RPG: Time Travel, v. 2015
A reboot of the original:
Date: January 21, 2015
Categories: RRRs, RPWs, and RPGs
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KaiYves
in January 23rd, 2015 @ 22:05On Wings of Angels– A brief recap for everyone who doesn’t want to read through all of the last thread:
Rainbow*Storm: “Throughout history, many of the most famous and powerful people have reported similar childhood experiences: being saved from imminent death by an ‘angel in white’. The angels are actually an organization from the future known as the Guardian Angels, whose job is to make sure that history’s great leaders and pioneers survive to fulfill their destiny. They have high-tech mechanical wings on their suits (think Artemis Fowl), and headlights that resemble halos.”
Enceladus: “The Guardian Angels would be ‘battling’ against time itself, but working for it- they go make and make history what happened, not what would happen if the Guardian Angels weren’t there. To add a bit of plot, the famous and powerful people should almost unite to send the Angels a message about something that could possible destroy the universe if there isn’t interference. Something paradox proof.”
Bookgirl_Me: “The “Angels†are a group of unknown entities who save famous minds from death in their childhood. No-one knows exactly who or what they are because they have only been reported as humanoid figures surrounded by blinding, white light. Our thesis is that they are time travelers from the future who are attempting to make history unfold as we know it by undoing paradoxes so that their future ends up the way they want it to be. That’s where we come in: they’re able to manipulate time in whatever way the want too and they’ve chosen groups of young people for every 7700 years or so (that would make us able to visit the times from ancient Mesopotamia to now). Basically, we’re “chosen†to “correct†the time stream.”
– Angels often leave those they rescue with messages or ideas to include in their future work that will aid in the future development of humanity.
– Recruits are trained at the Angels’ base somewhere and somewhen in the far future.
– Angels are usually assigned to missions in teams, with more experienced Angels overseeing and mentoring newer ones.
– In the previous thread, wings indicated an Angel’s experience and status within the organization, with the hierarchy as such:
Angel-in-training (plain metallic wings)
Junior (small glittering wings)
Semi-expert (large glittering wings)
Expert (large glittering wings that glow)
Semi-master (small feathered wing implants)
Master (large feathered wing implants)
– Angels often wear goggles while flying, but their other choices of apparel and gadgets are up to personal preference and the need to blend in when traveling.
– I raised the possibility of some adult historical figures having been rescued in situations where they would have been strained/weak/ill/delirious enough to assume the encounter wasn’t real, but I don’t know if anyone else liked the idea.So welcome to the Guardian Angels, trainee. Are you ready to make history?
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Rainbow*Storm
in January 24th, 2015 @ 01:19I like the idea of including adult historical figures who are delirious enough to assume the angels aren’t real, that expands the possibilities for missions so they don’t have to be during childhood. Maybe we could research historical figures that had actual near-death experiences and try to incorporate them?
I kind of think this could also work as an RRR as opposed to an RPG like last time? There would be more opportunity for character development if we could focus on a core cast that everyone contributes to writing, instead of each character only being active when their blogger can be online. What do you guys think?
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KaiYves
in January 25th, 2015 @ 20:45I don’t know about RRR vs. RPG, but I definitely think research and historical in-jokes should be big parts of this game.
Last thread, the missions that got described in briefings or gameplay were:
Cleopatra VII, Ptolemaic queen, rescued after being trapped while exploring an ancient tomb at age 10 (59 BCE)
Galileo Galilei, astronomer/physicist, prevented from eating poisonous berries at age 14 (1578)
Thomas Jefferson, politician/polymath, rescued from drowning after falling overboard during a sea voyage at an unknown early age (1740s-50s)
Susan B. Anthony, activist, rescued from drowning at age 4 (1824)
Georges Bizet, operatic composer, rescued from drowning at age 10 (1848)
Carl Sagan, astronomer/author, rescued after getting lost at World’s Fair at age 5 (1939)Additionally, the briefings mentioned the following without any details:
Leonardo da Vinci, artist/inventor, 1492 (this may have been a mistake as da Vinci would have been 40 in that year, and the date given for Galileo’s rescue in the same post was in Galileo’s adulthood but later revised to a date when he was a teenager)
Christopher Paolini, author, sometime between 2000 and 2010 (ages 15-25)
Several other (20th-21st century?) authors besides Paolini and SaganRescues discussed out-of-character but not mentioned in-game:
Agatha Christie, author, possibly during the period she disappeared in 1926 (age 36)
Ernest Shackleton, explorer, during the crossing of South Georgia Island in 1916 (age 42. Actually, expanding on this idea, Angelic intervention could be an explanation for a lot of examples of “Third Man Syndrome”– people feeling as though another person is there helping them in a period of crisis, especially in wilderness survival.)
Antoine de Saint-Exupry, aviator/author, either as a child or during his crash in the Sahara in 1935 (age 35) I kind of like the idea that, since The Little Prince was inspired by this experience and *involves a pilot meeting an otherworldly being in the desert*, it could have been his interpretation of interacting with an Angel.
William Shakespeare, playwright/poet, no details given, but he lived 1564-1616.
Mohandas Gandhi, activist, no details given, lived 1869-1948.
Rosa Parks, activist, no details given, lived 1913-2005.
Bill Gates, computer programer/businessman, no details given, born 1955, still alive as of 2015An idea mentioned on the other thread was that people rescued by the Angels were visited again at the end of their lives, restored to full health, and recruited as Angels themselves. This was objected to because there seemed to already be many Angel characters and in the case of people who were seen dead and buried, it would seem to contradict history. However, the facts that Cleopatra’s death is shrouded in mystery and Saint-Expury disappeared in WWII with no body ever found were pointed out…
I *really* like the idea of historical in-jokes in the form of the Angels as explanations to historical mysteries and inspirations for works of art in general.
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KaiYves
in February 7th, 2015 @ 14:21So they have Peter Sis’ new children’s biography of Saint-Expury here in the library and at one point it says “his mother called him an angel” and I chuckled.
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ZNZ
in February 7th, 2015 @ 20:24Peter SÃs is the greatest.
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Noah2316
in February 3rd, 2015 @ 20:12A couple questions: Would this be starting entirely from the beginning or continuing from where the other one left off? Also, are the Angels fighting anything other than just things that happen to happen to important people? It doesn’t really make sense to me if Cleopatra gets lost in an old mastaba accidentally, but if some person or group of evil-doers trap her on purpose, then that would give a reason to prevent it from happening. Otherwise, Cleopatra would never have become who she is known as now in the first place, rather than being a real person in our time and then suddenly disappear from all records. If that makes sense at all (it only kind of does to me) Also, while I’m on the subject of Cleopatra, I noticed it said that she would be 10 years old. In Egyptian times, weren’t the preteens and teens – especially the royalty – pretty mature for their age? Wasn’t Cleopatra rather young (compared to us, at least) for her rule? Maybe if she was 5 or 6, it might make a little more sense. To me, at least. I may be completely wrong, but that’s what I remember.
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KaiYves
in February 8th, 2015 @ 10:05This would be starting from the beginning, but possibly featuring some of the same missions.
I think our conception of it was that the Angels were just fighting accidents of fate– there were several earlier proposals for a time travel game with a human villain at the beginning of the thread, but people thought that would be too melodramatic.
I didn’t come up with the Cleopatra scenario, but I think exploring an old mastaba would be in-character for the “Royal Diaries” version of Cleopatra, but it’s been many years since I read that book.
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Noah2316
in February 8th, 2015 @ 11:08I’ve never read the “Royal Diaries” books, but maybe I’ll head over to the library to ‘check them out’. Also, I still feel like if the angels were just fighting against fate, their work wouldn’t make any difference in the regular, modern world. If the famous and important people were lost or died as children, they wouldn’t have done any of the things that we know them for as adults. Perhaps the people did end up being who we, right now, know them to be, but in the RPG/RRR (whatever we decide to do) reality, it would change the course of time far too much to be able to cover even the greatest repercussions in this thread. Also, how would the Angels know about what the people that they save could do in their adult life if the Angels are from our timeline? (they are from our time period, correct? Or at least from a period in our past or future?) The only way that I can think to make this possible, or even realistic, would be to have an outside group of beings changing time from our present or future so that the people that we rescue can be known in our world first, just like they are now, and suddenly wiped clean from our memories. Battling against fate itself just doesn’t make any sense to me.
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