Deus ex machina time twister

[kottakinge]

Hello.
We actually play before the CG with my players and i played some of the CG campagn scenarios (night of the living dead, touch of evil and feast of goblyns).
I don't want to continue the serie, so i redirect the focus of the campaign, i plan to play "a calling to Verbrek" adventure, because they played evil eye a few months ago.
So here's my question:as they just finish the evil eye a few months ago the dukkar wasn't able to gather enough forces to be the menace described in "a calling to Verbrek", and as Gundakar fell a few months ago too i need to play this adventure several years later.
As i don't want to continue the CG serie i want them to be spectator of the CG not actor.
So i was thinking of a deux ex machina to make travel in the future, i was thinking of an oubliette (in the VRGTTM), they will be catch in the mists and when they reappear in town 5 years will passed and they will learn from the people what happened during all this years.
What do u think about that?I don't my players to be frustrated with this deus ex machina.

[HuManBing]

Ugh. Time travel. I hate time travel. Gives me all sorts of headaches. And the in-flight movie sucks

Seriously though, try to avoid time travel if possible. This is a very complicated issue and from a purely logical viewpoint it's rife with dangers. If there's a real-world alternative to it, e.g. substituting leaders, or rewriting characters and actions, then I'd go for that. If a DM of mine wrote in a time leap, he's instantly lost my suspension of disbelief unless there's a very good handling of it. (For an example of this, see the first part of From The Shadows, where the PCs' consciousnesses are sent back in time, to an isolated incident where they would normally die anyway. That's good planning.)

I haven't read the Verbrek adventure yet but it seems like you need a large military to run the adventure. (And Malocchio is still too young and Gundar is dead.) Can Urik von Kharkov work? Or, could you do something similar with a smaller band of militants? Perhaps create a Vistani or oppressed minority leader who has an armylike band of fighters below him or her, and that through bad leadership they have become a force that preys upon the land instead of freeing it from oppression.

If you really have to do a time warping thing, I would mask it in a short adventure that lets them see their homeland again. Maybe another band of characters has begun the Grand Conjunction adventures and Azalin is currently splitting the Demiplane open. Weird things start to happen, and the PCs get a glimpse of their outworld homeland, but then the GC collapses and they're back in Ravenloft again.

Time passes at different speeds on different planes, so it's possible that while they were on their homeland for only a few weeks, but a decade or so has passed in Ravenloft, meaning that Malocchio could easily have grown up and mustered his armies.

[Sylaire]

Seriously though, try to avoid time travel if possible. This is a very complicated issue and from a purely logical viewpoint it's rife with dangers. If there's a real-world alternative to it, e.g. substituting leaders, or rewriting characters and actions, then I'd go for that. If a DM of mine wrote in a time leap, he's instantly lost my suspension of disbelief unless there's a very good handling of it. (For an example of this, see the first part of From The Shadows, where the PCs' consciousnesses are sent back in time, to an isolated incident where they would normally die anyway. That's good planning.)

If you really have to do a time warping thing, I would mask it in a short adventure that lets them see their homeland again. Maybe another band of characters has begun the Grand Conjunction adventures and Azalin is currently splitting the Demiplane open. Weird things start to happen, and the PCs get a glimpse of their outworld homeland, but then the GC collapses and they're back in Ravenloft again.

Time passes at different speeds on different planes, so it's possible that while they were on their homeland for only a few weeks, but a decade or so has passed in Ravenloft, meaning that Malocchio could easily have grown up and mustered his armies.

I second everything HuManBing just said about time travel. Ravenloft adventures are often bad enough with "railroading" the PCs and making them think that whatever they do means nothing (this, I think, has something to do with the Gothic-horror setting and the strong stories behind the adventures, not unlike how in video-game RPGs there is an inverse relationship between the detail of the story and the amount of player freedom) without turning time itself into a plaything and making cause and effect into a mere whim of the Dark Powers. If the PCs are from outside Ravenloft, HuManBing's suggestion of having them go off-plane for a time is very appropriate, since the notion of time passing differently in different realities is ancient, appearing in many classic folk-tales.

[cure]

How about suspended animation instead? For example, Azalin puts them on the shelf to use at some indefinite future date and either that date comes along or something accidentally disturbs and wakes one of the characters.

A Grave Elemental can achieve this. A Mirror of Lifetrapping would work too. A curse, à la sleeping beauty, is another means to this end, and perhaps to be unkind they have aged in the five years that they have been snoozing.

There is also the Nowhere Man/Hitcherhicker's Guide to the Universe/Torment idea where they have amnesia concerning what they have been doing in the last five years, and ultimately have to discover this before the enemies that they acquired in the time return to finish them off. And to this very end, they could wake up living normal lifes in Darkon five years in the future and only slowly regain their true memories on quitting the domain.

[Jester of the FoS]

Stepping out the Mists into the future is sometimes spooky, seeing what the future brings and trying to avert it. Seeing friends and family and supporting cast in another light.

[Rotipher of the FoS]

FWIW, jumping ahead in time doesn't carry the kind of baggage (i.e. temporal paradoxes) that crops up with characters who travel into the past. I don't think there's any great problem with the scenario that Kottakinge describes, so long as it's not overdone.

Whatever means you settle on, K, try not to make every change that takes place during the PCs' 5-year absence a negative one. If the players find that everything their characters ever cared about has been trashed in the interim, they'll probably be more ticked off at you than creeped out by Ravenloft.

[Isabella]

IIRC the Zarovan Vistani in Barovia tend to travel through time. One visit to the raunie later and the PCs can be 5 years in the future.

Keep in mind this does present them with a method of further mucking with time.

[kottakinge]

Thanks for all ur interesting points of view.
The Raunie Zarovan can be a good idea, because they've already work for her in the last adventure (evil eye) so it can be cool to have such a demonstration of the power that hold the Zarovan.
One of the character IMC is a bard half vistani who always dream about Hyskosa.The mad old man still threaten him during his dreams about a time of doom, and after the last adventure he said:
"So u met that old fool Eva.She's afraid of a dukkar heh?but there is but ONE DUKKAR, you and me know that, this little bastard cannot be called like that."
(excuse my english i try to translate as better as i can)
So maybe Eva know that the bard is chosen by Hyskosa to fullfy his prophetics, so she decides to prevent that by putting them in the future.
What about that?
Or like Humanbing suggests i let them "free" of adventure life during this time, they will just return to their normal activities and the CG arrives little by little (storms more and more violents, some minor earthquake, the sound and odor of the sea near the cliffs full of dark mists east of Nova Vassa), and 1 year or two after the CG they will continue the new adventure.

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

I can say nothing against five-year forward jumps in time, since I had one in my campaign.

I used Scaena to do it. They entered the theater, touched the stage, and then never knew that they were trapped there. They went back to their inn that night (an illusion of their inn on the stage), and woke up in a different place and time, apparently in the past. (But this part was just more illusion, I never actually had them really travel to the past.) They did one adventure in the past (Feast of Goblyns) and then found out it had all been one of Juste's plays. When they defeated him and escaped, they found that they had actually been trapped there for 5 years.

The fake trip the past was very problematic, for various reasons. (Making it seem like it mattered, and wasn't just "all a dream," dealing with being kidnapped against their will and fooled into performing, etc.). But the jump forward at the end gave me no problems at all, and I think it was a very good thing for the campaign.

If you have a campaign where you track time rigorously (like I do, with an old calendar), you find that adventurers have very hectic lives. The average adventure lasts a few days to a few weeks, and then their off to the next one, very rarely stopping to rest. Especially if they have personal quests that remain unresolved. So changes to the world over time are very hard to show.

I wanted to show the results of their past adventures several years down the line. (Malocchio coming to power after the evil eye, Van Richten's roster of friends changing due to his curse, The power struggle between Falkovnia and the Four Towers, people they saved in the past getting in trouble again, etc...) But if they just kept adventuring, they'd be epic level before any of those changes bore fruit. And if I just said, "ok, five years pass uneventfully" they'd complain that their characters would never have sat still for 5 years without pursuing their personal goals.

So I think the 5-year jump was very good for my campaign, and it looks like it will be for you too. I think your players will forgive a little deus ex machina if it results in a more interesting game.

[ChrisNichols]

Need a deus ex machina time jump?

Two words.

Castles Forlorn.

[Joël of the FoS]

Or Ashington Manor!

Joël

[Sylaire]

Actually, Ashington Manor could work very well, because unlike Forlorn (where Tristenoira is more-or-less fixed as the "modern" version), the five versions of Ashington Manor aren't tied to any particular timeframe. The players could go into the inn version, for example, solve the quest, and end up at the ruined-manor version thirty-four years in the future...

[Joël of the FoS]

Actually, Ashington Manor could work very well, because unlike Forlorn (where Tristenoira is more-or-less fixed as the "modern" version), the five versions of Ashington Manor aren't tied to any particular timeframe. The players could go into the inn version, for example, solve the quest, and end up at the ruined-manor version thirty-four years in the future...

Well, no, they are linked to time frame by a very definite period of time between similar events (14 years IIRC). Moving out of that time frame makes the adventure get out of the rails.

So you could add another murder event, that could happen in 14 years (or 28 years).

Joël

[Sylaire]

Actually, Ashington Manor could work very well, because unlike Forlorn (where Tristenoira is more-or-less fixed as the "modern" version), the five versions of Ashington Manor aren't tied to any particular timeframe. The players could go into the inn version, for example, solve the quest, and end up at the ruined-manor version thirty-four years in the future...

Well, no, they are linked to time frame by a very definite period of time between similar events (14 years IIRC). Moving out of that time frame makes the adventure get out of the rails.

So you could add another murder event, that could happen in 14 years (or 28 years).

Joël

Fourteen? I thought it was seventeen (that's why I said thirty-four). Wait here; I'm going to go look it up...

Yep, seventeen.

But what I meant was, kottakinge wouldn't need to add new murders to the end, but simply rule that the "now" version of the Manor was one of the earlier ones (I used The Inn in my example, because it's the easiest to simply have the PCs run across in their travels without needing to railroad them into going there via plot events--the instant they walk into the door they're stuck--but The Asylum would probably be easier, for a seventeen-year jump forward which doesn't completely change the world) and that when the manor was cleared the PCs end up in The Ruins, the latest version in the timeline.

It is true, though, that a number like "five" or "nine" would be inconvenient, though, if he didn't want to move the party around by a multiple of seventeen. As you say, that would mess up the adventure.

[Joël of the FoS]

17? Oh well, I tried

Well indeed taking the last scenario and putting it in the future would be nice & easy indeed. That way also, you do not mess with the number of suits the deck has.

Joël