Design goals
This game was developed for the 2018 edition of the 200 Word RPG challenge. Inspired by the masterpiece Stein’s;Gate, my design goals were to recreate the sense of loss from being lost in alternative universes while using a mechanics that was reminiscent of the original.
The rules
You accidentally discover a way to send messages to the past, which you realize later altered the future – in a terrible way. Will you repair that mistake, or fail and end up in a foreign timeline? And what will you sacrifice on the journey? Determine as a group what is wrong. Maybe you attracted undue attention, suffered a loss, or started a time war.
Take three dice showing the sequence ‘521’. The sequence indicates your current timeline ‘coordinates’. Your original timeline is ‘111’.
Taking turns, you send a message up to two weeks back in time. Describe the message, add 1 to one of the die, and subtract 1 from another (adding 1 to a 6 brings you back to 1 and vice versa). Roll the remaining die. This is your new timeline.
The player on your left describes something unchanged in the new timeline, the player on your right something an unintended consequence. You describe a positive change.
In timelines with identical coordinates (e.g. ‘222’) the time-messaging device is destroyed.
The game ends when you reach timeline ‘111’ or when the device is destroyed. Each player narrates their new life, what they gained, and what they lost in parallel timelines.
