Skip to Content
 

Theming Question Related to Time Travel

12 replies [Last post]
harmon89
harmon89's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/13/2016

I'm working on a game that is centered around vacationing in the future once time traveling is made possible. This is also a biblically themed game, so players are time traveling back to the land of Israel during Bible times.

Currently I have a time portal that all players are using. The time portal moves forward 1 century every round, and players try to play cards from their hand from that century to score points. (There's also a set collection aspect of the types of events players are trying to collect, but that is beside the point.)

Obviously it could be difficult to coordinate your travels perfectly, to see everything you want to see and be everywhere you need to be at exactly the right time, so players can pay to have the portal expand, so that the portal's range extends. Now this means that the portal also expands for all players, so you have to keep that in mind.

The game is quite fun and it really has that feeling of when you go on a vacation and you're trying to see as much as you can see, but you know that you can't do everything, so you have to pick and choose what are the best things to spend your time on.

My main question is do you buy the story this game is trying to tell? Do time portals work like that? Does it make sense that you can expand the strength of a portal so that it could travel further forward and back in time?

Gabe
Gabe's picture
Offline
Joined: 09/11/2014
Considering that time portals

Considering that time portals aren't a real thing, they can work however you want them to. This is your fictional world, so you make the rules.

Just make sure the things happening in the past are fairly accurate.

radioactivemouse
radioactivemouse's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/08/2013
Hmmm...

My initial opinion of this is that when I play a "time" game, I want to manipulate time, not go on vacation.

Are there any consequences? What are the objectives?

TBH, if I were you, I'd choose a different theme instead of Biblical. I believe you can make a great Biblical themed game, just not as a time setting (see Commissioned the card game). When I heard your pitch, I thought more of a convention setting. Go to a convention but you can't see everything. You have a time limit and you and your friends have to get as many points as you can doing things around the convention before the convention ends.

But that's my opinion.

harmon89
harmon89's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/13/2016
If I could time travel

First of all, there is the theory that if you could time travel, you couldn't actually change anything, you could just observe it. Secondly, if time travel was possible, I'm sure there would be a ton of religious people who would want to take biblical tours of events that they believed really happened. It would be totally awesome! :) I know I for one would be first in line for such an adventure.

And I know biblical themes don't appeal to as many people as perhaps other more popular themes like pirates and zombies, but it interests me. And I know there are others out there who would like to see more than the handful of decent biblically themed strategy games. Also, my main motivation for designing games is to make games that I enjoy and the people that interact with regularly will enjoy as well.

While you are not manipulating time in the game, you are playing with it, which does create some interesting situations and choices.

Basically on your turn you have 4 actions that can be used in a variety of ways. For 1 action you can purchase event tickets (cards with events with their time and place) from a draw pool or blindly from the top of the event deck, Move from one location to an adjacent location, or play an event card. (To play a card you must be in the correct location and century)

Starting in the 15h century BC, the time portal moves on a track 1 century each round until it reaches the New Testament era. So if you have an event card that is in the 11th century the most optimal time to play that card would be when the time portal is in the 11th century. The further you are from the 11th century when you reach that destination the more it will cost you to expand the range of the portal so that you can play that card. You must discard 1 card from your hand to pay to expand the portal by 1 century.

With a 7 card hand limit, specialty cards that clog up your hand but will give you big benefits at the end of the game, and event cards that are trying to get to, hand and time management become a big part of the game.

harmon89
harmon89's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/13/2016
Commissioned the card game?

And when you say Commissioned the card game, do you mean the board game by Chara Games?

While I agree that is a good game, I don't think all Bible themed games have to be modeled after that one.

radioactivemouse
radioactivemouse's picture
Offline
Joined: 07/08/2013
It's not the theory...

It's a perception that when stories and games about time are made, it's always about the playing or manipulating of time. There's no rhyme or reason, it's just a perception on what we think is interesting. It appears plausible and we always think about what we "could" have done, hence the curiosity of bending time.

I can see where you can get the "play" aspect of your game, but games have grand objectives and winning conditions, you'll need some kind of end goal in mind and that would require a time element, some goal, or something you're trying to prevent. That's the whole point of games...to "win". As it is I haven't seen any kind of objective (just "end game"), so there's no reason for me to play...regardless of the subject.

Why would I want to go to these locations? Are there point values to these places instead of "vacationing"? Create an epic objective. Give the player a reason.

We all create games that we want to play and enjoy. Everyone here does that. I'm looking at this from a clinical standpoint...why would people want to play this game? Does a card really indicate "vacationing".

If you're creating this game for just you and your circle of friends, my criticism shouldn't really matter. But if you plan on publishing this game, you'll have to give more of a reason to go back and forth through time instead of playing around with it.

The example I gave was just an example. I'm just saying there's biblical themed games out there that are successful.

Willem Verheij
Willem Verheij's picture
Offline
Joined: 06/08/2016
It's a bit of an odd

It's a bit of an odd combination to mix a biblical theme with time traveling vacations.

Presenting biblical events as historic facts might also spark controversy.

My advice would be to focus just on the time traveling vacation, having fun in the past. That way you can reach a larger market too instead of focusing on just christians.

Tedthebug
Tedthebug's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/17/2016
There's the whole time

There's the whole time paradox issue but what if players had to try & help the events to happen, I.e. What if the events wouldn't have happened if time travellers hadn't gone back to witness the event & while trying not to change the event actually cause it? That is, things would've ended up differently but because time travellers had gone back to witness the events that they had read in the bible they were the ones that had actually caused those events to happen.
The players have to take actions to lead to the desired result but depending on what actions each player takes they could help or hinder each other. It could be played as competitive where each player is trying to be the one that has the last action that puts the story on track or it can be co-op where the players are working together to overcome the 'normal' series of events so that they can trigger the biblical series of events..

Sorry if that makes no sense, time travel is a painful convoluted thing to try & write down.

Soulfinger
Soulfinger's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/06/2015
You pitched this one a few

You pitched this one a few months ago, right?

I recall tachyons and quantum tunneling as being the in-thing last time I looked at time travel theories (I was trying to find a use for the box my water heater came in, so time machine, obviously). I hate to recommend a Michael Crichton book, but he does more work sharing his research in Timeline than he does developing his characters, whereas most time travel novels that just involve getting lost in some mist and the heroine emerging in medieval Scotland for a lusty romance. Then again, your time travel agency could lease that particular patch of Scottish moorland, because seriously, I've read at least a dozen stories by legitimate, non-bodice-ripping authors who use this trope. It must be science, because it looks like magic, and as Arthur C. Clarke said, "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Ultimately, there is no way of making a time portal "make sense" since the concept is still magic to us.

Since "Using a time portal" is really the only explanation a board game needs, none of these questions matter, but out of sheer curiosity: Do I understand right that it is a one-way portal, so the Romans can't conquer our world? People can't affect history, so they couldn't use advanced technology to change the course of history and elevate Simon Magus to pope, for example? What protects visitors from virulent diseases, like smallpox and plague? One of the worst possibly byproducts of time travel would be the reintroduction of disease strains that we have little resistance to in modern times, or vice-versa. For me, the actual tourism is less interesting than the profound geopolitical changes that such an invention would have. In terms of "buying the story," that's what I most think about. What a messed up world that would be.

What are your plans in terms of Biblical scholarship? I'm assuming that the time travel tour is going to leave out gray areas, like who actually wrote many of the books, but what translations will you be using? Does your game approach the Bible as inerrant? Certainly what is Biblically accurate for a King James-literalist is going to be markedly different from the expectations of other Christians. Also, assuming that you are approaching the subject from the perspective of a Christian, how do you manage to interject reverence into the topic of these voyeuristic tourists going on vacation to watch Jesus Christ get crucified? It can get cringe worthy pretty fast. That is a subject of particular interest for me as scripture is so often treated like Trivial Pursuit among Cultural Christians.

Will you be including events from the Apocrypha and/or the Psuedepigrapha? The problem, of course, is that this is as much a selling point for Catholics and Orthodox Christians as it would be shocking and confusing for charismatics. A supplement, perhaps. Flavius Josephus is a wonderful source to draw on though. I'm always curious when people make Bible-themed games, what process of scholarship goes into it or if it is just reflexively based on the denominational market of the author.

Soulfinger
Soulfinger's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/06/2015
Willem Verheij wrote:It's a

Willem Verheij wrote:
It's a bit of an odd combination to mix a biblical theme with time traveling vacations.

Presenting biblical events as historic facts might also spark controversy.

It will fly just fine with Conservative Christians, as it boils down to another Bible trivia game, of which there are many. It's a profitable niche to cater to. The sort of Christians who are disturbed by such a thing tend not to shop at the Christian bookstores that would be the principal distribution point for such a game, as ironically enough, these stores do not carry actual books on Christian theology (I've yet to find one that stocks the Apostolic Fathers). This game would be one of the least shocking things on sale at a store like that, for theist and atheist alike. There's really no room for controversy in this. The potentially horrific implications of the time travel theme likewise won't concern that audience. It'll be a harder sell for Biblical Christians in a traditional market.

Tedthebug wrote:
That is, things would've ended up differently but because time travellers had gone back to witness the events that they had read in the bible they were the ones that had actually caused those events to happen.

There has been a lot of fiction covering this over the years. Of hand, I recall Michael Moorcock's "Behold the Man." The time traveler wants to meet Jesus and ends up nailed to the cross.

Zag24
Offline
Joined: 03/02/2014
Mechanic sounds fine to me

I think your theme sounds OK, and the mechanic is fine. It's your time travel, so they are your rules about how it works. As long as the whole thing is self-consistent, I'm willing to suspend disbelief on your major mechanic. (Connie Willis has a series of time travel stories with the "no changing time" limitation. The science-y justification is that the "temporal field" collapses if, in going back in time, you affect something that would cause you or the time machine not to exist or not to be in this present in order to send you back in time. Given the butterfly effect, you really have to affect almost nothing, or you just don't go.

(In fact, it's pretty silly. Given the butterfly effect, just breathing is enough to change the weather around the globe 10 years from now, which probably means somebody lived or died who wasn't otherwise going to, etc. But you get the idea.)

The big question about a mechanic is whether it creates the appropriate decision tension, and I think that this could. You want to weight the cards so the later ones are more points. This means that I get a really valuable card early in the game, and the decision tension is whether I hang on to it for several turns until it is playable (clogging up my hand) or do I just use it as fodder to score some medium-point card right now?

This is similar to San Juan, in which the same cards that you play are the ones you use as fodder to be able to play them. I think it works quite well, and could do so for your game, too.

I suggest that you have a range on the cards of how costly they are to play, as well. For instance, to "See any of the direct descendants of Abraham" you could play that cheaply in any of 4 centuries, and it isn't worth very many points. To "Observe Moses as a child in the house of the Pharaoh" you need to be in the right century to play it cheaply, but you have a 15-year span that you have to hit, so it's not that expensive. However, to "Witness the Sermon on the Mount" you need to be at a very precise place on a specific day and time, so even in the correct century you would have to use up several cards in order to score it. But, of course, it's worth a lot of points.

The other aspect that I think your game will need is player interaction. (Maybe you have this and just haven't mentioned it, yet.) I should have actions that affect my opponents' ability to play certain cards or do certain things. Perhaps players can control regions, so other players can not act in those regions. Perhaps as simple as getting the opportunity to steal cards or make their time adjustments more expensive. Without the interaction, the game is just 4-player solitaire, which gets boring pretty quickly.

harmon89
harmon89's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/13/2016
Zag24 wrote:I think your

Zag24 wrote:
I think your theme sounds OK, and the mechanic is fine. It's your time travel, so they are your rules about how it works. As long as the whole thing is self-consistent, I'm willing to suspend disbelief on your major mechanic. (Connie Willis has a series of time travel stories with the "no changing time" limitation. The science-y justification is that the "temporal field" collapses if, in going back in time, you affect something that would cause you or the time machine not to exist or not to be in this present in order to send you back in time. Given the butterfly effect, you really have to affect almost nothing, or you just don't go.

(In fact, it's pretty silly. Given the butterfly effect, just breathing is enough to change the weather around the globe 10 years from now, which probably means somebody lived or died who wasn't otherwise going to, etc. But you get the idea.)

The big question about a mechanic is whether it creates the appropriate decision tension, and I think that this could. You want to weight the cards so the later ones are more points. This means that I get a really valuable card early in the game, and the decision tension is whether I hang on to it for several turns until it is playable (clogging up my hand) or do I just use it as fodder to score some medium-point card right now?

This is similar to San Juan, in which the same cards that you play are the ones you use as fodder to be able to play them. I think it works quite well, and could do so for your game, too.

I suggest that you have a range on the cards of how costly they are to play, as well. For instance, to "See any of the direct descendants of Abraham" you could play that cheaply in any of 4 centuries, and it isn't worth very many points. To "Observe Moses as a child in the house of the Pharaoh" you need to be in the right century to play it cheaply, but you have a 15-year span that you have to hit, so it's not that expensive. However, to "Witness the Sermon on the Mount" you need to be at a very precise place on a specific day and time, so even in the correct century you would have to use up several cards in order to score it. But, of course, it's worth a lot of points.

The other aspect that I think your game will need is player interaction. (Maybe you have this and just haven't mentioned it, yet.) I should have actions that affect my opponents' ability to play certain cards or do certain things. Perhaps players can control regions, so other players can not act in those regions. Perhaps as simple as getting the opportunity to steal cards or make their time adjustments more expensive. Without the interaction, the game is just 4-player solitaire, which gets boring pretty quickly.

Thanks for taking the time to understand the game. I think you "get" the kind of choices that the games requires you to make. Hand management is a huge part of it, as well as evaluating cost vs reward for each decision. And I always liked the mechanic used in San Juan, and it works well here as well.

I really you've got a good idea there about having cards where some are easier to play than others. I will think about whether it is something I can incorporate into the game in some way.

Player interaction is something that I've given a lot of thought to, and I don't know if I yet have the perfect solution, but it is getting better in that regard. Players interact in different ways throughout the game.

One way is that players cannot occupy the some location on the board on a given turn. There are many opportunities in the game to strategically block other players. I have 3 teleportation stations that really amplify the effect of this rule. If no one is occupying the space of the teleportation location in the south and the north, a player could jump from the north to the south side of the board in 1 turn. Of course all players know this, so people often strategically use their pieces to block other players from using the ports, which causes strategies to be reevaluated. The teleporters provide a source of conflict and tension, and since you can change the location of the 3 stations for each game, it provides a slightly different player experience each play.

Many cards also have symbols on them such as a sword to represent famous battles, or a symbol to represent miraculous events, (there are 5 different symbol categories). At the end of the game players score additional points if they have been to the most of that type of event. This causes constant competition throughout the game as you are continually trying to make sure you maintain the lead in at least 1 or 2 symbols.

You also score points through regional bonuses. There are 5 regions on the board. If you go to 1 event in each of the 5 regions you have 1 regional set. At the end of the game you get additional points for each regional set. There is also some competition here since some regions have fewer events that take place there. You can focus on an region with fewer events, making it harder for other players to complete their sets.

Since cards are drawn from a draw pool (similar to Ticket to Ride) there's always the aspect of affecting other players by taking cards thus denying other players from taking that card.

The time portal is another way that players actions affect other players. Suppose in a particular round player A discards 2 cards and expands the portal by 2 centuries (It expands in both directions so, the range becomes 5 centuries wide). The portal now stays open until it gets back to player A's turn. Player B could chose to discard a card opening up the portal yet another century. If no other players increase the range of the portal that round, when it gets back to player A's turn he will first take back the 2 tokens he contributed the previous turn, but player B's token will still be used. This mechanic creates interaction, in that a player's decision directly impacts all other players.

So, I hope that helps give you an idea of how I've tried to address the solo problem. I would love to hear any ideas of how I could further address the issue. :)

harmon89
harmon89's picture
Offline
Joined: 01/13/2016
Soulfinger wrote:What are

Soulfinger wrote:

What are your plans in terms of Biblical scholarship? I'm assuming that the time travel tour is going to leave out gray areas, like who actually wrote many of the books, but what translations will you be using? Does your game approach the Bible as inerrant? Certainly what is Biblically accurate for a King James-literalist is going to be markedly different from the expectations of other Christians. Also, assuming that you are approaching the subject from the perspective of a Christian, how do you manage to interject reverence into the topic of these voyeuristic tourists going on vacation to watch Jesus Christ get crucified? It can get cringe worthy pretty fast. That is a subject of particular interest for me as scripture is so often treated like Trivial Pursuit among Cultural Christians.

I've sort of debated how to deal with this. Once is to not have events in the deck that would be viewed as irreverent to observe. Another is to view the "points" in the game as a value that represents the impact witnessing the event has on your life. This is the reason people go on biblical tours. And I think if you frame it in that way, it becomes reverent enough.

I've gone back and forth about using events in the Apocrypha. I'm not opposed to it, but most of the events in those books occur in Jerusalem, and I already have enough events from that location, so my reason for leaning toward not including it is more practical than anything.

Syndicate content


forum | by Dr. Radut