Game Design Pattern: Time Action!!!

In my continued attempts to do weird spacetime stuff with TTRPGs (The Art of Chrono War, Multi-Dimensional Hex Crawl), here's a system neutral Game Design Pattern for running conflicts with time mechanics.

These are currently untested. Might be better for fast or rules-light games, encounters with specific goals, or where there is some imposed limit on the number of Rounds (could just be a baked-in hard limit and not context specific); since individual Actions and entire Timelines may be overwritten, the pace of the conflict might be slower, all else being equal.

The idea was partially inspired by Source Control Management (Git specifically), if you know you know, but you don't need to know.

Again, totally untested, so if you catch any obvious issues with the design pattern, please let me know. I haven't run a game in a while but I'll try to incorporate this next time I run something and see how it goes.

Terminology

Basic overview of the game design pattern.

Turn: A single character's continuous Actions.

Round: Cycle of every characters' Turn, or reset after a new Timeline is created by a Time Action.

Action: General term for anything a character can do on their Turn.

Time Action: An Action of any kind that is taken backwards in time to alter a previous Turn within the Round, and that may create a new Timeline (and therefore resetting the Round).

Timeline: Linear sequence of Actions or Turns encompassing a Round. Whenever a new Timeline is created, the Round resets starting from the next Turn.

Stash Action: A special kind of Time Action, forfeiting a Turn to react to or interrupt other Actions.

Merge Action: Use a Stashed Action to react out of Turn order immediately after another Action.

Rebase Action: Use a Stashed Action to interrupt a Time Action, resolving prior to the Time Action.

Time Action Game Design Pattern

Explanation of the mechanics laid out in detail.

Time Actions

• Time Actions resolve using whatever mechanic would normally be involved for that Action. 
  
  
• They can only go back as far as the current Round.
  
  
• -X penalty on the Action for each Turn backwards.
• e.g. -1 to reset the Timeline from the previous character's Turn, -2 for two Turns back, etc.
• -X penalty is a relative term for whatever makes sense for the chosen system.
• Or, cost +X Time Action points, if you want to use a meta currency to limit Time Actions.
  
  

• If the Time Action is successful, the character may choose to accept the new Timeline and reset the Round, or revert to the original Timeline.
• If reverting to original Timeline, they are in effect forfeiting their turn, but gain +1 to their next Action or receiving a Time Action point if taking that approach.
• If accepting the new Timeline, they gain a +X bonus on their next non-Time Action where X is the number of Turns erased by the new Timeline.
  
  

• If the Time Action failed against an opposing character, the opposing character may choose to accept the new Timeline.

Stash/Merge/Rebase Actions

• Stash Action: Choose a kind of Action (e.g. running, fighting, hiding, etc.). 
• Forfeit your Turn.
• Stashed Actions may be used to Merge or Rebase.
  
  
• Merge Actions use Stashed Actions to react to another Action out of Turn with +1.
• Can react to other Merge Actions, resolving in the order they were made, each subsequent Merge Action receiving an additional +1.
• Can react to Time Actions, but not resolving until the beginning of the new Timeline, and are lost if the original Timeline is preserved.
• Can react to Rebase Actions, but only after all active Rebase Actions are resolved (otherwise it would get way too messy...).
  
  
• Rebase Actions use Stashed Actions to interrupt Actions with +1.
• Can interrupt other Rebase Actions, receiving an additional +1 for each number of Actions being interrupted.
• If a Rebase Action is successfully interrupted by another Rebase Action, it is lost.
• Can interrupt Time Actions, preserving the original Timeline or creating a different new Timeline based on how the Rebase Action alters the original Timeline.
• Can interrupt Merge Actions.

Flow of Time Action!!!

The Game Design Pattern explanation above is a better reference, but given that this is all about time, I thought it might be easier to understand at first if presented linearly.

Each sequence of continuous Actions or Turns over the course of a Round comprises a Timeline. While new Timelines reset the Round (prohibiting Time Actions further back), the character Turn order proceeds as normal.

Time Actions allow characters to create a new Timeline branching off of any Action within the Round, taking a -X Penalty (whatever that means within the system) for each Turn backwards they're attempting to erase in the Timeline.

This could alternatively use a points system to buy Time Actions rather than inducing a penalty. Or Time Actions could be tied to a specific stat or unique resolution mechanic, but I prefer the idea to just tie it to the Action itself, or a points system.

If the Time Action is successful, the character may choose to accept the new Timeline, reset the Round, and gain +X to their next (non-Time) Action, where X is the number of Turns erased by the new Timeline.

Attempting a Time Action from further back in the Timeline, where more Turns would be negated, involves a greater penalty or cost. However, if successful, it can not only turn the tides after a particularly bad Round, but can also provide a proportionately large benefit on the next (non-Time) Action.

So there's a risk/reward system involved that also reflects the natural advantage one might imagine having by successfully rewriting the Timeline in their favor.

Or, they revert to the original Timeline (in effect forfeiting their turn, but gaining +1 to their next Action or receiving a Time Action point if taking that approach).

If the Time Action failed against an opposing character, they also may choose to accept the new Timeline.

For systems with degrees of success especially, or where unexpected complications might arise, the option to reject a new Timeline, or to accept a new Timeline as the opposition even if it erases your previous Action, may be a beneficial decision.

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Huffa and I have been working on something called The Mycelium Matrix, like a psychedelic animist cyberspace (perfect for my animism setting whenever I get around to properly writing that up besides anima crafting and the appendix-n).

Part of the Mycelium Matrix are the Freaky Fractals, these weird micro-events that are like psychedelic incursions, augmented realities layered on top of one's perceptions, crossing the boundary between physical reality and dream.

As part of the full set of tables and features of The Mycelium Matrix, we're planning on chopping up these writeups into bullet-points that will hopefully be a little more obviously usable, but I still like these writeups as-is and wanted to share them, so here they are.

Freaky Fractals of the Mycelium Matrix

Within the Mindscapes of the Mycelium Matrix, reality and rumination intertwine in a synesthetic transposition. What at first appears as mundane reality infinitely unfolds into a kaleidoscope of thoughts and feelings, each layer replicating onto the subsequent layer like a rainbow. Imagine any one (or two, or three…) illogically interweaving with reality like a dream.

1. A red sky and portents of crisis. Red-faced anger and shame on incongruous faces. Butt-busty baboons bawling incessantly; nagging and distracting and out of place. The baboons are really getting in the way of things. Individually they are not too powerful, but they multiply through murder. For every baboon murdered, two more fall butt-first from the red sky like little bright red comets. The baboons have the taste and nutritional value of cinnamon candies. An incorrigible chaos, at best its proliferation may be aimed before being set loose.

2. Avaricious ASMR anteaters, long tongues licking orange juice slime and nuggets of gaudy gold glitter from unsuspecting ears. A deliciously disgusting smacking sound. The more polite anteaters will trade treasures for your delicious ear stuff. For every nugget of ear stuff dug out, a chunk of perceived reality is replaced with orangeness. Battalions from the fire ant military industrial complex pour from the orangeness with a mission to colonize cleaned ears.

3. Streaking yellow arrows guide you along clear cut paths bending over the horizon. While traversing the yellow arrows, you never grow tired, hungry, thirsty, or taller. The sun shines brightly. Everything is soft, round, bouncy, smiling, and everything sings. Heatwaves burst like bass beats from Mr. Sunshine Man, everything vibrating in a heat haze. Mr. Sunshine Man is a font of knowledge, but will never tell you anything you don’t want to hear. For every truth he shines a light upon, another truth becomes a saturated parody of itself, a clearly misremembered memory, a crisp mirage seen through a polarized lens. The yellow arrows guide you down a path that could neither be more clear nor more clearly wrong.

4. A lush forest of deep time folded around the present moment like an emerald ring. Glittering mineral richness, neon bioluminescence, absinthe dew and chartreuse ponds; floating freezing superconductor monoliths, geometric patterns on circuit board forest floors. Glutinous mossy flora, fatty fauna feeding on fruits and each other, full of life and vibrancy and danger. An algorithmic maze where monsters hunt the ignorant as easy prey, stalked in the shrouding shadows of their own minds, their small worlds closing in around them. A mathemagical forest, predator and prey, man and monster. Those seeking only an exit will fail to find one; this is a survival game that must be played, but the clever define the rules for themselves.

5. Beyond the fourth wall, the world reveals itself to be a stage. Structures made of flimsy paper diorama and cardboard cutout character collage. The sky is lapis lazuli, the stars periwinkles, streaking petal comets inducing visual snow and CRT static. Like a paper fortune teller or a game of he loves me / he loves me not, frivolous premonitions and portents alike reign from the whims of the astrological astronomical Witch Qing. The Silly Stage is a duel, dance, and discourse between the Witch Qing and their audience. Who rules and who fools? Only those who do both receive a standing ovation.

6. Ultraviolet ultraviolence in a blinding white light discothèquenological mosh pit. Physically demanding freedom, free-form destruction, fertile frenetic femininity in ballroom vogue. No grudges are kept, even those are destroyed. Spiral-shaped primordial anti-monsters ambulating in non-integer dimensions like plants in hypertime, meta-rainbow mantis shrimp mod squads, a genetic sequence unhinged in the universe for good and ill, solidarity through singularity, and other such things. The only escape is through destruction. When you return to reality, something is missing, but the gaps have not been left unfilled.

Weird & Wonderful Wavelengths (Variety Show s1e4)

Take it Easy my Brother Charlie

Reruns

Episode 1

Episode 2

Episode 3

Sometimes you just have to take it easy.

I haven't posted in a while, so this is just a collection of random slush pile stuff.

Heaven is here (and it has a waitlist)

I will come back to this idea after I've read TechGnosis and/or some of Erik Davis' other stuff.

A kaiju born from the insemination of a planet by tungsten rod kinetic bombardment.

If history recorded myriad Mandela Effects, generation over generation, how would we ever know? Collectively, the world is waking up to the hyperreality of its own creation, history and the present reality rewriting itself in real time.

The gods of this world are created every time someone says "I wish I had someone to talk to about this".

Under what conditions would ants or other insect-life "go to war" against humanity? What would that look like?

How can an "intelligent" carnivorous plant compete against animals? Plant as trap as dungeon as system. Something like a literal or symbolic pitcher plant?

Noah's ark did not succeed, the world starts over with new animals. The old animals in cryogenic slumber in the deep ocean.

Alien and monstrous things?

God's Breath as a Hilbert Space wave medium as a means of travelling at faster than light speeds, outside spacetime as we know it, powered by an engine of Oneness and Love.

Some ghosts are not of people, but dead ideas, emotions, memories, and dreams.

A world of intelligent birds. The PCs are humans isekaid into this world that was not designed for them, that they barely understand, and with limited means of communication. They exist on the fringe of this alien avian world, in its seedy underbelly. Elements of cyberpunk, and a more modern kind of existential and/or cosmic horror.

In Jewish mysticism, the things a mother sees or imagines before conception influence the nature of the child. A species or magic of resonance, a genetic encoding or universal consciousness driven by imagination.

Gold or some other metal or material that's a piece of the sun.

Magic pinocchio / scarface dummy carved from "the world tree", yggdrasil, etc.

Semiurge did a post inspired by this one

Undeath as an absolute ignorance towards one's own non-existence.

Roving gangs of raptor-like salarymen.

The tree of knowledge of good and evil and the forbidden fruit were not plant life at all, but skeleton and heart, the conscious awareness that to live is to end many lives while only living one, to mutilate and destroy bodies not unlike one's own.

Weird Seasons

"Seasons" caused not by change in energy, but other cyclical processes with different effects (or epiphenomenon of regular seasons). See Weird Colors.

• Different chemical composition of the air.
• Bacteria or Fungal blooms that dye surfaces or the atmosphere different colors. Change the "taste" of the air and other things.
• Major biome changes.

Soft Math

Let's take a quick break from all this heavy stuff. Sit back, relax, enjoy the smooth dulcet tones of soft math.

If you actually are interested in what Uncertainty is about, without all the baggage and preconceived notions and nonsense that comes with a pop sci understandings of quantum physics.

Game Stuff

Setting or mechanics meant to explain and explore complectity, the complexity of stateful systems.

Game mechanics involving touch.

OSR/fantasy classes:

• The Carnival King
• The May Queen
• The Fool

FIST Setting

Our universe is colonized by the USA (United Spacetimes of America), who have used bribery of world leaders and propaganda to enact a soft power takeover. FIST and CYCLOPS must work together, in secret, and with limited outside support, to take down USA.

• MC Bradley Buzch: Appropriative skater-punk / graffiti artist (JSRF-style) sponsored by Anheuser-Busch-Americorp NLC (non-liable company).
• Amerikarate™ Master: From the Mars colony on America XXX, an assimilated alien and master of the ancient authentic martial art Amerikarate™.
• Nono the Non-Euclidean Clown and the Stormfront Circus.
• Mecha-Franklin.

And finally, since you've all been asking for it and waiting so patiently, on to the main performance of the night... Pigs.

MINECRAFT▸ Pigstep ▸ Curly remix

I'm not even into Minecraft but this is good. Also, there actually will be pigs if I ever write the Animism Setting.