So I'm playing around with the idea of time travel in my game...not anything the player's can control, kind of more like Sliders (which I realize isn't time travel) where the players are trying to get home. I'm just curious what some of your ideas might be about adapting to the early 21st century (thinking of sending them back to 2000-ish).

Most of my players are human but I do have a dwarf and a dryad. The dryad might be a little iffy, but nothing so obviously inhuman as a troll will be present. I'm thinking of having Magic still exist somewhat, since the way I understand, it was kind of always there...it just became accessible during the awakening... but it will of course be less effective. The matrix is right out, of course, and anything that REQUIRES it will be useless. I think only one of my characters has visible cyberware, his eyes and one arm, so that should be fine.

So that's what I want to toy around with. I have a way of getting them to the past as well as getting them back, its mostly just a "what do you think of this/do you have suggestions?"

And before anyone starts, I am NOT going to be toying around with paradoxes or major alterations to the timeline due to player actions. Minor changes maybe, but this is ultimately just a fun adventure for the players.

GRAAAAH... TIME-TRAVEL... we meet again.

Well, one can always do it as an UV or, better yet, an metaquest adventure.

But overall it might work. But what do you want to have them do to return? Or can they just fool around in the "good old time"?

Hey, there's always the Time Travel Face Bags!

I say let them see the groundwork being laid for their own time. Maybe not the foundation of the Corporate Court, or "Re-education" for the native americans, but some of it, depending on when you exactly send them.

Keep in mind that the cars, and well everything, will still use the US standard, not metric (What the hell are miles?! A 5 lb. bag of sugar, what the heck...)

Prejudices aren't based on metatype. Also, the boundaries would look a how lot different.

* * *

With all that mentioned, what's the intent of this time-travel romp? Fun and games, trying to avert a disaster, or something? Depending on that, there's a ton. I mean, they could be the one to discover some vein of a resource that is eagerly gobbled up in the Resource Rush that, or indirectly start the riot in NY that leads to the case giving the corps extraterritoriality. Again, all that depends on when (and even where) they getting dropped.

Since none of my players seem to ever come to this site )despite me telling them to check it out) I should be able to post my secrets.

The basic idea is that the players are sent by a Johnson to recover a particular artifact which has been broken into pieces and scattered around the world. Upon finding and assembling the artifact it thrusts them back in time. From there, the artifact again scatters and the players must reunite the pieces in order to travel home. A special thing about the artifact (which the players may not necessarily know) is that only one of it can exist in a particular time, so simply by travelling through time, the artifact has altered the timeline a little bit (most of the artifact was discovered in Brazil between 2055 and 2060, now some of it will have been "discovered" in 2000, but probably with pieces still missing).

I am doing this little stint through time for two reasons:
1) I am hoping it will motivate my players into getting more creative with the way they do things (they are pretty much a run and gun group, which is fine except it tends to leave the Rigger and Driver out of the action). And since 2000 is a completely different world than 2072, they'll have to get REALLY creative.
2) It should be fun and I think the players will enjoy it simply for the novelty of travelling through time.

I have no idea if this will all happen, as I don't want to make this the ONLY thing they do. I pepper in some runs for other Johnsons while they assemble the artifact, and we are still in school so sometimes we can't play. But I am hoping it goes all the way.

The Artifact is a golden statue of a man holding a clock. The pieces it is broken into are the main body of the statue, the clock face, two hands and a pin to hold the hands onto the clockface. They have just acquired the main body of the statue from a confrontation with the Prime Runners and gave it to the Johnson for now (though I was kind of hoping they might decide to hang on to it instead, but I can't tell them what to do of course).

Oh yes of course! in fact things like that will be emphasized a lot. Using US standard probably won't be so much of a problem though, since as we are US people anyway, we don't use metric in the game....mostly because we don't use it in everyday life so we have a bit of difficulty imagining it in our heads....I do try to push it though...but so far to no avail.

I think one of the main things will be the change in currency. NuYen is obviously completely non-existant, but even the UCAS dollar is likely to look completely different than the 2000 US dollar. Plus, shit will go down the first time one of the players tries to use money printed in 2015. Bwahahaha!

And like I said, I don't want to deal with major changes to the established timeline, but if that happens then by gum, I will work something out!

Time Travel adventures can either be a ton of fun or absolutely horrible. There is very little middle-ground on this. Here are a couple points to consider:
- Even though you are planning on avoiding major changes to the timeline, you have to remember that your players WILL try to massively change the timeline (either intentionally or inadvertently). Just be ready to either find (non-obvious) ways of preventing them from doing this, or ways that history "repairs" itself (ie. Party prevents the Big-D's death, he dies another way. etc).
- Modern Commlinks would be able to connect to pre-crash 2.0 matrix just fine (just need a wired connection) but pre-first crash would be... odd. It might work (since Echo Mirage's systems weren't connecting to a system designed for VR) but it would be... odd. Also a LOT slower. Go before 1990 and there is not internet at all (at least none you can really connect to). Even as early as 2025, you'd probably have issues connecting to systems due to incompatible ports.
- Ammo will be a HUGE problem. Going back even a 2-3 decades would make it nearly impossible to find the right kind of ammo. As such, they'll have to have it custom made if they need more.
- Unless you spent extra (or it's purely internal), most cyberware is going to draw a LOT of attention.
- SINs didn't exist until 2036 and your fake SINs wouldn't be functional before you got them (same with fake licenses). Although not a HUGE deal pre-2036, just don't get pulled over for speeding or try to cross any borders (at least without paying a little trip to the black market).
- Electricity: Although the rules don't mention it (mostly because it is so rarely an issue), you still need to plug your devices into a power source every once in a while. OGo too far back, and you'll either find non-compatible power sources or no power at all.
- Money: Before 2033 (?), there was no such thing as a Nuyen. Heck, paper money changes so often that you could easily run into situations where people go "What the heck is this?"

Would be cheesy, but a lot of fun.

Cyberware would work, but can't be repaired. Matrix stuff would not work. Magic would be very limited, or may not work. Firearms will work, but yes, you'll run out of ammo pretty quickly, and again, can't be repaired. If anything is discovered and reported to the police, it could very quickly bring down some MAJOR government heat, so destroying all future tech would be pretty prudent. A lot of skills (repair skills, matrix skills) become less useful, or even irrelevant. Definitely forces the characters to think on their feet.

However, yes, could be a lot of fun.

You should probably check out... darn it, what's that tv show I used to watch as a kid with some muscley actor who played an alien who was exiled from his home planet (for a crime he didn't commit!) and wandered around with a floating eyeball no one else could see that helped keep him out of trouble. A great guide on culture shock.

I didn't even think of the money issue, your players are effectively going to be broke. They also aren't going to be able to use their comms to talk to one another, they'd have to get go-phones or something.

Here's something to keep in mind, too. What if they don't want to go back? Think "Back to the Future" here. Instead of putting the statue back together in 2000, what if they wait for their future to approach? Age a concern? Not for the dwarf. Also, with a bit of foreknowledge, like that up and coming company Ares is a good one to invest in, they'd have no concerns for money. And with that much money, they could afford good health care to get them up to when the Leonization procedure is invented, so back to their old selves, save they own chunks of several megas. It wouldn't even muck with the timeline, unless they really try.

Here's a problem, how do you explain the Troll? Or even an Ork?

Elves and Dwarves are easier to get around, but those two are right out the window.

And, don't even ask about the Non-Metahumans.

we have two humans, a dwarf and a dryad...so we should be mostly fine....the dryad MIGHT draw attention but easier to cover up than a troll I think.

Also, jaellot, you are a devious bastard...

Magic during the Fifth World is only accessible to very, very high-grade Initiates (as in, immortal elves and great dragons). One good way to motivate the party to return to their own time is to have the dwarf and dryad become seriously, incurably, debilitatingly ill upon arrival due to insufficient mana to sustain their metatypes. Alternatively, you could have them "reverse goblinize:" they become human, losing their metatype attribute bonuses.

It was called Doing Hard Time on Planet Earth and had the guy from the Karate Kid movie... the teacher of Kobra Kai. Good example of culture shock and how a foreign entity can totally mis-read/misinterpret a new civilization.

2 words... Quantum Leap. The runners encounter the artifact that hurdles their minds/consciousness into the past where they inhabit the body of their ancestors or someone else. No worries about cyberware or other stuff. Imagine a big, bad-ass troll gets hurled into the body of his teenage great-grandma and she was a hot cheerleader. Active skills could still be kept... so cheerleader granny knows kung-fu and can load/shoot a rocket launcher.

Hoo boy this sounds like a fun idea. The biggest hurdle would seem to be that you describe their play style as run and gun, if real world examples are anything to go by that usually doesn't work out as well in the past as perhaps being a stealthy person would since the lack of balkanization as extreme as it is later down the time line means more heat can be brought down on rogue elements. Do you think your players can basicly start from scratch like the characters do in Terminator, scrounging up past weapons, rides, and safe houses all the while not attracting too much attention from the cops, fbi, and national guard?

Though, I wouldn't worry too much about the dwarf and dryad, how does our current world deal with things like sasquatch, vampires, or whatever - such things may have some acceptance as being real in SR's future thanks to the prevalence of magic and technology turning the world upside down even further but people those days would probably just dismiss it as a cosplay crazy person. Perhaps you could make a joke out of it by having Mulder and Scully investigate their dryad sightings, if they just don't convince whoever is tripping balls that it is makeup for a Indy movie. If you really want to smooth things over, you could always give them that Quality that makes them look more human and say it is because of lower magic levels or something.

And wireless devices not working? Pretty sure they could still talk to each other still like they were using digital walkie-talkies or something, the have a Matrix there, its just really small with very limited range.

Being broke, not used to this society's version of "normal", running out of resources, no current ID, and no home base. Oh, look, they are basicly illegal aliens, careful or they might get shipped south of the border? They are criminals with criminal skills and some ridiculous future tech, even minimal magic vs current tech and no magic? They should be able to friggin be top dog almost right away if they can just play it subtle and stay below the radar MiB black ops, X-Files, and organized crime investigation units used to dealing with groups like biker gangs and families.

Oh man and even if their firearms eventually run low on the universal ammo type, there are tons of tools on their persons that would just blow away the competition in the past, like armour, camouflage, auto-picker, gecko, the different perception mods, memory storage and basic software they might own in that space, like an entire Encyclopedia Britannica or something. If anything, you could have them accidentally cause some of the stuff that makes for the human-machine interface by having one of their agent programs escaping becoming what those first deckers had to fight and get bad bio-feedback from, their shit could become the ghost in the machine, the mystical 1s and 0s resonance The One uses later and all that.

And don't worry about them screwing with the past, all the crazy stuff that happens in the SR timeline, like say riots, earthquakes, wars, and VITAS, has you covered. Self correcting and all that, like a few ants trying to divert a river or something. And they kill someone with a big name in the timeline? Oh, well, someone else was actually the big name person, that was just something history books where accidentally or deliberately wrong on in the Orwellian future.

Yeah, frick yeah, time travel would be bad ass for a Shadowrunner worth their salt, like stealing candy from a baby and all that. Definitely with jaelot on some of his ideas, screw going back, father John Connor to fight the powers that be. Make mad weapon caches, bunkers to ride out the various apocalypses you know are coming, make killings with mercenary outfits, huge heists of valuable goods in any era, back the winners of wars, and investments in companies that are the founders of the next dystopian future with all the stuff they stole by so outclassing their past competition. Its not like rail road robber barons and prohibition alcohol runners didn't create financially well off families that went on to affect history in the US or anything.

Buy stock in Ares then leave a will to hold the stocks until your "descendant" claims them.

It would indeed be very cool if your characters arrived around 2015 and, unknown to them, a piece of Troll porn malware on the sammies commlink gets free on the internets and causes the first crash.

Played in a game that tried to capture the first changes. We were Seattle PD being pissed that Microsoft now owned us. Friggin windows labels all over our squad cars.

I can see it.. you're in a firefight and your Microsoft™ Smart Link gets a Blue Screen of Death and Reboots.

Well maybe, given that it is pre-2012, they revert to human form? Inconvenient if the troll has troll-sized cyberware have implants, even for the dwarf. *cough* Also could do wonky things with stats. But otherwise it works it out. Is this reversion canon? Well you've already gone clear off the Canon Reservation with time travel....

Spike Babies allowed for Dwarves and Elves to be around from 2000 or so.

Magic would also be accessible at power sites, or places of high blood shed. It is used to account for spike babies.
Dragons went into a slumber during the 5th world.

Goblinization isn't reversable. Alternately you just make them labelled as "demons" "sirens" etc. Trolls and Orks would be easily seen as demon half breeds. Play up the smalltown hick superstition.

If they are broke, one of them could try to sell a comlink. How much would Sun Microsystems pay for a peice of hardware that was 50+ years ahead of the curve?

Does any characeter have the Decrypt program on their comlink - If so, selling that little peice of tech (remember, it can bypass any encryption in seconds, and the handwavium math formulas it is based on have not yet been discovered) should net you millions of $ or a bullet in the back of the head.

You are right about the dwarf, he should probably de-goblinize. No idea what the Dryads awakened from, but they should turn back.

Most SR4 items have RFID chips that are very far advanced, likewise materials for sommon items like clothing would be worth some cash.

Page reference? Metatypes express when the ambient mana level rises high enough to activate their metagenes. Suddenly, two mana-dependent characters (and they are mana-dependent, regardless of whether they are personally Awakened or not) find themselves in a world where the ambient mana level is not sufficient to sustain metagene activation. What happens? I'm pretty sure there is no RAW on this, but the logical conclusion is that the metagenes become dormant again. Hey presto, you're human! "But I don't wanna be human! I'm a dwarf, damnit!" Then you'd better get off your six-foot ass and find that statue, hadn't you, chummer?

If you had a Pixie character it would just die.

luckily Dryads are Elven metavarients.. so they probably just painfully turn human.

Also of the metavariants, elves and dwarves were born. They didn't go through a Goblinization like Orks and Trolls. I like the idea of an illness coming over them that was mentioned. You could try and make that they have to be in some area that has at least some mana to alleviate the symptoms. Or I could see some sort of dormancy as the mojo that powers them in a sense is not present. Of course that means the players don't get to do much. Still, would add a sense of urgency and a desire to fix the statue again.

I always liked the idea of going forward in time and having the players trying to catch up.

2050-to-2070 Decker: "Wow, so much electronic data to mine! Where do I plug my Fuchi Cyber-7?" "Plug, in? Fuchi? I think I heard about Fuchi in history class."

2070-to-2090 Street Sam: "Alright, how much for a box of APDS?" ".......Uh .......What?" "Don't mess with me chummer, how much for some bullets?" "Oh! Sorry, don't deal in antiques. But if you need a new battery for you HP-Laser, I'm your man."

I think you're wrong here. The metagenes needs enough mana to activate, but once activated we have multilples exemples showing that they stay on and the changes brought by their activation persists even with lower/no mana.

Surge : a mana peak can triggers the change, but once activated the genes stays on and the changes stays there.

Spike babies : they need the spike to trigger the changes, but they keep them later, they didn't "de-spike" when leaving the high magic area.

Semi-ballisitcs, suborbitals and space stations : they leave the manasphere, but metahuman in them don't revert to baseline.