In another roleplaying game made by the whipping boy of the RPG community, White Wolf, the power to manipulate time wasn't "temporal manipulation" per se. Like McDonald's making hamburgers, that's what they do, not how they make money. McDonald's makes money from real estate.

Temporal manipulation is communion with the GM. Executed properly, and you gently parse out the limits of your own power within the game you are in. You accept it will not work the same way twice, particularly if the GM is different.

Mess it up, and you retcon yourself. It's more like being a priest than a wizard. You are asking permission of the cosmos rather than asserting it.

When NPCs use this kind of power, it is smoother and more efficient because they are already the tools of the GM. They are already fully in their power, and have no will or existence beyond the GM. They do not need to ask permission as we do, because it is implicitly granted by virtue of the GM having them do it.

PCs don't roll like this. We have to ask.

So, it is possible that in the Heroes Universe, the past is truly an insurmountable wall, and the best you can do is create another universe where you altered the past at a critical point. Or perhaps the attempt to go back simply makes you effectively deader than dead, or all energies and information shot into the past are converted into cosmic energy and dispersed. Or it could work as it sounds like.

All of this is what it is to mess with time in an RPG format. It's both extremely powerful and extremely limited at the same time.

The power used in this case is a communication rift. Nothing else can get through it. Most of what happened was GM fiat. There are certain areas within rpg's where story  and convenience trumps mechanics and PC personalities. This is one such area.

I'm not saying that the Shifter ability to communicate across space and time unerringly is a game destroyer... just that is VERY powerful.. and the GM should very carefully allow or more importantly disallow its use .. on a case-by-case situational circumstances or it could destroy the game coherancy.

I've run games where a player had legitimate time manipulation abilities... it was a challenge to keep them in scope with the plot and the rest of the players but it CAN be done.

Palladium is NOT and has NEVER BEEN about Game balance... it takes a GM with a clear mind as to what elements of plot and story flow to keep things in perspective...

Good luck with that SSOGM.  RAW 'Rules as Written'... I totally see why SSOGM has the interpretation of the shifter ability he has taken.. its valid in my opinion... just really powerful.
This message was last edited by the player at 20:57, Fri 06 Oct 2023.

OK so are you saying that going forward, that power does indeed give effective time travel to the user? That they can open a communication portal to the past? What about the future?

It can be if you fix a lot of stuff....

Sort of, mostly when the GM wants it to it can transcend time and space. There are other possibilities, for instance, the same sort of portal was opened to speak with and eventually call forth the anjana.
For those of you that haven't met it yet, the anjana is the size of a barbie doll and...

I had a friend who ran Rifts as a SDC game.

OK so if I understand you correctly GM, you will allow that power to be used foe time travel when you want it. So it's not something we or the PCs can ever plan for. Is that correct?

And what's this about Anjana? Have we seen them in this game and I just haven't noticed? Or was it before my joining?

There's one with CMZ, Paragon, and The Drifter.  He summoned her.

He as in Drifter? And did you mean three total summoned? And no PC thought to mention there existence to the rest of the team? Some of whom are, to put it mildly, are suffering from paranoia?

Drifter's Communication Rift allows communication between two points in transdimensional space time. When the GM allows it this will include two different space times on the same planet.
When Drifter uses the Communication Rift to speak with entities from other dimensions, it's possible to convince some of these entities to join and serve him. Which is where the anjana came from. Drifter has a fairly high level skill called Lore: Faerie so he knows which faeries are which and a fairly high MA which makes the convincing easier.

OK that explains some stuff. Thanks GM.

Well, mostly, as long as Drifter is here chatting it up, Winter Herald was going to coordinate with that team, if possible. As long as we have a secure line, that could be quite handy.

Pronoia darling. Universe loves me, not out to get me. ;->

I begin to regret this communication rift. It's forces me to do so much more posting.

In reply to SSOGM (msg # 938):

'Snort'  :)

Not to be an ass, but sometimes the GM digs a hole they have to deal with (been there and done that...).

LOL  Yeah, that'll become annoying quickly.

Eh. The Comms aren't as disruptive as you might think. Watching the expectations of communication around RPGs and media evolve has been a fascinating journey. Totally Sarcastic covered this subject in one of their videos - its just now taken for granted that a group should have the means to quickly and easily communicate with each other, when in Ye Olden Times, being cut off from each other when physically separated was the norm.

It's more than the comms, there's a lot of pieces on the board in two different times. But that should be resolved soon.

RL has reared its tediously mundane head. I'll be back tomorrow.

I will consider that a post from Paragon rather than a GM post or an "enough people have posted" post.

Ok, I think that's enough cross-thread comms.

Been a bit from me, but I should post later today.

Lilibeth could bring that up to him. Winter Herald's actually not sure if Runa is what she says she is, although what she is capable of is certainly real enough. He's not sure if she's got some form of mental block on her power, or if she is indeed possessed by a pseudo-immaterial being.

Just because I know this stuff doesn't mean he's processed it. He's still trying to figure out what magic's limits are, because his first encounter with Goliat and that perfect invisibility shook him rather deeply. This was also one of his first real experiences with the superhero world.