Time and Time Again
The Time Travel Role-Playing Game

Game Review

Review by Sam Shirley


Written by HN Voss and WP Worzel
Timeline, Ltd. PO Box, Lansing, MI
Released: October, 1984
Price: $18.00
Cornplexity: Intermediate
Solitaire Suitability: None
**

Time & Time Again is a roleplaying game about time travel that takes a serious approach to the idea of adventuring through time. In the world of the 21st century, which unfortunately isn't described fully, a world government has arisen from the ashes of World War III. Through a series of unlikely events, an organization known as The World Federation of Colleges and Universities gained academic control over the newly discovered time travel machines, while the Bureau of Temporal Affairs (BTA) was developed to train time travellers and to make sure the new technology was not abused. The player characters (PCs) all come from the BTA, which is organized along the lines of the French Foreign Legion.

The bulk of play is travelling through time with a team of fellow adventurers to observe some important periods of history, to find out who really built Stonehenge, and to stop some renegade time traveller rampaging about, or something of that sort. Most referees can see the problem inherent in this approach; in order to run the game one would have to know a great deal about every period of history. The game designers have taken the only reasonable approach to lessening this problem, fully half the game is a series of essays intended to tell the referee about the most important elements of any time period. Running a serious time travel game is still too large a task to handle alone, so I hope the authors intend to bring out culture packs detailing particular time periods.

There are unfortunately some inconsistencies in the rules' designs; by creating arbitrary time travel physics, the authors have managed to plug most of the time travel paradox holes as far as the players are concerned, but then they would seem to contradict their own temporal physics for the sake of a scenario. For example, they say that a time traveller can't change the past, but then in one of their adventures they have the PCs chasing after some renegade time traveller who is doing that very thing.

Now a few words about the components. The cover art is substandard. The interior art is all old lithographs and quite often is not applicable to the text it accompanies. The few hand drawn illustrations are skimpy. The game comes in two major parts: book one, which contains descriptions of the physics of time travel, minimal information on the world from which the characters come, character generation, combat, and skills. Book two contains absolutely no mechanics, rather it has a series of introductory level essays on climate, terrain, animals, economics, technology, transportation, government, politics, ethics, and etiquette. A few mechanics in this section would have been helpful, even if they were just rules of thumb.

Speaking of mechanics, the game really doesn't have enough to let it work properly. The ones that are included are clumsy, like the d200 skill system, or like normal characters having an average of 267 hit points while weapons are doing 50 and 60 points of damage. it would be much simpler, with no apparent change in effect, if all the combat damage related numbers were divided by 20. There are actually only three categories of mechanics in the game: a character generation system that lets you generate statistics that are never used again, a combat system, and a skill system. Categories such as character background, movement rates, and damage to physical objects are not covered.

The rules are well enough organized, but there is no glossary or index with the game, so particular points may be difficult to clarify or locate within the text. There are a number of abbreviations used, most of which are only explained once, so if you forget what a particular abbreviation means it mav be some time before you can locate its source. Most of the tables are not included in the regular text and can be found only on two loose sheets of paper.

Time & Time Again comes with three scenario ideas. They are really just suggestions; the referee will have to do a lot of work before they are playable. "The referee will have to do a lot of work" manages to catch most of the feel of this game. There isn't enough of anything provided with the game.

One annoying thing about the game is the author's writing style. There are many grammatical errors, stylistic oddities, and other errors that make Time & Time Again difficult to read. Furthermore, the author's petty tirades do not belong in a role-playing game. At one point he spends two pages lambasting the current educational system. He should have mailed that section to his local newspaper and put something else in its place.

Time & Time Again is not a professional quality product. It needs better art, better writing, better mechanics, and more information on the time periods.

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© Copyright 1985 by Dana Lombardy.
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