Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

[McCoy]

Running a variant Marvel universe. In Marvel, eithe mainstreme 616 universe or the MC2, who other than the Fantastic Four/Five and Dr. Doom would have acess to time travel? Kang has a time machine built into his armor, but he doesn't live in the 21st century. Dr. Strange can go to ancient Egypt as easily as the corner drug store, can most mystics?

[OddHat]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Dr. Strange can go to ancient Egypt as easily as the corner drug store' date=' can most mystics?[/quote']

 

Back when I was still reading Marvel in the 1980s, most Marvel Mystics could time travel if the plot called for it, but rarely did. I don't recall Wanda ever doing so, but then she wasn't really a mystic in the 80s.

[fredrik_nilsson]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Kang has a time machine built into his armor' date=' but he doesn't live in the 21st century.[/quote']

I don't know if this helps:

 

http://underworld.fortunecity.com/blood/201/marvel/spacephantom.html

[Egyptoid]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

don't just think good guys. (eg Hank Pym)

 

if you're in the kind of huge bind

that takes a time-machine to solve,

you may be in a big enough bind to

cut a "deal with the devil"

 

Mad Thinker, Modok, Mandarin...

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Hey--

 

its a time machine! Hire a retainer company to hold a letter deliverable to the general press after the first successful public trial of a time machine. The letter will run in all the media:

 

To anyone who can help:

 

We are the [Good guys in your campaign] and are in desperate need of help. [brief description of problem]

 

We feel that a method of travelling through time is critical for [resolving problem X]. Please come back to 2005 and loan us a time machine. It'd really help us if you could aim for August 28th. If you need to, you can wait a couple thousand years until they are cheap enough to be disposable. Just aim for August 28th, 2005, and it really won't matter how long it takes for you to get it here.

 

Thanks!

[The Super Heroes]

 

Deliver the letter, then go home. If there's a time machine there, it worked. If there isn't, then time travel is obviously impossible, and will never, ever be invented.

 

[freakboy6117]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

shouldn't a member of the team from the future just turn up or an obnoxious 24th century fanboy he doesnt have super powers but the stuff he uses to get to school and goof around with friends at the weekends is almost the same.(or you could just steal booster golds origin)

 

on the other hand I bet an agency like SHIELD has a warehouse full of confiscated time travel machines and mystical artifacts.

 

of course they might not let you borrow them. do you really want shield upset at you, just to go galavanting back in time?

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Well, just in case there was doubt, my own suggestion was for humorous purposes only. Use only as directed; do not exceed four in a single 24 hr period.

 

For what it's worth, I can't abide time travel fiction, simply because it's almost always contrived. Time travel is one of those things that points out human follies. It does not exist now, therefore it never will. Like any invention, more than one person will eventually figure out how to do it, given several billion people and several million years in which to work. Given infinite time (which will be immediately granted by success), one of those people, no matter how secret you keep it, is going to slip up and let the cat out of the bag.

 

All that being allowed, Time Travel will then become scattered throughout the Allwhen, making it readily available to anyone, anytime, anywhy.

 

But Time Travel fiction seems to ignore that, mostly by simply refusing to deal with it. I don't care who good your Time Police or Government Secrecy Policies are, given enough people and enough time, it will get out. By the very nature of time travel, it won't be just 'from that point on, this is no longer a secret.' It will instead become a universe plagued with time travel since its very beginning.

 

The other issue of Time Travel is the relative ease with which a paradox can be created, or the polar antithesis: the all-consuming terror of 'changing the past.' I submit to you that such is not possible, and I believe I can prove it without a lot of math.

 

Let's say that A is sent in the past to prevent the birth of B. It won't work. No matter what happens, A will be born. B will not kill his parents, or his grandparents, or send someone off to war. And the reason for this is that B will have gone into a past that created A. By the time A was born, B had already been mucking about with his grandparents and gone home, even though B himself won't be born for x00 years yet. The sad corrollary is that B is doomed to failure even before he is born.

 

Which brings me to a pretty happy place, and that is the idea that lack of time travel prevents us from proving predestination, so we can continue to belive in free will without making any sort of compromises.

 

Sorry for the hijack, McCoy.....

 

I have one thought for your sourcing a time machine though. I think maybe you're keeping your views too narrow when you are looking for specific characters. Is there no 'super science' type research companies or government agencies in your campaign? You said you were using comic book sources for your world, and as I recall, it seems that comics are filled with companies 'on the verge of a breakthrough' lacking only that 'critical test.' Supers might strike a bargain with such a company.

 

And, if you're looking for a way to keep your players from abusing time travel in the future (pardon the pun), make this test run a huge success (allowing them to complete their mission), but for some reason (space rays; alignment of the planets; melted controls created by a dead man who for some wierd reason refused to leave any records, and nobody bothered to make a diagram; or some other such thing) absolutely cannot be duplicated.

 

One of the other Supers campaigns back when I was in college had let time travel in, and the GM allowed it to continue to exist (didn't bust the machine, etc). He eventually had to reboot his campaign. The supers had simply taken the expedient method of dealing with villains:

Study everything known about the villain. If his powers were reversible, note that.

Go back in time to his first appearance. Reverse his powers if possible. If his 'secret ID' was known, go to his childhood and do the same.

If his powers were not reversible, develop a supression method and deliver that the same way.

Failing those two attempts, catch him early on and 're-educate him as a hero.

 

Time travel-- in particular, time travel that allows paradox-- is best as a plot device or one-time enabler. As a functional part of the universe, the universe becomes a very dull place.

[Cancer]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

For what it's worth' date=' I can't abide time travel fiction, simply because it's almost always contrived. Time travel is one of those things that points out human follies. It does not exist now, therefore it never will....[/quote']

 

I admit the only time travel story I've read and liked was Laumer's Dinosaur Beach (originally appeared as a novella in Analog magazine titled "The Timesweepers").

 

Part of its point was that manipulation of time/history is, in the long run, intrinsically destructive to life, and ... well, to say more would be a major spoiler.

[McCoy]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Let me be a little more clear. It was a spur of the moment game. The PC's were housesitting at the Baxrer Building. A man in his 40's, claiming to be Franklin Richards showed up with some supers they didn't recognize, saying they needed to borrow the time machine the FF captured from Dr. Doom.

 

PC's requested some proof, like a DNA sample. He agreed, and everyone went to the biolab. A blood sample was drawn and fed into the approperate mahine. The PC's saw it say "Match." An NPC who was with them with higher EGO defense said "Guys, it says 'no match.'" Obligatory fight scene ensued, during which one of the "time travelers" slipped away.

 

As the combat continued, several holes were made in the sides of the building. Then the one who had slipped away came back, said "I got it, lets go!" and the "time travelers exited the building, some flying, some being carried by teammates, and scattered. Remarkably unfuzzed security videos show the one that broke away form the combat going down the hall to the time travel lab, entering the combination for the door on the first try, then using a Magneto-like power to crush every component of the time machine into a single metal sphere three feet in diameter.

 

Obviously they did not want to borrow the time machine, they wanted to destroy it.

 

Remarkably, the DNA analyser was not destroyed, and the blood sample was a total non-match for Franklin Richards, but was a 92% match for Mystique.

 

Now I know why they busted the time machine, and why they are going to bust others. But if the PC's get the idea of staking out a time machine, where, other than Dr. Doom's castle in Latveria, should I be prepaired for them to go?

[Cancer]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

Let me be a little more clear. It was a spur of the moment game....

 

Sounds good to me, and no criticism implied at all. Heck, I've co-run time-travel adventures.

 

Now I know why they busted the time machine' date=' and why they are going to bust others. But if the PC's get the idea of staking out a time machine, where, other than Dr. Doom's castle in Latveria, should I be prepaired for them to go?[/quote']

 

As a plot seed idea ... because faster-than-light travel is inherently equivalent to time travel, anyplace where you have someone either experimenting with or in possession of an FTL drive has something like a time machine, though they may not recognize that. So ... who would be trying to develop an FTL drive, and might not completely understand what they're doing? That's a decent pointer to someone who might accidentally recreate a time machine.

[Supreme Serpent]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

For ones accessible from 21st C Earth, I think the ones Doom made are the only reliable ways. Kang and Immortus of course, and their possibly infinite variations, depending on how you view all that.

 

The various gods could probably do it, as could Thor's hammer I would think.

 

Aside from physically going back in time, there's also the psyche-switch with a younger version of yourself without significant mental defenses, such as was used in Days of Future Past.

 

But as far as someone going around destroying proven existing time travel devices? I think the ones Doom made would be the only ones. Baxter Building, probably Latveria, plus he might have a few stashed around, like at his embassy in NYC.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

because faster-than-light travel is inherently equivalent to time travel' date=' anyplace where you have someone either experimenting with or in possession of an FTL drive has something like a time machine, though they may not recognize that. So ... who would be trying to develop an FTL drive, and might not completely understand what they're doing? That's a decent pointer to someone who might accidentally recreate a time machine.[/quote']

Hey, nice!

 

Repped!

 

McCoy, I don't think any of us where trying to shoot down your idea or your adventure. It just happens that Time Travel is one of the "Hot button" topics for sci-fi fans. My appologies.

 

Good luck with your plot!

[McCoy]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

McCoy, I don't think any of us where trying to shoot down your idea or your adventure. It just happens that Time Travel is one of the "Hot button" topics for sci-fi fans. My appologies.

 

Good luck with your plot!

No appologies needed, just trying to be more ckear what I needed.

[tm80401]

Re: Who's door do you knock on to borrow a time machine?

 

I'm with Supreme Serpent, on 'modern' earth, Doom is the only character with known, reproducable, available tech.

 

There may have been some one-offs that showed up in secondary stories, but I think Doom's the man with the assembly line.