Why is Time Travel generally avoided? (+ feedback)

So I was reading the TimeTravel Trope page and I kind of concluded, by it's tone, that writers generally think writing Time Travel stories are too difficult/demanding or they're afraid to step on a TemporalParadox and have to Lampshade or HandWave the fact, or maybe because they don't want to suddenly get too scientific about it so to explain the plot consistently. At least in my point of view, when they actually do, they come with some stupid, baseless rule like "You can't go back before you was born" or "No matter what, you won't be able to change anything in the future at all!".

Now, I don't know why, but I don't feel like that. I have a Time Travel-based game series plot I'm still developing that has been growing up with me since childhood and I think I had a lot of time and effort put on it to give up just because I may trip into a TemporalParadox. I'm only human so I also find Time Travel theories to be way too much complex, scientific and, well, theoretic, but I still try to understand everything I can and work from an acceptable, fantasy-set scenario rather from a realistic mess.

Here it is, I'll try to explain it as simple as possible: First and foremost, the plot takes place in another world similar to Earth in both landscape and history, but not identically so there's no "Germany wins WWII" whining (but that would still be possible with other fictional nations/wars). Imagine a timeline being a film strip. To represent all the (not-so-infinite) different possibilities of destiny when the player/hero eventually changes the past, there would be a lot of film strips branching from the main one, but every one of them is just as important as the rest. The villain strives to redo the world the way he wished it was (preferably with himself at top), and he discovers that, through Alchemy and a pact with the God of Chaos, he is able to break time apart. Now, that would be more or less represented by tearing all the films strips down ("corrupting" the natural flow of time) so they're in little tiny pieces, but leaving them in order. Except he accidentally leave some larger, still "watchable" film strip pieces (portions of time that didn't get their flow "corrupted"). The heroes's mission is to navigate this "larger pieces", restoring the natural time flow around them in the different timelines. When he hits the last second of a piece, he is automatically sent back to the beginning of the same piece. There are also important characters that, if modified by the protagonists by a certain way, will unlock new timelines with their own new "larger pieces" scattered inside it, advancing the plot towards the final confront with the villain. In another way to say, the protagonists travel to GroundhogDayLoops scattered around different eras and are send back through ResetButtons that are triggered thanks to DivineIntervention (not beacuse that would mean a Time Paradox, but because it would otherwise put the heroes into a chaotic, "corrupted" and dangerous time stream).

That's basically what's about it. And I don't think it's neither too scientific or too dangerously Time Paradox-inducing, mainly because it's mostly made of MagicFromTechnology and FantasyPantheon (maybe also DoingInTheWizard, but I'm not sure, so please point it out for me), so there is no way someone could start arguing about how things should work and don't without falling themselves into a MST3KMantra case. Of course I'm not saying it is a flameproof plot, so I'm fully aware of YourMileageMayVary, but I'm guessing it's at least less lame than "Let's give Time Travel a spin" episodes in a generic children cartoon.

Comment/Discuss it, feedback would be much appreciated. Also, feel free to relate Tropes to my plot since I couldn't exactly find something similar to it. Thanks!

edited 19th Nov '10 11:07:42 AM by Drezus

Time travel always makes my brain hurt.

The big issue why I wouldn't write a Time Travel plot with maybe the exception of a comedic one-shot is because Time Travel itself is very hard to explain in real physics let alone getting something that is fully believable and increases Suspension of Disbelief.

Which is the big reason I like how Back To The Future did their Time Travel. Apart from the classic stuff related to it, it was never played as the central focus, it was never played as meant to be fully explained as a science. It was just the Plot Device used to do some really funny/cool stuff in various eras as set pieces. Sure the consequences of simple time travel were explored, but that was part of the premise.

Nowadays, you can't really pull that off the same way. You have to incorporate either more science or you have to make it obvious it's something like a comedic parody. But that doesn't mean you can't try at it. After all, the only Time Travel we humans know is The Slow Path, and physics depending on which field you're using and the theories you subscribe to is sometimes contradictory when it comes to Time Travel beyond The Slow Path.

^^ That's a big reason. It makes a lot of people's brains hurt. If you explain in detail how it works, either they get lost trying to follow, or it simply doesn't hold up; and if you don't explain how it works, they're stuck with all sorts of "But what if...?" and "Why can't they...?" and "Wait a minute, how...?" questions.

edited 19th Nov '10 11:20:37 AM by Madrugada

@Major Tom, I never noticed how Back To The Future managed to keep Time Travel as a Plot Device rather than the central focus, and I think I would never be able to assimilate that example . But I must admit I also think today's take at trying to make it more serious or central, even when it spawns just one episode of the whole series (see Harry Potter And The Prisoner Of Azkaban, for example) are just stupid and worried about a scientific theory or something rather than just being creative.

@Madrugada, I know time travel plots generally creates all those sorts of questions, and maybe that's exactly why I like to develop something like that. And I don't really see like a challenge, because I'm very comfortable with it. I like games like Chrono Trigger that tells about interesting Time Travel plots in a much more fantasy setting than fearing paradoxes and the stuff. And that's exactly what I want this plot to come out.

Time Travel works best these days when it's in the form of a Multiverse or Elseworlds, and like Major Tom said, only when it's used as a plot device. If it's an actual mechanic within the plot, then expect to alienate about 70% of your audience off the bat. Then expect to alienate another 25% if you screw up or contradict the mechanics.

You're also better off sticking with characters and settings that everyone knows, but are slightly different. For example, if someone goes back in time and makes a minor change, it's better off to retain the same characters/settings in the new universe, but with altered personalities/motivations.

Yeah, Zeal, you bet I like to work with the Multiverse concept, as in "Multiple paths that history could have taken" than making it a complete contradiction, but I don't know whether it is used as a Plot Device in that plot of mine or not (it is there, it would be much appreciated if you could point it out). Too bad the audience seems less receptive to the concept of time traveling than I consider it being very broad and creative. So I'm kinda worried about what impact it could cause on public (mainly because I don't know if I'm giving Time Travel too much plot focus or not). Can anyone help me with that?

And, yeah, you can bet I won't be making things like "What if Dinosaurs still existed", but instead just smaller and less important (thus less annoying) changes like changing the land's ruler/king, etc.

Some consider fourth or fifth-dimensional◊ thought straining. But I say, I find unnaturally traversing time adding an extra depth. It shouldn't matter in terms of real world physics, or concerning suspension of disbelief. Have it flow intuitive, like an natural pattern, and the rest is history.

I imagine time as an outgrowing snowflake; one timeline is connected to derivative timelines (that are within possibility), and each derivative point has its own set of derivatives — so on and so forth branching out like vines from the original timeline. You kill your own father in another timeline but you (from the original) still exist.

edited 19th Nov '10 12:51:21 PM by QQQQQ

Yes, that's what how I like to think time is, too. There's no way a future can intersect with another future from another branch, but two futures may be linked to the same past. Know-it-all scientists would probably say that would then lead to a paradox in the likes of Divided by Zero or something, but screw that. I'm more focused on telling an interesting, action-based story rather than explaining humans how their own time-ruled universe works (in theory).

I really liked Time Travel when I was a kid, but I've found that if it doesn't have a shitload of restrictions, it kills the effectivity of the story, since if the level of power is left unchecked, it can very easily basically make the user omnipotent, and omnipotent characters are not the path to a good story.

First you have to decide if you can travel into the future byond your reference time. I'm assuming that any time travel will include the possibility of going backwards and then returning. In the movie Primer, our prtagonists could only travel backwards but could not return. Instead, they had to wait until their time of departure, at which point their past self hops in the time machine thereby eliminating their "clone".

More important is to consider universal resilience and inertia. Resilience refers the ability for the universe to sustain historical changes while keeping reality in tact. Under some time travel regimes, a significant alteration in the temporal flow can cause a tear or rift leading to the end of all existence. The characters might not know if that is the case, but they don't want to take a chance so they try to minimize or correct deviations from the historical record. A completely resilient universe is never in danger of ending regardless of how many changes you make, although there is still the possibility of destroying humanity / life-as-we-know-it through the butterfly effect.

One way to get around the chaotic/butterfly effect is the idea of temporal inertia. That is, a timeline will tend to be self correcting. So if you chage something minor, that will tend to get washed away by all of the other events that occur on the way back to the present.

Probably the best way I have seen this handled is in the Time Wars series by Simon Hawke. Time commandos go back in time and replace historical figures to thwart terrorist attempts to change the past. They are worried about the timeline resiliency although there is temporal inertia. The goal is to keep things as close to the historic record as possible, and in some cases one of them has to stay behind to permanently replace a famous person who died during the mission or was otherwise catastrophically compromised.

Of course, there are some paradoxes or self fullfilling prophecies. In the first adventure, The Ivanhoe Gambit, the medieval heroes in question were nothing like their historical legends: Robin Hood was a drunken coward who couldn't shoot straight and Maid Marion was a poxy wench who actually ran the Merry Men. But the characters' intervention is actually was sets the the novels and text books as we know them today.

Other books deal with the Gunfight at the OK Corral, the Battle at Khyber Pass, and Roman legionaries.

One additional consideration is the idea of people meeting their former selves, or earlier versions of other people they know. The easiest solution is to avoid it at all costs. Unless you are a complete bastard of a GM, characters can't prevent themselves from existing in the sense that if you go back and give your grandmother a depo shot, you won't disappear when you return to the present, but no one will recognize you and you will be off the grid. It's probably best to avoid those sorts of things by sending the characters back at least a hundred years on missions where they don't meet anyone directly related to them (biologically or otherwise) and then let temporal inertia smooth everything out. That will avoid some of the more problematic arcs that you get in Time Cop, for example. You will need to invoke some trope to justify this, but that's part of the fun of being a GM, eh?

Another fix is to have a place that exists outside of time. It could be your Temporal Police Station or Olympus or whatever, but the idea is that the people living there won't be affected by changes in the time line and will remember what the old time line was like as well as understanding the new one.

On the whole science thing...

If it makes sense in context you could just like...make it magical instead, couldn't you?

IMO, the only version of time travel that is remotely scientifically justifiable is the self-consistency principle. Everything else seems to stem from Hollywood Quantum Mechanics.

A good writer can make a story that is self-consistent, but it is almost impossible in a role playing environment because gamers are like herding cats.

Yeah, I think I was already counting on a temporal inertia sort of thing, maybe subconsciously. Another important thing is that there IS a "Olympus"(as a place where the flow of time can't reach), and it exists ever since the first time I thought on the story. Except in my idea it's called Space-Time Continuum. And the most important entities are there: The God of Time, the Goddess of Earth (or the planet they're on) and the four elemental spirits, as well as the evil organization ruled by the villain and the God of Chaos, except they're in different places. This is done so there's no way the heroes could screw with any of them just by changing the past. And they're there either because they're not human and lived ever since Universe has been created or, in the evil organization's case, have been erased from any existing timelines and allowed to hide in the space void thanks to God of Chaos's pact. Search for hidden pieces of erased past is also part of the player's gameplay (a kind of major sidequest). The heroes are also protected of any timeline interference so they're mostly acting from the outside than from inside time. This helps explain why they can remember things when traveling or make it out alive from a major past interference.

And, yeah, I can't really get sad now of making a game plot rather than a novel because I never thought of becoming something like that in the first place. It would be impossibly full of plot roles and lack of action it would just bore anyone reading or watching it. So that's why there's room left for gameplay and player choices.

Adding Time travel to a plot increases the complexity of the plot and contuinity Up To Eleven, sometimes to the level of Mind Screw

The results of screwing around the timeline are very variedm but the most plausible one is the one mentioned in a theory that states that at the moment you change history, commit a paradox etc. you create a completly different contuinity from the one you started to Time Travel in, and to put it shortly, you accidentally jumped Into another dimension by changing the past.

When it comes to the future, its the same thing and sort of justifyiable. For example, Heroman travels forward in time and dicovers that the world has gone to hell by Darkbadguy's hand. In this alternate timeline, Heroman dissappeared the moment he went forward in time and thus, there was nobody to stop Darkbadguy.

And still, things get really messy, the idea of Time travel sounds like a really cool idea, but in the end, it just complicates more things than it actually fixes.

writers generally think writing Time Travel stories are too difficult/demanding or they're afraid to step on a Temporal Paradox and have to Lampshade or Hand Wave the fact, or maybe because they don't want to suddenly get too scientific about it so to explain the plot consistently.

Preemptive answer to your own question is quoted for truth.

edited 22nd Nov '10 11:35:01 AM by Slan

The problem is that without restrictions, Time Travel is inherently a Game-Breaker, so you'll run into tons of Fridge Logic.

For example, practically every fictional version of time travel ever involves violation of the conservation of mass. So the heroes are basically allowed to create infinite copies of themselves at will. Yet they never use this power, even when it would be beneficial.

People avoid using time travel in works because it's very difficult to get it "right." If your story is based around time travel from the beginning, your chances of getting it right drastically improve, because you are more likely to pay attention to the rules and keep them consistent. If your story added time travel later, be careful. Contradicting your own rules for anything will break suspension of disbelief hard, and time travel seems to suffer from this the most.

By the sounds of it, the OP has a design for an interesting and unusual mechanic for time travel, and is working under the Multiverse version of time travel. Here's something for you from a scientist: The multiverse model does not involve paradoxes at all. Your worry that "us sciencey folk" will tell you you're going to cause them makes me wonder if you talk to scientists or science majors much.

Talk of paradoxes doesn't work in fiction that is using this model, it only matters in a world with a single timeline. When timelines branch out like this, talking in terms of paradoxes is meaningless, but keep in mind that the protagonist might end up duplicating him or herself, possibly multiple times. This can make for some interesting story all by itself.

^ The multiple copies reminds me of the "Lucas Lanes" Yellow Book commercial as potential for a Time Travel gag.

Good to know, Google Fox. I'm a little relieved with that, thanks. And I was really considering that clone/duplicate theory, but in a much lesser way: The player would be able to see a ghost of his actions the last time the time "fragment" reseted. That would help players see what they already did or what they still need to do, specially during quests/events that would require various "resets". But, now that you said, I don't think it's a bad idea to incorporate it into the plot, maybe I can come up with something interesting.

Have you played Braid? Chronotron? The Company Of Myself? They all do something similar, so you might get some ideas.

edited 23rd Nov '10 11:38:37 AM by storyyeller

Actually, no, never heard of them. Thanks for the suggestions!

EDIT: Actually I've played The Company of Myself before and, well, it's fantastic to say the least. Specially because I'm not very fond of Flash games, but that one exceeded my expectations.

edited 24th Nov '10 8:03:24 AM by Drezus

Alternate Universe is really the best way. As long as you don't mind dealing with the ramifications of All the Myriad Ways.

With reference to my first post in this thread, the multiple universe theory presents a perfectly resilient model. If you go back in time and change this, that or the other thing, there is no chance that reality will cease to exist and no paradoxes are created. What happens in timeline happens with natural consequences flowing.

Where it gets intersting is when you try to return to the "present". If you will pardon the expression, the "logical" result would be arriving in the newly established timeline at the chronological point point of departure with all sorts of whacky outcomes.

That can make it difficult to keep a place that is out of time, and it can be unworkable to to have infinite timelines because if they are accessible, then what is the point?

But take a look at Zelazny's Amber series where the characters are basically gods who can move through "shadows" that are basically any timeline or reality that you can imagine. A diceless roleplaying game was based on it.