Sweatshopping the Temp
Time is but a stream I go fishing in.
-Henry David Thoreau
I have found repeatedly, of late years, that I cannot fish without falling a little in self-respect.
-Henry David Thoreau
Time & Temp has been on my mind for about a year now. I would occasionally noodle with it, trying to find where the balances were, but most of this work was done in the dark without the practical illumination of the ISS and its sweatshopping.
Until now.
Behold, as the Imagination Sweatshop brings all of my insecurities and miscalculations into sharp focus and reveal them to be . . . I might be getting a bit ahead of myself.
In T&T you play temps hired by Marigold Staffing and contracted out to Brown Chronometric Engineering, Inc., to stride through the ages and actualize paradox solutions. You are reality’s only line of defense in the war between freewill and the rigidity of causality. And your only reward is the hard earned satisfaction of a job well done (plus $11.50 an hour and moderate health package that includes comprehensive immunizations against histories most prolific diseases).
In Brief, How Some of It Works:
The game is designed for a handful of players, one of which will play the GM and the others will play Temps. Temps are represented at the beginning of the game simply by their résumés–later they will also have progress reports, incident reports, and their permanent record, but most of that is beyond what played out in this first sweatshop.
The GM presents the world the Temps must meddle in. This is very much like a story that will play out in a way that history had not intended. It is the Temps’ job to figure out what’s wrong and troubleshoot it before it irrevocably contradicts history or their own actions permanently damage the timeline. The structure of this should be set up so that there is a narrative, however skeletal, that exists before the players get involved, and it is specifically their job to step in and make it there own (a job that they are hopefully given ample tools for).
Whenever the players want their temps to do something that they could fail or hurt themselves trying, or something that seems out of step with history; they must consult the matrix. To do this they must:
- Roll several dice whose size and quantity are determined by the amount of effort the Temp puts forth, the scope of the action’s impact on history; whether or not the Temp risks failure, some other sort of incident, or paradox; and anything relevant on the temp’s résumé (as well as a few sundry factors). The worse conditions are, the more dice are used and the smaller the size of the dice used.
- Compare the results on the dice and decide which of them they wish to enter into the matrix. To be successful, the lowest result can be entered in, but higher results may be purchased by accepting failure or a related complication (called in incident report).
- Enter the chosen number into the matrix, which is basically a grid filled with numbers from previous actions, and use the number’s value and placement to determine how time itself reacts to the Temps’ efforts.
- Patterns of non-repeating numbers can be built by the players to gain synchronicities, which are those nifty advantages one has when one can say to oneself, “If I ever get out of this, I’m going to have to remember to come back in time and help myself get out of this.” The Temp is at ease in the timestream and able to manipulate it to his or her will.
- Identical numbers placed next to each other cause the temporal cohesion of the universe to hiccup, producing anomalies and other complications for the Temps to deal with (or ignore at their own peril). The Temp’s meddling cause such amusing oddities as a velociraptor suddenly appearing in the early 6th century or a temporal field around a natural spring in Florida that causes people to age backwards.
- And too many instances of the same number and the world could disappear before it was even created. The Temp’s actions contradict history in a specific way that cause the Temp to be unable to come back in time and commit said actions. The resulting paradox evaporates all of reality.
How the First Game Went:
So, what’s the point to playing a time travel game if you can’t play a caveman or an elite Napoleonic soldier? While we kept the idea of the Temps being underpaid and under appreciated office workers, we quickly abandoned the notion that they needed to be recruited from the modern workforce. If Brown Chronometric Engineering could travel time, why not share this technology with Marigold Services and allow their temp agency to recruit from all of human history?*
Our first sweatshopped game was the maiden voyage of Gaston, one of Napoleon’s weapons of last resort, and Moog, an early hominid and whose name was a tribute to our prog rock soundtrack, after they were plucked from their own eras and introduced to the soul-crushing horrors of the cubicle. Before long, and before Moog could get a hold of a stapler, the two of them are ushered into the early 6th century via some sort of utility closet/planetarium hybrid.
The very first roll, and first number in the matrix, came from Gaston’s attempt to “land” the time machine in the proper time and location. Give his unfamiliarity with the technology and the slapdash training he had received, we figured he risked incident, but neither Jason, Gaston’s player, nor I wanted to see the roll fail, so we left that risk out. The system lets either the player or the GM decide if the roll risks failure and/or incident. So either one of us could have said that failure was a possibility, and then it would be.
The dice hit the table, and wanting to start off on the right foot temporally speaking, Jason decided to accept an incident so he could put the larger of the two numbers in the matrix. So the time machine lands several yards offshore, underwater, and Gaston and Moog are forced to swim the freezing waters of the North Atlantic.
Following this auspicious beginning, Moog is quickly mistaken for Beowulf and they find themselves saving Hrothgar’s men from what turns out to be a robotic monster from the future, while trying to avoid the suspicions of Hrothgar’s wife and nephew.
The system seemed to function satisfactorily. The action kept a good pace–not getting too bogged down in rules, but dramatically pausing for the dust to settle as rolls were sorted out and the universe dealt with the Temps. There were some wonderful moments of synchronicity culminating in a battle with Grendel’s mother (another time traveler controlling the creature) in which it became necessary to enlist the help of a future Gaston (who could be distinguished from current Gaston by his shiny new cybernetic leg).
Much to my glee, the threat of ending the world in paradox and the temptation to gain synchronicities seemed perfectly for this first session. We ended with the matrix right on the edge, forcing Gaston’s future self to sacrifice his pride and take a rifle butt to the face that knocked him unconscious, so that the current Gaston and Moog could capture Grendel’s mother.
There is definitely work to be done on Time & Temp before it is ready for the big leagues, but for a first time out, it performed shockingly well. Especially considering how shaky I felt about it going into the sweatshop. The matrix was completely outside the realm of my gaming experience. So when I was designing it, I wasn’t confident it would do more than just flop. Fortunately, it hit a sweet spot. There’s plenty more testing to be done, but for now I can rest assured that it does not need to scrapped entirely.
* Yes, yes, it is a horrendously bad idea, but that’s what happens when you privatize temporal mechanics.
Tags: Sweatshopping, Time & Temp