Godwin's Law Of Time Travel
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Basic Information

Godwin's Law of Time Travel is a Time Travel Trope that establishes any change to history results in a Nazi victory. It's Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act crossed with Butterfly of Doom. Settings that uses this Trope tends to have multiple parallel worlds in which the Nazis won, or might use this hideous scenario as a hammer to punish those who meddle with history (and everyone else at the same time).

Named for Godwins Law of Nazi Analogies, which postulates that any discussion of or comparison to Nazis on a forum or wiki will result in a total thread highjack and likely flamewar.

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Game and Story Use

  • Why break with tradition? If the players choose to muck around with the 1930s, and Hitlers Time Travel Exemption Act isn't enough to dissuade them, after about the third session you might as well have the Nazis win and blame it on something the PCs did. That'll teach 'em not to manipulate the timestream.
    • They'll probably head straight back and fix the mistake they had made, then stay far away from Nazi Germany. Of course, the GM is still within his rights to send a squad of Nazi Time Travelers after them several sessions later when the players aren't expecting it. He can justify it by saying these ones escaped before the Delayed Ripple Effect hit them.
  • And when they've settled the Nazi pursuit, they find themselves in a communist wasteland. Beating the Nazis early simply allowed Stalin to overrun all of Europe instead. When they try to fix that, something equally nasty takes its place…
  • The GM is free to swap out Nazis for whatever unpleasant group is local to era the time-traveling PCs are poking around. Rome, the Confederate States of America, Mordor, Neanderthals, etc.
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