Temporal Tricks
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Roll over.
Fetch.
Roll over in fourth-dimensional timespace and fetch something that doesn't exist yet.
Good dog.1

Basic Information

This page is a sublist of Time Travel Tropes that just covers tricks you can do with a pair of idle hands and a time machine. The simple and obvious uses of Time Travel, such as merely changing the past, or winning tomorrow's lottery, do not make this list. Only the clever stuff, the stuff you might not think of on your first voyage through the ages, makes this list.

Some items on this list might require very specific technology or laws of physics to be in place. Check with your GM before assuming any given strategy will work.

In addition, there's various tricks involving spacetime and the fourth dimension. Since gamers are much more devious and practical than most mass media [4], some of the above have rarely if ever shown up in a movie.

This page is like a stub, if you've got a wicked new idea for something crazy a time-traveler can do, make a page for it and link to it from here.

For further ideas, see also:

Sources

Bibliography
2. Movie: Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey
3. RPG: Continuum
4. Years of experience running and playing RPGs, then yelling at the TV when a movie character missed something obvious any gamer would have figured out.

Game and Story Use

  • The Veteran Chrononaut will have a very good idea which of those tricks do or don't work in his native universe.
  • If, heavens forbid, you find yourself at odds with a Time Master, expect them to throw all of these at you, even the ones that shouldn't work, and a few more that haven't made the list yet.
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