Shipping prices to Europe are quite high at the moment, unfortunately, so the options are: 1) find an European reseller (could only find a German seller for this product, but it is unfortunately sold out); 2) make a very large order to "soften the blow".
Since I was planning a big order from Mothership website, I would have really hoped that a reprint was underway, so I could add Time After Time to that order. I have checked Spear Witch and I'm not sure I would find enough stuff I want to order there to make it economically convenient.
Now, I might end up biting the bullet anyway, but just in case, if there is a reprint scheduled in the future, it would be helpful to know.
I don't have any plans for a reprint in the immediate future, no, unfortunately. Perhaps some time next year, depending on how sales go? But nothing for certain.
Hello there. Wonderful module. I have such a basic question I’m scared to ask, but bear with me:
If a player can say “I put a gun under the table in the past” and lo, there’s a gun under the table, wouldn’t it follow that “stopping the source” would mean that the players would never be in a state where there was time travel? Or alternatively, that stopping the development of time travel would immediately blink them out because they were only there because of time travel?
I’m sure I’m misunderstanding something - I’m just predicting the questions the players will ask at the table.
Hi! Yes, you're correct. Stopping the Source, as a potential "solution," is meant to be extremely tricky to solve. I don't think there is any obvious "intended" path to solving it—I've heard stories from various GMs making the attempt—but you're totally right that anything that occurs as the direct result of time travel would, of course, get fragged out if time travel never occurred. That's certainly why, say, Mamadou has been unable to do it on his own so far.
I'm a big fan of these kinds of open-ended "solutionless" problems, both as a player and as a designer. It forces the player to engage with the problem head-on, rather than merely hunt for what I as the designer had in mind. A rawer, one might say almost more brutal, form of play.
Hello. I have a question about the "Perfect Loop Ending" : Would you force the players to travel in every remaining loops (100-D100) for Nazhun to finish her research ? Or use some other trickeries ?
Also, do you have any opinion on how "Time is no variable, but fixed" is consistent with her work going through 100 loops ? I understant it as "There is the illusion of parallel timelines, but it is actually the same. Although a bit more complexe that we can comprehend")
However, how to play that ? Sometimes we want player's to solve paradoxes (Boostrap, Grandparent - as if the was only one Bolero's time line), sometimes we want to let go (Nazhun's work going through 100 loops as if there were 100 parallel Bolero's time line ; crossing out existing events...).
I am not sure how to rule that... Any insight ?
Maybe with : "as long as player character's timeline is relatively untouched, it is okay" 🤔
As a side note, on this discussion on the safe working, I would give an answer which is slightly different than yours. Here is my take :
"I would consider the safe as having a timeline which is orthogonal to the Bolero's one. Which means, it is totally independent. "Before" and "after" in the safe has no link with "before" and "after" in the Bolero.
The easiest way to play it would be : Next time a player opens the safe (player's time), it finds what has been placed last time (player's time) with no consideration of Bolero's timeline.
A slightly more complex way to play it would be : the safe timeline does not have to be correlated with the player's timeline either... Maybe the object/character has been taken/replaced at another time. How to rule that ? You could let the player decide what they find, roll a dice, or if you (the warden) finds a nice gameplay opportunity decide yourself."
I realise : if Tyro can be over 100 year old, and for exemple was 50 years old on his first loop, where was he when he aged ? The must be some long periods (months) where there are more than 50 copies of him of all ages in the station... Thus Tyro would account for 1/6th of the station's population ! He should litteraly be everywhere (I imagine a hidden room filled with tyros) or even be able to take hower the station. Unless he spent a huge part of his timeline in coffin safes, or has been attacked a lot but time-Leeches and the Kronophage.
I imagine that yes, Tyro has spent a lot of time living the same days over and over and over again, and indeed, has spent a lot of time being artificially aged, de-aged, and re-aged again. He's the veteran for a reason.
If they fulfill Nazhun's requirements, Bootstrap and Grandparent paradoxes can no longer exist—the timeline "closes," meaning that anything that's happened in the past has already happened. It's a tighter, more restrained, more restrictive mode of time-travel. I'd look at something like Terminator (the first one) or The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate as reference for how this works.
It is ironical though, that getting that ending relies on multiverses : Nazhun telling us how many times her work still needs to be looped, and the rule book implying that she might die too early in any remaining loop.
Maybe we then realise then that things did not happend the way we think they did. We really did the actions, but interpreted their context and result wrong🤔
Some more personnal thoughts (for me and maybe other DM) about paradoxes in this module :
Apparent paradoxes(Sophothesis consistent)
Circular Bootstrap : player's decide now, how actions they'll do later in the past change their present. (ex: they will place a gun in the room they are now)
Apparent Grandparent paradox : What they originaly thought was wrong. But their is a good explaination. (ex : they thought that they used a gun produced by a factory to destroy the factory before it produced it. But it actually had been made somewhere else
Real paradoxes
Spiral Boostrap : Nazhun's case, every loop he sends himself a bit of knowledge which progresses. For each "instance" of Nazhun it is as if this knowledge came from nowhere. (Noothesis consistent).
Posibility for players to enter a time loop (if they where in the situation of Nazhun, recieving new information from themselves at a point of the game. they should have lost all memory equipment)
Real Grandparent paradox : The past actually changed and made present situation impossible.
Reality repares itseld through frag
Posibility for players to enter a time loop (they restart when the change occur)
Multiverse with travel between them (not really a paradox) (Require Noothesis)
Players / NPC can travel from one reality to an other with objects / souvenir which are not consistent with the new reality. But it is not a problem
Safe behaviour :
Their interior have their own timeline, which crosses the Bolero's when they are open. However, except for a failsafe, there is now way to be sure that the objet placed in it has not already been taken / replaced next time a player/NPC opens it
Amazing work! I think I have a question for you. How do the Optics Wing and the Personnel Wing connect?
In the "late" version of these maps, there are multiple references to using the Optics (6) entrance because the one through the Rotunda (1.4) is heavily barricaded and rigged with explosives. Looking at the map, there is no direct path to the Personnel Wing (7) through Optics (6) because the Communications Wing (5) is located between them. The only solution I can think of is through the vents. However, 7.3 (Manufacturing Floor) specifies that two scavengers are assigned to watch the door to Optics. Am I missing something?
Further, I think I spotted a typo, in pg. 53, the very last paragraph under (2.13) says, "Hidden in Themis’s (pg. 72) foot locker is her tool of last resort: a null blanket (pg. 68) and a clockwise bomb (pg. 68)". I think these last two should be "pg. 78" because that's were the reference sheet to all devices is and there is no mention of these items in page 69.
Love the module! Bought a copy from TKG. A question though: is there a map legend I'm missing somewhere? I assume the circles on borders are airlocks/doors, but what's the dotted line that runs through the map? Ventilation?
Just a heads up: this most recent printing of the zine is messed up along the spine. I don't know if it's a materials issue or if it's just my luck, but I had ordered from both TKG and Spear Witch and both the spines were pretty knarly.
Can you be a little more specific? Messed up how? Zine spines are known to be rather flimsy (especially thicker ones like TAT), but I’m not quite sure what you mean.
They were very frayed. Like the paper itself was broken along the fold line of the spine when they were pressed and doesn't seem like it will stand many openings/closings before breaking off. I understand that zine spines are somewhat flimsy, but I own quite a few modules and this is the only one I've seen with this issue (twice), so wanted to give a heads up.
Looks like the zine is out of stock again at spearwitch. Sounds like a good problem to have. If we buy the physical copy there (when it gets back in stock), do we also get the PDF with that purchase?
Looks like it's back in stock today on Spear Witch? I was hoping to order it through Tuesday Knight Games so I could get a couple of things with the shipping though. But the low availability!
Is there any chance a B/W version will ever be made available as a PDF? I bought the physical print on Spear Witch but the second section is very hard to read for someone with weak eyesight (much lower contrast than it appears on the PDF, basically black on brown).
Probably not, unfortunately—there's a lot of overlapping intersecting layers of InDesign and Photoshop going on to get the complete PDF that makes a simple black-and-white version difficult to produce.
I agree that the selected font is a huge accessibility issue between pages 30-48 (the dark brown text on lighter brown background), even on digital. How about a PDF version were the only thing that changes is making the font in those pages white or even match the more yellow tone of the text in page 50? Would that be possible? I love this adventure module and I can't wait to run it, but I've had a hard time reading those pages without ending up with a migraine.
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if I purchase the hard copy from Spear Witch, do I also get the PDF?
Yes!
Hi, are there plans for a reprint? It seems to be out of stock practically everywhere, including the official Motherhsip website.
It's still in stock at Spear Witch!
First of all, thank you for the answer :)
Shipping prices to Europe are quite high at the moment, unfortunately, so the options are: 1) find an European reseller (could only find a German seller for this product, but it is unfortunately sold out); 2) make a very large order to "soften the blow".
Since I was planning a big order from Mothership website, I would have really hoped that a reprint was underway, so I could add Time After Time to that order. I have checked Spear Witch and I'm not sure I would find enough stuff I want to order there to make it economically convenient.
Now, I might end up biting the bullet anyway, but just in case, if there is a reprint scheduled in the future, it would be helpful to know.
I don't have any plans for a reprint in the immediate future, no, unfortunately. Perhaps some time next year, depending on how sales go? But nothing for certain.
Ok, then I'll see what I can find on Spear Witch and get it there. Thank you again :)
Hello there. Wonderful module. I have such a basic question I’m scared to ask, but bear with me:
If a player can say “I put a gun under the table in the past” and lo, there’s a gun under the table, wouldn’t it follow that “stopping the source” would mean that the players would never be in a state where there was time travel? Or alternatively, that stopping the development of time travel would immediately blink them out because they were only there because of time travel?
I’m sure I’m misunderstanding something - I’m just predicting the questions the players will ask at the table.
Hi! Yes, you're correct. Stopping the Source, as a potential "solution," is meant to be extremely tricky to solve. I don't think there is any obvious "intended" path to solving it—I've heard stories from various GMs making the attempt—but you're totally right that anything that occurs as the direct result of time travel would, of course, get fragged out if time travel never occurred. That's certainly why, say, Mamadou has been unable to do it on his own so far.
I'm a big fan of these kinds of open-ended "solutionless" problems, both as a player and as a designer. It forces the player to engage with the problem head-on, rather than merely hunt for what I as the designer had in mind. A rawer, one might say almost more brutal, form of play.
Hope this helps!
Thank you so much, I really appreciate such a quickly reply. Have a good one.
Hello. I have a question about the "Perfect Loop Ending" :
Would you force the players to travel in every remaining loops (100-D100) for Nazhun to finish her research ? Or use some other trickeries ?
Also, do you have any opinion on how "Time is no variable, but fixed" is consistent with her work going through 100 loops ? I understant it as "There is the illusion of parallel timelines, but it is actually the same. Although a bit more complexe that we can comprehend")
However, how to play that ? Sometimes we want player's to solve paradoxes (Boostrap, Grandparent - as if the was only one Bolero's time line), sometimes we want to let go (Nazhun's work going through 100 loops as if there were 100 parallel Bolero's time line ; crossing out existing events...).
I am not sure how to rule that... Any insight ?
Maybe with : "as long as player character's timeline is relatively untouched, it is okay" 🤔
As a side note, on this discussion on the safe working, I would give an answer which is slightly different than yours. Here is my take :
"I would consider the safe as having a timeline which is orthogonal to the Bolero's one. Which means, it is totally independent. "Before" and "after" in the safe has no link with "before" and "after" in the Bolero.
The easiest way to play it would be : Next time a player opens the safe (player's time), it finds what has been placed last time (player's time) with no consideration of Bolero's timeline.
A slightly more complex way to play it would be : the safe timeline does not have to be correlated with the player's timeline either... Maybe the object/character has been taken/replaced at another time. How to rule that ? You could let the player decide what they find, roll a dice, or if you (the warden) finds a nice gameplay opportunity decide yourself."
The odd case of Tyro :
**SPOILER**
"But where are all those Tyros ?"
I realise : if Tyro can be over 100 year old, and for exemple was 50 years old on his first loop, where was he when he aged ?
The must be some long periods (months) where there are more than 50 copies of him of all ages in the station... Thus Tyro would account for 1/6th of the station's population !
He should litteraly be everywhere (I imagine a hidden room filled with tyros) or even be able to take hower the station. Unless he spent a huge part of his timeline in coffin safes, or has been attacked a lot but time-Leeches and the Kronophage.
I imagine that yes, Tyro has spent a lot of time living the same days over and over and over again, and indeed, has spent a lot of time being artificially aged, de-aged, and re-aged again. He's the veteran for a reason.
If they fulfill Nazhun's requirements, Bootstrap and Grandparent paradoxes can no longer exist—the timeline "closes," meaning that anything that's happened in the past has already happened. It's a tighter, more restrained, more restrictive mode of time-travel. I'd look at something like Terminator (the first one) or The Merchant and the Alchemist's Gate as reference for how this works.
Ah ok. It actually changes the rules of what we can do and not.
It is ironical though, that getting that ending relies on multiverses : Nazhun telling us how many times her work still needs to be looped, and the rule book implying that she might die too early in any remaining loop.
Maybe we then realise then that things did not happend the way we think they did. We really did the actions, but interpreted their context and result wrong🤔Themes??? In my tabletop roleplaying game adventures??
The review from PrinceDabsALot is really helpfull ! It convinced me to buy the module ...
Lot of neat advice and feedbacks
I'll retain :
Edit :
This discussion has good ressources too. (Consolidated description per room + timeline, Maps, portraits)
Some more personnal thoughts (for me and maybe other DM) about paradoxes in this module :
Safe behaviour :
Their interior have their own timeline, which crosses the Bolero's when they are open. However, except for a failsafe, there is now way to be sure that the objet placed in it has not already been taken / replaced next time a player/NPC opens it
Hi Sam,
Amazing work! I think I have a question for you. How do the Optics Wing and the Personnel Wing connect?
In the "late" version of these maps, there are multiple references to using the Optics (6) entrance because the one through the Rotunda (1.4) is heavily barricaded and rigged with explosives. Looking at the map, there is no direct path to the Personnel Wing (7) through Optics (6) because the Communications Wing (5) is located between them. The only solution I can think of is through the vents. However, 7.3 (Manufacturing Floor) specifies that two scavengers are assigned to watch the door to Optics. Am I missing something?
Further, I think I spotted a typo, in pg. 53, the very last paragraph under (2.13) says, "Hidden in Themis’s (pg. 72) foot locker is her tool of last resort: a null blanket (pg. 68) and a clockwise bomb (pg. 68)". I think these last two should be "pg. 78" because that's were the reference sheet to all devices is and there is no mention of these items in page 69.
Love the module! Bought a copy from TKG. A question though: is there a map legend I'm missing somewhere? I assume the circles on borders are airlocks/doors, but what's the dotted line that runs through the map? Ventilation?
Yes, you got it exactly: circles are the big heavy station doors, the dotted lines are ventilation shafts. Thanks for your kind words!
Just a heads up: this most recent printing of the zine is messed up along the spine. I don't know if it's a materials issue or if it's just my luck, but I had ordered from both TKG and Spear Witch and both the spines were pretty knarly.
Can you be a little more specific? Messed up how? Zine spines are known to be rather flimsy (especially thicker ones like TAT), but I’m not quite sure what you mean.
They were very frayed. Like the paper itself was broken along the fold line of the spine when they were pressed and doesn't seem like it will stand many openings/closings before breaking off. I understand that zine spines are somewhat flimsy, but I own quite a few modules and this is the only one I've seen with this issue (twice), so wanted to give a heads up.
Huh, okay, I’ll talk with my distro and see. Thanks for the info.
Looks like the zine is out of stock again at spearwitch. Sounds like a good problem to have. If we buy the physical copy there (when it gets back in stock), do we also get the PDF with that purchase?
It's back up in stock—and yes, you do get the PDF with the purchase of a physical copy!
Good news! TIME AFTER TIME is back in stock at Spear Witch! You can get it here!
Are physical copies going to be restocked on TKG any time soon or is it just Spear Witch for now?
Just missed out on ordering this in zine form on TKG, will there be any reprints soon, either there or on Spear Witch?
Yes! We're in the middle of reprinting—look for them in the next few-to-several weeks!
Just missed this on Spear Witch. Is there a reprint for physical copies happening soon?
Looks like it's back in stock today on Spear Witch? I was hoping to order it through Tuesday Knight Games so I could get a couple of things with the shipping though. But the low availability!
yay, thank you.
Is there any chance a B/W version will ever be made available as a PDF? I bought the physical print on Spear Witch but the second section is very hard to read for someone with weak eyesight (much lower contrast than it appears on the PDF, basically black on brown).
Probably not, unfortunately—there's a lot of overlapping intersecting layers of InDesign and Photoshop going on to get the complete PDF that makes a simple black-and-white version difficult to produce.
I agree that the selected font is a huge accessibility issue between pages 30-48 (the dark brown text on lighter brown background), even on digital. How about a PDF version were the only thing that changes is making the font in those pages white or even match the more yellow tone of the text in page 50? Would that be possible? I love this adventure module and I can't wait to run it, but I've had a hard time reading those pages without ending up with a migraine.
any UK distributors for physical copies?
Not that I'm aware of right now—but if you tell your favorite shops to reach out to Spear Witch, they can get copies shipped over in bulk.
Hey, if I buy the module on Spear Witch, is it possible to get a copy of the PDF ?
Edit: Nevermind, I just received the Download Link, I didn't find info it would arrive as PDF as well!
Will there be any more physical copies printed? It seems to be out of stock everywhere at the moment.
Also wondering this!
They're back in stock now!
Where?
Spear Witch!
Bought!