Time Wizard Lawrence and Friends: Episode 1

Time Wizard Lawrence and the Time Wizard Friends: Episode One.



Well, /tg/, I did it. I tried to play a game of Time Wizards: The Revised First Edition.

If you have no idea what I am talking about, here is a link to the thread that brought it all together: http://suptg.thisisnotatrueending.com/archive/27744747/

If you’d just like a TL;DR version of this game: a poster at /tg/ vaguely recalls a strange game that he played with his friends and /tg/ attempts to piece together a coherent game system from these strange nuggets of information.

As I was saying earlier, I convinced my one player (and long-time friend) to try this game with me. Just to see what would happen. Being the agreeable sort that he is, he decides to go along with it—most likely to humor me. He’s a good friend.

And so, with our 24-pack of PBR tallboys at the ready, we do what needs to be done: “¡mientras tanto, los MAGOS del TIEMPO!”

First: the Doctrines. Doctrines are essentially universal rules that everyone must follow throughout the game or suffer dire/dumb consequences. Our two Doctrines were pretty white bread, but we hadn’t been drinking very long and thus our creative juices were lacking. Here they are:

DOCTRINE UNO: “When declaring a Time Moment, you must take a drink of your beer. Failure to do so within five seconds of declaring a Time Moment will not only make you a huge bitch, but you must also drink the remainder of your beer. Bitch.”

DOCTRINE ZWEI: “No harm may come to cats or any animal of the feline nature. Failure to prevent harm to such creatures not only makes you Pussy of the Night, but you must also finish the remainder of your beer.”

Now, because we were starting fresh and with barely a clue as to how begin, I pulled out a list of my “Verb the Nouns.” I was bored during work earlier that day (I substitute teach), so I pulled out my journal and began writing “Verb the Nouns.” Verb the Nouns are the basic ingredients for the improvisation during the character creation phase. For those who are unaware of the game mechanics, player creation stems from the TM (Time Master) describing a mundane day for one of the characters. If a player likes the particular day, he declares that day and time to be his character’s origin story. So, when describing a mundane day, I would pull out my “Verb the Nouns” at random.

For example, let’s say that on Tuesday at 5:30 in the Evening, a character decides he is going to cook a burrito. He cooks the beef, cuts some cheese, spreads a little green stuff on top, drops a few beans, oils the food, wraps the burrito, and bakes that shit. He then sets the alarm and takes the dog for a walk. If my counting is correct (I doubt it), there are nine Verb the Nouns right there. A player can decide to declare that day and time as his character’s, and choose five of the nine phrases as his Time Wizard Powers. He then becomes Tuesday at 5:30 in the Evening the Time Wizard.

My friend Grant is given a different scenario than the one listed above, and chose the following phrases: “Make it sweet,” “Oil the food,” “Change the baby,” “Drain the vein,” and “Set the alarm.” He is known as Monday at 10:45 in the Evening. I also make a character for Grant to use in addition to Monday. Wednesday at 8:15 in the Evening, friend to Monday at 10:45 in the Evening, had the following phrases as his Time Wizard powers: “Tie the knot,” “Choke the chicken,” “Spread the green,” “Replace the chair,” and “Cut the cheese.” With these two unlikely heroes(?) finally created, I (as the Time Master) had to create the setting.

The year was 17X9. The Fourth Crusade was well on its way. Jerusalem, The Holy Land, was currently held by the Muslims; though, the fate of such ownership was about to be challenged. Enter our her—err, protagonists:  Monday at 10:45 in the Evening and Wednesday at 8:15 in the Evening, both controlled by my friend Grant. As M & W are patrolling about the city’s walls, they see a single torch waver in the vast and dark emptiness in front of them. The one torch becomes two, then four, then a hundred, then a much bigger number than a hundred but less than around a million. Whatever, there’s a lot of torches, guys. ANYWAY, voices begin to rise along with the torches.

“What do the voices sound like?” Grant asks me. “Like, their tone. Do they sound angry?”

“They sound like Christians,” I reply.

“Shit,” he murmurs. “That means whoever these guys are, they’re probably upset about something.”

With this, the din of hooves hitting hard dirt became apparent. As the third moon rose above the clouds, its unholy illumination revealed the source of the sound: completely mundane Christian knights riding their horses. And a mile behind the knights: serfs and slaves, carrying improvised weapons and giant ladders! Damn, they were planning on the ol’ Battle of Helm’s Deep Shoots and Ladders Strat of 1492. Things were about to get hairy.

A great SLAP hit the table as Grant yelled “I DECLARE A TIME MOMENT.” Then he drank his PBR.

Things were about to get more hairy than previously thought.

Okay, so, let me take a moment in time to explain Time Moments. Time Moments are when the Time Wizards shine, because they can use one of their Time Wizard powers to affect the playing field. In order to figure out who succeeds and who fails, there is a dice mechanic. Each player (TM included) gets a pool of 5d12s and 5d4s. Depending on how chaotic the scene, the more or less dice one can bet at a given time. War is pretty fucking chaotic, so I make the Chaos Rating a 2. This means that each player can bet up to 2 dice per turn. The players definitely don’t want the TM to grab any dice, but they want their fellow Time Wizards to grab dice. The more dice you have, the better your chance to get a high number. If—after rolling your captured dice—you roll a higher number than the TM has, you succeed. If you roll all your dice and your total number is lower than the TM’s rolled total, your Time Wizard power fails in some way, shape, or form (which, of course, depends on the TM’s whims).

Basically: toss d12s in hopes that your fellow Time Wizards grab the d12s, toss d4s to hinder/hurt other players in their mad scramble to slap the dice. Remember: d4s are pointy and hurt to slap, d12s aren’t pointy and are more beneficial all-around. Players don’t want the TM to get high numbers, but some selfish players may just toss out d4s because they are assholes and want to cause some pain. To each their own: Time Wizards encourages all forms of tomfoolery.

So, to keep this less wordy and more actiony, both Monday and Wednesday have higher numbers than the Time Wizard’s total number. Monday goes first: at the beginning of the Time Moment, he wrote down one of his five powers. The power he wrote down was “Make it sweet.” Monday decides that the battlefield is now covered in giant crystalline boulders of hard sugar, making “it” (the battlefield) “sweet.” With time still completely stopped, the huge chunks of hard sugar appear all around Jerusalem. An interesting obstacle for the knights. Then comes Wednesday’s chosen power: “Replace the chair.” Wednesday (still controlled by Grant) decides to replace each knight’s saddle (their “chair”) with a giant spike. When asked what the spike would be made of, Grant replied, “A spike up the ass is a spike up the ass. Does it really matter what it’s made out of?” With that, I nodded and asked if either wizard wanted to Dilate Time (more on this later). Grant declined, the Time Moment ended, and time began moving at normal speed.

The knights, their collective anus now penetrated by a foreign (likely leathery) spike, were unable to concentrate on the task of steering their horses away from the giant crystals of sugar; thus, they all died from either blunt-force trauma or rectal bleeding. Probably both. Needless to say, a large portion of the serfs and slaves turn 180 degrees and peaced out. Unfortunately for the Time Wizards, a good 21% of the peons continued charging forward, picking up extra ladders dropped by their comrades as they moved. Easily dodging the saddle-spikes and sugar rocks, they began setting up their ladders along the walls of Jerusalem.

SLAP. “I DECLARE A TIME MOMENT!” Grant declared, guzzling more PBR. We were a few cans in by now, though our livers are pretty advanced against such standard faire. He wrote down the two phrases he’d like to use for Monday and Wednesday and then we began rolling dice. You all must remember that typically fellow Time Wizards don’t know what other Time Wizards are going to do; but, considering I only had one friend willing to do this at the time…. I’ll take what I can get. Unfortunately for Wednesday, I had a higher number than him; though, Monday’s total was higher than my own, so his power got to succeed. Monday wrote, “Oil the food,” so he declared the peons/slaves/serfs as “food” and decided to have them become covered in rocket fuel. Okay, done. Wednesday wrote down, “Tie the knot.” Since Wednesday failed to get a higher number than me, Time Master Supreme, I decided that “Tie the knot” meant that the ladders wanted to have a marriage (a “holy union” if you will) and merge to become MEGALADDER: CRUSHER OF KINGDOMS, SURROUNDED BY HIS BROOD-ORGY OF MINI-LADDERS… With peons covered in rocket fuel clinging to it and the mini-ladders.

Grant blinked at me. “I wanna Dilate Time.”

This is when things got weird.

See, Time Dilation is basically “Double or Nothing,” except replace “Nothing” with “Something-Better-Or-Worse-Than-Double.” More dice are thrown during the betting phase, previous effects stack with current effects, and it just gets all-around CA-RAZY. Monday and Wednesday wrote down their chosen power for this round, more dice are thrown, and the results are in: they both failed miserably. Which means I got to have fun.

Monday: “Change the baby.” I decided that the mini-ladders writhing against MEGALADDER were its babies; thus, the mini-ladders “changed” into F16 Jet Planes, soon to be fed by the rocket fuel surrounding them.

Wednesday: “Spread the green.” I mentioned in an off-handed comment earlier to Grant that there were some shrubberies surrounding Jerusalem; so, I made the shrubberies grow into a 1ft-thick wall covering the walls of Jerusalem. Doesn’t seem too bad. For now. But, those jet planes looked pretty fierce. Grant, head in hands, whispers a most excellent whisper that changed the entire game: “Dilate it again.”

This was Grant’s last chance. Almost all of the 5d12s and 5d4s had been rolled on all sides. These totals would either destroy any hope of the Time Wizards succeeding, or turn the tide. Or, just generally fuck everything up. Who knows with this game. And since I’m already getting pretty wordy, I’ll just cut to the chase: they totally kicked my ass during this last slap phase. With these successes in mind, they revealed their powers.

Monday: “Drain the vain.” Monday said that he drains MEGALADDER of all its pulpy juiciness, making it brittle and weak. Poor MEGALADDER… But what of the jet planes? Surely once time resumes, they’re going to go apeshit.

Wednesday: “Choke the chicken.” Wednesday (Still my friend Grant, mind you) explained the following line of logic: Another word for “chicken” is “cock.” A “cockpit” is where the pilot of a jet plane typically controls said jet plane. To “choke” is to constrict or crush. With all this in mind, Wednesday said that he will “Choke the chicken” by crushing the cockpit of each F16—causing them to harmlessly crumple to the ground outside the walls of Jerusalem once time resumes. Which it then does.

And in a flash, the ladders become a giant ladder, serfs get covered in rocket fuel, baby ladders turn into jet planes which immediately become worthless chunks of metal, and MEGALADDER disintegrates into sawdust. Everything seemed great—oh except for the rocket fuel covering the peons who also happened to be carrying torches. Next to the giant wall of flammable grass. Which was surrounding the entirety of Jerusalem. FWOOOSH, just like that, Jerusalem was a holocaust. As oxygen was being sucked out of the surrounding area, Muslims everywhere rushed to the middle of their holy land. Watching the inferno spread, Monday and Wednesday decided that they needed to make this right.

SLAP. “I DECLARE A TIME MOMENT!!” Grant yelled. He also forgets to drink his beer, which I call him out on. What a bitch. After the bitch drank his drank, he wrote down what powers Monday and Wednesday would be using for this round. After the slap phase, it appears that Monday had a higher number than the Time Master; though, the Time Master had a higher number than Wednesday.

Monday: “Change the baby.” I don’t even remember how he convinced me how this made sense. I think he said that Jerusalem was considered the “baby city of God.” Also, Los Angeles was the “city of angels, and angels are basically like God’s babies, right?” So, Monday switched Jerusalem with modern-day LA. With all the 17X9 Muslims along with it. But hey, no more inferno of death, right? What could possibly go wro-

Wednesday: “Cut the cheese.” Mind you, Wednesday failed. I’m in charge now. I decide that “the cheese” actually meant “the BIG cheese.” And that “cut” meant “assassinate.” Fortunately for the Time Wizards, it was a failed use of powers, so that attempt on the big cheese of LA (and all of the United States, really)’s life did not result in a death. However, Los Angeles police were now on high alert, looking for two dudes who looked very similar to Monday and Wednesday.

And with that, we ended the game since we were both getting a little hammered at this point.

Tonight, I play with 4 players (Grant being one of them). I hope that playing this with more people will be more fruitful, but we’ll see. I’ll be sure to let you guys know how it goes. Thanks for reading, and feel free to post suggestions or questions here!

-Time Wizard Lawrence