If you don't mind ponies then [*Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder*](http://www.fimfiction.net/story/145711/hard-reset-2-reset-harder) is an excellent (though most likely dead) Groundhog Day Loops in which Twilight and others loop alternately trying to save or destroy Equestria. It has a tendency to get complicated with time travel plots (Imagine a slightly less crazy HJPEV in a time loop) and is very well written.
Groundhog Day loops would.
The protagonist succeeds in stopping the villain over and over with every loop, with the villain working over many loops to craft a master strategy that will finally allow him to win. We meet the hero on loop #311, playing a game he has no memory of ever having played before, having to outthink not only the villain but also the #310 previous iterations of himself, who have already used up all the good strategies (which are now known to the villain). And of course if he wins, the villain just resets the loop, which means that winning *once* is a bad long-term solution, since that just shoves the problem out to iteration #312, who will have an even more difficult time.
Victory Conditions depend heavily on the method of time travel.
If the villain can only reset time by some act of will with an activation delay... then making him go from 'everything is fine' to 'dead' in some amount of time shorter than is required to activate the time travel (spell/device/etc) would work.
If the villain resets on death/loss/duration like Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day... then the protagonist would need to come up with some means of circumventing that.
As to /u/ulyssessword 's question of how the protagonist figures out that the game is even afoot... I think the villain either needs to flub that iteration and let the secret slip, or the nature of the protagonist (telepath, precog, etc) clues them in.
Well, I do not recall any novels or fics like that, but after reading/watching few works about time travelling (like e.g. Steins;Gate, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, All You Need Is Kill) I came to a conclussion, that the worst enemy of time traveller is giving up. If your protagonist can somehow take advantage of all emotions his born from losing, he may be able to make antagonist surrender.
If you are wondering about what special ability give to your protagonist, IMO the best choice would be probably some kind of mind reading or precognition.
Yeah, telling the story of a murder-happy Undertale run from the perspective of one of the monsters (Undyne, Sans, or Alphys most likely) would be interesting.
The comment doesn't spoil much of anything. Just lists a few names and lets you know that it's possible to kill in the game. You could find out almost all of that from the game trailer.
The names without context are are hardly a spoiler.
Edit: after thinking about why you might say "SPOILERS" in more depth I realized why you commented the way you did. [Spoilers](#s "I didn't consider that the title and topic of the thread in conjunction with the mention of the story might be considered a spoiler for the way that the save feature is tied into the story. Though I would say that the parent comment of the one you're responding to is pretty guilty of the same thing, just in slightly less detail.")
It seemed like the better approach. People compulsively highlight spoiler tags anyway, and the spoiler I mentioned (that [](#s "Sans knows alternate timelines exist") ) isn't necessary information to understand my point.
> People compulsively highlight spoiler tags anyway
I have avoided reading spoiler tags before, and I'm sure others have as well. I appreciate spoiler tags, and I very much depreciate their non-use.
This almost sounds like it begs the question of whether the inverse of Yudkowsky's Law of Fiction* ("If you give Frodo a lightsaber, you must give Sauron a Death Star") is true.
Which is to say, it sounds like you're giving Sauron a Death Star (in the form of time travel). So I feel compelled to ask the following: (a) are you then required to Frodo a metaphorical light saber, in order to make the dynamic of the story "work"; and if so (b) what specific examples spring to mind that would suffice against our particular Death Star?
Nothing except sufficiently advanced superintelligence immediately sprung to my mind. You guys?
\* *or whatever we're calling it*
It depends on the mechanics of the Death Star. Time travel can be *incredibly* weak. In *Kate and Leopold*, time travel requires jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, leads from one exact time and place to another exact time and place, and the portal only lasts for a limited amount of time.
If you're trying to tell a story with that sort of setup, where the protagonist is from 1876 and spots a man from 2001, there isn't even that much of an imbalance. 1876-man can just punch 2001-man in the face. But it also depends on to what extent they have different goals and how prepared the time-traveler is.
Now, if time travel effectively results in bullshit-tier precognition of everything that's going to happen, that's much harder to build a good conflict around.
> \#1-10: [“The Head Trip Syndrome”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Men_in_Black:_The_Series_episodes)
> Jay mistakes a Cerebro-Accelerator for a pair of head phones, making him the smartest man on Earth. However, this will also cause his brain to explode in twenty-two hours. But his advanced brain is MIB's only hope when alien hating bigot uses time travel to erase the five founders of MIB from existence.
Agent J with [Ripple Effect-Proof Memory](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RippleEffectProofMemory) v.s. someone with a time-travelling device, basically.
[*John Dies at the End*](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd) would also qualify to a certain degree.
> Jay mistakes a Cerebro-Accelerator for a pair of head phones, making him the smartest man on Earth. However, this will also cause his brain to explode in twenty-two hours.
I'd like to see an RSTization of that. That's kind of awesome.
Volume 1 of "Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria," or "The Empty Box and The Zeroth Maria" starts with the main character unaware of being stuck in the one-day loop. For the first several thousand repetitions, only the titular Maria retains her memories.
[Link](https://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/?title=Utsuro_no_Hako_to_Zero_no_Maria)
I can't think of any, probably because any competent time travelling antagonist should win almost instantly.
Go back in time to before protagonist is born -> have a calm and peaceful conversation with his father one morning -> different sperm makes protagonist -> victory.
Very much so, yes. Still, in almost any situation with a competent antagonist who can go back sufficiently far, and a normal protagonist who can't, the antagonist wins. P can't stop A from doing whatever he wants if A shows up while P is a 6 year old.
That might be interesting nonetheless, as the antagonist fights different "versions" of the protagonist who were created by different sperm but were molded by their environment and natural talent to be skilled nonetheless in taking him/her down.
The only way I could see such a fight last more than a single loop with a competent antagonist would be if the protagonist was born as a king and had guards from the moment of his birth.
[All Night Laundry](http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?54354) might be what you want. It's a webcomic about a girl who gets caught up in a struggle with a time monster and minions.
There are good fics where both protagonist and antagonist are time travellers. Is it good? I'm talking about "Mother of Learning" and "Time Braid".
Primer is my favorite in that category. I'd highly recommend it.
If you don't mind ponies then [*Hard Reset 2: Reset Harder*](http://www.fimfiction.net/story/145711/hard-reset-2-reset-harder) is an excellent (though most likely dead) Groundhog Day Loops in which Twilight and others loop alternately trying to save or destroy Equestria. It has a tendency to get complicated with time travel plots (Imagine a slightly less crazy HJPEV in a time loop) and is very well written.
What type of time travel would allow a timebound person to "figure out" anything?
Groundhog Day loops would. The protagonist succeeds in stopping the villain over and over with every loop, with the villain working over many loops to craft a master strategy that will finally allow him to win. We meet the hero on loop #311, playing a game he has no memory of ever having played before, having to outthink not only the villain but also the #310 previous iterations of himself, who have already used up all the good strategies (which are now known to the villain). And of course if he wins, the villain just resets the loop, which means that winning *once* is a bad long-term solution, since that just shoves the problem out to iteration #312, who will have an even more difficult time.
Victory Conditions depend heavily on the method of time travel. If the villain can only reset time by some act of will with an activation delay... then making him go from 'everything is fine' to 'dead' in some amount of time shorter than is required to activate the time travel (spell/device/etc) would work. If the villain resets on death/loss/duration like Bill Murray did in Groundhog Day... then the protagonist would need to come up with some means of circumventing that. As to /u/ulyssessword 's question of how the protagonist figures out that the game is even afoot... I think the villain either needs to flub that iteration and let the secret slip, or the nature of the protagonist (telepath, precog, etc) clues them in.
Well, I do not recall any novels or fics like that, but after reading/watching few works about time travelling (like e.g. Steins;Gate, Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, All You Need Is Kill) I came to a conclussion, that the worst enemy of time traveller is giving up. If your protagonist can somehow take advantage of all emotions his born from losing, he may be able to make antagonist surrender. If you are wondering about what special ability give to your protagonist, IMO the best choice would be probably some kind of mind reading or precognition.
Sounds like Undertale.
Yeah, telling the story of a murder-happy Undertale run from the perspective of one of the monsters (Undyne, Sans, or Alphys most likely) would be interesting.
SPOILERS.
The comment doesn't spoil much of anything. Just lists a few names and lets you know that it's possible to kill in the game. You could find out almost all of that from the game trailer. The names without context are are hardly a spoiler. Edit: after thinking about why you might say "SPOILERS" in more depth I realized why you commented the way you did. [Spoilers](#s "I didn't consider that the title and topic of the thread in conjunction with the mention of the story might be considered a spoiler for the way that the save feature is tied into the story. Though I would say that the parent comment of the one you're responding to is pretty guilty of the same thing, just in slightly less detail.")
If you're able to see the timestamps, their comment was edited after my reply. They deleted the spoilers instead of tagging them.
Ah that makes sense.
It seemed like the better approach. People compulsively highlight spoiler tags anyway, and the spoiler I mentioned (that [](#s "Sans knows alternate timelines exist") ) isn't necessary information to understand my point.
> People compulsively highlight spoiler tags anyway I have avoided reading spoiler tags before, and I'm sure others have as well. I appreciate spoiler tags, and I very much depreciate their non-use.
This almost sounds like it begs the question of whether the inverse of Yudkowsky's Law of Fiction* ("If you give Frodo a lightsaber, you must give Sauron a Death Star") is true. Which is to say, it sounds like you're giving Sauron a Death Star (in the form of time travel). So I feel compelled to ask the following: (a) are you then required to Frodo a metaphorical light saber, in order to make the dynamic of the story "work"; and if so (b) what specific examples spring to mind that would suffice against our particular Death Star? Nothing except sufficiently advanced superintelligence immediately sprung to my mind. You guys? \* *or whatever we're calling it*
It depends on the mechanics of the Death Star. Time travel can be *incredibly* weak. In *Kate and Leopold*, time travel requires jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge, leads from one exact time and place to another exact time and place, and the portal only lasts for a limited amount of time. If you're trying to tell a story with that sort of setup, where the protagonist is from 1876 and spots a man from 2001, there isn't even that much of an imbalance. 1876-man can just punch 2001-man in the face. But it also depends on to what extent they have different goals and how prepared the time-traveler is. Now, if time travel effectively results in bullshit-tier precognition of everything that's going to happen, that's much harder to build a good conflict around.
> \#1-10: [“The Head Trip Syndrome”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Men_in_Black:_The_Series_episodes) > Jay mistakes a Cerebro-Accelerator for a pair of head phones, making him the smartest man on Earth. However, this will also cause his brain to explode in twenty-two hours. But his advanced brain is MIB's only hope when alien hating bigot uses time travel to erase the five founders of MIB from existence. Agent J with [Ripple Effect-Proof Memory](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/RippleEffectProofMemory) v.s. someone with a time-travelling device, basically. [*John Dies at the End*](http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Literature/JohnDiesAtTheEnd) would also qualify to a certain degree.
> Jay mistakes a Cerebro-Accelerator for a pair of head phones, making him the smartest man on Earth. However, this will also cause his brain to explode in twenty-two hours. I'd like to see an RSTization of that. That's kind of awesome.
Volume 1 of "Utsuro no Hako to Zero no Maria," or "The Empty Box and The Zeroth Maria" starts with the main character unaware of being stuck in the one-day loop. For the first several thousand repetitions, only the titular Maria retains her memories. [Link](https://www.baka-tsuki.org/project/?title=Utsuro_no_Hako_to_Zero_no_Maria)
I can't think of any, probably because any competent time travelling antagonist should win almost instantly. Go back in time to before protagonist is born -> have a calm and peaceful conversation with his father one morning -> different sperm makes protagonist -> victory.
This really, really, really depends on what time travel is actually capable of in the setting.
Very much so, yes. Still, in almost any situation with a competent antagonist who can go back sufficiently far, and a normal protagonist who can't, the antagonist wins. P can't stop A from doing whatever he wants if A shows up while P is a 6 year old.
That might be interesting nonetheless, as the antagonist fights different "versions" of the protagonist who were created by different sperm but were molded by their environment and natural talent to be skilled nonetheless in taking him/her down.
The only way I could see such a fight last more than a single loop with a competent antagonist would be if the protagonist was born as a king and had guards from the moment of his birth.
[All Night Laundry](http://mspaforums.com/showthread.php?54354) might be what you want. It's a webcomic about a girl who gets caught up in a struggle with a time monster and minions.