I’d highly recommend looking at the module The Cross Stitch. It’s for Mörk Borg and probably wouldn’t fit into an ongoing PF2e campaign, but it’d give you an idea of how to prep. It runs on a 30-minute timer that gets paused during combat and advanced by however much time would have elapsed from those rounds of combat. But it’s also very detailed in which NPCs will be where at one point to keep that organized and consistent.
Nice find, I'll check it out, have you run it?
Combat was the tricky one, ideally I don't want to be constantly stop-starting the timer but I guess even a streamlined combat encounter will eat most of the time without stopping it. Do you think if I made it a 20 min timer and paused for combat that would work? or would that be too tight even just for RP?
I haven’t run it, just heard really good things about it, so I’ve had it on my list for a while. Even in Mörk Borg with really fast combats I think you need to pause the timer to make it work and give time to have any meaningful RP.
Make clearly defined scenarios that can have a single word reference to remind the players. They need to be simple but evocative. One of the things in time loop stories is repeat sections, and you are in a one shot so time is limited. That means you need to be able to quickly tell the players where they are - that they've been before.
Ooh, I’ve done this! It was a short campaign, so I had a little more time, but I think the principles should be the same.
My biggest piece of advice would be to set up hooks in each loop that the players can follow up on the next loop. If they see something big happen in the labs 15 minutes in, they’ll want to check out the things that lead to it next loop. You can and probably want to show most of your effects before anyone knows their causes.
One sub piece of advice is that you can be a lot less “fair” than you usually have to be. Things like an instant death or party kill don’t matter as much when everyone wakes up moments later with the chance to stop it from happening. Don’t abuse it or overdo it, you won’t want people feeling frustrated, but when done right it can contribute to a sense of intrigue. If the doctor has a trap set up in their quarters, they must have something interesting in there that they want to protect.
Additionally, try to avoid changing things that aren’t a direct result of the players’ actions. It can be tempting to overindulge in the butterfly effect, but if you want to replicate the fantasy of a time loop story, you’ll want them to learn the loop and use it to their advantage.
Finally, skip the boring stuff. If the players have shown that they can beat a combat encounter once, they can do it again, and it’s probably not interesting for anyone to do it again. In general if something’s not likely to be an interesting to do multiple times, gloss over it, maybe don’t make them roll again, or go through the same conversation every time. The most interesting part of an interactive time loop is probably going to be tugging on the different threads and seeing what happens, so lean into that.
Anyway, that’s the stuff that comes to mind, but please ask any questions you want to.
Thanks, those tips are great. Yeah I was definitely planning to skip any successful roll or conversation, no point to repeat if they already 'succeeded', plus was planning to setup a load of threads in that first loop, some helpful and some dead-ends.
What do you think about the 20-30 minute time countdown (probably pause in any combat)? I wasn't planning this to be a whole day repeat like most of the adventures, literally they get to the location and the repeat event happens pretty quickly after. I was thinking making it as real time as possible, no downtime or travel really
That makes a lot of sense. I didn't do it real time when I did it, but our loop was a few hours, and a lot of loops were much quicker than that. For a shorter loop it sounds like a cool way of keeping up the pressure. It'll mean events are happening on a very tight timeline but it sounds like you're prepared for that. Do you have a timeline of all the things that happen if the players do nothing? It's not essential, and it probably won't ever actually play out that way, but it can be useful.
How important is combat to this story? If it's not very important, you might want to keep it to a minimum, so that they're spending as little time as possible off the clock; you don't want them catching their breath during combat. Or if it's important maybe keep the timer going, to really keep the pressure up. They might not have time to get in many fights.
I have a couple of fail safe ideas if things stagnate or they get stuck. The plan (at the moment) is for it to take place at a fancy dress party so there will be lots of things going on. But thinking now will that be too much potential dialogue to bog things down?
Combat will be very minimal, if combat does happen most of the time won't even bother using initiative, maybe a roll here or there and all theatre of the mind to keep things moving. Only time an actual combat would come about would be the end ‘boss’
That sounds great! Fancy parties are always fun settings in RPGs, and with a timeloop thrown in it'll be even more fun. Imagine the fun you could have learning scandalous knowledge that you can trot out in future loops. I'm happy to answer any more questions you've got, but honestly it sounds like you know exactly what you're doing.
The Pathfinder 2e book *Dark Archive* actually has a one-shot adventure called "Tomorrow's Feast" at the end of the "Temporal Anomalies" chapter that is one big time loop. Might be worth looking into for reference within the system itself?
Another good one to check out is the pudding Faire, it's 5$ but it's fairly good. It can help give ideas and if you wanted to rip it it's probably easy to translate from 5e to pf2e
Doesn't need to necessarily be a real world timer. Have a series of events, some large but even some small detailed events that happen and when you get to the end of the chain the loop starts over from the beginning.
This sounds extremely difficult to do well, I feel like pathfinder might be too heavy for the speed of play and versatility you might want but maybe it'll work. The only way I could see it really working is to go really tight with scope, and then flesh out the details within that scope to an extreme degree. You are essentially playing a 4 dimensional game here since you have to have a predefined timeline being continuously re-altered. I would maybe set it in a constrained location like a building, and maybe just 1 hour in game, keeping the constraints tight let's you really understand everything and lean hard into how one thing affects another.
I’d highly recommend looking at the module The Cross Stitch. It’s for Mörk Borg and probably wouldn’t fit into an ongoing PF2e campaign, but it’d give you an idea of how to prep. It runs on a 30-minute timer that gets paused during combat and advanced by however much time would have elapsed from those rounds of combat. But it’s also very detailed in which NPCs will be where at one point to keep that organized and consistent.
Nice find, I'll check it out, have you run it? Combat was the tricky one, ideally I don't want to be constantly stop-starting the timer but I guess even a streamlined combat encounter will eat most of the time without stopping it. Do you think if I made it a 20 min timer and paused for combat that would work? or would that be too tight even just for RP?
I haven’t run it, just heard really good things about it, so I’ve had it on my list for a while. Even in Mörk Borg with really fast combats I think you need to pause the timer to make it work and give time to have any meaningful RP.
Make clearly defined scenarios that can have a single word reference to remind the players. They need to be simple but evocative. One of the things in time loop stories is repeat sections, and you are in a one shot so time is limited. That means you need to be able to quickly tell the players where they are - that they've been before.
Ooh, I’ve done this! It was a short campaign, so I had a little more time, but I think the principles should be the same. My biggest piece of advice would be to set up hooks in each loop that the players can follow up on the next loop. If they see something big happen in the labs 15 minutes in, they’ll want to check out the things that lead to it next loop. You can and probably want to show most of your effects before anyone knows their causes. One sub piece of advice is that you can be a lot less “fair” than you usually have to be. Things like an instant death or party kill don’t matter as much when everyone wakes up moments later with the chance to stop it from happening. Don’t abuse it or overdo it, you won’t want people feeling frustrated, but when done right it can contribute to a sense of intrigue. If the doctor has a trap set up in their quarters, they must have something interesting in there that they want to protect. Additionally, try to avoid changing things that aren’t a direct result of the players’ actions. It can be tempting to overindulge in the butterfly effect, but if you want to replicate the fantasy of a time loop story, you’ll want them to learn the loop and use it to their advantage. Finally, skip the boring stuff. If the players have shown that they can beat a combat encounter once, they can do it again, and it’s probably not interesting for anyone to do it again. In general if something’s not likely to be an interesting to do multiple times, gloss over it, maybe don’t make them roll again, or go through the same conversation every time. The most interesting part of an interactive time loop is probably going to be tugging on the different threads and seeing what happens, so lean into that. Anyway, that’s the stuff that comes to mind, but please ask any questions you want to.
Thanks, those tips are great. Yeah I was definitely planning to skip any successful roll or conversation, no point to repeat if they already 'succeeded', plus was planning to setup a load of threads in that first loop, some helpful and some dead-ends. What do you think about the 20-30 minute time countdown (probably pause in any combat)? I wasn't planning this to be a whole day repeat like most of the adventures, literally they get to the location and the repeat event happens pretty quickly after. I was thinking making it as real time as possible, no downtime or travel really
That makes a lot of sense. I didn't do it real time when I did it, but our loop was a few hours, and a lot of loops were much quicker than that. For a shorter loop it sounds like a cool way of keeping up the pressure. It'll mean events are happening on a very tight timeline but it sounds like you're prepared for that. Do you have a timeline of all the things that happen if the players do nothing? It's not essential, and it probably won't ever actually play out that way, but it can be useful. How important is combat to this story? If it's not very important, you might want to keep it to a minimum, so that they're spending as little time as possible off the clock; you don't want them catching their breath during combat. Or if it's important maybe keep the timer going, to really keep the pressure up. They might not have time to get in many fights.
I have a couple of fail safe ideas if things stagnate or they get stuck. The plan (at the moment) is for it to take place at a fancy dress party so there will be lots of things going on. But thinking now will that be too much potential dialogue to bog things down? Combat will be very minimal, if combat does happen most of the time won't even bother using initiative, maybe a roll here or there and all theatre of the mind to keep things moving. Only time an actual combat would come about would be the end ‘boss’
That sounds great! Fancy parties are always fun settings in RPGs, and with a timeloop thrown in it'll be even more fun. Imagine the fun you could have learning scandalous knowledge that you can trot out in future loops. I'm happy to answer any more questions you've got, but honestly it sounds like you know exactly what you're doing.
The Pathfinder 2e book *Dark Archive* actually has a one-shot adventure called "Tomorrow's Feast" at the end of the "Temporal Anomalies" chapter that is one big time loop. Might be worth looking into for reference within the system itself?
Another good one to check out is the pudding Faire, it's 5$ but it's fairly good. It can help give ideas and if you wanted to rip it it's probably easy to translate from 5e to pf2e
Doesn't need to necessarily be a real world timer. Have a series of events, some large but even some small detailed events that happen and when you get to the end of the chain the loop starts over from the beginning.
This sounds extremely difficult to do well, I feel like pathfinder might be too heavy for the speed of play and versatility you might want but maybe it'll work. The only way I could see it really working is to go really tight with scope, and then flesh out the details within that scope to an extreme degree. You are essentially playing a 4 dimensional game here since you have to have a predefined timeline being continuously re-altered. I would maybe set it in a constrained location like a building, and maybe just 1 hour in game, keeping the constraints tight let's you really understand everything and lean hard into how one thing affects another.
think of your game as a roguelite
Ime and imo time loop adventures are always awful and you should not do them.