Customer Reviews

CONTINUUM: Roleplaying in The Yet

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

Most (nearly all) time-travel related stories, movies, or games are riddled with inconsistencies or paradoxes - usually the result of the writer not thinking the entire concept through. Continuum is the exception that proves the rule. A logical, wholly consistent world in which time-travel is a reality, and it is actually playable as intended! (As long as you don't mind keeping what is essentially a character diary to keep track of all the time travelling.) I read it cover-to-cover the day I bought it, and I still can't get it out of my mind. Easily _the_ most compelling RPG I have seen in a long, long time. Buy this game, you won't be sorry.

This is an excellent book, one of the best RPG's that I've ever seen. I picked this book up at GenCon 1999 and I can't wait to pick up Narscissit (a companion game book) this year. What makes this book so interesting is that it doesn't limit the players or the GM, if you've seen it it happened, if you don't remember the event, it is in your YET, (the required future) otherwise it happened. The book goes on the assumption that the universe just "is" there aren't any rules to control what spanners do, there are rules of conduct as in any society, but no "can'ts"

This game has presented the best mechanics on time travel RPG's to date in my opinion. There is no comparison to any other game or system, period. If you want to play with time travel this is the game for you.

The world however that the game is set in was... a bit boring for me. I didn't like the political groups that the characters had to join, the history was unimpressive and seemed half baked, and I was left with the thought "ok, I can travel through time... now what?" I needed a little bit more to understand the motivations of these beings. More of an enemy to oppose.

It's the best Time Travel Role-play you'll never fully understand. I've been looking for a physical copy of this book for awhile now and I'm really happy to have gotten it.

Timemaster is far better and easier than this game. How these sellers can ask for $400.00+ dollars for a not that big a deal game is beyond me, I wouldn't pay it, I have a free PDF to go off of and am I glad I never bought it, I will stick with Pacesetters Timemaster instead.

It is a great game to read and think about, but far too complicated and work-intensive to actually play or run.

Whilst reading the Continuum RPG, one should always keep in mind that the book is both intended to be an RPG for levellers (non-time-travellers) as well as being written by a Continuum spanner (time-traveller). By skillfully reading between the lines, one can understand what the Continuum do not say...

Having read through Continuum:Roleplaying in the Yet I can safely say I would never play it, so take the fact that I haven't played it into account. This game seems unplayable and unrecommendable to me. The rules are simple enough but why you would want to use them is beyond me. The complexity of skills seems entirely unnecessary. It uses both ranks (Novice to Grandmaster) called titles and scores (1-10). People with the the same score but higher titles do better despite the fact they are rolling against the same number, this seems to me needlessly more complicated than just having a single way to rate abilities that would allow better characters to just do better than inferior characters. Not that anyone would really want a better character. The level system would make me terrified of leveling up. Luckily it would be entirely out of my hands, as the system rules have characters increase in level entirely in game at the GM's discretion, there is neither XP nor any other earning action other than acting responsibly. There are things that a player must have accomplished before their characters can level up, but beyond that it is when the GM decides the higher ups feel the PC is ready. When the GM does decide you are ready to move on, you are unfortunately stuck more with an increase in responsibility than powers (though those do grow quite a bit). At level 1 you are a student, and you have to obey your level 3 teacher and do what they say to learn the ropes. At level 2 you get a job (most of which sound quite dull) and do what your bosses tell you. At level 3 you become a teacher and have to tell all your students what to do, just like you were told to do it. At level 4, you are important, you get to spend centuries doing pointless tasks of ordering others around on a large scale to prove your ready to be a level 5. At level 5 and up, you're a troubleshooter for everyone else and you get to judge what you did at level 4 just the way you remember being judged. That last brings up one of the real obnoxious parts of the game: everything has to happen the way it did. While this is ok on a general scale, you always have to fix any meddling in the time line so history occurs just as it did, it also applies at a personal level. The character and the player are expected (failure is punished by the system) to fill out notes on what they did and will do and when and where those events occurred. You must note down every time you encounter information about your future and make sure that you scrupulously enact those deeds at the proper time, even to the point of doing your best to play through meetings of yourself the same way they went the last time it happened however many sessions ago (serious divergence harms your character). Pretty much the only interesting thing this time travel game has going for it is the unusual idea that you absolutely cannot change history. What really happened might not be what you thought, but everything that has happened, will happen without exception (whether it happened in the future or the past) or the universe is destroyed. This gives a sense of urgency and community to time travel but beyond that I can't think of much of anything to recommend this game that any of the universal systems - or even several non universal games - wouldn't do much better.

This book has some great ideas to use in a time travel game. For example the idea of the "yet" - things that you learn you must do in the future to avoid paradox. However, if you use all the ideas the game becomes too complex and difficult to play.