You know what'd be amazing? A roleplay that lets characters travel through time, starting from the beginning of the roleplay. I'm thinking of Achron-like shenanigans, where posts would have to be edited, and the course of the RP adjusted over and over.

I wish I could think of a way that that'd work.

Like, maybe have everyone run through the plot once, resolve it (unfavorably), and then start editing and note when you edit what post in the OOC? But then you'd have to have dedicated players to update all their posts.

Or restart the IC entirely any time someone travels to/from the past?

I'm not sure how to make it work. I wish I could think of a way. If anybody does have an idea, please post it and/or try it out!

This sounds like a really cool idea. I don't know how I feel about editing posts over and over, though. That sounds tedious. Moving through the entire plot sounds much more plausible, but I would imagine you would need a pretty short plot in order make this work well. A short plot that can still be interesting. Maybe go back in time in chunks instead of all the way to the beginning. For example, once you get to the end, maybe the characters would think going back in time only a few hours would render their desired end. Then they may go further and further back. Maybe they won't go in any order, but choose completely random points in the plot to return to.

Editing previous posts sounds like a massive headache and a lot of work prone to errors and mistakes. But a time travel rp has potential.

I'd suggest simply making it explicit and clear the time and date of a post within the IC, and then frequently updating the op of an rp with a timeline of dates (and if neccessary, times during those days) along with a summary of what happened there, as an easier guide and reference. For any changes that occur, make it clear in the summary how that branches off and what new events happen (ala parallel worlds).

I've done time travel before. Admittedly it's been a long time, but alas...

Generally speaking, you don't edit previous posts, you keep moving forward, then after a certain amount of "time" has passed, you trigger an event that allows players to go back in time to resolve something. Maybe one of their compatriots died, so they go back in time when able to stop the death from happening, but in doing so create a new timeline with the old instances of themselves still existing, but as new people.

For example: Maybe PC's A, B, and C were in a love triangle. B and C like A, A likes B and C but can't decide which one it wants. C dies, causing A and B to grow close. They go back in time to save C, as C was their friend.

The timeline then changes as a result. In this new timeline, A and C ended up together, and B is left to the wayside. The two instances of the characters--the "old" versions that were changed instantly, slowly start to affect their "newer" versions and vice versa, until they become identical people, and hit crisis point, merging into one. You could then have instances where, say, C is terrified of the unknown consequences of being brought closer with his dead "other", and decides to go back in time again and again, making more versions of the future to prevent the ultimate cataclysm of losing itself to crisis point, or potentially losing A to B again on top of losing itself.

Eventually, you would have so many timelines, that you could justify anything, and this is where the fun truly begins, as timelines finally start to collapse in on one another. You could end up with a merged timeline in which dinosaurs never became extinct, but humanity did end up managing to reach its modern incarnation, so now you have a T-Rex rampaging through New York, and that alternate version of Earth now needs to recoil from the changes to the environment that occurred, humanity would have to change, its cultures quickly adapting or dying off to these sudden schisms in reality. People would suddenly find themselves involved with other people they don't even know, or find people they once knew as having ceased to exist. Enemies become friends, friends become enemies, and nothing is ever quite left with the feeling of wholeness again.

-Then-, in that one, singular moment, you have achieved the apex of creativity: The ability to justify the creation of anything, in any situation, with characters you've established.

-That- is the power of time travel.

It often gets flubbed though. It's really hard to write convincingly without tearing plot holes the size of the big bang into it... But when you -can- manage to achieve it...

I'd say go for it. A few months ago when I decided I was going to open a second roleplay, I was caught between an exploratory fantasy and a roleplay focused on time travel. My idea was less to do with running the course of a plot and adjusting thereafter, and more a group of people being enlisted to execute some objective that takes place at a time other than their own. Staying too long out of your own time would begin replacing your memories, because the mind simply couldn't handle such peculiar transfers through space and time for long. In other words, you disembark into another time and if you get stranded or forced to stay too long you lose yourself to it. Anyway, I found the idea appealing, and I think time travel has that sort of generally likable nature.

My advice would be to approach simply and complicate as you go. You know, create some of the rules of time travel and world hopping and explore those a bit. Then out of nowhere a rule is broken, or something happens that really shouldn't, and things get complicated. Perhaps timelines cross (like the overlap you described), suddenly throwing things out of whack. Just have fun with it, but try to keep things straight in your own head. This sort of roleplay has a strong chance of confusing your participants, and a bit is fine, but too much may just drive others off.

All in all good luck! This sounds like a fun idea that deserves to be shared.