The default campaign concept for Timewatch is time-travel police procedural; you’re a team of agents recruited from all over the Earth timeline, charged with making sure history doesn’t go off the rails.* (Thoughtfully, the designers also offer several variations on building a campaign around time travel in case you don’t want to play time cops, but I’m going to operate from the default for the purposes of this exercise.)
Timewatch is built on the Gumshoe system, which is designed for games that focus on investigation. One of the core premises of Gumshoe is that you can and will find the clues that you need to pursue the case, so that the game won’t sputter to a complete halt just because of a few bad Search or Investigate rolls. (We’ll get a little into the mechanics of this when we hit that part of character creation.)
Anyhow, the big challenge of creating a Timewatch character is the insanely broad range of options for character ideas. You can play anything from a Neanderthal from a thousand centuries before recorded history to a brain in a jar from the far-flung future.** But the designers are here for you with a list of archetypes they call Character Competencies, basically a list of core skill sets that can be applied to similar character ideas, each matched up with three or four character concepts from different eras of human history. These are only starters; they don’t spend all of the points allotted, and players are encouraged to combine packages. But they make a great starting point, so I’m going to use them
I find myself drawn to the Chronal Expert, who is basically the time travel specialist in your team of time cops. I want to combine this with the brain-in-a-jar concept, though I haven’t figured out whether the brain is a preserved formerly embodied person or a clone brain that has never known any life but jarhood. Scientist and Analyst seem like good mixers, though they may leave me with a character who’s not so good at the rough stuff. But, hey, brain in a jar.
Skills are divided into two types, Investigative Abilities and General Abilities, and each type works a little differently. In both cases your score represents a pool of points you can use to improve your results. On the other hand, if you don’t have any points assigned to a particular Investigative Ability, you don’t know enough about that subject to pick up clues. With General Abilities spending these points will improve your die rolls when attempting to use the skill in question. But Investigative Abilities always generate at least some success, and your pool of points can be spent to improve the quality or quantity of the information you gain.
Now the Chronal Expert package includes these Investigative Abilities: Hacking (1 pt), History (field TBD) (2 pts), Paradox Prevention (1) Science! (2), and Timecraft (2). The Scientist bundle includes Hacking (1), Notice (1), Research (1) and Science! (2).That’s a lot of overlap. Fortunately, Analyst broadens the field more, adding Anthropology (1), Bureaucracy (1), Forgery (1), History (Ancient) (1), History (Contemporary)(1), History (Future) (1), Military Tactics (1) and Research (2). Put them together, using only the highest score in each Ability, and you get the following list:
Anthropology 1
Bureaucracy 1
Forgery 1
Hacking 1
History (Ancient) 1
History (Contemporary) 1
History (Future) 1
Military Tactics 1
Notice 1
Paradox Prevention 1
Research 2
Science! 2
Timecraft 2
Discounting our free point of Timecraft, that’s 15 points out of 20 spent. Let’s see whether we want to expand the list or beef up what we’ve already got. The book suggests that it’s fine to leave a few points open for assignment during play; I’ll reserve one to three points. Brains in jars are not noted for their interpersonal skills, but they can be perceptive enough to detect stress tells, so let’s add a point in Falsehood Detection. The same sensors that do that might be useful in health diagnostics, so add one in Medical Expertise. Add one point to Paradox Prevention, which sounds very useful when time-traveling. And finally add a point to Trivia just for the fun of being a tinned game show contestant. That leaves 1 for an emergency.
Turning to General Abilities, we note that characters receive 50 points to assign, and that all Timewatch agents receive free starting scores of 6 each in Health and Chronal Stability. Health is the game's version of hit points; Chronal Stability serves a similar function, only in reference to your ability to resist the time stream's natural tendency to erase anomalies. Time travel, temporal paradoxes, and certain types of aliens or devices can reduce your Chronal Stability; if you run out you may well be erased from existence. (We may want to spend some points to boost those scores.) In addition, two of our Competency packages include a further 24 points worth of General Abilities:
Chronal Expert: Chronal Stability 8 (that includes the 6 referenced above, so it only counts as spending 2); Reality Anchor 8, Tinkering 8
Scientist: Medic 2, Preparedness 4, TInkering 8 (which overlaps with Chronal expert so we only count it once)
That seems like a good start, though I should probably see what Reality Anchor and Preparedness do. Turns out the former is the equivalent of medical skill for Chronal Stability; you use it to stiffen teammates' resistance to being wiped out of the timestream. Preparedness is your ability to have foreseen what you might need; a successful check means that you remembered to bring the equipment or supplies that the current situation calls for.
Now to spend the remaining 26 points. The rules also recommend that you put at least one point in every General Ability unless you want to be completely terrible at it. Fortunately, there are only thirteen General Abilities, so I can start by putting a point in everything that my Competencies haven't already addressed: Athletics, Burglary, Disguise, Scuffling, Shooting, Unobtrusiveness, and Vehicles. That's 7, leaving 19. I should have at least a 4 in anything I want to be pretty good at, and an 8 in my personal specialities. I would expect to be pretty poor at athletics and hand-to-hand combat, so I'm going to leave those scores at 1. I think I'll be fine with just Reality Anchor and Tinkering as my superstar skills, so let's see how many of the rest I can bring up to 4, and whether I'll have any left over. If I bring Burglary, Disguise, Medic, Shooting, Unobtrusiveness, and Vehicles up to 4 each, I'll have 2 points left to boost my baseline Health. My Hit Threshold (the number attackers have to make to hit me) is only 3, but that would be true unless I made a large investment in Athletics, so I'll have to suffer with it.
Because my Reality Anchor and Tinkering abilities are at least 8, I get a Boost for each of them. For Reality Anchor, it's Grounded, which gives me automatic successes on the first few time jumps I make in each scene. For Tinkering, it's Rapid Deployment, which lets me jury-rig stuff twice as fast as less-skilled people.
Before I go further I should probably address the whole brain-in-a-jar thing, which is covered under "Alternate Species and Constructs." The game assumes that technology and evolution will address most of the complications of a non-standard-human body type, which in practical terms means that I'll have short-range telekinesis that enables me to float over solid ground at about two feet elevation, maneuver at roughly a fast walk, and manipulate object up close as though I had hands. In addition, much of my equipment (which we'll cover below) will be built into my jar. There are a couple bits of awkwardness, however; I'll be extra vulnerable to stunning effects, and if my holographic disguises should ever slip while I'm on mission, the local normies will react with considerable discomfort to my appearance. But I can deal with that.
Now let's take a look at gear. What follows is the general department-issue bundle; other items will usually be assigned on a per-mission basis or retconned via Preparedness rolls. We start with an Autochron or personal time machine for traveling to and from the sites of investigations. Next, the agent receives Impersonator Mesh, a cloaking/disguise device that provides a bonus on Unobtrusiveness checks in most circumstances. The Uniform doubles as light personal armor; Dr Daniels' uniform is, as we noted, a containment device in the departmental colors. You get a medkit, a translator, a tether or holographic PDA, several MEM-tags (memory modification devices for those moments when you've blown your cover), and a personal defense weapon called a PaciFist Disruptor. Most of this, except the medkit and possibly the MEM-tags, will be built into Dr. Daniels' containment device.
Next we get into the descriptive stuff. For Personality, the rules suggest you ask "what actor would play your character on the TV show?" and go from there. Immediately I went to William Daniels, maybe because of Knight Rider, who knows. But I like the fit: the archetypal Daniels character is very smart, kind of fussy, a little snarky, all qualities I think my bottled brain should have. I'll add sneaky and pessimistic to that list of personal qualities, just for funsies. And we'll call him (he identifies male) Dr. Daniels to make the connection clear.
Then we turn to Appearance. I'm a brain in a jar; not being particularly interested in the variations in appearance that the human brain can take, I think I'll focus on my packaging. I'll take the transparent cylinder with metal caps at both ends, please. In Timewatch blue with gold trim, and various lights and buttons to indicate which systems are currently active. Add a suspension medium that changes color at my whim or with my moods, and I think I'm good to go.
Next I address the character's motivation. What drives a snarky, pessimistic brain in a jar to help police the timestream? The fear of things getting worse, is what. Don't Let It Get Worse, It's Bad Enough Already, is Dr. Daniels' credo.
Now I need a Background. This brain is cloned from tissue and has never seen the inside of a body (well, OK, excepting the occasional autopsy). Dr. Daniels started his career as a chronometrical variations analyst at TimeWatch HQ and was transferred to field operations due to a data-entry error. He's making the best of it, though, or at least trying to make it work while complaining nonstop.
Timewatch PCs also each have a Secret that might create no small awkwardness if other characters or TimeWatch administration happened to find out about it. What secrets would a brain in a jar have? How about this: While still an analyst, he made a stupid error and got an agent wiped. Somehow, despite the timestream having erased virtually all trace of this agent, Dr. Daniels knows he's got a responsibility to clean up after his mess (though he's no longer entirely sure what it was). The "data-entry error" that got him transferred to field ops was actually his own hacking.
And there we have it. One Timewatch agent. To sum up in statblock form:
Dr Daniels, Chronal Expert and Brain in a Jar
Nationality: none
Era of Origin: Far Future
Profession: Time Travel Scientist
Age: 75
Drive: Don't Let It Get Worse, It's Bad Enough Already
Personality: Analytical, Fussy, Snarky
Appearance: Human brain in a cylindrical floating containment device
Background: Office analyst mistakenly transferred to field duty
Secret: Engineered the "mistake" to correct his own grievous error without it coming to light
Hit Threshold: 3
Armor: 1(uniform)
Chronal Stability: 8
Health: 8
Investigative Abilities (1 point unspent):
Academic: Anthropology 1, History (Ancient) 1, History (Contemporary) 1, History (Future) 1, Military Tactics 1, Research 2, TImecraft 2, Trivia 1
Interpersonal: Bureaucracy 1, Falsehood Detection 1
Technical: Forgery 1, Hacking 1, Medical Expertise 1, Paradox Prevention 2, Science! 2
General Abilities:
Athletics 1, Burglary 4, Chronal Stability 8, Disguise 4, Health 8, Medic 4, Preparedness 4, Reality Anchor 8, Scuffling 1, Shooting 4, Tinkering 8, Unobtrusiveness 4, Vehicles 4
Boosters:
Grounded (Reality Anchor)
Rapid Deployment (Tinkerer)
Standard Issue Gear (mostly built into jar):
Autochron (time machine)
Impersonator Mesh (cloaking device)
Medkit (first aid)
MEM-tags (memory modifiers for when you blow your cover)
PaciFist Disruptor (personal defense device, built into jar)
Tether (holographic PDA)
Uniform (built into jar)
Translator
*Full disclosure: I created a comedy version of this premise (called Eternity!) using the Risus engine about a dozen years ago. Players took the role of significant historical figures acting as time cops. (It could probably stand some revision, to be honest.) Anyway, Timewatch does this more seriously and, frankly, better (though it does dissuade you from playing famous historical or fictional characters because it’s not shooting for sitcom-level humor).
** You can even play an intelligent dinosaur from an alternate timeline, thus passing the Dr. Dinosaur test.***
***The Dr. Dinosaur test is “Can I play Dr. Dinosaur (or at least a close facsimile) in this game?” If the answer is “yes,” then your game is cooler than it would be if you could not play Dr. Dinosaur.
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