“History isn’t written by the victors. It’s written by the …history!) and one in groovy 1970s In Search Of… style Forteana (the time-stream is festooned with cryptids, ancient

some images and text from TimeWatch by Kevin Kulp http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/timewatch-rpg/

“History isn’t written by the victors. It’s written by the

people with the time machines.”

The year is 1976, except when it isn’t. You are an agent of

TimeWatch, the time-traveling conspiracy that protects

human history from the very dangers that time travel has

unleashed. From an ultra-secret headquarters at the

zenith of human civilization—the 1970s!—you patrol the

time-stream, protecting the future and repairing the past.

Your enemies are legion: crosstime invaders from hostile

histories, reality-eating paradoxes, chronal saboteurs.

When an Assyrian army eradicates Greece three centuries

before Socrates, when nuclear war breaks out in 1588,

when the Nazi Zeitwaffen meddles with the U.S. Civil War

again, TimeWatch is there.

STRANGE ATTRACTORS is a game of time travel, chaos

theory, and alternate history. I’m going for a sci-fi vibe with one foot in

paranoid 1970s airport thrillers (shadowy forces pulling strings behind

history!) and one in groovy 1970s In Search Of… style Forteana (the time-

stream is festooned with cryptids, ancient astronauts, and killer bees!). Think

The Lemurian Candidate, The Paradox View, 66 Million Years of the Condor.

We’ll be using a mashup of the TimeWatch RPG for setting and time travel

mechanics) and a hack of the Cortex Plus RPG. (Basically it’s the same Night’s

Black Agents/Cortex hybrid we used for Cold City.) I’ll give you info on both

systems—don’t feel like you have to digest them all now.

“It’s cooler than Roswell. Three alien bodies and

a hunk of Reticulan tinfoil are as so much dross

in the lambent greenish glow of the

Philadelphia Experiment.”

TimeWatch has its origins—for now—in the

Philadelphia Experiment, a top secret project by

the U.S. Office of Naval Research during World

War II. A team of physicists led by John van

http://site.pelgranepress.com/index.php/timewatch-rpg/


Neumann charge the hull of a navy destroyer with rotating electromagnetic

currents in an attempt to render it invisible. The U.S.S. Eldridge and its crew

vanishes from the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard—and appears over 200 miles

away in Norfolk, Virginia, eight minutes before vanishing in Philadelphia.

All records of the experiment are suppressed,

but research continues under the command of

Robert A. Heinlein and the U.S. Navy

Directorate of Time. Now called Project

Rainbow, research moves from Philadelphia to a

massive underground facility near Montauk,

New York. There, Project Rainbow completes a

working time machine in 1963.

On November 23, 1963, the same day that Carl Schermer assassinates John F.

Kennedy in Houston and the BBC airs the first episode of Doctor Who,

Commander Heinlein looks on as the time machine is tested. Eighty seconds

before the machine is activated, the lab’s sensors go wild. There is a high

keening vibration, a rush of air, and time travelers from the 26th century

appear to stop the test, accompanied by Commander Heinlein’s own future

self. What Heinlein tells himself on that day is classified well above

IRIDESCENT-level clearance, but a partnership is struck between Project

Rainbow and the future visitors. In that partnership, TimeWatch is born.

At least, that’s the history they’ve told you.

“People like us, who believe in physics, know that the

distinction between past, present, and future, is only a

stubbornly present illusion.”

You are an elite TimeWatch agent—plucked out of your old

life and armed with high-tech gadgets, a sleek blue bodysuit,

and a time machine. You’ve been fixed up with 26th-century

nanomedicine and given an extended lifespan. You’ve been

trained in history, diplomacy, survival skills, and tradecraft,

along with chronal theory and time travel tech.



You have a lot of latitude in coming up with

a character concept: TimeWatch agents can

come from any era in human history, even

from alternate histories. The TimeWatch

Players Guide offers a kitchen sink list of

ideas on pp. 17-19: everything from a 12th

century samurai to a super intelligent spider

monkey. I’d much rather stick with humans

(or Bigfoots; see below), but I’m not

inflexible. If it helps you to narrow it down,

let’s assume that most TimeWatch agents

are from our own timeline (which Project Rainbow has code named NAVY) or

one very close to it. Why would somebody from an alternate timeline risk

their neck defending a history that was not their own? (Though that could

definitely make an interesting character if that concept speaks to you.) Also,

TimeWatch typically stations agents somewhen close to their home era.

Since you’ll start our game based out of 1976 New York, a good default

assumption is that you came from some time in the 19th, 20th, or 21st

centuries. But if you’re thinking of something else, let me know.

What kind of people become TimeWatch

agents? Remarkable people, devious

people, highly skilled people from all walks

of life. Some agents are groomed into

TimeWatch by the shadowy front

organizations the conspiracy maintains in so

many places and times (the CIA? the Knights

Templar? the White Lotus?). Some come to

TimeWatch’s attention after they get hold

of, or even invent, their own time travel technology. Some agents come from

parallel time streams, orphaned after their own history gets absorbed or

erased. And some agents are recruited directly by TimeWatch because of

their impressive future deeds—deeds that may not happen once TimeWatch

goes back in time and preemptively recruits them.

Here’s a list of possible character types that would fit well with the 1970s

weird action sci-fi spy-fi vibe I’m going for. This is by no means a complete list

- these are just meant to spark your imagination. We’ll do character

generation together, so don’t set your heart on one specific character just



yet. But by all means think about ideas and the kinds of character you might

want to play.

• a suave, unflappable James

Bond-style super-spy (of any

nationality and gender)

• a weird Agent Dale Cooper-

type holistic zen detective,

capable of inexplicable

insights

• a scholar of secret,

suppressed, and hollow

history - bookish, paranoid,

and intense

• a chronal scientist or

technician who invented, or

helped invent, time travel - as

part of Project Rainbow in

1963 or at some other time or

place

• a daredevil explorer just

happy to be tagging along on the greatest adventure of all

• a “First Earth Battalion”-type special forces commando with a weird diet

regimen and New Age ideas

• a young Navy serviceman from the original Philadelphia Experiment, out of

his depth in all this Buck Rogers stuff but eager to punch Nazis

• a charismatic parapsychologist with spooky abilities in neurolinguistic

programming and hypnosis

• a wizard or magus from centuries past whose hypergeometry lines up

remarkably well with the physics of time travel

• a manic, nervous defector from the rival Soviet time travel project, Setka-MO

• a con artist and chameleon from anywhen in time - a loveable rogue, a

master of impersonation, persuasion, and disguise

• a mad scientist of any stripe, but especially weird physics (zero-point energy,

N-rays, time travel), weird chemistry (red mercury, alchemy, chemtrails), or

weird math (chaos theory, strange attractors, quantum realities)

• a gung ho gadgeteer - aces at building, fixing, hacking tech from just about

every era

• a cunning catburglar and infiltration expert, stealing the great treasures of

history



Here are a few constraints on your character concept:

You’re human. The TimeWatch book does

discuss weirder possibilities: futuristic cyborgs,

super-intelligent talking animals, disembodied

brains in jars. I’d rather stick with human agents.

Though I’ll make an exception if anyone wants

to be a wise Bigfoot / Yeti (from the Lemurian

civilization that predates humanity), because it

fits so well with that In Search Of vibe.

You’re extremely competent, but don’t have

superpowers (other than time travel).

TimeWatch agents are impressive even before

they get recruited, and their training makes

them seriously bad ass. You can assume you

have a James Bond or Sherlock Holmes level of competence in your personal

wheelhouse (which might be Action, Stealth, Intrigue, History, or Science),

and that you’re highly effective in most other areas as well. Generally,

though, there’s no superpowers. You can, if your heart is set on it, ask for

some kind of low-level psychic powers that fit with a 1970s New Age vibe.

But much of what those accomplish can probably be duplicated already with

TimeWatch’s store of psychotronic technologies.

You have to work for TimeWatch (for now).

TimeWatch is a big, clandestine organization,

born in a secret marriage between the inner

sanctums of U.S. military intelligence and tight-

lipped time travellers from an unspecified future.

And TimeWatch takes it upon itself to tamper

with the very fabric of reality. Your character has

to be OK with that, at least at first. Whether

TimeWatch can really be trusted with the power

to meddle in human history—whether anyone can

be trusted with that power—is a question our game may explore, in classic

1970s conspiracy-thriller fashion. But at the outset, you should come up with

a character who would not be wholly unwilling to do secret work for a

shadowy conspiracy of this kind. Otherwise it’ll be a pretty short game.



You can’t go home again. Not really a character constraint, but worth

knowing: joining TimeWatch means saying goodbye to your old life, probably

forever. Your friends and loved ones think you died or disappeared—or

maybe you (or they!) will be erased from history altogether. There’s a couple

reasons for this: First, TimeWatch tries to forbid its agents from revisiting

their own lives or loved ones—there’s just too much potential for paradox,

weirdness, and heartbreak. Also, TimeWatch agents try to keep their old

identities and histories secret. When your enemies have time machines, you

are extremely vulnerable to anyone who knows where and when you (or your

parents, or your grandparents…) were a child. Finally, time travel has side

effects: suffice to say that every time you travel in time, you become slightly

estranged from reality as history gets altered in tiny ways. Every TimeWatch

agent has lost something in the time-stream. Think about who, or what, or

when, you might have lost.

“I don’t want to talk about time travel, because if

we start talking about it then we’re going to be

here all day talking about it, making diagrams with

straws.”

If you know me you know I do want to talk about

time travel, more than anything. But we’ll save that

for now.

I’ll send you a link to some other documents, including the TimeWatch

Players’ Guide and the Cortex Hackers Guide, which explains the rules

although not really well. Read the TimeWatch Player’s Guide for information

on the setting and the logic of time travel, but read it with two caveats:

1. We’re hacking/adapting the TimeWatch GUMSHOE system, so the specifics

of the rules will be different.

2. Remember, this is TimeWatch’s version. Can everything they say be trusted?

For instance, they say in the book that TimeWatch’s headquarters is in a

citadel at the start of the universe, before the Big Bang. You’ve never seen

any proof of this place.


“History isn’t written by the victors. It’s written by the …history!) and one in groovy 1970s In Search Of… style Forteana (the time-stream is festooned with cryptids, ancient

Documents