Mike Read
Thailand
Bangkok
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Time Tripper is a fun, fast-playing, oddball little game from the mind of Jim Dunnigan. It does seem to get some mixed reviews but will certainly appeal to the right kind of gamer. The biggest drawback is that the maps and counters that come with the game are a little bland, and the different locations in time, although highly varied, are only given a short capsule paragraph of detail. To make the most of it you should aim to apply some degree of imagination as you go.
I was inspired to scour e-bay to find this after reading the session report from seriousz and I've tried to write up my report here in the same vein. As I started writing this intro I noticed how both sessions start in the same locations - I should point out that this is pure coincidence! There are 72 different locations in the game so the odds of that exact combination happening twice are more than 1000:1. Oh well, as Han Solo once said - "Never tell me the odds!"
As usual I've created my own Vassal module for play, but the maps and counters shown here were customized from various bits and pieces after the session to make this report prettier (I don't have a full set of maps and counters in Vassal yet but they are easy enough to create and IMO certainly enhance the game).
I like to play this one fairly loosey-goosey with house rules to speed things up and keep it fun. I don't bother with the rules on twiddling with the radio and prefer to just have the flux dance around on the battlefield somewhat randomly. This makes Tim's visits through time very short and sharp as he simply tries to keep up with the flux in the hopes of getting home....
And away we go --
ZAP!
Verdun, 1917: Tim finds himself on a scarred battlefield surrounded by French riflemen. As he watches, a shell whistles overhead then lands nearby, blowing one of the soldiers apart and knocking two others to the ground. When the flux materializes close by to suck in a French soldier, Tim makes a crouching run towards it and leaps through.
ZAP!
Little Bighorn, 1876: Tim finds himself on a greasy grassy slope covered with Indians. He crouches down further in the grass as he watches the Apaches take down and scalp the confused French rifleman. The flux suddenly materializes near them, pulling in four of the braves. Tim breaks into a sprint and dives through after them.
ZAP!
The Future, Time Police Squad Room: With time cops all around, Tim decides to lob an M26 fragmentation grenade. Pitching it at the largest group he takes out one time cop, and stuns two others. Two of the Apaches are also killed in the blast. In the ensuing confusion Tim makes a run for the flux but when a time cop staggers into his path he pops him with his M-16. The rest of the cops pull stun guns and quickly subdue the howling Apaches braves with some accurate fire. Two stunner blasts also hit Tim but he shrugs them off easily. Across the room Tim spots one time cop fiddling with a large machine labelled 'Flux-Be-Gone'. The cop is struggling to close the flux and prevent his escape. Tim takes a pot shot at the chap but misses. As three more stun blasts hit him, the flux handily appears right on top of him, dragging him back into the past.
ZAP!
Gladiator Arena, 108 AD: Tim appears close to a group of lightly armed men whirling slingshots. The nearest one screams in fear, drops his stones and runs off. Tim shrugs, and blasts the chap next to him. The crowd cheers, then goes wild as the flux appears across the arena and sucks in a gladiator. Tim runs after it firing at a helmeted Myrmillo that blocks his path. He misses and receives a nasty sword cut in return. The flux suddenly jumps closer and sucks in the cheeky swordsman. Tim staggers in after him.
ZAP!
The Siege of Paris, 885 AD: Tim finds himself in the middle of a Viking raid. The two nearest Vikings are scared witless by the sudden appearance of a 'god' in their midst and flee in terror, but the others just scowl and close in to attack. Tim shoots one warrior down but an axe blow from behind him drives him to the ground. Fortunately it's only a light wound and he staggers away to catch his breath while the Vikings make themselves busy trading blows with the gladiators. When the flux suddenly appears and sucks up the last of the Myrmillos, the Viking warriors turn their attention back to Tim. As they heft their axes and approach, grinning evil grins, Tim shrugs, flips his weapon to rapid fire and blazes away... Alone on the field for once, he takes a break to recover and search the bodies for souvenirs. He comes away with a Viking Insignia and a Gallic Arm Bracelet. Satisfied, he steps into the shimmering flux.
ZAP!
Augsburg, 910 AD: Four mounted Magyars charge across the field, composite bows drawn back and arrows nocked for firing. Tim looks on as a very surprised gladiator goes down in a hail of arrows. He draws a bead and neatly shoots one of the scarred fellows off his horse, then steps smartly into the nearby flux.
ZAP!
Guadalajara, 1937: Tim finds himself with a group of Italian soldiers, running from the Spanish Republican Army after their failed attack on Guadalajara. While the shock of his appearance causes one fellow to drop his rifle and flee in horror, two others open up on Tim in a blind rage. A heavy bullet strikes him the back, and this time it's a serious wound. Tim switches to rapid fire and quickly takes them both out. The flux suddenly appears behind the Italian group and snaps up the fleeing soldier. Dropping to one knee, Tim exchanges fire with another pair of Italians, killing one and wounding another. Fortunately he's not hit again and manages to roll into the flux as it moves past him.
ZAP!
Kiev, 1941: Tim finds himself with a squad of Russian troops trying to break out of the German encirclement at Kiev. The flux takes two of the Russians almost immediately and Tim opens up with his M-16 in rapid fire to clear a path towards it. One Russian soldier and a rather confused Italian both fall in a hail of lead while the other soldiers back away. The flux moves closer and Tim crawls in.
ZAP!
Waterloo, 1815 AD: Tim stands at the crest of a gentle slope on the field of battle. Soldiers in bright red uniforms are forming into squares on the plain behind him as a squadron of Hussars rapidly approaches. The mysterious flux appears briefly on one flank to carry off a Russian soldier and two mounted Hussars. As the troop begins their charge, Tim takes careful aim and shoots the lead rider off his mount, firing the last round in his weapon. The horses are almost upon them when the Russian soldier beside him draws a machine pistol and shoots himself in the head. With a wry grin, Tim pulls out his old Remington 12 gauge, shucks a round into the chamber and starts firing. As the mass of troopers bear down, he has a final moment to admire their splendid blue uniforms before he's hacked down in a swirl of steel sabers...
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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LOL - great session report! I've always been curious about Time Tripper ever since I first read about it in high-school. My only question is - what kind of decision making is involved in the game?
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Mike Read
Thailand
Bangkok
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castiglione wrote: LOL - great session report! I've always been curious about Time Tripper ever since I first read about it in high-school. My only question is - what kind of decision making is involved in the game?
Hey Cas,
Thanks for the comment! It was a real fun session, both to play and write up. With it's tiny map of 11 x 11 hexes, Tripper reminds me a bit of those quick tactical battles you'd get in computer RPG's in the eighties. Each battle only lasts 5 to 10 minutes in real-time, sometimes it's over even quicker.
There is really quite a lot of randomness to it all, the trips through time can only be partially controlled (with experience) and the composition, setup and activity of the historical soldiers at each location is all decided in the same way - with the same few charts.
As the tripper your choices are really just limited to where to move and/or shoot and the mechanics are simple - pick a weapon and make a fairly easy roll to hit. With an M-16 almost everything you hit is probably a kill. The tripper starts out armed to the teeth with M-16, shotgun, hand gun, grenades, flares, perhaps even a LAW or a Claymore mine. There are some fiddly rules for using the radio to summon the flux and align it for your jump and these will require you to spend a few turns of shifting and firing so you can clear the field long enough to make your next trip. (I like my flux to have a mind of its own so I drop the radio and don't use those rules). There are also some optional rules on negotiations which are fun to include - many of the historical soldiers you try to interact with will either flee or become enraged, but it's also possible to awe the locals enough to gain followers.
The activity of the historical units is decided by making a roll on a detection chart. Depending on various different factors and capabilities they may stand still, move towards, away from or attack the tripper. The tripper has a high endurance, and can recover quickly, but combat is quick and brutal especially when you're surrounded. Enemies may be animal, or human (melee or missile), or other weirder things in the future (Heck, one trip sends you into Room Two of Buffalo Castle - a T&T reference from Jim Dunnigan!).
Each "battle scenario" is presented only very briefly. Basically you're just given the number and type of enemy, and some very simple statistics with one or two paragraphs to flavor the period and location. Several of the various locations do also have some neat special rules to make things interesting and memorable.
Following the similarity to RPG's there are some optional rules for controlling multiple trippers (and also for playing with a Timemaster, which is your basic GM). With multiple trippers the rules state that your weapons and equipment get fluxed all across the battlefield, so there's the added difficulty of recovering all your gear before you can use the radio and get everyone the flux out.
Dunnigan's designer comments make the point that he wanted to keep things simple yet provide enough material to spark imaginations... and without winging it to some degree (what would those Hussars do when suddenly finding themselves charging a T-Rex?) some folks may just find the game a mindless drag of pushing random units around a little blank hex map. In his closing statement Dunnigan makes tongue-in-cheek reference to creating "Advanced Time Tripper" if this one proves successful 
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castiglione
United States
Sunnyvale
California
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I can't believe Dunnigan put a T&T reference in Time Tripper! I actually used to play T&T quite a lot and Buffalo Castle was one of my favorite solitaire adventures.
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steve trololo victim
United States
San Diego
California
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While I found your session report entertaining, I also found myself wondering which rules you were using, and the variations you were introducing to the game.
From my memory, weapons, except for sidearms and grenades, scatter on landing in a new time arena. This process include the radio, any looted historical weapons, and trippers and anyone swept up in the flux, followers or antagonists alike. That is typically the struggle for the Trippers - trying to preserve their sidearm and grenade ammo as they struggle to get back to the present. Removing the randomization of the radio I can understand if you have only 1 tripper, but I still think it radically changes the play of the game.
Many times, your M16 locates itself half the battlefield away. And the other part of the game that is critical to surviving more than a few battlefields - getting some groupies. Using technology, depending on the gullibility of the troops on the battlefield, you can recruit a big pile of followers to absorb the attentions of the hostile forces, and frequently even grab a bunch of historical weapons to bring along with you. It seems like you didn't manage to recruit a single follower during your trip, unless you did, and it just wasn't mentioned.
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Mike Read
Thailand
Bangkok
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Hey Soltan,
Thanks for your comments! I also mentioned some of those points in my second post.
I'm not sitting with the rules right now but the weapon scatter you described only appears in the multi-player game - and even there I don't think you scatter every weapon (I think the soliders keep their M-16's). Without weapon scatter I agree that the solo Tripper does have way too much firepower and I think I'd probably limit that in a next game.
Dunnigan mentions this also in the designer comments but I think his idea was that the number of jumps needed to get home could be a lot and the game gets gradually more difficult as you burn all that neat gear and must switch to local weapons. My trips have never exceeded 10 before getting killed.
My main variation to the game was all about the flux and the radio. Instead of using the radio at all, I gave the flux a mind of its own and had it appear, disappear, and/or move about randomly each turn, sucking in locals as it goes.
This meant that some 'battles' were over quickly where the flux appeared close enough and, with a clear path, Tim could just run for it and jump in right away. This aspect was exactly what I wanted - a much faster experience about chasing that crazy flux through time and trying to get home. In earlier games I found the radio rules slowed that all down so I decided to drop them. Most of my trips lasted only two or three turns, some were longer, but I only cleared the field once.
You mentioned the negotiations too. Yes I always tried to negotiate on my first turn wherever possible, I didn't even fire a weapon until I got busted by Time Cops in the third jump. Unfortunately Tim wasn't lucky at all in gaining followers as they mostly ran away or became enraged. It's actually quite difficult to gain followers anyway (unless you meet the types that can get an Awe4 result), but maybe easier when there are multiple trippers.
I also suspect I wasn't doing negotiations properly - in my game I only negotiated with the few locals that started out immediately adjacent to Tim (and you can spot those results in the session report). According to the rules I think negotiation results are supposed to be checked against everyone.
I agree that playing "TEAM-TRIPPER" with three or four players and scattering weapons would make for a different game completely, and this also sounds like it could be fun. Unfortunately I don't have the friends around to try. 
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steve trololo victim
United States
San Diego
California
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I'm going to have to dig out the rules, good lord, its been many years since I last played this one. I have looked at it (picked up a replacement copy), but just verified that it was intact before I put it away.
I will encourage you to play it via the multi-player rules, it should be easy enough to just throw the extra trippers into the game and then make the decisions yourself for each action. As I recall, when we did this, we would also discuss what we were doing - one guy would run for the M16, another for the shotgun, the third guy would just RUN, and the fourth guy would try to use tech to impress them. The nastiest encounters are the mounted guys who aren't easily impressed... they get to you so fast you just have no time to whittle down their numbers, or get the trippers out of the way fast enough.
One of the problems that we used to have was differentiating the type of historical weapons we picked up - you really should have different unit counters for these - we borrowed counters from other games - but at certain points in the game, we had everything from future stun guns to submachine guns, bolt action rifles, and bows all in play at the same time.
There are, from my recollection, at least 2 "instant death" scenarios, both, I think, in the future. Anyway, its been great talking about this game - I think I got the most bang for the buck for this title out of all the many SPI games I've owned over the years.
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Cool stuff. Love the random flux idea.
It's amazing what a different map and specific individual counters do for each stage, rather than a blank map with the same units for each jump.
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Kim Meints
United States
Waterloo
Iowa
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Mike
I agree with Art.Your different maps and counters make it a completely new game. Very well done!
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