Tempus Diducit
They call it the Unraveling. Or they will¸ anyway. Hard to say with time travel. Too many trips¸ and timelines begin to fray at the edges. Most folks just struggle to adapt to this broken world. Some exploit it for their own gain. But for others - the warriors¸ investigators¸ and agents of change - there are wrongs to right¸ paradoxers to catch¸ and a glimmer of hope of fixing this mess.
Tempus Diducit is a super-slim¸ self-contained¸ lo-fi sci-fi RPG about a world where every era is happening right now. It's inspired by every bonkers¸ kitchen-sink roleplaying game you've ever shaken your head at¸ and encourages you to bring in characters made from any other 24XX game. It's 3 pages and a cover¸ fitting on two sides of a letter-sized page.
- Basic rules for play based on the FREE 24XX SRD and Emergency Rules
- 20 backgrounds for bizarre PCs¸ including a soldier in giant golden armor¸ a bear-skin-clad viking¸ and a virtual life form that can possess any video display
- 22 starting items from across spacetime¸ like an antigrav skateboard¸ a captive velociraptor¸ and four-seater mecha that's out of ammo and low on gas
- GMing prompts in six 20-item tables to define a situation and a location¸ like you hear word of motorcycle-riding priests that might broker peace with glow-in-the-dark pirates in someplace like Kyoto¸ with elements from IKEA and the Thirty Earths War (and yes¸ that is an actual random result I just rolled)
What is 2400? 2400 is lo-fi sci-fi. It's centuries in the future¸ and it's a decades-old modem that screams like a dying robot when it connects to the net. It's a space ship with an FTL drive¸ artificial gravity¸ and a flickering display you gotta tap a few times to see the jump coordinates. It's hacking something together with whatever cheap materials you have on hand¸ ignoring the rules until you need them¸ banging out something that might not sound finished¸ but definitely sounds fun. It's a series of micro RPGs that might all be in the same setting¸ unless they aren't.