This article follows on from Part One, Characters, to give GUMSHOE GMs a picture of what the TimeWatch RPG has to offer.
With the whole of history to play with, the TimeWatch RPG is able to offer you an incredible selection of equipment. We’ll start with the standard issue equipment of the TimeWatch agent. All of it is chronomorphic; that is, it adapts to match the local place and timeline. All of this equipment was included in the game to handwave obstacles to the narrative, move the game forward and make it more enjoyable. These descriptions highlight some of the TimeWatch-specific rules
- Autochron – your personal time machine. It looks like a short long baton, but can change appears to be a handle bar or even reins.
- Impersonator Mesh – makes you uninteresting to casual observers – it’s dull to be an obvious time traveller everywhere you go.
- Translator – stops you worrying about learning every language in history.
- Medkit – who wants to be laid up in hospital?
- Tether – an AI with holographic projection and a huge array of data. It’s a way of accessing your more obscure Investigative abilities in field
- Uniform – part disguise, part armour. Better than acquiring new outfits every time you jump.
- MEM-tags let you send unconscious people back to the Citadel (TimeWatch HQ) to be memory altered and returned moments later. It’s more convenient and genre-appropriate than explaining that
- The PaciFist Neural Disruptor – a stun gun. Stunning foes is a great option in TimeWatch, which lets you take people down without killing them; ideal if you want to rescue a mind-controlled Einstein. When you hit someone with a stun weapon, they need to make a Stun test, optionally spending Health points to resist being knocked unconscious. Even if they succeed, they are impaired, suffering a penalty on tests. Foes with 3 or fewer Health points do not get to make a test, which makes it easy to stun mooks.
Agents can make Tinkering and Preparedness tests and occasionally a Science! spend to snag high-tech devices, and Here are Eight TimeWatch Devices Which Will Leave you Flabbergasted!
- Grandfather Bullet – jumps through time and kills the target’s grandfather, forcing them to check Chronal Stability.
- Codova Cryto-Tranposer, or Bigfoot Beam – summons up a bigfoot or other cryptid, and dumps it near the target
- Ezeru Infestator – a weapon which fires insect eggs at the opponent which then incubate and eat their host
- Mindblanker – a pen light which knocks out a subjects recent memories
- A Psyonic Stone – anyone wearing one of these looks like a large velociraptor for 24 hours, and can’t remove the disguise.
- Punxsutawney Prime Perpetuation Device (Tri-P) – want Groundhog Day? You got it.
- Stopwatch – just what you’d expect. In game terms – gives you an extra go in a round
- Timebat – hit someone with it and knock them six days into the future
In the next article we cover thrilling fights and time chases
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TimeWatch is a time-travel adventure RPG where brave agents of TimeWatch defend the timestream from radioactive cockroaches, psychic velociraptors, and human meddlers. Go back in time to help yourself in a fight, thwart your foes by targeting their ancestors, or gain a vital clue by checking out a scroll from the Library of Alexandria. But watch out for paradoxes that may erase you from existence… or worse.. Purchase TimeWatch in print and PDF at the Pelgrane Shop.