Welcome to my Continuum set of pages. I'm sure that not many of the folks who are looking at my roleplaying game pages for the first (or even the tenth) time likely have not heard of this game. First published by Aetherco back in May of 1998 in testing phase, Continuum was a hit with the gamers who got involved with it, and the company finally published the official version of the game, Version 1.0, at GenCon in August of 1999. For those not familiar with the game system, the Continuum RPG is a roleplaying game of time travel with a couple of unique twists to it. With the exposure of the game growing on a constant basis as new fans are introduced to it, not to mention the support that Aetherco is giving to the game (see the Links page), I have no doubt that the game will become more popular as time goes by and folks discover the uniqueness, the intelligence, and the sheer lovely nature of the game itself.
I will be the first to admit that I hadn't seen the Continuum RPG until December of 1999. I have been a fan of time travel stories for a long, long time. The Time Machine by H.G. Wells is still one of my favourites in the genre, although I am also rather partial to some Poul Anderson, Connie Willis, Kage Baker, and Ann Benson in more modern times. The appeal of the novel and short fiction of time travel to me has always been the idea of being able to go back to the past in order to see what *really* happened in an event in history. The "What If...?" stories of time travel had less of an appeal to me, simply because I couldn't get around the nature of the whole paradox issue thing... you know, the one where "you go back in time and kill your grandfather before your father was born, so how could you have gone back to kill him if you're never going to be born?" business. On the other hand, changes in history is a time travel element that always intrigued me, ever since reading Ray Bradbury's lovely short story, "A Sound of Thunder." The motto of that story is "Let the time traveller beware" and goes to show how a little change can have a serious cause-and-effect relationship to the whole of temporal history as one understands it. When it comes to tv series that deal with time travel, I was a fan of the Doctor Who tv series growing up, although I never had an interest in The Time Tunnel series at all. Quantum Leap was lovely in its conception and had a lot of good stuff in it, but time travel just hasn't been done right in the movies and on tv. When it comes to roleplaying games, there haven't been all that many rpgs that offered time travel in them. While the Doctor Who roleplaying game was interesting, it wasn't using real science for time travel and thus didn't have the real flavour for me that I wanted a time travel rpg to have. And there was Timelords , of course, which offered a more unique, interesting game in this regard (even down to having the players create themselves as player characters), but again the interpretation and view of time travel just didn't have any real appeal to me.
I've been running all manner of rpgs in my time, although these days I run three systems. There is the Arrowflight: The Edge of Fantasy rpg system, the Ringworld science fiction rpg based on the works of Larry Niven, and Continuum. In December, 1999, as mentioned above, I discovered Continuum . I was surfing the internet, specifically the RPGNet site, when I came across the review of Continuum written by John Karakash. John's review of the game peaked my curiosity and my interest, since it appeared that the folks who created this game had a strong feeling about how a time travel game should feel and look, as well as a more scientific oriented view of the mechanics of time travel - and some of the ramifications of time travel.
Naturally enough, I decided to pay a visit to to the website of the parent company, Aetherco, to check out the game and see what I could find out for myself. Within an hour of looking at their website, I placed an order for the game itself on the Amazon.com site, since I *had* to have this game and run it. The Continuum RPG is a time travel roleplaying game like no other that I've seen to this point. While most of the time travel games pay a great deal of attention to the elements of time travel and to their own view of how time travel works and what one can and can't do, they fail to take the society of the time travellers into account. Continuum 's real strength is that it does deal with the issues of how time travel works - and takes a very scientific, very thought-provoking approach to the matter. The game also posits that one cannot change the past and there are no alternate realities (although the "companion" game, called Narcissist takes a somewhat diametrically opposed view of the matter, and eschews the probability (or should that be likelihood?) of alternate realities. Continuum has a terminology of its own, ranging from the notion of spanners (those who can travel through time) versus levelers (those who can't), and into such nifty concepts as Gemini incidents (an event where a spanner meets herself).
By far, the most unique element of the game is the notion of how time travel works. No machinery involved in this game, folks. I'm not going to discuss too much about the matter here (you can check out more about this on the Continuum overview page), but suffice it to say that the means of time travel in this game is magnificent, it's totally unexpected in terms of the methods normally associated with time travel, and it is one that makes an immense amount of sense given the background history and story that surrounds time travel in the context of the game.
I've seen a lot of different time travel roleplaying games in my time, but my experience to this point with Continuum is such that I don't envision myself ever playing or running any other rpg that is oriented around time travel. From the various Societies and Fraternities that are part of the universe of Continuum to the nature of time combat, to the concept of frag, all the way to the idea of the inheritors, Continuum has something for everyone who likes the concept of time travel and has been looking for a game that deals with the concept. It's a scientific view of time travel wrapped together with a sociological view of time travel confrères - and enemies. One only need look at the game system and its rules to get a good idea of what Continuum is about. You can actually go to an overview of the Continuum game system to see what the game is all about. If that isn't enough for you, there's a review of the game that you can check out. This review was written by me early on when I was still looking at and evaluating the game, but I had an intrinsic grasp of the system, so bear in mind that my perspective on the game system may be somewhat slanted in that regard.
I think that the Continuum time travel roleplaying game is an infinite (every pun intended!) source of enjoyment, satisfaction, and wonder, and there are many elements of the game that have contributed to this feeling on my part. I hope, that by exploring some of the pages that I've provided for you here about this game system that you'll be able to experience the wonder of Continuum , and get a feel for the game.
So, enjoy! (And who knows, perhaps you'll learn to span, too...)