Chrononauts: Difference between revisions

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Chrononauts is a bit different in that there are three ways to win. You can have your character (you're given a unique character ID, hidden from all others at the start of the game) recreate their own timeline, at which point they go home. You can also have your character become an expert at preventing paradoxes, thereby being hired by the game's [[Time Police]] (symbolized by hand size). Finally, you can use your time machine to acquire stuff for some fabulously wealthy individual, and retire to whatever era is pleasant enough for you.

That said, there's also a [[Rocks Fall Everyone Dies]] scenario - if there are at least [[Thirteen Is Unlucky|thirteen]] unpatched paradoxes at the same time, [[Time Crash|the entire universe collapses]]. Good luck with all that.

That said, there's also a [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]] scenario - if there are at least [[Thirteen Is Unlucky|thirteen]] unpatched paradoxes at the same time, [[Time Crash|the entire universe collapses]]. Good luck with all that.

There's also ''Early American Chrononauts'' that focuses purely on early US history; the two games can be combined to make what the developers call ''Uber Chrononauts''. They also released a small expansion set called ''The Gore Years'' that focuses on more recent events, and can be added on to the base game or the uber version, and another one called ''Lost Identities'' which adds more ID cards.

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* [[Prequel]]: ''Early American Chrononauts'', which can be combined with the main game to make what the developers call "Uber Chrononauts".

* [[Reed Richards Is Useless]]: Averted; among the future artifacts you can acquire are a cure for cancer, a matter duplicator, and Infinite brand super-batteries.

* [[Ret Gone]]: The "It Never Existed" card... does [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]].

* [[Ret-Gone]]: The "It Never Existed" card... does [[Exactly What It Says On the Tin]].

* [[Retroactive Preparation]]: The "Memo from Future Self" card effectively works like this, instantly negating the last card another player played. The German Chocolate Cake artifact can also be used as a Memo and the image on the card shows it having a postcard attached. Though, [[Word of God]] says that it is not the postcard but the cake itself, and that the cake is just so good that it distracts the other player from [[Time Travel Tense Trouble|doing what they just did]].

* [[Rocks Fall Everyone Dies]]: If 13 paradoxes are active, then everyone dies and loses (unless you have Crazy Joe from the expansion pack, who wins in this scenario). In Uber Chrononauts, this kicks in if a given block of four rows has 13 paradoxes.

* [[Rocks Fall, Everyone Dies]]: If 13 paradoxes are active, then everyone dies and loses (unless you have Crazy Joe from the expansion pack, who wins in this scenario). In Uber Chrononauts, this kicks in if a given block of four rows has 13 paradoxes.

* [[Rubber Band History]]: You can always, with enough appropriate cards to revert events, recreate the starting timeline.

* [[Shout Out]]: To several other time travel stories, including ''[[Back to The Future]]'' ("Grey's Sports Almanac") and, of course, H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine." Most are found on the identities (like Crazy Joe's post-time line restaurant). The creator keeps a (somewhat incomplete) list [http://wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Chrononauts/Mysteries.html#13 here].

* [[Shout-Out]]: To several other time travel stories, including ''[[Back to The Future]]'' ("Grey's Sports Almanac") and, of course, H. G. Wells' "The Time Machine." Most are found on the identities (like Crazy Joe's post-time line restaurant). The creator keeps a (somewhat incomplete) list [http://wunderland.com/LooneyLabs/Chrononauts/Mysteries.html#13 here].

** There's now a licensed ''[[Back to The Future]]'' version of the game, with different rules for changing time linchpins and a new rule for winning: you change the timeline and then ''stop Doc Brown from inventing time travel in the first place'', thereby locking the timeline into '''YOUR''' version.

* [[Solitaire]]: A single-player game variant involves getting a number<ref>The default number is 8.</ref> of time travelers back to their home times with one pass through the deck.

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* [[Thirteen Is Unlucky]]: See [[Time Crash]] below.

* [[Time Crash]]: If there are ever 13 unresolved paradoxes on the timeline, then the universe implodes in a [[Puff of Logic]] and everyone loses. (Unless you're Crazy Joe from the Lost Identities expansion, who comes from a post-[[Time Crash]] future. In that case, you ''win''.)

* [[Timeline Altering MacGuffin]]: Grey's Sport's Almanac, in a [[Shout Out]] to the former [[Trope Namer]] and [[Back to The Future|possible ur-example.]]

* [[Timeline-Altering MacGuffin]]: Grey's Sport's Almanac, in a [[Shout-Out]] to the former [[Trope Namer]] and [[Back to The Future|possible ur-example.]]

* [[Time Police]]: Though they don't have a lot of direct effects on the game, they do justify several tropes.

* [[Timey-Wimey Ball]]: Mostly averted; time travel works on fairly defined terms. That said, it isn't quite clear why patches are destroyed if the timeline flips twice, and the arbitrary number of paradoxes that cause universal destruction isn't quite explained either.