Charisma: Timetraveling Anthropomorphic Hopepunk

“The past carries with it a temporal index by which it is referred to redemption. There is a secret agreement between past generations and the present one. Our coming was expected on earth. Like every generation that preceded us, we have been endowed with a weak Messianic power, a power to which the past has a claim. That claim cannot be settled cheaply.”

You are animals facing an existential threat. You have the each other of now and across time.

Teleology and Apocalypse

“To articulate the past historically does not mean to recognize it the way it really was. It means to seize hold of a memory as it flashes up at a moment of danger. Historical materialism wishes to retain that image of the past which unexpectedly appears to man singled out by history at a moment of danger. The danger affects both the content of the tradition and its receivers. The same threat hangs over both: that of becoming a tool of the ruling classes. In every era the attempt must be made anew to wrest tradition away from a conformism that is about to overpower it. The Messiah comes not only as the redeemer, he comes as the subduer of Antichrist. Only that historian will have the gift of fanning the spark of hope in the past who is firmly convinced that even the dead will not be safe from the enemy if he wins. And this enemy has not ceased to be victorious.”

There is no singular way to win this game despite the enemy being known to you.

It could be that your species survives only through stories of others or your fossils. It could be that later generations revive your species through DNA. It could be that you demonstrate charisma of your kind, which demands time travelers come back to aid your struggle directly. It could be that you bond with your contemporaries across species and trick or beat back the enemy somehow against overwhelming odds.

A better world is possible. It might not be now, and it might not be yours. But there’s nothing better to do than try.

How to play

“The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt in the class struggle. They manifest themselves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude. They have retroactive force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and present, of the rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history.”

1. Session 0A: Build a world that determines a setting

• Time period
• Species of group
• Enemy
• Some characteristics of other time periods (especially availability of time travel technology/magic)

2. Session 0B: Create Characters

Character traits are created by allocating 10 ordinary coins to:

• Courage
• Humor
• Cunning
• Fortitude

At least 1 coin must be placed for each skill.

Players should also be able to answer these questions about their character:

• What made you realize the severity of the threat to your species?
• How has this threat impacted you recently?
• How will the enemy respond if you fight back directly?
• How has your [best stat] helped you or a friend deal with the enemy?
• What can you do that none of your friends can? (establish mechanics with “historian” as needed)
• How would you describe yourself physically?

Note that your characters have more or less human level intelligence, but do not have a common language or culture with them.

3. The “Historian”

One player acts as the historian, playing as the enemy, friendly contemporaries, future, and past societies.

4. Tasks and Combat

In general, players are free to narrate action that they take. When an outcome is uncertain and interesting, the historian can determine the skill(s) needed and the amount of successful (heads) flips needed.

Up to 2 other players can assist with one extra coin.

Combat is fast and narrative. If one party surprises the other, they go first. If no surprises (or surprises are resolved), two tokens per player and some number of tokens per enemy (depending on their capability) are put into a bag, along with two tokens that indicate the end of the round. Once an end of round token is drawn, tokens are put back into the bag and continued till one side cannot fight anymore or both sides decide to stop.

Attacks by the players and defenses against attacks by the enemy are both treated as tasks. An undesired outcome can be changed once per session through “contingencies.”

5. Contingency and Memory

Once per session, the players can agree to declare a contingent moment, allowing them to try a bold strategy without consequence. They can jump back to this point within that session if something goes wrong. Note that a strategy cannot simply be retried with new flips. That path is set. Prepare differently or find another way. Narratively, this functions more as a vivid tactical imagination or foresight rather than literal time travel.

Also once per session, one player may recall some useful piece of knowledge or preparation taken.

Settings and Hooks

“His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.”

• 1587 CE Wolves of Germany, Enemy: The Krupp Family
• 1600 CE Dodos of Mauritius, Enemy: Dutch Traders
• 1800 CE Buffalo of Turtle Island, Enemy: American Settlers
• 1965 CE Tanuki of Japan, Enemy: Japanese Land Developers
• 200,000,000 BCE Dinosaurs of Laurasia (North Hemisphere land mass), Enemy: Asteroid
• 200,000,000 CE Squnkies (Intelligent Forest Squids) of Neolaurasia (North Hemisphere land mass), Enemy: ???