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Review of Time Travel Review Board


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Time Travel Review Board is a 12 - 18 player theatre-style comedy larp from Alleged Entertainment which has been run repeatedly on the US con circuit. The game is set at a meeting of the eponymous Time Travel Review Board, which controls access to the world's single working time machine and reviews all proposals for research into the past. Of course, not everyone is telling the truth, and the past will change as the game progresses, resulting in unexpected shifts in history and even the board itself.

The product

The game is available as a 266-page PDF, with a print-on-demand hardcopy from Lulu. The book consists of a 14-page GM's section, 126 pages of printable props, and 118 pages of character sheets. The latter is inflated by a design choice to repeat briefing material for each major character, but there are still almost 80 characters, some with more than one version.

The layout is readable, but not pretty. There is no artwork other than in-game logos and diagrams.

The game

The game is structured as a "horde" game. There are six core cast members - the Review Board itself - with all the other players playing a "horde" of rotating parts appearing before the Board. Its not a format I've seen before in theatreform games, and it raises questions about what counts as a player in a larp. The horde roles are tightly constrained and short-term - in New Zealand, we'd say that the people playing them were crew. That doesn't mean that those roles won't be fun to play, but they're rather different from the Board characters, who (unless history is changed) last the entire game. People running this game should pitch it appropriately, to avoid deceiving players about their level of involvement.

That caveat is important, because history will change. Almost half the book is given over to printable props for a timeline of human history, marking major events and "footnotes". There is also a series of alternate events, which may occur depending on who goes back in time. Some of these events may affect the Board characters, causing them to change gender or even identity. Paradoxes are effectively ignored, with witnesses to the time-trip remembering the original version of history. This may result in confusion, as the Board will have to keep track of an ever-changing timeline - but that's the point. The game is a comedy, with the hapless Board watching as history changes before their eyes. Some of them may want to change bits of it back, some may not. But either way, their efforts will be unintentionally hilarious.

The game requires three GMs - one to manage the Horde, one to manage the timeline, and one to handle things on the floor of the game. The information for GMing is detailed and exhaustive. There's a complete list of all the props you will need to run the game, and separate briefings for each GM spelling out their role and the rules they need to pay attention to. Its the sort of documentation you get only after a game has had a lot of runs, and I wish every larp had runtime advice this detailed.

The plot is goofy, oddball humour, which may not be to everyone's tastes, but there is enough of it. The Board will have enough to do, and the Horde will be kept perpetually busy poking them.

Finally, there are enough roles for women. Half the Horde is gender-neutral (the other half is gendered, with an 80:20 M:F split), and while the Board has a slight gender bias towards males, that can change during the game (meaning that it doesn't really matter what gender the player of that character starts off as). The high number of gender-neutral roles in the Horde also provides the game with a lot of flexibility, which is always useful.

Overall

Its a bit goofy, but the game is basically solid. Its written by actual larpers, and so it pays attention to the fundamentals: having enough stuff to do, and making sure the GMs can manage the game effectively. I'm not sure if I will run it (this style of comedy isn't quite my thing), but its certainly useable.


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