A complete game in two volumes with the combined powers of the Valiant Universe and the Mutants & Masterminds RPG.
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Latest Updates from Our Project:
September Update: Archetypes
5 months ago
– Mon, Sep 29, 2025 at 11:34:21 AM
Hello heroes!
I hope you’re having a fantastic day. We’ve been hard at work getting through the layouts of the two books and waiting for approvals from Valiant, but things are progressing well and I’m looking forward to finally being in the homestretch for this project. Thank you for your support!
For this month’s preview, I wanted to share something from the Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook. Creating your Valiant Adventures character can be as easy as selecting one of our premade archetypes and making a few decisions from the listed options. I’m sharing the Nano-Infused archetype, something that allows you to make a character inspired by the legendary Bloodshot! Enjoy the following preview, I’ll have some more updates soon!
Nano-Infused
You’re infused with high-tech nanites, microscopic machines that enhance and repair your body and give you various abilities making you useful as a field agent. You might be a former agent or experimental subject of Project Rising Spirit or someone enhanced by a similar version of their nanotechnology. Like other nano-infused agents, you might have no memory of your former life, or you might have been programmed with false memories to ensure your compliance. Your nanite infusion needs regular amounts of protein to rebuild damage to your body and keep your Regeneration Effect working.
Abilities
Note the following basic Ability Ranks:
Str Sta Agl Dex Fgt Int Awe Pre
4 2 4 4 8 0 2 0
Select one of the following character types, which provide special bonuses to your Ability Ranks:
Determined Sta +1, Pre +1 Once you set your mind on something, it is very hard to dissuade you from it.
Quick Dex +1, Awe +1 You are quick with both your hands and your mind.
Smart Int +2 You have more technical understanding that people might expect.
Defenses
Note the following Defenses:
Tough Dodge Parry Fortitude Will
+0 +4 +0 +3 +3
Add these Defenses to any defense bonuses provided by your Ability Ranks. Stamina adds to your Toughness and Fortitude. Agility adds to your Dodge. Fighting adds to your Parry, and Awareness adds to your Will.
Select two areas you have studied and trained in and record the Skill Ranks provided by each. You cannot choose the same area twice, but if both of your choices provide Ranks in the same Skill, add them together.
Anti-Psiot Mental Training: Will Defense +1 Psionic Shielding: Resistance to Mental Effects Enhanced Endurance Improved Metabolic Resistance: Enhanced Fortitude 2, Immunity to Disease and Toxins Improved Nano-Repair: Regeneration +14 (Lethal Recovery 12, Non-Lethal Recovery 10, Source: Protein) Nano-Hacker Skills: Computers 6 Nanite Networking: Senses 8 (Interface, Radio Communication 4) Nano-Infiltrator Advantage: Hide in Plain Sight Nanite Camouflage (Array) • Mass Shifting: Morph 2 • Visual Blending: Invisibility
~Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
August Update: Near and Faraway!
7 months ago
– Thu, Aug 28, 2025 at 10:52:16 AM
Hello heroes!
I hope everyone had a great summer, we’ve been hard at work getting both of the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Games through layout. The text is complete and I’m expecting approvals from Valiant in the next couple of days so we are painfully close to being ready for you all to play the game. Gen Con was excellent and I wanted to thank the people who showed up to play our two Valiant Adventures scenarios. They were a ton of fun and we got a lot of excellent feedback from the players. Big shout out to our GM for those events, Bigg Nate!
As for this month’s update, because we’re so near to the finish line, I wanted to share a preview of the Faraway! Honestly, this is my favorite little corner of the Valiant Universe, as seen in the Penny Arcade actual play we did during the Kickstarter, and I think it’s another great example of the value we’re bringing to the Worlds of Valiant book! Enjoy!
The Faraway
The Keepers of the Timeless Word, broken off from the Sect, devoted themselves to preserving the written wisdom of Obadiah Archer. Some considerable time later, the Word was threatened by the Fourth Harbinger War. The Sentient Cities of that era banded together to protect it by creating the Hyper Sphere, a self-contained environment able to exist outside of space-time. As Archer wrote “Tending a garden is like painting a picture with time,” so did the Sphere take the form of a garden, of sorts.
Pushing the Hyper Sphere outside of space-time caused a series of ripples on the four-dimensional surface, what came to be known as “time arcs,” briefly connecting different points in space-time, including the interior of the Hyper Sphere itself. That led to a lot of interconnected time travel and in turn created much of the history associated with the Faraway but then, that’s time travel for you.
Stories about the “faraway place” within the Sphere filtered throughout history, including the earliest human history and it was known by many names, including the Lost Land, the Garden of the Sun, Utnapishtim, and the Faraway. Those stories led the Anni-Padda brothers in ancient Ur on a quest to find the fabled land, not knowing it wasn’t a place on Earth, merely accessible through various portals that appeared in different places at different intervals.
They finally reached a gate in the Mountain of Mashu, as the Scorpion King told them, leading to the “Garden of the Sun.” There they found the ziggurat of the Seven Sages, the Keepers of the Timeless Word, and took the device known as the Boon from them, but at the cost of the youngest brother’s life fighting the rough inhabitants of the Faraway. The results of their quest and return are detailed in the descriptions of Armstrong, The Eternal Warrior, and Timewalker.
Numerous other people ended up in the Faraway over time: The disappearance of the Roanoke Colony in Virginia occurred because of it, likewise the disappearance of Ambrose Bierce in 1914. The Bermuda Triangle was often the site of portals, taking up aviator Amelia Earhart and the U.S. Naval Flight 19 that disappeared there in 1945. Other disappearances in the Triangle may have resulted in transfers to the Faraway, or elsewhere. Searching for the missing Flight 19, General Redacted found his way into the
Faraway through a portal in what would become Area 51.
More recently, famed English footballer Kevin Sauvage, along with his wife Veronica, their infant son Kevin Jr., and the pilot of their private plane, passed through a portal into the Faraway and crashed. Surviving on his own in the Faraway for years after the deaths of his parents, Kevin Jr. eventually fought his way back to Earth through another portal, becoming known as “Savage.”
Investigating his past, Obadiah Archer, together with his friend Armstrong, broke into Area 51, where they were drawn through a portal into the Faraway, along with Archer’s adoptive sister Mary-Maria. There they encountered General Redacted and his Grey pilots, who abducted Archer. Armstrong and Mary-Maria found allies with the Roanoke, and Archer escaped, learned he was the inspiration for the Keepers of the
Timeless Word, and freed Armstrong’s brother Ivar from the Keepers’ temporal prison. Together, along with Amelia Earhart, they were able to take out General Redacted’s UFO forces and sun-platform base.
Contact between Earth and the Faraway has become more common, with Professor Hanley Nealon and Project Bizarre nearly tearing-down the distance between them, causing Faraway creatures to pour into London and other places on Earth until Savage and his new ally Mae put a stop to it, sending Prof. Nealon hurtling through a collapsing portal.
A Timeless World
Although the Faraway appears to be a vast, primeval land, it is none of those things. Although vast, it is contained within a Hyper Sphere, since the creators of the Sphere had an understanding of tesseracts, structures that bend space, it’s unclear exactly how much “space” is inside the Sphere, or how large its exterior dimensions are. It’s possible the Faraway is the size of a continent, or even larger than the surface of the Earth, or its spatial dimensions might vary.
Although it appears to be a landscape of lush grasslands, forests, and even seas and islands, much of the Faraway is an unchanging simulation of that environment made up of stone, crystal, and metal. Even the water is often liquid metal like mercury, the leaves, and blades of grass like fine jade. In some places, this is obvious and there are forests of crystalline trees with rivers of silver liquid. In others, one must touch the foliage or the water to feel the difference. In some places, it seems the Faraway has developed an actual ecosystem, due to water, plants, and other things that have found their way through the portals.
The “surface” of the Faraway appears to be a plane dividing the interior of the Hyper Sphere, although those spatial relationships may be distorted. The surface of the Faraway is flat, rather than being situated on a globe. What is underneath or on the other side of the surface in the rest of the Sphere is unknown but offers several possibilities for Valiant Adventures Gamemasters.
Fortunately for the inhabitants of the Faraway, it exists outside of time, so living creatures do not experience biological needs like hunger or thirst there, nor do they age. Presumably, living things also don’t reproduce in the Faraway, although they do heal, and experience the passage of time. That is more difficult to measure as the “sun” in the Faraway also isn’t what it appears to be. Instead, it is a vast, lighted platform at the summit of the hemisphere above the surface, higher than the cloud layer. It sheds
light down on the surface, and shuts off each night for eight hours, creating the “night without a sunset” where the sun simply goes out every “night” and turns back on every “morning.”
Using the Faraway
The Faraway is a “lost land” suited for adventures where the heroes meet time-lost people from any point in history along with dinosaurs, lots of dinosaurs. Portals into the Faraway can appear virtually anywhere at any time, and may last for just a moment, or long enough for characters to potentially find their way back to one, although given that some portals are high up in the air, which may prove a challenge.
The Faraway is a source for dinosaurs and other fantastic creatures to show up on Earth through a random portal. It’s also where madmen like General Redacted and Professor Nealon gather forces to either conquer peaceful people within the Faraway or lead their soldiers to Earth.
Given its position outside of space-time, the Faraway is a kind of “temporal crossroads.” Time arcs led there from the past, present, and future, so futuristic or alien tech might be salvaged from there, and characters who end up in the Faraway might find their super-powered origins among the treasures of the “Garden of the Sun.” Project Rising Spirit has a long-standing association with the Faraway and, losing
their connection with General Redacted, might send expeditions there to find and secure new sources of technology and other resources.
The Faraway also makes an excellent potential place to exile “unwanted elements” and some organization like PRS, G.A.T.E., or some ambitious politician or mad scientist might decide to use it as a dumping ground or establish a functional prison-camp there. Exactly who is imprisoned there and why will determine a lot in terms of what the Player Characters might want to do about it.
Rules Considerations
Living beings in the Faraway effectively have Immunity to Aging and Deprivation due to its timeless nature. Animals like the dinosaurs unfortunately don’t realize that and still follow their predatory instincts. Creatures in the Faraway still rest, sleep, suffer from fatigue and injury, and recover from them.
Although it appears to be a natural environment, the Faraway is not, so outdoor or survival Skills based on Earth’s environment range from having a Penalty Die to being useless. For example, it is always “noontime” during the day, with the “sun” directly overhead. Come nightfall, the sun simply goes out, rather than setting, and the “stars” are smaller, unmoving lights in the dome overhead with no relation to earthly constellations. The “foliage” is false and even the water is often as hard as falling against stone or metal.
It is up to the Gamemaster whether the Faraway might affect the Powers or other Traits of visitors. Certainly, Geomantic magic is likely to be less effective or even ineffective here, and the same might be true for necromancy or powers related to the Deadside. Other Powers could be affected by the Faraway’s location outside of spacetime as well. Any Player Characters whose Abilities are affected should receive a Hero Point for the Complication.
~Alex Thomas, M&M Line Developer
Valiant Adventures July KS Update: Announcement!
8 months ago
– Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 09:25:39 AM
Hello heroes!
I hope you’re having a great summer, we’ve been working around the clock to get Valiant Adventures finished up and out to you all and I have very good news on that front. All writing for the two sourcebooks is finished and edited! We’ve sent our text in for approvals from Valiant themselves and both books are now in layout. Our team is taking the plain text and making it look like an RPG now. We’re getting the text looking good and going through the rigorous process of selecting art for the books from Valiant’s amazing catalog of comics and graphic novels. This means we are incredibly close to the finish line on this project. The hardest part of the project is over, and I will have more exciting previews to share as we get everything finished up. Basically, once the book is finished in layout and once we have our approvals from Valiant we’ll have one more proofreading pass and then we’ll ship it off to print.
I really want to thank you for your patience as we’ve worked through this project. I’m sorry for missing deadlines and want to apologize for the lack of communication as we’ve hammered away at these two books. No one wants them out in the world more than me and Steve and your support in making that happen has been one of the things keeping me going through the process. I will let you know as soon as I have a definitive release date for this project, just know that we are close and I appreciate all of you who have been so gracious with us as we’ve worked.
You may have also seen that the 4th edition of Mutants & Masterminds has been announced and might be wondering how this affects Valiant. Valiant Adventures will still be based on 3e, but there are things we tested in Valiant that have migrated into 4e. It's not officially a hybrid of the two editions, but it is a neat blend of the two.
Fortunately, the core mechanic of 4e is remaining the same as 3e, and stat blocks should be easy to convert if you want to use Valiant with 4e rules. It's not 100% backwards compatible, but we're trying to keep everything from 3rd as useful and usable for those ready to take the plunge on a new edition, as we can.
And as for development time, one of the benefits of having two developers is that we can split our attention a little more easily. Steve is focusing on getting 4e ready and my task is to keep Valiant as my priority. I’m still hard at work getting the additional Kickstarter benefits finished (I have a really cool preview of the Player and Gamemaster journals to show you all next month) and of course I am helping the layout team with the art selection process and anything else we need until the game is ready for release.
We will be at GenCon this week so please feel free to stop by Booth 101 and say hi! If you’d like a more hands-on experience with the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game we are offering two full sessions of the game, one on Friday at 10am (Game ID: RPG25ND284683) and Saturday at 1pm (Game ID: RPG25ND284685). Both still have seats available and are an excellent opportunity to play the game before it releases shortly. Thank you for everything and as always, stay Valiant!
-Alex
June Valiant Kickstarter Update: Organizations!
9 months ago
– Wed, Jun 18, 2025 at 10:31:01 AM
Hello heroes!
I have some excellent news to begin this month’s update with, Worlds of Valiant, the second title of the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game, is heading off to the editor by the end of the month. We’re very close to the homestretch of this game and I cannot for you all to get your hands on it. Valiant Hero’s Handbook is still in layout and will start getting its art very soon. To celebrate this milestone for the game, I wanted to share a snippet of the Earth chapter of Worlds of Valiant.
We’ve taken space in this book to talk about the various amazing organizations that dominate the Valiant Universe, from Edison’s Radical Acquisitions (E.R.A.) to the Harbinger Foundation to Project Rising Spirit. These groups are sure to be the focal point of many Valiant adventures and we want Gamemasters to be able to wield them effectively. The organization breakdowns include statblocks for prominent members, headquarters, vehicles, minions, and even optional rules to incorporate them into your stories. We also finish each section with a breakdown of the various uses you might expect to find for these groups. What happens if your players run afoul of Project Rising Spirit? What if they become members of Unity and work alongside G.A.T.E.? It’s all just a lot of cool information to help your games come to life. I’ve included the information about the Global Agency for Threat Excision (G.A.T.E.) below for you to preview!
G.A.T.E.
The Global Agency for Threat Excision, or G.A.T.E., is the successor to the American covert organization M.E.R.O. (the Military Extraterrestrial Recon Outpost), following the conflict with the Armor Hunters, which exposed the existence of M.E.R.O. and cost many of that agency’s assets and personnel. The name G.A.T.E. was chosen based on feedback from focus groups suggesting it signified safety and security to people.
G.A.T.E. is intended as a first-line of defense for the Earth against extraterrestrial and unusual threats, particularly from space or realms like the Unknown. The agency has dealt less with the supernatural, and relies somewhat on the greater expertise of agencies like MI6 in that regard. Although technically a global agency under the auspices of the United Nations, G.A.T.E. remains American-dominated and -driven, given much of its core personnel originated with M.E.R.O. and the United States has the greatest number of resources suited for the agency’s mission.
Brigadier General Jamie Capshaw PL 6
Str 2 Sta 2 Agl 2 Dex 2 Fgt 6 Int 2 Awe 2 Pre 3
Equipment: Capshaw has access whatever military-grade equipment she wants or needs, including unusual experimental devices G.A.T.E. has adapted from alien technology.
Advantages: Benefit: Rank 4, Director of G.A.T.E., Connected, Contacts, Defensive Roll, Equipment, Improved Defense, Inspire 2, Leadership, Set-Up
Motivation – Responsibility: General Capshaw feels a keen sense of responsibility to G.A.T.E. and her duty to protect humanity from otherworldly threats.
The director of G.A.T.E. and former director of M.E.R.O., Jamie Capshaw—or “Lady-General Capshaw” as X-O Manowar calls her—is a career Army officer dedicated to her work with the agency. Indeed, Gen. Capshaw might be a bit too dedicated to her work, having sacrificed her personal life for it. At least one girlfriend left Jamie because of her constant absences and focus on her work to the exclusion of all else after the Armor Hunters incident.
Ironically, interpersonal relationships is an area where General Capshaw excels when it comes to her work: She convinced Aric of Dacia to come and work for the U.S. government and to continue working with G.A.T.E. She has been able to organize some of the most powerful superhumans in the world and get them working together in times of crisis, and she has sought out resources like Sabbas and brought them over to her cause. When it comes to getting what she needs to get the job done, Capshaw is patient and relentless, and usually gets her way. She’s willing to face-down aliens and superhumans with the power to level cities and manages to stay cool, calm, and professional while doing so.
Sabbas PL 6
Str 2 Sta 2 Agl 1 Dex 2 Fgt 3 Int 2 Awe 4 Pre 2
Powers
Ageless: At the least, Sabbas is Immune to Aging. He may well have Immortality.
Visionary: Sabbas has visions of the future that appear to come true. Guided by destiny, he is often in the right place at the right time, always confident things are unfolding as they should be. Gamemasters should allow Sabbas—and those he aids and advises—wide latitude in spending Hero Points or Power Stunt Ranks to Edit the Scene in accordance with his visions. Likewise, his Inspire Advantage represents the guidance of his visions rather than social inspiration as such.
Advantages: Beginner’s Luck, Defensive Roll 2, Evasion, Inspire 5, Luck 2, Power Stunt (Visionary) 2, Seize Initiative, Set-Up
Motivation – Destiny: Sabbas is driven by his sense of destiny, following his visions and their guidance.
From the beginnings of his life centuries ago, Sabbas had visions: Dreams and insights into the future that gave him the calm and confident air of a man who knew how things would turn out. He escaped enforced labor in Africa, finding his way to India, escaping pirates to obtain an enchantment map that guided him to Venice, where he met Aric of Dacia. The two made their way to Rome, where Aric intended to rescue Batwin, the son of a fellow Visigoth. When Batwin chose not to leave the new life he found in Rome, Aric and Sabbas left and parted ways, although the visionary told the Visigoth “Our destinies are intertwined.”
Sure enough, in the 21st Century, General Capshaw visited a Tarot-reading parlor in New York City, where she met and recruited Sabbas, looking the same as he did centuries prior. The visionary told Capshaw he was Aric’s “protector” and “I am your ally as long as our interests are aligned.” The General had Sabbas moved to a G.A.T.E. black-site in the Nevada desert, where he is supplied with quarters and an extensive library, and she can consult with him as needed. The seer’s advice means that General Capshaw and G.A.T.E. have an ace-in-the-hole when it comes to being in the right place at the right time, just as when Capshaw obtained B.O.B. for the agency, while also thwarting the Cartographer’s plans.
Sabbas’s true nature remains a mystery: Is he an early psiot with precognitive abilities and powers that make him ageless? A mystic similar to the Geomancer, chosen by destiny to guide heroes like X-O along their paths, or something else entirely? In your own Valiant Adventures series you can decide the truth about Sabbas for yourself or leave it an unknown. This means the game traits given for Sabbas are just suggestions based on his known abilities—feel free to modify them to suit your own ideas about who he is and what he can do.
“The Love Boat” was the code-name for the M.E.R.O. mobile headquarters the U.S. government developed and built based on captured Vine technology. It was activated when the Armor Hunters attacked the Cheyenne Mountain facility. During the Harbinger Wars, Livewire controlled Bloodshot to hijack and ultimately crash the Love Boat, destroying it.
The Love Boat was a massive, aircraft-carrier sized vessel, capable of serving as a launch platform for smaller vehicles, and equipped with alien thruster technology and weapons.
B.O.B.
Size Colossal, Toughness 16
Features: Communications, Computer, Isolated, Living Space, Mobile, Personnel, Power System, Security System (DC 30)
The Biosphere Oversight Base, or B.O.B. for short, is a sputnik vessel the Brotherhood of the Bomb traveled to Earth in when they sought the new Observer (see The Unknown for details). Following the destruction of the Love Boat, General Capshaw and X-O Manowar investigated an incursion by the Brotherhood of the Bomb on Earth (see their details in The Unknown section). After the Titan Patrol rounded up and retrieved all of the visitors from the Unknown, General Capshaw was able to retain the alien ship for G.A.T.E. and turned it into the agency’s new mobile headquarters.
Although B.O.B. is a “vessel” of sorts, it is more of a headquarters than a vehicle and its traits are treated as such.The listed Features are probably not its only ones, and Gamemasters should feel free to give the G.A.T.E. HQ whatever additional Features make sense. At the least, it has sensors able to detect and monitor potential incursions worldwide, and is no doubt equipped with weapons, probably equivalent to those of the Love Boat, if not better.
Using G.A.T.E.
G.A.T.E. serves three main functions in a Valiant Adventures series: As a support organization, as well as potential employers or even antagonists for the Player Characters.
G.A.T.E. can operate in the background of any number of scenarios, and their agents are likely to turn up in any adventure where Earth’s security is threatened, especially by extraterrestrial or extra-dimensional forces. G.A.T.E. agents and soldiers may be able to help back-up the Player Characters, or they might simply get underfoot against more powerful foes, leaving the heroes with even more people to protect and look out for. While she doesn’t like to relinquish control over a situation, General Capshaw still knows well enough to let people with the right abilities handle things. She’ll withdraw her personnel, if convinced that letting the Player Characters take point is the right play, and have her people back them as much as possible.
Since General Capshaw prefers to be in charge of any useful assets, she may try to recruit promising Player Characters to work for G.A.T.E., much as she recruited X-O Manowar. The agency serves as a great patron and employer for a group of Valiant Adventures heroes, and you can easily kick-off a series where the Player Characters are members of a new agency-sponsored team, ideally one made up of fewer loose-cannons than usually compose the Unity team, which only ostensibly answers to G.A.T.E., and with a greater variety of powers and resources than the Armorines, although General Capshaw might want to include an Armorine as part of the team, especially if a player is interested in playing one.
A G.A.T.E. agent team, possibly with a code-name like “Gate-Crashers” or “Gate-Keepers” (assuming they don’t just adopt the “Unity” moniker) will likely operate out of B.O.B. or else another agency facility like Cape Canaveral or Cheyenne Mountain. The agency can supply whatever Equipment the GM feels is reasonable for the series, including their headquarters, one or more team vehicles, and potentially some field equipment. The Gamemaster can also decide if the heroes need Ranks in the Equipment Advantage for these things and, if so, whether they need to pay for them with Power Points they’ve earned for advancement or not.
Finally, G.A.T.E. may decide some Valiant Player Characters pose a threat to the world. That was certainly the case with X-O Manowar initially, and others like Livewire have certainly been threats in the past. Agents, possibly including super-agents like the Armorines or even Unity might come after the characters to “bring them in for questioning,” although they can depend on not leaving until General Capshaw is satisfied with their answers. The more they fight back against G.A.T.E. and its agents, the more convinced the agency is that the characters are a threat. Still, G.A.T.E. has a habit of turning threats into assets, and a confrontation may well lead to a job offer and the kind of arrangement discussed previously, where the heroes work for the agency. General Capshaw is not above a little bribery to get her way, either; she’s happy to offer to solve character’s financial or legal problems, or offer them other incentives, within reason, if it gets them on her team.
End Preview
I can’t wait for you all to get your hands on this book, it has been quite a lot of work behind the scenes for Steve, Malcolm, and me, but I think you’re really going to like the thorough and fun information we’ve pulled together to make your Valiant Adventures games feel truly Valiant.
Valiant May Kickstarter Update: Time Travel!
10 months ago
– Thu, May 29, 2025 at 09:40:17 AM
Hello heroes!
Apologies for missing last month, but I have some exciting news! The Valiant Adventures Hero’s Handbook has officially entered the layout step. We’re hard at work taking the various plain text files and turning them into their final form. I can’t wait for you to see the final product. Worlds of Valiant is almost off to the editor so we are in the home stretch of this project.
As for this month’s update, I wanted to give you a preview of some of the GM advice we’re loading into the Worlds of Valiant. One of the unique challenges presented by exploring a universe as vast and varied as the one presented in Valiant Comics is just how to travel between its diverse biomes. Heroes may need to stop villains in different dimensions such as the Deadside or the Faraway or they may even need to journey through time to explore the alternate timeline of the Stalinverse or the haunted forests of Britannia. We explore various ways to break through dimensional barriers in the settings they most pertain to, but time travel is something ubiquitous enough to warrant its own breakdown here. Many superhero stories must contend with the possibility of time travel and the Valiant Adventures Roleplaying Game makes this ability incredibly accessible for player characters should you allow such a thing in your series.
With characters such as Ivar the Timewalker and Neela Sethi in the setting, it’s important to understand the mechanics of time travel in this universe. The core mechanic of traveling through time in the Valiant Universe boils down to something called a time arc. Characters “timewalk” through these arcs in order to move up and down the time stream. Time arcs are unpredictable, pseudo-natural phenomena that are a side effect of manipulation of the timestream by a group of beings called the “Archies.” Many of the most famous disappearances in history—Amelia Earhart, the Lost Colony of Roanoke, the Bermuda Triangle—are explained by the fact that these unfortunate people fell into or flew a plane into a time arc. Project Rising Spirit have used stolen Archie tech to keep a time arc leading to the Faraway permanently open in Area 51. Strangely, many of these time arcs lead into the Faraway.
Time arcs connect one random era of history to another and cannot go outside the main Valiant Universe timeline—or your equivalent Valiant timeline. This point to point travel means that heroes can’t use time arcs to “change history” because they move along a single path. We’ll break down some more of why things are set in stone a little later in this section. What I really want to get into is how heroes can potentially use these chaotic rifts in reality to their advantage.
Tachyon Compass and Five-Dee Tech
Fortunately for the sake of superhero shenanigans, there is a method to predict where/when a time arc is going to appear and when it’s going to go. Ivar Anni-Padda invented a device called the Tachyon Compass which does just that, sort of. Technically, Ivar got the idea from an older Neela Sethi, who received the technology from the older Ivar so in a way no one invented it? Time travel is wild like that. In terms of game mechanics, it’s best to handle a Tachyon Compass as a Complication. Heroes who regularly time travel could potentially take a Compass as a Feature 1 Effect, but the specificity/chaotic nature of the device makes it a better candidate for a plot device than a true part of a character’s powers.
The other means of traveling through time stems from Fifth-Dimensional technology developed by the Null to create their servants, the Prometheans, whom they send into the timestream to murder other time travelers. As is the norm when dealing with weird extra dimensional technology, this is left in the realm of “sufficiently advanced technology as to resemble magic.” Suffice to say, Fifth-Dimensional beings move naturally through the fourth-dimension the way we move through the third dimension.
The Null Generator
The last big piece of the time travel puzzle is a device invented by Neela Sethi called the Null Generator, which manufactures so-called “negative” energy. This energy allows for a gravitational curvature of the space-time continuum which creates in essence, “self-contained” timelines/universes. These are spaces where heroes can change history to their heart’s content, but it doesn’t affect their native timeline. The Null once captured the Null Generator and used it to “destroy” the universe by dumping it into an empty timeline, but Neela was still around in the main timeline to stop them. Effectively the negative energy can create endless illusions of changed history, but at best the heroes are simply traveling forward into different pocket dimensions instead of saving the place they’re originally from.
Why You Can’t Change History
It’s important to preface that this is simply how time travel works in the main Valiant Universe. You and your group are free to decide how you prefer time travel/manipulation to work in your corner of the setting. The rules presented here are intended to reflect the groundedness of the Valiant Universe. Changing history is magic but that can fly in the face of the more serious and internally consistent logic of typical Valiant properties. In Valiant, the multiverse sort of breaks down like this:
● The multiverse, like our universe, is infinite.
● Therefore, it has an infinite amount of matter and energy.
● Therefore, every combination of matter exists within it.
● Therefore, every possible version of the universe has always already existed.
● Furthermore, the past is the past and has always already happened.
According to this logic, if you take a time arc from now to 1813 you didn’t insert yourself into 1813 where you weren’t before. 1813 already is a before. At best, you have shifted over from a timeline when you weren’t in 1813 to one in which you were, but that timeline, and the other one, were always already there. This can create the illusion of changing history mentioned above, but you are simply traveling in your preordained fashion.
Why Use Time Travel at All?
This poses the question, “If time travel is such a complicated and ultimately fruitless endeavor, why even bother with it?” Simply put, it can be a ton of fun! Time travel is a tool in your Gamemaster toolbox that opens a bunch of avenues for storytelling. Valiant is an eon-spanning setting with time traveling and even immortal characters. It would be a missed-opportunity if there wasn’t a way to interact with younger versions of those immortal characters or to see some of the setting defining events in real-time. Time travel is an interactive way to deliver exposition without turning the information into a stretch of droning flavor text. You don’t necessarily even have to make your heroes travel through time to employ some of these techniques either. Writing a flashback adventure set in the past with younger versions of their characters or NPCs for the players to pilot is an engaging way to let them live through story beats they might not otherwise see. You could also just grab the Null Generator and pop them into a self-contained timeline to play out a classic what-if scenario. Just because it doesn’t change the prime timeline, doesn’t mean it can’t be devastating and/or cool for the players to experience. It also doesn’t mean that the heroes can’t die or suffer other consequences in that pocket timeline. Jump into history and see how exciting and weird things can get.
