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The Guns of Old John Brown

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Having the city be mostly demolished and the revolution fighting a all out war with the government could work as long as the quest focuses on helping John Brown via time travel because the future is unwinnable which was the original premise of the quest plus word of QM straight up saying the moment the time machine shuts down the future is utterly annihilated leaving only John Browns altered timeline with some acausal people and objects.

But as it is the quest's premise is dead unless the QM retcons the destruction of the time machine and the gang half of radical reconstruction, just let us resume with heavy damage and replace secrecy with security since the issue is no longer hiding from the government but holding off the genocidal tide of soldiers, artillery, and airstrikes to ensure john browns time can be helped as much as possible before the time machine is inevitably destroyed. After all the fallout quest this is inspired by has a more or less fixed time limit before the pre war era is forcibly ended.
 
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I feel like we should have hidden and kept our heads down. The group's purpose was supplying John Brown to create a better timeline, rather than trying to salvage the uptime modern day. Everything should have been to work towards that purpose. Get guns, money, and supplies into Brown's hands to kill slavers and do a revolution in 1860s America. The fact that the future/modern day hasn't collapsed yet means the time machine might still be functioning, which means it could be recovered and if there were any survivors they could try to relink with the past. If it's closed though, then the future timeline is kind of locked into place.
 
Just spitballing ideas here, but perhaps maybe some of the brains behind the Machine survived and this is less 'machine broke, isekai adventures' and more 'have to rebuild the uptime gang and build the machine in a less convenient spot'? If we rebuild the machine where it is, its in a fairly safe space but you have to ask just how much is left in the area after the devastation of the incident. We could rebuild the machine in another city, but that means having to redo the downtime supply lines, not to mention the new complications that a new uptime City brings, etc. etc.
 
I liked this last update. For me, it feels like the difficulty is being ramped up, we no longer have the easy way out through exporting solutions from uptime (until we are able to repair the time machine, if we can) so we are going to have to focus next turn on solving the issues this creates. For example: How are we going to keep getting so much money when we no longer can export sugar from uptime?

There's also some truth in that the premise of the quest is the time travel and without a time travel machine it can seem as if there is no sense to the time traveling theme but time travel stories are not about getting from time X to time Y rather they are more about what happens when a person of time X has to interact with a society of time Y. As long as we continue getting that disonance between what our characters believe in, what 19th century america believes in and how that mixes together I will be happy.​
 
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What would have stopped our group evacuating with the time machine before the bombs fell? If we have everything we have stockpiled plus our uptime knowledge that should be enough to make a difference even if we're stuck on the John Brown side.

And honestly that'd free the story from the uptime updates that felt like they didn't matter because what we were building was to escape from them.
 
I don't think a retcon is what's needed here ? Perhaps a little more choice, as in any, on how to react to the anarkiddies and baby Marxists jumping the gun on revolution would have been nice, but overall I'm not really fussed about leaving the upstream behind. It's definitely going to make things much harder, but the 'what if the machine broke' vignettes prove we're not exactly fighting a hopeless battle.
 
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I am going to leave this in the hands of my players. Regardless of any decisions they make, I think this crisis could have used more build-up and some opportunities for the players to get off the wild ride. I do apologize for that decision, I got caught up in the excitement of writing a big twist and epic battle.

Your options:

[] Continue without a retcon, the quest becomes entirely focused on downtime.
[] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
[] The uprising simply failed, and the quest continues as normal, albeit with a loss of Secrecy
[] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.

[X] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.

One of these two seems like the best bet to my mind.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] Continue without a retcon, the quest becomes entirely focused on downtime.

I don't see how we can do downtime justice while fighting a revolution, or the revolution justice while investing in downtime. A break has to happen at some point and this seems like a convenient time for it.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
[X] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.
 
[X] The uprising simply failed, and the quest continues as normal, albeit with a loss of Secrecy

This was the premise of the quest, and I'm fine with things continuing that way.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
[X] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.
The conflicting needs will make for a compelling obstacle
 
[X] Continue without a retcon, the quest becomes entirely focused on downtime.

I think both posts @Nyvis made are spot-on; I'd like to see the entire displaced crew continue in downtime.
 
[X] Continue without a retcon, the quest becomes entirely focused on downtime.

The only thing that kinda bothers me is that we're now very definitely in a multiverse situation and we couldn't choose to just push stuff through the portal instead of joining the obviously doomed revolution.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.

[X] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.
 
[X] The time machine wasn't destroyed, but now you have to work to support Brown from uptime while taking part in a civil war, with suddenly limited access to goods like sugar but also new opportunities.

[X] The uprising was a limited success that heralded an end to social peace, creating something of a competition between the needs of uptime and downtime.

I simply enjoy the struggle of the quest so far.
 
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