OSR Commentary On The Empire of Time rpg by Paul Drye from Baggage Games As Alternative Time Travel Cepheus Engine rpg

 "The 21st century has cracked open the past and future–not historical periods, true, but really deep time. Dinosaurs are a day trip away on a fast ship and your potential stomping grounds range over billions of years. Pit yourself against a future slave-running Empire, trade between human colonies, or just explore a nearly infinite progression of Earths that get ever-more alien as you get farther away from home."

"Empire of Time is an OSR SF RPG using the free Cepheus Engine core rules (available via DriveThruRPG) or other similar game systems. Play as humans from the 21st century, or from the future, or even one of four different races evolved to intelligence long after we are gone. Includes maps and descriptions of Earth throughout geological time (past and future) based on current scientific discoveries, adventure seeds, organizations to use as patrons and villains, a bestiary of creatures from the most ancient times to hundreds of millions of years from now, and much more."

Tonight I was thumbing through an old copy of Man After Man, after looking through the Monster Brains: Dougal Dixon Man After Man  blog entry on the infamous book.  Why infamous because its worth  between $225 to 600 dollars U.S.. But what does this have to do with the Empire of Time rpg by Paul Drye from Baggage Games?! Well besides the idea of far past or future time travel ?! There are quite a bit of speculative evolutionary ideas within Empire of Time. And Empire goes deep into the best terrority of Man After Man  weirdness. Earth as we know it in deep time is incredibly dangerous from far future diseases to dangerous NPC's with their own time ships. 2d6 alternative timelines & evolutionary paths are explored. 
Man After Man By Dougal Dixon got me on the path of evolutionary though experiments because rampant genetic tampering messes with the human genome. And this is one of the factors that allows Fate to open the door to the evolutionary weirdness of Man After Man. 

Empire of Time is it's own rpg setting, campaign add on, and more. What Empire of Time  does is take the idea of speculative fictional evolution & marry it into Cepheus Engine rpg mechanics. And it does this quite brilliantly thus expanding the game fare beyond the normal Cepheus Engine campaign ideal. And it does this by bringing in the time travel aspect. Five reasons why a time travel campaign set up works is as follows:

1. The PC's have eternity quite literally across all of time & space. 
2. Those 'big boy' interstellar projects can be showcased in adventures. 
3. Theoritically any starship with a hyperspace & FTL drive could become a time machine 
4. The idea of trading in various timelines is very appealing. 
5. The entire line of the time & space continuum is open for the PC's to explore & the DM to exploit for their own campaigns. 
6. Sword of Cepheus or Barbaric! is a perfect add on to Empire of Time for those pesky reptilian barbarians or lizard knights. 

Empire of Time is a great game campaign to trot out those tech level 16 and beyond alien technologies. Why?! Because they don't matter up or down the time line in five million years in the past or future. Saving timelines and being mercenaries across space & time has a definitive slant for Empire of Time as an rpg setting.The various rpg epochs have enough flexability as to be completely separate Cepheus Engine rpg campaign settings to make the entire campaign a point crawl across time & space.

The Empire of Time rpg by Paul Drye from Baggage Games For The Cepheus Engine rpg Is Available Right Here