The Power Rangers RPG has given players the chance to be Power Rangers, teenagers, and even space travelers. Then, last year the team at Renegade Game Studios decided that it was time for Rangers to travel through time with the A Jump Through Time sourcebook.
This sourcebook is focused on things from beloved seasons of the Power Rangers franchise such as Time Force and RPM. Renegade was kind enough to supply me with a copy, but all thoughts below are my own. If you like what you read, you can grab your own copy from your favorite RPG stores including DriveThruRPG (affiliate link).
A Jump Through Time is a phenomenal sourcebook that does what it says. It gives you the tools to run Power Rangers RPG adventures with time travel. For this review, I’m planning on more or less just walking through each of the chapters in order highlighting what you get and what my thoughts are on each thing.
In short, I do think that there’s a lot of valuable tools in here and while I don’t think it’s absolutely necessary for any group not doing time travel, I would recommend it if you have a bit of money to expand your tools for the Power Rangers RPG.
The first chapter is a standard introduction. It gives brief snapshots of various time travel related Power Rangers mythos. I don’t have many thoughts on this chapter, but I would recommend reading through it since it does a good job of priming the rest of A Jump Through Time.
The second chapter is where the real meat starts. These are the character options with 8 new Influences, 7 new Origins, 2 new Core Roles, 1 new Advanced Role, 7 new Role options, a multitude of new Skill suggestions related to time travel, 18 new Perks (including 2 Form Perks), 17 new Grid Powers, and 3 new Contacts.
I personally am very intrigued by the Paradox Influence. This is where your existence creates a paradox in the spacetime continuum which appeals to me from a storytelling perspective. From a game mechanics viewpoint it’s cool that you can draw on your other self to give you a boost to a Skill in a scene and I’m a slight agent of chaos and so the Hang-Up that forces a roll on the Continuum Anomalies table feeds that side of me.
The Origins in A Jump Through Time really help flesh out the why or how you are involved in time travel such as Accidental which lets you re-roll a die during a Skill Test or a Volunteer which lets you re-roll a 1 on a Skill Test if you’re doing what your superiors direct you to, There are other Origins like Low Tech (think Koda from Dino Charge) or Last of my Kind that just help flesh out your character’s motivations outside of the how or why of time travel.
The new Core Roles are Orange and Purple each with pretty cool flavor. Orange Rangers can utilize their imaginations as their weapons. Their creativity is what gives them unique Morphin shells. Also, their Think Fast! feature gives them Edge on Initiative tests and potential to fabricate tools and equipment using Story Points.
Meanwhile, Purple Rangers are powered by their emotions. This allows them to get different bonuses based on their emotional state (guilt allows a re-roll of a 1, joy gives an upshift when close to an ally, etc.) and recovers Power Points when specific triggers occur (an ally achieving a Critical Success triggers joy, an ally fumbling triggers disgust, etc.).
I really like the flavor of these Roles, but they definitely feel like the player and/or GM really need to be on top of things to make sure that things are allowing them to shine. I also wonder if Orange and Purple might be better suited for a group member who can’t make it to every gaming session for whatever reason.
The new Advanced Role in A Jump Through Time is none other than the Quantum Ranger. One of my favorite features is Quantum Power which lets you choose from a list of items at certain levels and I love Explosive Morph.
This Quantum Power lets you create an explosion when you morph (cue the Q&A scene from RPM) to hit all targets within 20 feet for 1 Energy damage. Chronomatics is also very powerful as it allows not only a die re-roll but you also get to choose which of the results is kept! That’s really powerful!
I don’t want to talk too much about the other new character options for brevity’s sake, but I’ll dash through some that I really like. A suggested Skill specialization for Targeting is Siege Weapons and I love that. Don’t know how often that would come up in a Power Rangers RPG campaign, but it does start feeding some ideas. A Jump Through Time also gives the Additional Zord Perk which reminds me of Wild Force and Jungle Fury more than the other series.
The Gremlins’ Mischief Grid Power makes your Unarmed strikes deal Electromagnetic damage which is really cool if you’re fighting a lot of machine-based enemies like the Machine Empire.
The next chapter is all kinds of different equipment. This includes a variety of ways for time travel to occur both technologically and magically such as a Time Ship or the Energems. It also has information about era-specific weapons and when you might encounter them such as a khopesh (a personal favorite weapon in general) for the Dynastic Era or an Eltarian Guardian Cuirass for Master Vile’s War.
I actually like the attention to detail where they actually lay things out instead of just saying, “Talk to your GM about things.” That said, this section is really short. At least this serves as a good starting point to then go and talk to your GM about re-flavoring or customizing stats.
There’s also a ton of other items in here that any time traveling group would benefit from such as a Chrono-Case, a multitude of vehicles like the Time Jet, an arsenal of weapons including a Vortex Blaster and Guardian staff, Zords such as the Tiger Jet and Wolf Cruiser, and Zord Features like Martial Controls which lets you use Finesse or Might instead of Driving when you attack with your Zord. Once again, a very solid chapter.
The fourth chapter of A Jump Through Time is all about time travel and how it works in the Power Rangers RPG. Traveling through time is more difficult the further from your current time you want to go and traveling forward is harder than the past which all makes sense.
Also, as you travel through time, all kinds of things can go wonky creating errors and/or anomalies. Some of the errors include just barely missing the time (by literal minutes) you planned which then causes some confusion for the players until they get it sorted out or possibly even getting lost in time.
Meanwhile, anomalies range from things like meeting your own historical paradoxes to changing temporal events all the way to making the fabric of spacetime unstable and unravel. This chapter is the linchpin to the entire sourcebook and in my opinion does a very good job of laying out the rules and then going into detail about various eras including The Awakening, Prehistoric Times, Wild West, Corinth, and many more.
Finally, we get the threats from this book. There are a ton of new minions such as Batlings from Lightspeed Rescue, Cyclobots from Time Force, Eltarian Rebels from the BOOM! comics, Scorpion Cartel from RPM, and a heck of a lot more! Some monster highlights include Camera Attack Bot, Dash, Frix, etc. In addition, Nadira and Fresno Bob are some of my favorite Lieutenants. Lastly, the Villains lineup includes Moltor, Flurious, Vypra, Ransik, Final Attack Bot, and Wizard of Deception. Not a bad lineup.
Once again, I will say that I think A Jump Through Time is a good sourcebook. It is a little niche since anyone who doesn’t care about time travel isn’t going to find much value in it, but it is good at what it sets out to do.
All of the new options have fun aspects that can really make the GM think a little bit outside the box (how can we make Siege Weapons a viable specialization in a campaign) and I do like the ideas behind the new Ranger Roles. If you’re a little trepidatious about time travel, I would recommend checking out A Knight Through Time (review here) to get a taste for how it works before fully committing.
