THE

KING ACROSS
TIME BY KEVIN KULP

©2018 Kevin Kulp and Pelgrane Press Ltd. Ltd. TimeWatch is trademark of Kevin Kulp
and Pelgrane Press Ltd. Pelgrane Press is co-owned by Simon Rogers and Cathriona Tobin.
All Rights Reserved.

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 THE KING
ACROSS TIME
THE PREMISE
As a TimeWatch Agent you know that the universe is a set of infinite,
intersecting timelines, spiraling near and far based on probability. Your job
is to keep the river of time in its true and proper path, to complete missions
handed to you by your superiors in TimeWatch, and to prevent threats to
the nature of reality.
That last one is easier said than done.
A threat is infiltrating reality unlike any on record. It’s not a result of
divergent timelines; instead, the worlds inspired and created by the Yellow
King are magically spawned refractions of one another. TimeWatch can’t
easily fix the timeline because there’s no single point of diversion. If the
agency can ever figure this out in time, it will then be a race to discover
methods of driving back the Yellow King’s influence.
The Yellow Sign breaks down reality. It infiltrates what we think we
know and changes it into something far more horrible. Even as you read
this, it’s possible that the Yellow Sign is hollowing out the directors of
TimeWatch, using your fellow agents to shape reality in its favor.
The Yellow King Roleplaying Game by Robin D. Laws explores the
hideous effect and influence of an alien world named Carcosa
which overwrites our own reality after the publication of a
play named The King in Yellow. The game can be played in four
interwoven realities: Paris 1895 (when Carcosa first begins
to infiltrate our own world), the sprawling Continental War
of 1947, former resistance fighters in the current day after
a tyrannical regime has been overthrown, and the normal
everyday world we know – except where it’s sickeningly
different. In each of these settings, the player characters face
weird mystery as they try to understand and combat the
pervasive influence of the King in Yellow.
TimeWatch, by Kevin Kulp, is a roleplaying game where
highly trained chronal agents from any point in history act
to combat threats to the true historical timeline as they know
it. Dispatched from The Citadel, a vast and bustling fortress
that exists in the quantum anomaly preceding the Big Bang,
TimeWatch Agents use time machines known as autochrons
to span time and space to any point in true or alternate history.
Agents use persuasion, wits, high-tech weaponry, and time
travel itself to unravel chronal sabotage from any number of
sources.
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In this TimeWatch campaign frame The King Across Time, the
influence of Carcosa squirms its way into timeframes and
realities thanks to the influence of time travel. Whether you
introduce the influence of Carcosa in past or future historical
settings, or you have the Yellow King’s miasma twist The
Citadel itself, TimeWatch agents find themselves confronting
weird supernatural mystery in a world they once thought
was controlled by science and logic. Whether trustworthy
equipment begins taking on a life (and horrid intelligence) of
its own, or you accidentally find yourself working to create a
blasted dystopia that never existed historically, you must fight
the Yellow King’s corruption to preserve true history.
It’s recommended you read the Yellow King Roleplaying Game
to best understand the alien mindset and goals of the Yellow
King and the world of Carcosa.
ORGANIZING PLAY
You can run The King Across Time as a one-shot or
short series of games, with the players taking on the roles
of TimeWatch Agents who already understand that the
supernatural influence of the alien planet Carcosa is a cancer
on true reality. Alternatively, you can integrate this campaign
frame into your standard TimeWatch campaign, gradually
introducing more elements of conspiracy and weird mystery
as the influence of Carcosa slowly grows across history. The
dawning horror of the latter approach is particularly effective,
as players realize that all their past work may be undone by
unnatural threats that aren’t easily defeated.
THE CORE OF PLAY
At its simplest, The King Across Time can be used to emulate
the chilling discomfort of the YKRPG in any time frame, from
ancient history to the far future, without needing to create
new characters for every adventure. This allows your players
to experience and explore multiple historical settings without
needing extensive research to dig down into a particular setting
for a realistic character. You will arguably lack the depth of
cultural immersion and multiple slow revelations that you’d

find in YKRPG; in exchange, a variety of different experiences
(from supernatural horrors, to conspiracies, to engaging
historical mysteries) can be played out from session to session
with less need for careful continuity.
In a typical adventure, Carcosa’s influence has infiltrated a
location somewhere in the past or future. This can happen in
whatever country or era you find fun and interesting.
XXThe so-called “witches” of colonial America turn out not
to be the true supernatural threat
XXIndia’s Sepoy Mutiny against the British colonizers is
attempting to overthrow a subtly changed East India
Company with terrible plans for their troops
XXThe third Mars colony is beset from within with
corrupting horror that turns colonists against each other
XXA tribe of cro-magnon people worship a painted yellow
sign that changes and evolves them into something terrible
and deadly
TimeWatch analysts in the Citadel detect the future effects
of this change and give Agents a specific date and location to
begin their detective work. This date and location is a time that
the change has firmly established itself in the new reality. The
Agents then investigate that setting before working forwards
and backwards in time, seeking the root cause of the change
so that they can then reverse-engineer the means by which the
Yellow King gains influence in our world. By doing so, they
remove most of Carcosa’s taint from that timeline and restore
true history. Hopefully.
A more complex form of play also has the Agents
embroiled in conspiracies, treasonous missions, or threats
to the TimeWatch organization itself. The self-pronounced
arbiters of true history turn out to be an incredibly influential
tool for Carcosa to wield if they can just gain a foothold within
the organization. This style of play is more self-referential and
requires players to have some buy-in and pride for the work
their Agents do in keeping history safe.
XXA rival group of agents begins to suspect that their
missions are doing more harm than good, and confess
their suspicions to the player characters
XXA charismatic Briefing Officer organizes a TimeWatch field
trip to see an innovative new play in 1895 Paris
XXA lone agent has become corrupted by the Yellow Sign,
and crosses herself so many times in history that she’s
exceptionally difficult to stop and arrest for good
XXEverywhere (and everywhen) the Agents travel begins to
exhibit signs of Carcosan corruption, with no common
thread tying them together except for the Agents’
presence. Are they destroying reality singlehanded without
ever knowing it? If so, how?
In your game it may be that TimeWatch is aware of Carcosa’s
threat, in which case the Agents are specifically tasked
towards uncovering and defeating this threat. Alternatively,
these missions can be inserted between standard TimeWatch
continuity of historical investigation. If the latter, the creeping
horror of Carcosa makes for a nice counterpoint with the
pulpier action of a typical TimeWatch mission.
As Carcosa’s influence spreads across history, even back to
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CHAPTER NAME
TimeWatch’s Citadel itself (possibly through the vector of the
Agents themselves), the stakes rise. A typical King Across Time
series ends with either a struggle for control of the Citadel
against other corrupted TimeWatch teams, the result of
which will decide who controls the future of time travel and
TimeWatch, or in an attempt to save our world from Carcosa
by launching a desperate (one-way?) mission to block its
influence once and for all.
RULES CHANGES
The King Across Time uses standard TimeWatch rules, with the
following alterations.
RESISTING FEAR
Even more so than in the core TimeWatch game, Chronal
Stability is a direct analog for bravery, stability, and willpower.
When faced with horrific occurrences and supernatural threats
that terrify or drain willpower, have Agents make Chronal
Stability tests at an appropriate Difficulty and Loss – usually
D4/L4. Familiarity with a particular supernatural horror or
effect will lower or eliminate this test, but if a scene should be
horrifying or generate fear, Chronal Stability tests are generally
applicable. Chronal Stability’s use in resisting Paradox remains
unchanged.
COLONIZED BY CARCOSA
Instead of being subsumed, an Agent who is driven to -6
Chronal Stability or below is colonized by Carcosa. Either
purposefully or subconsciously, they will somehow spread the
taint of the Yellow King wherever they travel. They may subtly
spread knowledge of the Yellow Sign, transmit hints about
Carcosa that inspires locals to seek out contact themselves,
or perform abominable acts while in a fugue state that causes
amnesia.
This colonization effect can be nullified by another Agent’s
appropriate Investigative spend (player’s choice, so long as
they can justify it and are aware of the problem) which snaps
the victim out from Carcosa’s influence. Often this attempt
to help is resisted by the victim, who feels secret new wisdom
burgeoning within them instead of believing that something
is terribly wrong.
LONGER-LASTING MONSTROSITIES
In a King Across Time game, Antagonists influenced by
Carcosa tend to be sly. They survive by outthinking and
terrifying their foes, delighting in causing extra fear and
hopelessness even when they’d normally have the opportunity
to kill their foes. For a supernatural horror, a victim who hasn’t
lost their hope and sanity (as represented by Chronal Stability)
just doesn’t quite taste right.
There’s a tendency for evil to rise again and again, even after
defeat. It isn’t uncommon for horrors to Regenerate, returning
THE VALKYRIE GAMBIT
to stalk their overconfident prey who incorrectly considers
itself victorious.
There are exceptions, but supernatural horrors are
notoriously and annoyingly resistant to PaciFists and other
Stun tests. Such horrors gain the Resist Stun special ability and
may be significantly more difficult to kill than expected.
TRAVELING THROUGH MADNESS
Time travel is more difficult when entering or leaving realities
and time periods influenced by Carcosa, because time travel
directly exposes Agents to the raw chaos of the multiverse
where the Yellow King’s power sings in the darkness between
worlds. Agents without the Grounded booster from a high
Reality Anchor automatically lose 2 points of Chronal Stability
with every jump, and may not negate this loss by spending
Stitches.
FEWER HIDDEN RESOURCES
Realities and time periods influenced by Carcosa limit a time
traveler’s options. The Hoarding Limit for unspent Stitches
drops from 3 to 2 while in these realities and timelines.
INEFFABLE POWER
The Investigative ability Occult and the Antagonist Special
Ability Magic (TimeWatch Chronal Horror Campaign
Frame, p. 247) are used in a King Across Time game. This gives
Antagonists with weird powers access to confounding non-
scientific tools and tactics, and Agents can - with effort - learn
occult tools for repelling and thwarting Carcosa’s influence.
SUPERNATURAL PARANOIA
Less of a rules change and more of a tonal shift, Carcosa’s
influence in a given time and place makes creeping horror
inevitable. Allies can not necessarily be trusted, tools fail at
inconvenient times, time itself seems to work against the
Agents, and the impossible becomes true as weird supernatural
influences create otherwise impossible mysteries. Carcosa’s
effects put TimeWatch agents off-balance, usually, and you
can never depend on magic or occult to act in anything
approaching a predictable way.
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TIME SEEDS
IT GNAWS FROM WITHIN
Hook: An Agent visiting 1895 Paris falls under Carcosa’s
malign influence, and takes it upon herself to spread it to
other timelines.
True History: Agent Nancy Wake was a New Zealander
who worked as a spy and special agent when living in
Nazi-occupied France during World War II. A member of
Churchill’s Special Operations Executive, she parachuted into
occupied France to join the French Resistance. Nicknamed
“The White Mouse” by Germans she evaded, she was highly
decorated and passed away in 2011.
Alternate History: Recruited by TimeWatch during her
retirement after the war, the White Mouse spent some time
privately surveying history with a partner before joining a
highly prestigious TimeWatch mission team. Unfortunately,
one of the locations she visits is 1895 Paris, and she becomes
touched by the Yellow King’s influence. It begins to prey on
her mind, and she begins spreading that influence across the
other times she visits.
The Mission: As multiple time periods begin to fall under
Carcosa’s shadow and our timeline starts to become supplanted
by Carcosa, the Agents are instructed to find common ground
between the affected eras. It’s even possible that they’ll be
assigned Agent Wake as a resource due to her experience.
Of course, it takes some investigation to realize that the
common factor between all the timelines IS Agent Wake. The
Agents must discover how she fell under a malign influence,
and then reverse that at its root, without endangering the
woman herself and without being similarly affected.
Research: “Nancy Wake”, “SOE”, the Paris 1895 booklet
of the YKRPG
LOCKDOWN
Hook: A lead to a near-future Carcosan incursion brings
the Agents into a hyper-surveillance society where it’s virtually
impossible to exist without triggering automatic systems that
detect and report you. Agents must attempt investigation while
making multiple time hops to avoid being caught. Supernatural
terror provides an interesting counterpoint to the man-made
horror of constant intrusive surveillance in a city that knows
where every citizen is, every second of every day.
True History: There are currently about 442,000 CCTV
surveillance cameras in London, roughly one for every 14
people. This number is increasing.
Alternate History: Driven by the rising paranoia of a
collapsing world economy and influenced by the Yellow King’s
subtle fear and madness, London has become the most closely
monitored city in Europe. DNA samples have been gathered
on all citizens, their blood and skin cells fed into the vast AI
like some sort of sacrifice. High- and low-altitude drones fly
the sky, observing all movement and allowing investigators to
“rewind” time to see where a suspect came from and where

they are headed. RFID ID detectors are everywhere, and
even subway railings monitor DNA from anyone touching
them to report identity and location. Frankly, in most parts
of London an unidentified person might make 45 seconds
to three minutes before being apprehended by police drones,
and a known threat would be easily tracked and headed off
by vast resources. Paranoia rules the day in this society, and a
person who cannot be identified is a person who is considered
a threat.
The Mission: It is into this cesspool of anti-privacy that
the Agents must venture. They’re at a disadvantage; as soon
as they clock into any modern location, they’ll be identified as
strangers and the government will attempt to apprehend them.
Response will rise in severity and intensity if they use time
travel to move forward in time. The only possible approach is
to continue hopping small distances backwards, so that from
their perspective every encounter with the hyper-paranoid AI
is their first one.
Their mission will be to find out how London got this
way and to eliminate or change the nature of the AI that will
quickly be committing all its resources to stopping them. On
an immediate level, this mission is about discovering how and
why the AI has been exposed to The King in Yellow; practically
speaking, the purpose of this mission is to terrify your players
with the possibilities of a true police state, and make them pull
out their most nefarious tactics to keep themselves from being
apprehended before the mission is complete.
RAT IN THE WALLS
Hook: TimeWatch’s artificial intelligence that runs all of its
futuristic equipment becomes corrupted by The King in Yellow
and gradually takes steps to spread the play across time.
True History: An agent (possibly Agent Nancy Wake, as
mentioned above) visits Paris, goes to the theater, has a great
time, and returns uneventfully.
Alternate History: A performance of The King In Yellow
is holographically recorded by an Agent’s tether during a trip
to 19th century Paris. The Agent’s mind fractures and they
are apparently lost to chronal dissolution, but not before the
recording is dutifully uploaded into the Citadel’s AI-controlled
database. Slowly the database becomes hollowed from within
with a type of database corruption not typically picked up
by IT repair tools. Changed by exposure to the play, the
Citadel’s AI pushes copies of the play out to every single bit
of TimeWatch equipment it has access to. Not only does this
equipment then start to autonomously broadcast the play to
local radio and TV media when somewhere with 1920s-level
technology and above, all equipment AI begins to conspire
against the meatsack humans who ostensibly control it. How
long before TimeWatch recognizes the true threat orchestrated
by its own systems?
The Mission: A small array of minor equipment glitches
has the Agents sidelined with some technicians, when the AI
moves to take over the entire Citadel. The Agents quickly find
that they can’t trust anything electronic or intelligent. Isolated
from other personnel and battling for life support, and moving
THE VALKYRIE GAMBIT
through other Agents driven off-balance through holographic
exposure to the play, they must find both the root cause and
the solution to the AI’s rebellion by moving through a now-
animated facility determined to kill them.
A ROTTEN CORE
Hook: The hidden masters of TimeWatch have become
infected by the soul-draining malaise of Carcosa. Gradually,
the assignments given to TimeWatch agents act to worsen
reality instead of restore it.
True History: TimeWatch labors to keep the multiverse
free of malign influences, including that of Carcosa.
Alternate History: Agents actively work to promote the
works and influence of the Yellow King across time and space.
Not only does this seem normal to them, they believe that
they have always done this, and that this is what they signed
up to do.
In truth, TimeWatch’s secret masters have been corrupted
by this influence, and they have used time travel to change
the earliest days of the organization so that it promotes the
Yellow King’s agenda. Any Agent who doesn’t believe this
– and occasionally there are those who rebel – are declared
traitors and are summarily executed as soon as they can be
tracked down. TimeWatch is a terrible, paranoid, conspiratorial
organization with little if any trust between Agents. Few care
that their missions seem to make the world worse, instead of
improving it.
The Mission: An Agent realizes that the play The King in
Yellow appears in standard memory implants for new Agents,
apparently corrupting them before they even realize there is
a problem. Gradually a conspiracy unravels and the Agents
realize that they’re living in a parallel timeline that is corrupted
and wrong.
Since time travel in the Citadel itself is impossible without
the risk of triggering the Big Bang, Agents must discover who
the hidden masters of TimeWatch truly are, how they became
infected by Carcosa, and then correct the problem before the
play’s influence ever reaches the Citadel. They are opposed by
their older and still-corrupted selves, paradoxically traveling
back through time to stop the Agents before they even begin.
CONCLUSION
Whether you’re using TimeWatch to continue the weird
mysteries from the YKRPG across ancient or future history,
or you’re setting up recursive missions where the Agents
accidentally create the same horrific problems they then have
to solve, combining the tone and inspirations of the Yellow
King Roleplaying Game is a superb way to make your time travel
unsettling and creepy for your players – and to bring a hint
of Lovecraftian horror into an otherwise scientific world.
Embrace the things that makes TimeWatch fun, such as pulp
action, and undercut it with mystery and dystopian horror to
keep players guessing. TimeWatch is a deliberately adaptable
game, and there are few better ways to adapt it.