A Review of the Role Playing Game Supplement The Genius Guide to the Time Thief

The Genius Guide to the Time Thief is a role playing game supplement published by Rogue Genius Games, although it was originally published by Super Genius Games. This supplement is a new base class for the Pathfinder Role Playing Game. The supplement is covered by the Open Game License and therefore some of it is Open Game Content.

The supplement is available from RPGNow at the regular price of $3.99, but was purchased as part of a special bundle which reduced this price to only $0.20. This is a ten page PDF which has an unusual, but common for this publisher during this period, landscape format as opposed to portrait. The first page is mostly, but not completely, taken up by a cover illustration and one page is the credits and Open Game License.

This is set out like any normal class, although it first begins with a brief overview of time-based additions in role playing games, namely that they are often difficult to manage. There is an advancement table, class skills and then an extensive amount on class features. Finally, one page is on using the time thief in your campaign.

The supplement has a three column layout, due to its landscape format. No errors were spotted in the text. On the first page two columns are taken up by the cover image, and frequently an entire column, or a substantial portion of one, is taken up by one of the five large, full colour illustrations. The illustrations themselves, supposedly of a time thief, deserve a mention, for they are actually photographs of a scantily-clad glamour model, Veronica F. Which, even given the fantasy tradition of having women not wearing much, does seem a little odd, even if the model in question is also a role-player. These illustrations might not be approved by adults as being suitable for children.

Regarding the time thief’s abilities, some of these are quite interesting. None of them are magical in nature – this is a derivative of the rogue class – but their effects pretty much are. The time thief steals time from either their own future – they have a daily pool of ‘motes of time’ that they can use – or from others, using abilities. At 5th level, the thief gains access to a larger amount of time taken from the future. These bits of stolen time are then used to power their abilities, such as playing out a scene to see how it goes, then rerunning it if it goes wrong. The abilities themselves are interesting, and vary from using motes to improve the chances of doing an action correctly to actually rewriting parts of the past. This class is also intended to essentially pair with another, the Time Warden.

This is an interesting new class, but how well it will work in a campaign is another matter. Messing around with time in role playing games is tricky – there’s a reason there aren’t many supplements that use chronomancy – and any class that does do this has the potential to cause problems. Still, this seems to be a reasonably balanced class. At $3.99, The Genius Guide to the Time Thief is a bit pricy, but it was definitely worth the $0.20, and it can be found by clicking here.