Young Yoda and Adventure ideas

Ok, I?m running a NJO campaign for my kids (ages 12, 10 and 9) and I was thinking of diverting from the story line a bit to give them a break from fighting Vong.

My thought is to use the tried and true ? explosion throws adventurers backwards into time, plot device.

The general idea would be to have players, and possible a few Vong ships they where battling at the time, go backwards in time to when Yoda was younger.

Yoda and a few other Jedi would be encountered and possible saved by the young adventurers, as the ships Yoda and crew would be using would be much older and have no effective way to fight the Yuuzhan Vong.

The adventurers would stay back in time for a while, but eventually come back to the NJO time period. With Yoda, or possible some other Jedi with great mind effecting ability would wipe the visit from every ones mind. (if deemed necessary ? and that does seem likely).

Alternatively, Yoda could remained unchanged, and devise some possible help for the future battles against the Vong, but hide the information some where, leading to future adventures to uncover it.

You main reason for the wipe of this knowledge is to prevent radically changing the time lines and endangering the future.

So.. this idea might be flawed to begin with, but my main question for you all would be ? WHO should be Yoda?s wingman/men? What time period would you throw them into? I mean I have 800 years to chose from..

Any other suggestions or comments are welcome.

Hmm... First, you shouldn't let the Yuuzhan Vong accompany the PCs in the time travel.

If Yoda comes in contact with the Vong, he will know of this species and this knowledge would mean that the Republic travels to the Vong planets and eradicates them before they pose a threat. Then, the PCs won't meet the Vong, since the Vong were extinct in the past days, and that would mean a lot of strange occurances. After all, when dealing with time travel, you must consider the paradoxes.

An example of this is the time machine. If a person in the 1960's travels forward in time to 2300 AD to get the blueprints of the machine, a machine he travels back in time to 1930 and builds, and he would be asked "How did you travel back in time?", he would answer "I built the machine 30 years ago." The paradox.

Well, I could have them destroy the Vong in such a way as to leave no trace.

There is a NPC along with them that they trust and would follow his lead if he would suggest that they not let it be known that they where from the future.

Perhaps I'll play it along those lines.

Actually, if you think about it, it would be vital that they don't let them know their from the future.

One slip of the tongue about Palpatine, or Vader..

Either they have to let no one know, or there has to be some mind wipe / clean up afterwards. Plenty of time to work through that as this plot won't come into play for weeks.

The question remains - who should the other Jedi be? I'd love to use some obscure names that if my oldest spent some time looking up (via web or elsewhere) they would exist!

Nevertheless, the PCs are not the ones who would need the mind wipe, but Yoda and his henchmen are the ones. If Yoda knows about the Yuuzhan Vong, know that they are not of this galaxy, then the Republic would arm themselves against the Vong in the future. And most people in the NJO don't know that the empiror is Palpatine, they merely know him as "The Empiror". Any Jedi who comes across a never-before encountered species will look it up.

It's spelled Emperor.

Not that I'm all that great at spelling, but such an obvious mistake...tsk, tsk.

I like the idea of time travel and the point I was going to make has already been made. If Yoda or anyone else in the past become aware of the threat the Vong pose, they'll prepare for it and alter everything. That one piece of info or any info about the future could COMPLETELY change things. Which is cool in my opinion, but purists won't like it.

Well, I'm not a purist (as you can tell)
But I am going for semi-realistic with the main focus on fun.

Don't want to make it totally outrageous, but I do intend my children?s characters to play an important role in the development of the history of this world.

Anyway, I?ll try to explain my idea one more time. I was thinking of having Yoda mind wipe his fellow (same time period) jedi warriors, not the player characters. After all, in the end, they will be returning to the future. So they won?t need to ?forget? anything. So either the player characters pretend their from the past, or the mind wipe card has to be played. The problem then remains, how does Yoda mine wipe himself?

As I said, perhaps he doesn?t. Perhaps he spends many years working on a ?vong? solution. But knowing that he should effect the future adversely, he hides his help somewhere, or somehow, so that a smart jedi ? aka my kids can find a way to locate his long lost help against the vong.

That would be a HUGE deviation from the NJO story line. Something I?d rather not do. But it is an option.

So it?s still a bit of a problem.

Then? there is the problem of the return trip. I certainly don?t want to make time travel the norm. So getting back should be tough/next to impossible, or accidental.

Again, any suggestions are welcome.