Just some inspiration on the psychic link/time communicator route.

Initial premise, each character has a Future player and a Present player. Each player has a set of goals which may or may not coincide with their co-player’s goals.

You could add complications to make it even more interesting; more than one Future player per character, each player is a Future character for another player (could get messy, see WhiteWolf’s Wraith) , team Future against team Present, each Player has a Character with two other Players acting as Future players from different timelines