Quote from: dragoner;898339In a way, it is an honest solution, in that you aren't pandering to either group, and no matter how close ("the ashes are still hot") there could be that interval between them. The real problem I see arising is if the one party wants to go find the other party, that will call for a tricky solution.

For me the most important thing is I just want to be above board about it and have a consistent way of handling the problem. In an intersection situation like mentioned, I think time fudging a bit is the way to go. If they specifically seek out each other, I may incorporate Skype and it might require pausing the action until we can get everyone there. Both groups know they are sharing a campaign world (and I've told them who the other party is so there are not surprised about it).

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;898355In a way, strict accounting of time is what led to the issue (or at least what led me to have to directly answer how to handle the issue). I was keeping very strict time, much stricter than normal, when I realized the player's may intersect (normally I am not concerned with hours and minutes as much as days or times of day).

Fair point.

Usually days is good enough. I did run an arc recently where hours (and rarely minutes) mattered since the villains were performing ritual sacrifices set during specific times of night on specific days and were moving about and hiding out in between sacrifices while the players were searching for clues and eventually the villains. So it mattered who was doing what where. I also needed to track the expenditure of Arcane Magic Points by the evil witch for her rituals and the points expended for magical counter measures she took against the PCs as well as her recovery of points expended. I did have the party split up into separate groups a number of times so tracking time was important. Fortunately, I've found reasonable players are reasonable about having to occasionally manage time or place via GM fiat or fudging or cheating or whatever one chooses to call it when the GM says "You can't go there at that time, because the other PCs already went there then and you'd bump into them which would be awkward and might cause real problems with the timeline."

Quote from: estar;898313I fudge the timelines so that the other group arrives after the conclusion of party B. Otherwise you start crossing the streams and you don't want to do that ;-)

The other option is to explicitly firewall extant continuity: Just tell your players that there are known events at Location A (or whatever) that have been established by other sessions and they won't be able to contradict them.

You can run into this same problem even with a single group when they split up: Tammy goes to Location A while Bob goes to Location B. We play through several hours of Tammy's activities and then cut back to Bob. 15 minutes into Bob's activities, he wants to call Tammy on her cellphone. You can either go with a hard firewall ("You can't do that because we already know Tammy didn't get a phone call, so at best you can try the call and it won't connect") or a soft firewall ("Okay, but you can't say anything that would change what Tammy did").

Quote from: Bren;898352This was discussed on the Chrine thread maybe 1000 posts ago. As I understand it, they played weekly and a session covered 1 week of game time, so real time to game time was effectively 1-to-1. I don't know for sure how they synched up different parties, but the idea was if you played on Tuesday and looted a tomb and the next group played after Tuesday they'd find a looted tomb. So I assume that the week was counted from play date through play date + six days. And at least for Tekumel there was some correlation between real world dates and game dates.

I did something similar when I was running an open table: I started by just having every session run forward in real time, but this meant that the campaign was moving much faster than real time (if I ran three sessions in a single week, each covering an expedition lasting 15-20 says, you'd have months whizzing by) and players who missed a few sessions could find that their characters now had months of missing time. So I swapped to the game world passing in real time. This meant that characters who went on a 15 day expedition in a single session would be locked down and unavailable for play during the next 15 days in the real world (they were busy). (This wasn't a problem because everybody had a stable of characters.) The things those characters were doing and the places they went were firewalled during the time they were there.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;898359For me the most important thing is I just want to be above board about it and have a consistent way of handling the problem. In an intersection situation like mentioned, I think time fudging a bit is the way to go. If they specifically seek out each other, I may incorporate Skype and it might require pausing the action until we can get everyone there. Both groups know they are sharing a campaign world (and I've told them who the other party is so there are not surprised about it).

This sounds both fair and workable as a solution. Players who'd object to that just aren't thinking about the logistics or they are probably unreasonable people about other things as well.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;898364The other option is to explicitly firewall extant continuity: Just tell your players that there are known events at Location A (or whatever) that have been established by other sessions and they won't be able to contradict them.

That could work. I'm pretty sure I've used that before. I'd be more likely to use that in a situation where I thought it was unlikely that the intersection would be likely to cause conflicts. For example, fairly static or inactive activities like research and training can often coexist in the same space and time since they seldom lead to conflicts.

If I thought conflicts were likely (say both groups going after the same McGuffin contained in the same Tomb of Undying at the same time) I'd go with preventing the second group from getting there until later since a conflict seems a likely outcome of letting both groups be there and saying "You can't open that door" because stuff already happened behind that door seems more awkward than just forcing a delay.

QuoteYou can run into this same problem even with a single group when they split up: Tammy goes to Location A while Bob goes to Location B. We play through several hours of Tammy's activities and then cut back to Bob. 15 minutes into Bob's activities, he wants to call Tammy on her cellphone. You can either go with a hard firewall ("You can't do that because we already know Tammy didn't get a phone call, so at best you can try the call and it won't connect") or a soft firewall ("Okay, but you can't say anything that would change what Tammy did").

Those work. Also one can time switches in POV based in part on game time. So you switch back to Bob before several hours of time go by for Tammy. But that may mean the player whose actions (walking, searching, etc.) are measured in 10-minute game turns has to sit around a lot when the other PC's actions are measured in 12 second melee turns.

It really shouldn't surprise anyone that there is no perfect solution for all situations.

Quote from: mAcular Chaotic;898347Why a 1 week session? How does that work?

It was the interval between game sessions; using a calendar made time-keeping easier for the GM. Phil would keep very detailed records of who played when, and would refer to my notes for what happened. It was all part of the continuing meta-game he was running for his collection of 1,500 NPCs on his index cards.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;898359For me the most important thing is I just want to be above board about it and have a consistent way of handling the problem. In an intersection situation like mentioned, I think time fudging a bit is the way to go. If they specifically seek out each other, I may incorporate Skype and it might require pausing the action until we can get everyone there. Both groups know they are sharing a campaign world (and I've told them who the other party is so there are not surprised about it).

Nice, it does look like you have a plan. It would be interesting to hear an AAR if that does go down. The ultimate PvP (Party vs Party).

Quote from: Bren;898352This was discussed on the Chrine thread maybe 1000 posts ago. As I understand it, they played weekly and a session covered 1 week of game time, so real time to game time was effectively 1-to-1. I don't know for sure how they synched up different parties, but the idea was if you played on Tuesday and looted a tomb and the next group played after Tuesday they'd find a looted tomb. So I assume that the week was counted from play date through play date + six days. And at least for Tekumel there was some correlation between real world dates and game dates.

I suppose things could still become problematic if say your group played on Tuesday. In game they walked 3 days to the Tomb of Undying Death and looted it the next day, so on Game Day 4. And on Wednesday (equal to your Game Day 2) another play group teleported or flew to the Tomb of Undying so they could loot it on your Game Day 3. What would they see? How would that get resolved?

I'll toss the question over to Chirine and see what he says.

There''ll be a longer reply in the 'Questioning Chirine ba Kal" thread, too.

Yes, this is correct. Phil synched what happened in each game session by day, so that if the Monday group did something that happened on a Tuesday, it happened on our Tuesday as well. It was very, very rare to get both groups in the same city at the same time, let alone getting them into the same location at the same point in time. If this did happen, the 'custom of the house' was to have everybody show up on a Friday night or a Saturday afternoon and have one big combined game session.

If we had shown up on Day 3, we would have looted the tomb, and gotten away. The other group would have arrived on Day 4, and looted the tomb all over again. And, this being Tekumel the way Phil played it, they then would have gone looking for the party of clerics, guards, and bearers who had just gotten through restocking and resealing the tomb  to see what other goodies might be had. We met up with all sorts of parties like this over time, as Phil ran his world as a living entity - he based this on the misadventures of the cadre of priests and guards who looked after the Valley of the Kings, who left us all sorts of rather plaintive records of how many times they had had to deal with parties of tomb-robbers. Tutankhamun got robbed twice, for example.

Quote from: dragoner;898389Nice, it does look like you have a plan. It would be interesting to hear an AAR if that does go down. The ultimate PvP (Party vs Party).

I am not sure what AAR means in this instance, but player versus player, at this stage, is unlikely because they both come from good sects with similarly aligned principles. There is one wild card in the mix that could change that though.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;898395I am not sure what AAR means in this instance, but player versus player, at this stage, is unlikely because they both come from good sects with similarly aligned principles. There is one wild card in the mix that could change that though.

AAR = After Action Report

Whatever happens is cool, it could just be social conflict, either way, it would be interesting to see how you handle it, instructive. I have never had two parties encounter each other.

Eh, this isn't even the worst possible outcome in such cases.  The worst outcome is when Party A's actions or experiences (what the world does around it) would have a material effect on what Party B is encountering, only Party A is dawdling, and Party B's advancing to the point that they're going to leapfrog past Party A.

This is currently happening in my game; basically, the civil/world war that's affecting both parties is hinging on the outcome on a critical battle of Waterloo/Agincourt/Stalingrad-level impact.  Party A are material players in that battle, and Party B would know (and act upon) the outcome.

Happily, Party B has stepped up big time, and have just resolved to put their PCs on hold and go back to playing a previous set of characters for a while, to buy me more time.

Intersectionality! :mad:

(Don't mind me, I just had an opportunity and had to take it. I too am actually interested in how to handle this as it's always a good idea to broaden one's judgment repertoire. Carry on!)

Quote from: Opaopajr;898549Intersectionality! :mad:

(Don't mind me, I just had an opportunity and had to take it. I too am actually interested in how to handle this as it's always a good idea to broaden one's judgment repertoire. Carry on!)

I actually paused briefly before posting to consider that people might mistake 'intersecting parties' for intersectionality. But I couldn't think of a more precise word for what I was describing.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;898551I actually paused briefly before posting to consider that people might mistake 'intersecting parties' for intersectionality. But I couldn't think of a more precise word for what I was describing.

And now your confession of contemplating self-censorship shall breach the dam of pent up frustration against those barbarians at the gate, the DSWs! No, wait, that's Designer Shoe Warehouse... Shit, who was it that's threatening the foundation of Western Civilization again?

Quote from: Opaopajr;898554And now your confession of contemplating self-censorship shall breach the dam of pent up frustration against those barbarians at the gate, the DSWs! No, wait, that's Designer Shoe Warehouse... Shit, who was it that's threatening the foundation of Western Civilization again?

Storygamers.

Or Pundit.

Depending on who you ask...

Its never pretty when those two intersect.