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A GMing telling the players about the gameworld is not like real life
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<blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7574447" data-attributes="member: 29398"><p>This is the very context in which my games run - multiple parties within the same campaign and setting - and I still don't like the idea.</p><p></p><p>And I'll freely admit this leads to more work for me as DM in trying to keep things straight in terms of who might bump into who at what time and in what place, but to me that's just an accepted and necessary part of the job.</p><p></p><p>Looked at another way: when party A goes out on a mission to the far south for a month, leaving party B and a bunch of spare PCs back in town, there's no built-in assumption of any kind that party B and the spares will just sit in town awaiting A's return. If something comes up for B (and-or the spares) to do in the meantime then they'll go out and do it while A is still away. (sometimes the collective group end up with [or self-generate] several missions at once, and literally decide in-character who's going on which trip)</p><p></p><p>At the table this would go, on the macro level, like this:</p><p></p><p>Step 1: we play through party A's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I make it clear that I-as-DM don't know which if any of their friends and associates are here. We sort out A's bookkeeping and put them on hold.</p><p>Step 2: we play through party B's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I'll already know whether A is back yet or not but won't know about the spares. We sort out B's bookkeeping and put them on hold.</p><p>Step 3: we update the spares and see if they've got up to anything meaningful (usually not, but sometimes yes); and if anything needs to be played through we do so.</p><p>Step 4: open-ended. If A and B's time in town doesn't overlap then they probably remain separate, each might cycle in-out some spares and head back out, or the earlier might wait for the later to return to town, or whatever.</p><p></p><p>[side note - this is a large part of the reason why game time progresses so much slower than real time: we're playing through the same in-game dates more than once, with different parties]</p><p></p><p>Now if A and B are running side-along on different nights of the week it gets even messier, in that when one gets too far out of synch in game-time with the other I have to somehow slow down the faster group. The simplest answer there is to make up a party C out of the spare PCs and run them on something short while the slower main party catches up in time.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Lanefan, post: 7574447, member: 29398"] This is the very context in which my games run - multiple parties within the same campaign and setting - and I still don't like the idea. And I'll freely admit this leads to more work for me as DM in trying to keep things straight in terms of who might bump into who at what time and in what place, but to me that's just an accepted and necessary part of the job. Looked at another way: when party A goes out on a mission to the far south for a month, leaving party B and a bunch of spare PCs back in town, there's no built-in assumption of any kind that party B and the spares will just sit in town awaiting A's return. If something comes up for B (and-or the spares) to do in the meantime then they'll go out and do it while A is still away. (sometimes the collective group end up with [or self-generate] several missions at once, and literally decide in-character who's going on which trip) At the table this would go, on the macro level, like this: Step 1: we play through party A's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I make it clear that I-as-DM don't know which if any of their friends and associates are here. We sort out A's bookkeeping and put them on hold. Step 2: we play through party B's adventure until they get back to town, at which point I'll already know whether A is back yet or not but won't know about the spares. We sort out B's bookkeeping and put them on hold. Step 3: we update the spares and see if they've got up to anything meaningful (usually not, but sometimes yes); and if anything needs to be played through we do so. Step 4: open-ended. If A and B's time in town doesn't overlap then they probably remain separate, each might cycle in-out some spares and head back out, or the earlier might wait for the later to return to town, or whatever. [side note - this is a large part of the reason why game time progresses so much slower than real time: we're playing through the same in-game dates more than once, with different parties] Now if A and B are running side-along on different nights of the week it gets even messier, in that when one gets too far out of synch in game-time with the other I have to somehow slow down the faster group. The simplest answer there is to make up a party C out of the spare PCs and run them on something short while the slower main party catches up in time. [/QUOTE]
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