Tracking disparities in time in a pbp game with multiple groups

[CanadienneBacon]

Howdy. I run the pbp game over at Mortality.net. I have a situation for which I seek advice.

I have one group investigating the sewers. I have several new players back in town at an Inn. For the group in the sewers, it's nighttime, but the group in town obviously would like to get going on the action in town (making contacts, etc) without having to wait for the group in the sewers to resolve their actions.

I need advice on how to handle disparity in a timeline for a plot with multiple parties.

My thoughts so far have been to create a little side-adventure that lasts one night for the group in town to go on, which would coincide with the sewers group's timeframe. I could also just put the newbies in town on hold until the sewers group passes the night, then resume from there.

I'd appreciate your past experiences with this issue, as well as any untested advice any of you may have to offer me.

Thanks in advance.

 

[Creamsteak]

Ouch. In my experience, it's best to ignore the time related problems for multiple games in Play by Post. In our Living EN World forum, we basically turned off time-tracking between our many games so that we can have multiple groups meet whenever it is convenient.

How long will it take the sewer group to return to the surface in real time? If it's more than a few days, you should definitely have some sort of hook for the surface group to follow for the time being. I'm sure you can find suggestions for that around these boards somewhere...

But, as far as problems with one day and one night and such, I'd recommend just having the group farthest back get pushed forwards. So, either push the surface characters to evening (but perhaps not night), or push the sewer group to dawn. Either way, it should be a minor problem. As a player I wouldn't be bothered if the DM felt he had to intentionally skip a handful of hours to move the timeframe.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

Thank you for the reply. I was chatting with someone today who suggested that those characters who are at the Inn should have to deal with a cutpurse or two to keep busy while the group in the sewers resolves combat. This idea sounds good to me; it's light enough to satisfy the new players' desire for interaction yet not too engrossing. I'd like to have it be just slightly more than a simple thieving though. Thoughts for a plot?

 

[S'mon]

Hm, I 'tracked' time in my PBEMs by putting the in-game time/date in the subject-line of every post!
The best approach is to handwave it as far as possible and fast-forward where necessary to put everyone at the same time. Either that or just have one PC group.

 

[CanadienneBacon]

That's a good idea about time/date stamping the partys' actions. Might have to steal that.

My real question is, how do I keep two separate parties on the same time? Or should I not even bother and just roll with the whole DM's dramatic license thing.