From: utzoo!decvax!harpo!npois!alice!ggr Newsgroups: net.games.frp Title: How to handle "pop-tart" players Article-I.D.: alice.634 Posted: Thu Jun 10 10:11:45 1982 Received: Fri Jun 11 03:37:38 1982 I've seen a lot of solutions to the problem you address about where and what players are doing. The solution used collectively by the Univ. of Wisconsin Fantasy Gaming Club (about 10 regular DMs, incl. myself; about 50 regular players), is to have an interplanar transport system which operates by mental command. The system also acts as an automatic "customs" agency to keep down the abuse of players bringing in unbalancing or taboo items into the game. For example: I walk into the club at 6pm Friday and persuade a group of players looking for a game to come into mine. I announce that I will run a medium-level game (levels about 5th to 9th), with a limit of 100,000g.p. per character and at most 3 magic items of significance, no artifacts allowed. Now, each player has a "home world" that he is more-or-less tied to-- the world in which he was born. The player on that world receives an invitation through InterGate to which he has, say, 2 game-hours to respond to. If the player has any "taboo" item(s), then he has 2 game-hours to hide or bury them, or lend them into the safekeeping of a friend. If he forgets this step, then when he gates into the "guest" world, the items will be left behind-- dropping to the ground for anyone to grab on his home world. Sometimes, but not often, a time-constraint is put on the character ("Be home by the stroke of midnight, or ...") Also, record is kept of the amount of time spent in the guest world. This time is usually, but not always, in 1:1 ratio with the rate of time flow on the home world. While the player is away on the guest world, things happen (of course) on the home world. To avoid splitting groups up, usually the "return gate" back to the home world is specified relative to the place where an ITEM left behind is, not relative to a fixed place. Thus Ezekial the 5th-level cleric leaves behind his spare holy symbol with his friend George, so that when Ezekial is finished with play on the "guest world" then he can pop back right next to the item. Thus play can continue with the original group. But should someone steal the item, well that's just tough.... Gating back is a safe act, so that even should someone bury the item, the character will pop back to the nearest reasonable surface. When the character pops back into his home planet, the DM (via the Intergate Transport Co.) gets to review any items he has acquired and give the character say, 2 hours to find a safe place to secrete the taboo items acquired on the guest world. Experience points, precious things, is usually not messed with by the DM unless the guest world DM was truly excessive in handing them out. While the above may sound complicated, it worked surprisingly well and allows a kind of indefinite expansion into possible worlds or paralled time-tracks without messing up the game in the home worlds. A modification of it to Al's world that I would suggest: Following the solution DC comics used to bring back the "Golden Age" Flash, but keep the "New" Flash, I suggest parallel Universes. The one our regular characters are on is "Earth-1" (or "Altair-1" or whatever); the alternate characters are on "Earth-2". Earths 1 & 2 are assumed similar in every respect except for those changes explicitly desired by the DM. The parallel Earths have different "vibratory patterns" in some sort of higher dimension; the characters (like the Flash) discover these and intuitively keep up the vibrations at all times they are conscious, like breathing. Should they be rendered unconscious (not asleep!) or dead, the vibrations stop and they automatically pop back to their home plane. While on guest planes, they can, of course, do anything they could on their normal plane. Merely let the vibratory pattern be one to InterGate, in order to game-simulate the DM activity of "customs." Also, who says InterGate is free? It could extract an automatic "tax" as a percentage (say 5% each way) of the value of items flowing through it. This would cut down on excessive plane-hopping. Any comments, criticisms, suggestions? Send them to me, Jim Whitehead (at harpo!pyuxn!merlin).