yeah, that makes sense. time would be tough. I didn't even think of that. Is there any somewhat logical way around this besides going into Star Trek or Dark Souls alternate universe/converging timeline type setting?
This message was last edited by the user at 12:09, Tue 23 Sept 2014.

It takes work on the GM's part to keep people who move quicker than others from getting too far ahead and then allowing the slower posters to do little time skips to keep them in line.  It is complicated, but it can be done if you keep track of the disparate timelines.

so it's a lot of book keeping for time. makes sense. so you wouldn't want to have too many players, right? it would get pretty tedious keeping track of all those different in game times. not to mention everyone's different stories.

I've got a game going right now (not single-player, but multiple groups in one setting) with six or so different groups (about three dozen players).  I try to keep everyone in the same time frame, but like right now, I've got people spread over two different days.  It only gets complicated when people want to interact and they haven't lined up their timelines.  If you avoid allowing anyone to jump ahead more than a day or so in game time, then it'd be okay.

So then what do you do to catch the others up? Just hold the other group back for a little?

I announce time jumps: everyone knows when the time will change and unless something is arranged ahead of time the game's date will change and everyone needs to get their act together to move on.

does that normally go smoothly? how long do you give them before the time jump?

Smooth?  LOL!  Hardly ever.  There's almost always someone who needs to wrap something up, but it's good roleplay so I don't rush them.

I'll usually announce the jump a week or so in advance, but right now we've been trying to do a two week time jump for two months now.  People are just wrapped up in their scenes and need to have the chance to get through them.  I suppose if you had only one player per section it'd be easier for them, but don't forget that you'll be running all the NPCs then.  I like having multiple players in a group because then they can keep each other occupied without the GMs having to put as much work into keeping the players busy.

alright. thanks for the insight. so, just to make sure I got this, for example: group 1 is three days ahead of group 2, but you announce that in a week that the times will jump and everyone will be on the same day again? giving them time to wrap up whatever they have currently going on and establishing what they would be doing for the next few days during the time jump?

Exactly.

You can also make use of private threads if a scene needs to continue in conjunction with a time skip, but does not threaten to cause continuity issues. And it helps to keep a file up of all the character goings on.

so if they haven't quite wrapped things up, have them continue on as long as it doesn't mess up the larger group?

Yeah. If you don't want the other players to get confused, you change the group for the thread to one the other players can't see.

Alternatively, ignore time altogether. I'm running an intro to my game system. I'm starting everyone separately planning on them converging later in the story.

I haven't mentioned time at all except that it is nightime. Thus each player has moved different amounts in in-game time, but it will go unnoticed when they converge, as though each started at a different time.

By leaving time undefined, it becomes assumed that the implicit time skips, (like travelling for "some days to get there") somehow resulted in everyone being at the same place, same time without ever needing to say so.

Being flexible about when exactly everyone meets up helps too.

If you are running a flexible story like that, go for it since it would definitely be easier in some ways.  Unfortunately, if you have a story in which certain things happen at certain times and those events cross the different groups, you need something more structured.

I run an original setting using The Window in precisely this manner, OP.

I find post rates are slower than most I see advertised. But when quality it's favored over quantity, it's a fair trade off.

In reply to Evil Empryss (msg # 17):

Since when do you need to specify what those specific times are? I have yet to see a situation where specifying the time was needed.

There be something out there I hadn't thought of, but I very much doubt it.
This message was last edited by the user at 01:54, Wed 24 Sept 2014.

Dude, I wasn't attacking you.  In my game, certain events that affect the entire city have a set time they occur.  If a bomb goes off in the city I can't have one group playing three weeks ahead of that event when they should have been able to react on the day it happened.

If you do things different, that's fine -- I neither run nor play in your games.  I can see how it'd be easier to run things like that, except when it comes to having something that affects the whole setting occur.

I didn't feel like you were attacking me, so I'm sorry if it seemed like it.

In your example, you would never know how many weeks ahead one group is from another, ever. So one group finds out there is a bomb, they start doing things to handle it, your other group is at a bar at the time, so you have them hear evacuation sirens and etc start going off as though they are on the same day as group one, cause none of the previous play would specify how long it has been since they last dealt with the other group, so there is nothing to indicate that they are not at the same point in time as group one.

This may be a dumb example, but it's the first one I came up with while typing this. What if a character decides that he wants to spend two whole days binge drinking and then play the rest of the week out from there. The other characters decide they want to do things during those two days. So if they discover a bomb, with the other character now 2 days ahead and already playing out the days after the bomb, what then?

In reply to snayke_eiyes (msg # 22):

What then indeed, s_e. This is the sort of thing Evil Empryss was talking about. If the GM knows when that bomb is going off, she/he has to string out the player that would otherwise get ahead.

Maybe there's a little incident to occupy the binge drinker during those two days. Alternatively, you just tell that player 'Look the other group is lagging behind, so I need you to wait a bit.' If I'm the one that went off on my own, I need to accept that, but even if we all split up and someone is taking more time with their story, we all need to respect that.

However, if someone is lagging in their posting rate, the GM has the right to speed things up by puppeting that character or just condensing or even truncating that line.

One of the great things about Rpol for me is the separate groups you can divide players into, keeping what happens in each group separate. That and the Private Lines to individual players.

I have played and run games that start off with every PC in a separate thread until the event that brings them all together.

thanks for the help! it makes sense now.

In reply to snayke_eiyes (msg # 22):

You are passing up some serious opportunities if you just hand wave away two days for binge drinking (overly drunk people are fun to play with).

Further, if you have the others doing stuff while someone gets flatfaced drunk, you have the control over when and how long it takes them to reach the point of dealing with the bomb, for example, you can make it take them two days of investigation before they find the bomb.

In this way you as the GM who has complete control of pacing, can speed up the in game time for the lagging group instead of requiring the ahead group to pause/slow.

So, not only would I have not had the drunkard two days ahead in the first place (I would have fun at his character's expense instead and perhaps see if he is any good at drunken style kung fu), if the drunkard did get two days ahead, it would take the second group in game time to do what they do, bringing both groups an indefinite amount of time past those two days.

Following the previous example, I'm fairly certain that the bing-drinking drunkard would stumble upon the bomb, in the bar, at a point right before he would passout and was barely able to walk...

But that's me.

Either way, it is all about how you handle such things, that determines whether you cause yourself a problem later on or not, and how difficult it is to deal with it.