ggr (06/10/82)
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).laura (06/11/82)
Hmmm. decvax has been down and I missed the original article. My brother had a similar one though. He is DMing a game of new players who are 8-12 years old. (He is 14 and has been playing for 5 years). The events took place at a local library, weekly, but the library official responsible had absolutely no idea about d&d. He instructed all the new players to have a character rolled before they arrived with appropriate posessions. My brother (who at this point didnt know he was to DM) arrived with a first level half-orc fighter-assasin, fairly rolled with 16 str, 16 dex, 15 cons and mediocre wis, int, and char --- well actually a charisma of 5 which is worse than mediocre!. He had chain mail, a long sword and a dagger, 2 weeks worth of food and a sling with seven bullets. Also a mirror, rope, garlic and various other items in a back-pack. Low and behold all the other fighters had 18+ strength, +5 plate mail, +2 shields, a +4 defender, or a girdle of Storm Giant strength -- a vorpal blade, ions stones, you name it. It seems that everyone had read the DMG and decided what was a bare necessity. The library person was informed of the need for a DM. David (my brother volunteered). He spent the first day talking about strategy, and outlining the history of his favourite world (A land on the border between Norse and Egyptian Strongholds where the intra-panetheon conflict is thick, containing some of the worst dungeons <difficult, not unfair> I have ever seen....all designed by my brother. He could not, of course, get the new crowd to reroll -- they liked things the way they were. So David told the one other person with a fair character (he too had played before) to get himself a super-hero, to even things up. When he got home that evening I got a frantic fone call ... help -- what am I going to do with this crowd??? My first reaction was, quit -- but I said that their stupidities would prove their own downfall. In part I was right, but David found this remarkable beast called "The Disench- anter" in the Fiend Folio. THis is a magic snuffer which does for magic what rustmonsters do to metal. David's group seemed to meet a disproportionate number of these beasties -- it seems that their natural habitat is being steadily erroded, driving them out into the open and into small herds ..... Between these beasties, and the fact that they stupidly overstuffed a bag of holding with their magic items magic is now back to a more reasonable level .... 3 months later. Of course it is still a campaign of superheros, but that too can be fun. Tamar the Eternally Broke (ie I cant even pay for level changes! thats *broke*) decvax!utzoo!laura