3. Forum-Based Play

3 FORUM-BASED PLAY

Another distinction between tabletop games and forum-based games is that the play is continuous, instead of taking place at a certain time each week. Moreover, it means that some players get more done in the same amount of time, even seeming to have more days in the same amount of time.

The general approach I will take is to ignore temporal discrepancies. Something, something, maybe the warp. Instead, time is largely measured by real-life time, and the length of a session is a week. This means:

• Each real-life day counts as one day for the purposes of characters healing.
  
• Your Fate Points refresh at the end of the week.
  

Additionally, Heretics gain 50XP per real-life day.

Where possible, I will fudge in-game time to maximise interactions between player characters: perhaps you’ll both go to try and convince Lady Francesca at the same time. The rule of thumb is that if your characters both go off to do something in the same area on the same (real-life) day, then you can expect to bump into one another.

On the other hand, an interaction doesn’t necessarily mean talking to one another. One character might be specifically wanting to avoid another character. An interaction, in this kind of case, might involve an Opposed Stealth Test to avoid being spotted. The key point is that it’s on the character avoiding the interaction to take positive steps to avoid it.

When characters interact, it may prove convenient to arrange a time between the players to have such an interaction. This will typically take place on Skype, to avoid the GM having to act as a play-slowing go-between. The GM will then copy, or summarise, the Skype conversation to your forums.