Time Skipping and Maintaining Continuity

VariousRen · 08-20-2015, 11:56 AM

My weekly GURPS game had to go on hiatus several months ago, when one of our players ended up with a schedule that didn't allow us to all meet up. Their schedule has changed again, and we are now ready to resume weekly play.

We left off in the middle of a minor adventure, but coming back now the details are all a little foggy and it would take a lot of review by all of us to get right back into the action. Instead, I proposed to them a time skip forward a few weeks or months (depending on when they saw an event that they wanted to get back into action for), and they liked the idea.

What are your suggestions for skipping forward some amount of time, but still keeping up with players advantages/disadvantages? How much interaction should we both with for the time skip, for things like enemies, contacts, ect. Is there anything that I should abstract with a job roll, skill check, ect?

Anaraxes · 08-20-2015, 12:03 PM

The RAW advice starts on B498, with the Time Use Sheet on B569. Actually printing and filling out one of those things always seemed a little unappealing to me -- it would take valuable time away from redesigning the cover sheets for my TPS reports -- but at the least, it could be a checklist of categories to consider.

Desthro · 08-20-2015, 12:37 PM

It depends on what you really want to do, both as a GM and from an RP perspective. Do you even want to use time sheets? Is it necessary to track the PC downtime with one? What happened to the players during the Player's away time? Did they decide the adventure wasn't worth it and decided to take a vacation? Did they get lost? Did they find out that their adventure cost them nearly as much as they earned?

You all can come up with a suitable story for what happened, and maybe, if you are generous, award them with a point or two in a relevant skill if it matters.

As a matter of course, I typically don't utilize the time-use sheet unless it is a practical matter of them being on a ship for 6-months or something crazy like that. Or, if the players turn one in ahead of time, a player can leave for personal reasons and the game can continue on in lieu of the player if they are okay with that. (Sorry guys! The town wizard burned down my farm again!)

I tend to leave things as they were, there's no reason to suggest that the players would not keep up with anything that they didn't keep up with anyway during the down time. Likewise, they probably wouldn't fix problems that were on their sheet during the downtime either! Ultimately it boils down to what you want to do, and what is good for your friends =)

08-20-2015, 11:56 AM	#1
VariousRen Join Date: Apr 2015	Time Skipping and Maintaining Continuity My weekly GURPS game had to go on hiatus several months ago, when one of our players ended up with a schedule that didn't allow us to all meet up. Their schedule has changed again, and we are now ready to resume weekly play. We left off in the middle of a minor adventure, but coming back now the details are all a little foggy and it would take a lot of review by all of us to get right back into the action. Instead, I proposed to them a time skip forward a few weeks or months (depending on when they saw an event that they wanted to get back into action for), and they liked the idea. What are your suggestions for skipping forward some amount of time, but still keeping up with players advantages/disadvantages? How much interaction should we both with for the time skip, for things like enemies, contacts, ect. Is there anything that I should abstract with a job roll, skill check, ect?

08-20-2015, 12:03 PM	#2
Anaraxes Join Date: Sep 2007	Re: Time Skipping and Maintaining Continuity The RAW advice starts on B498, with the Time Use Sheet on B569. Actually printing and filling out one of those things always seemed a little unappealing to me -- it would take valuable time away from redesigning the cover sheets for my TPS reports -- but at the least, it could be a checklist of categories to consider.

08-20-2015, 12:37 PM	#3
Desthro Join Date: Nov 2009 Location: Albuquerque	Re: Time Skipping and Maintaining Continuity It depends on what you really want to do, both as a GM and from an RP perspective. Do you even want to use time sheets? Is it necessary to track the PC downtime with one? What happened to the players during the Player's away time? Did they decide the adventure wasn't worth it and decided to take a vacation? Did they get lost? Did they find out that their adventure cost them nearly as much as they earned? You all can come up with a suitable story for what happened, and maybe, if you are generous, award them with a point or two in a relevant skill if it matters. As a matter of course, I typically don't utilize the time-use sheet unless it is a practical matter of them being on a ship for 6-months or something crazy like that. Or, if the players turn one in ahead of time, a player can leave for personal reasons and the game can continue on in lieu of the player if they are okay with that. (Sorry guys! The town wizard burned down my farm again!) I tend to leave things as they were, there's no reason to suggest that the players would not keep up with anything that they didn't keep up with anyway during the down time. Likewise, they probably wouldn't fix problems that were on their sheet during the downtime either! Ultimately it boils down to what you want to do, and what is good for your friends =)