When it comes to Wraith I can't seem to come up with a good method of using Shadows within the rpol environment.

Does anyone know of any good methods of using rpol features to fascilitate Shadowplay rather then hinder it?

(This is for either method; GM control or Player controlled shadows.)

Thanks for your help.

The smoothest running game I was in, there was a second GM whose sole purpose was to play all the shadow characters. Most of the game was run out in the open where everyone could see what was happening to everyone else. Then, each PC also got a private thread in a separate group for talking to their shadows.

It works really well if the shadow GM is good at psychological torture. ;)

I also played in one game where shadows were secondary characters controlled by other PCs. The setup on RPoL was the same - a common group for the main game, and private threads for talking to shadows. But the quality of shadowing varied according to how good the other PC was, and the GM might want to put a bit of thought into matching people up by preferred playing styles.

I would almost think that, with a separate thread, it would be hard to keep track of your place in the timeline, especially if you have a really over active player.

Hmm... we didn't have any problems with it. Backreading, maybe - but actual play wasn't a problem. I guess if you're worried you can always put in a system of markers (e.g. "while walking through the square" "while talking to the hit man" etc.)

I wonder if it would be a good idea to somehow link the two posts/threads or possibly using a system of footnotes which indicate the posts which go together. What do you think?
This message was last edited by the user at 18:09, Mon 23 Feb 2009.

Well, each post comes with a thread title and a number. In the shadow thread, you could just put that info about the other thread at the top of the shadow post that initiates each conversation (which will most often be the shadow).

So, for example, the character is walking around in "Main Square", and on post #27 he stops to smell a rose. Shadow thread post (from the shadow) might say:

-= Main Square #27 =-

Watch out for the thorns... heh heh heh ...



I wouldn't do anything more complicated than that, because then it'll become tedious and time-consuming. You want as little paperwork as possible to keep play-flow going.