Scene and Scenario are easy. Roughly a scene changes whenever the narrative backdrop changes. The PCs go to a new place, focus on a new activity, etc. A scenario changes when the PCs go on a new adventure of some type or complete a narrative arc. In general story sensibilities let you know when these things happen.

Defining a session on Rpol is a lot tougher. I've run a short adventure on RPOL once that took about a year to complete. I ran that same adventure in real life without skipping anything and it took four hours. So yea. For most intents a purposes I tend to treat moderate consequences on RPOL as 2-3 scene shifts depending on length of the scene.

I just tend to play it by ear -- Cripple X has the gist of it, I think. Scene and Scenario translate directly, but session can be wonky. But it can also be wonky in FTF play, as a session might cover one hour of 'game time,' or six months!

I just work with whatever the complication is and figure out what makes sense in the context and "reality level" of the game.

So, basically, you do away with the speicfic time-restriction (one session) and leave it to narrative fit.  Shouldn't this also apply to Minor and Severe (or in the case of DFRPG, Extreme) Consequences?

As a Moderate (4-stress) Consequence, how long should these take to heal?  And is it okay if they don't take the same period of time as other Moderate Consequences?

Can you provide some examples of Moderate Consequences and how long they should take to begin healing?

Should Critical Incident Stress (Mental Moderate) take the same time to heal as a Cracked Rib (Physical Moderate)?

I'm sort of playing devil's advocate, but I do honestly want others input on this.

I think that would depend on how it is treated. With proper psychological help, maybe? Without help though. I think a moderate mental consequence would take years, if not a lifetime to recover from.

To my way of thinking, Critical Incident Stress is a Moderate Consequences (4-shifts) and should take a few days to a few weeks, possibly a month to recover.

Remember, the recovery starts once a pretext for that recovery is begun, so we're assuming it's treated in such a way that recovery is going to happen.  If the threshold to kick-off recovery is met, than it's working.  Even if it'sa "non-traditional" method of treatment.

To my mind, the equivalent Severe Consequence would be Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder.  And that, I would expect, should take a lot longer to recover from...

How do you keep players busy when dealing with the passage of time?

Let me give you an example situation:
Shaggy and Scooby are doing a once-over of the haunted house on the hill.  Fred and daphne are interviewing Old Man Rogers about what he saw.  Velma is doing forensic analysis on the blood and tissue samples found in the house.  While the others have things to do that are engaging, I'm not really that interested in roleplaying out Velma's scientific investigation.  So...  How do we keep Velma's player busy so we can sync up the characters once the others are done their respective scenes?

At the tabletop, you'd just listen to the others scene, make your meta-game comkmentar4y, get a mountain-dew, play on your phone.   It's only a couple of minutes.  But it might be weeks on RPOL.

So, how do you deal with it?

That can be tough to deal with for sure. What I try to do is avoid boring 'waiting' tasks or have something occur during the intervening time to keep that player occupied with their own scene while the others 'catch up' narratively. I feel it's important to do to keep the player(s) having fun.

Basically if that scene is so boring, why even worry about it? Have Velma set the samples up to run without her and have her hang with one of the others. If she must be by herself have her have an encounter with the Monster of the Week or something else important.

In reply to Cripple X (msg # 14):

Running tests and doing research isn't a scene, dramatically speaking. Unless the bloodstains talk back, Velma isn't so much interacting with the samples as extracting information from them. At best its a montage. Either way, it can happen off camera, during a scene change as a mechanical exercise.

That way, everyone is active during an actual scene, with NPC's and such, but the characters are still getting the results of the investigation.

Yes, that was entirely my point.

So, how do you account for the others actions in the time she spent off-camera doing this?  I ask this because I've seen it come up more than once.

Either someone gets left waiting and bored, or game-time passes and someone else isn't accounted for having done anything.

Sure, you could simply say, "While Velma is doing her blood sample stuff, what are you all doing?"   But what if they come up with something scene-worthy?  How do you synchronize time

Me, I try to use a pretty flexible approach and have different scenes at different paces, but have them sync up at regular intervals.  It's fluid and imperfect, but knowing where other players are in their scene gives a certain sense of impetus to close out the scene "sometime in the next two weeks real-time..."

You don't have to really. Nobody is sitting there with a stopwatch. If Velma says "I'm going to set up an experiment" and the others have an idea to do something else, pick that up a few minutes later with Velma having done the necessaries to get her experiment running and have her participate with the others as normal.

I'm sorry... I'm confused.  I don't have to what?

Maybe no stopwatch, I've certainly noticed each and every time I've had my character left in the doldrums for days or even weeks (real-time), because it made sense that she would do something that isn't RP-worthy.   In a Buffy-esque game, I've learned that I shouldn't play a Giles or a Willow, else I'll be set to twiddle my thumbs and wait.   Is this a failing of the GMs in those games?

Perhaps the story is a little too linear?  This is an issue with mysteries and procedural style games.  You don't want to just give the characters the big clues off-camera.
This message was last edited by the GM at 16:24, Sun 14 Sept 2014.

Account for the others' actions while Velma sets up her experiment. You essentially treat setting up the experiment as negligible timewise and let it run without Velma who can interpret the results later. That lets you have everybody on camera for whatever scene you're doing and you can have all the PCs present for the results afterwards.

If you don't want to do that because of genre conceit, then you need to do what I mentioned before and give Velma her own scene so she isn't bored.

The first few weeks of a game is when most dropouts happen in RPoL, but not all of them. In the versions of FATE I've seen, character creation includes 2+ aspects that have to do with the relationships and histories between the player characters. How do you prefer to work things out when the target players drop? Does it depend on how much the aspect can still be used? Do you let the players swap aspects out for new ones?

Hmm, why not add aspects like those later on when the drop out rate slows down? I know people can drop any time for any reason, but if its beyond the initial peak, it will be better right?

Ah, nobody's official dropped out yet. We're only just getting to the in-character stuff now. I've been stuck on my other aspects, and nervous about coming up with good ones only for the most relevant player to drop.

I may just go with waiting to see what emerges in game. Thank you!

I'd always gone with the idea that the story concocted by the two players still stands even if one of the characters isn't active anymore.  It's still a part of the character's life, thus the Aspect can stay, if the player wants it...

A new character coming in will need to share a story and derive an Aspect from it, but the existing character isn't obligated to take a new Aspect.

Sounds fair, the missing player can have their character npc'd if need be right?

One question that came to mind after reading the FATE, FAE and the Toolkit through and rummaging about Rpol:

How do you handle the fate point bidding in the PbP games?

One of the things I find most irritating about any system used in written games is when you have to post back and forth multiple times to get a single thing done. In this game that would be activating all kinds of aspects, opponent reacting with his/her aspects, then second player pitching in offering use of free invocation of some situational aspect or other etc. This game seems to be... conversational (lacking a better name for it) in a way I find very enjoyable, but possibly problematic in this environment.

Live with the fact that table-talk slows down the game.

Everything slows down in play-by-post. Everything...

Honestly I haven't had much of a problem with it. My players don't turn down compels. They like trouble. It's fun. If that doesn't happen and the back and forth bothers you, just offer the player your max offer.

As for the invokes thing is usually brought up when the Player creates the advantage or boost. Maybe something like:

OoC: Hey GM I'm going to use Shoot to create advantage "Pinned Down" on the enemy trying to advance. If I succeed you guys feel free to use the Free Invocations to sneak around behind them.

I do not feel (because I can't know without having tried yet) the compel would be the issue, more likely using the aspects. The way they are done states that you use them after you see the roll was not good enough. I was thinking that maybe if the GM provides all the variables on his/her part as the action is declared (including the possible aspects used, if PCs activate something. That way the players could indicate in their posts what they are going to use and there would be results with just a single post from all the participants.

That might give the players a bit more meta-game information from the start, but then again, this game enforces the idea of collaboration even more than most other games...

Oh, I got you. The way that's often handled is either, like you mentioned, giving the players enough information, or by having the Players tell you how many Aspects they are willing to invoke in order to succed. So if the number they needed to hit was say Superb +5, and  they got a Great +4 total, but told you they were willing to spend a Fate Point to invoke relevant aspect X, then they would succeed.

https://youtu.be/4wewNseVo24

There's no better way to celebrate this auspicious day than by launching my first written hack. I need the name for it since Evil Hat is doing something that sounds like Darkness of the Century.

Vampire
Cannot spend Fate points to reroll. Instead they spend a blood point.
Roll for hunger or take mental stress.
Gain Humanity stress track.

Do we need anything else?

Werewolf
Can take mental stress to activate gifts.
Roll Primal-Urge or invoke the high concept to go crinos.
Reputation unchanged.

Rage vs. Fate?

Mage
Paradox stress trek or invoke?
Quintessence stress track in addition or instead of mental stress trek?

Demon
I'd actually love to do these, but I will have to get my book before I start.

Rest
If there's interest, knock yourself out.
Aggravated stress?
Fate points vs. Willpower?
Powers inside the Pyramid?

Anything else?

Optional Rules
Dice pools instead of Fudge dice.
Attribute stunts.
+1 or +2 peak skill above Mortal.
Skills (and possibly Attributes) from World of Darkness.

In reply to Tzuppy (msg # 31):

I am wondering how this ended up?  Did you write out conversions of those games to FATE?