Folks, I though we might need a place to keep notes away from the main thread of this micro-game.  This is the place.

Just off the cuff, we've developed some useful methods, practices, and procedures for using multiple carbon copy SPC/NPC types in a game environment so far.  I'm looking forward to seeing what else we can discover.

Group Zero.  Usual protocols apply, please.

This seems to be going well. I wish I'd known about this feature when I was playing the original game. Still, I can use it for future games now.

We've figured out how to set up and label the NPCs so that they look like any other character, they can be used by anyone, new players can be quickly added into the user-group, we can tell which player posted which action, and we have a central character sheet for each NPC so we only have to upload data once.

It's working exactly to plan. I'm not sure what else we need to test.

Okay, Dabbler, if you're willing to dog off on it right here or keep it going, either way's fine.

Skald, do you have any further tests or suggestions to the experiment thus far?

What we've discovered:

1.)  Multiple "identical" characters can be created and assigned to each player such that all assigned players can post as if they were sharing one character.  Uses include but are not limited to allowing all or some of a party's players to post as this "character".

2.)  A common character sheet can be stored in a topic within the game, so that character data for all the "identical" versions of that character can be found and maintained in one place.

3.)  For small numbers of this character type, unique private groups can be assigned to the topics for these common character sheets.  All players who can post as such a character should be assigned access to that character's private group so they can view the character's data sheet.

4.)  Tags can be used to subtly identify each version of the cloned character so that it can be easily evident who is posting for it in each instance.

Something we might also test out:

5.) A common character sheet could also be posted to a locked topic if the GM wanted only the GM to be able to edit it.  (Is that true?  Seems like it should be...)

If that's all we wish to capture, I will go back as I have time and write up the actual steps I used in the various GM's Menus to accomplish this.

If we have further points to ponder or methods and practices to explore, or need to explore these we already have from different points of view, let's get to it.

I see no reason why a locked topic shouldn't work, going by what does work. Equally, a small number of NPC character sheets could simply be stored as Notices (locked or not).

I suspect there's little to gain in extending the micro-game. We've already tried every experiment I can think of. Skald and Bax haven't taken part in it to date, and I've been there before. If you're ambivalent, I suggest we drop it and spend our time on more productive endeavours here and elsewhere. :)

Unless there are other suggestions, of course.

In reply to Dabbler (msg # 4):

Okay.  I'll finish up the write-up of the how-to stuff later on in this topic here.  That will provide a suitable findings document for the experiment.

As always, it was a pleasure learning about how things work here.  Thank you for bringing this experiment into being here.

Thanks for helping me to investigate. I'll go and tell the guys on the forum what we've found.

Checking on the forum, somebody mentioned something else we could try - what happens if you send Private lines or PMs to 'Joe'? Who can read them? Does it direct you to a particular Joe or does it send messages to all Joes?