I understand where you are coming from C, but I do think you are overthinking it. I agree lots of players fall behind, but there are players who are dedicated to catching back up. To use an Emerald Example, Ravan cannot play basically at all. He has kept up with me though and has continuously been requesting plot and documents with the desire to play and join in, even if late. Regardless, time constraints are an issue that have always been difficult. None of us can see the future(if you can please tell me so we can get to work on getting really rich and fixing this issue. Possibly in that order) so it's very possible for people to just get surprised by RL and end up in awkward spots. I think Emerald in particular has that issue with you flying to the other side of the globe, Ravan caught up in Work, the Imposter Satori, as well as myself recently with a combination of my programming deadline and surprise family plans.
I can't argue for the mastermind from my own personal position, but I do believe this varies heavily between masterminds and there isn't a lot to do to fix it. I, personally anyway, have alot of things I am busy with around the clock and thats not including assorted random events(like grandparents suddenly deciding they need to move next door). I myself was away this entire weekend and the game did not progress for three IRL days which was a failure on my part, but I simply wasnt able to host during that time frame. I did mention in my initial times announcements that the weekends were iffy, but nor did I expect to be busy for a whole weekend. I do believe your position on the globe has affected how you view other mastermind's "busy time." Your period of activity prior was the same as mine(give or take an hour), you may not have been working, but you expect people to be busy during those times of your day. Now with you on the opposing side of the globe, the times we are busy overlap with your free time and to you, I seem even busier since when you have free time to check, I am missing.
Finding a time when all players are free is extremely difficult as you said, and alot of what our site is involves people being able to act in free, real-time, usually with a rapid response system. Having some kind of autonomous system that achieves the same effect would require some insane programming. The goal of scheduling times one will host is to warn players when the game will be going so they can make sure they are free at that time period, or at least speak with the mastermind about being unavailable and finding a personal comprimise.
I have an idea, although it does trade off some of our real time prowess in favor of playing in your own time. This falls into the vein of Eclipe Time like masterminding styles, so its more a method of hosting style than a built in Mechanic. And since I am a vain fool, I like sticking to my Naming Conventions. Allow me to explain the Solar and Lunar Phase Hosting Style. Name not finalized, might totally change this if I come up with something better.
Solar Hosting:
Solar Hosting is easy to explain. It is simply the way the game progresses regularly, that is with a mastermind declaring a hosting time and players pming them during that time. The name is drawn from Solar Eclipse, which is a rapid event that occurs in a set area on the planet, that would be the host's time frame and time zone. During this period the darkness is absolute and its easy to know what is affected. This is much like our real time regular hosting where you can see players and things going on simulataneously and immediately. Hence the term Solar Hosting.
Lunar Hosting:
Lunar Hosting is an alternate way of accepting actions that allows the mastermind to be away from their computer, but players can still play in "real time," kind of. Lunar Hosting shifts the entirety of actions from Skype to Forum PMs. This form of hosting calls back into the time that, for those familiar with it, Season 2 was hosted. This is more complicated so here is a list of steps for how Lunar Hosting Periods will work.
Lunar Hosting Timeline
1. The Mastermind will declare a period of Lunar hosting for the next [X]* days and how many In Game Days** it will include.
2. All player's locations will be reset at the start of a Lunar Session, to their character Rooms or their equivalent and be considered asleep.
3. At any point during the Lunar Session period greater than 24 hours prior to its end a player can PM the mastermind on the forum and declare their wakefulness. The time of waking in game is assumed to be 8:00 AM. All future pms time period will use this base time to be determined.
3a. From the moment of the first PM, time for that player, IRL and In-Game, will proceed in sync. If no pm is sent, the time starts moving 24 hours before the declared end of Lunar Hosting
Example: I am playing and Mastermind Zimbabwe declares Lunar hosting for the next 48 hours. It is current midnight my time. I don't want to play until the evening so I refrain from sending my "Awaken" pm until Noon my time. At that point my character awakens at 8:00 AM In Game Time. I immediately act by searching my room for any changes with a Forum PM on the same message board. I want my character to spend an hour searching the room so I wait until 1:00 PM my time before sending the next action PM. At 1:00 PM I send the command that I move to X room and read books. This correlates to your character at 9:00 AM Game Time proceeding to that room and reading books.
4. Players will pm actions at their own pace in real time starting from the awakening point until they return to their room and declare "Return to Sleep" or 24 hours since the awakening pm pass, whichever comes first. Movement is an Action and must be pmed. Do this by copying your Lunar Movement Post from the Lunar Movement Board into your Movement Action PMs.
4a. Movement is different during Lunar Hosting, as walking through the map with movement pms is pointless since the mastermind cannot check those after the fact. Please check the Lunar Movement section after this one for more information.
5. Repeat Steps 3-4 for each declared Game Day over the course of Lunar Hosting.
5a. Essentially if the mastermind declares that there will be 2 In game days over a lunar hosting period of 5 days, during that five days you will awaken and sleep twice.
6. After the period of Lunar Hosting ends, the Mastermind will return and map out the players actions over that time period (or possibly while more lunar sessions are playing out).
7. If any Break Events ensued, they will be announced and almost all actions after the Break Event time are nulled. A Break Event is a large in game event that would affect all player activities.
7a. Example Break Events:: Body Discovery Announcement: Room/Door Destruction: New Room/Door Discovery:: Mastermind Specific Events beyond this scope may also be considered break events.
8. Players will be sent the results of all their investigations/actions over the course of the Lunar hosting period up until the Break Event or end of Lunar hosting.
8a. If an action or investigation was invalid, the mastermind may substitute the action with another or simply remove it. This is based purely on the mastermind's decision.
9. Lunar Hosting is declared over and the game resumes with the next Hosting Session whenever that session is declared.
*X refers to how many IRL days the Lunar Phase will continue
**In-Game Days refers to how many Lunar Sessions will occur over the course of the IRL Lunar Phase
Lunar Movement
Lunar Movement is an alternate system so that players can use to interact with one another in a way that the mastermind can verify the location's correctness significantly after the Fact. This movement system heralds back to Season 2 so those of you from that time period may recognize it. The previous flaw with the system was people monitoring it and saving the image to track people's locations. In order to prevent this same issue, besides the fact that someone would have to monitor it 24/7 until the end of Lunar Hosting, I will institute a rule. The Lunar Movement Thread cannot be used for evidence in any way, unless another In Game person was witness to that movement. The punishment for using the Lunar Thread for Deduction outside of allowances is an immediate removal from trial and a warning. Repeated offense can result in being removed from the game entirely and possibly being banned. People who suffer as a result of this cheating will be compensated, either by being unconvictable or given special verbal bullets to destroy theories relying on that timing evidence.
Now with the heavy stuff out of the way allow me to explain!
Lunar Movement Steps:
1. At the beginning of declared Lunar Hosting all players movement posts are deleted and placed at the equivalent of the player rooms. These are not to be moved until the end of Lunar Hosting.
2. All players will create a Single Post on the "Lunar Movement Board" that reads:
Previous Locations: None
Current Location: [Insert name of Player Room Equivalent]
In-Game Movement Time: 8:00 AM
2a. This post will signify your current location and the path you used to reach that location. In addition it will store your current time at the location. Any players in the same Current location at similar* times may speak and interact with each other.
2b. These three items must be updated just before you make a movement action.
3. If a player wishes to move to another location they will update there post by editting it. They will move the Current Location to the Previous Locations and then place their new location in the Current Location(Old Previous Locations is deleted). If the player is moving multiple rooms, they must add the rooms they pass through to the previous locations list. Lastly, they must update the In-Game Time they are making this motion. This time should correlate to the time you send the movement action pm to the mastermind.
3a. Actions may only be performed in your current location, you cannot perform actions in rooms you simply "pass through."
3b. Movement isn't instantaneous! If you send pm movements that cross the entire building expect it to take more time! If you are carrying less than 50% your max inventory, 30 seconds per room. If you are carrying greater than 50% your max inventory, 1 minute per room.
4. When at the end of a Lunar Day, the 24 hour period from the moment you declared yourself awake, OR the time you return to the player room equivalent and declare yourself going to sleep you must update your Lunar Movement Post again. Set it in this format:
Lunar Day: [Insert the number of finished lunar days since the beginning of current Lunar Hosting Session]
Status: Finished
Current Location: [Player Room Equivalent]
This will show you have completed your lunar day and players can no longer interact with you except in the case of a Break Event.
4a. Simply edit the Finished Post with the next Lunar Day start when you declare your next awakening.
*Similar times means within 10 minutes of one another. It would be unreasonable to expect you all to be in room at the exact same in game time.
Special Notices and Rules:
1. I can See the Future, Not: Starting your lunar session after someone else may seem appealing as you can see where they "will be" at certain times during your characters day. Using this knowledge to prepare a trap or some other method to catch them at that time is forbidden. No I don't care how predictable they are or smart you are, you cannot claim to have known exactly where they would be at the exact right time. Actions that seem to rely on these glimpses of the future will be rejected if they are lacking motive.
2. This Time Train has No Brakes!: Your In-game time will proceed in sync with your real time after you declare yourself awakened. There is no accelerating or decelerating this process. This is to allow fairness on a global standard in people's ability to act. Everyone has a day and a night to be making actions. In this way everyone is subject to the same strain. Staying up for 24 hours straight tires a person out so players will have to decide when they want to sleep over that period. Perhaps you start your timer and go to sleep IRL, so that you can act during the later periods of the In Game Night so that few will be witness. Or perhaps its the inverse, you start during midday where the majority of people are active and flee to your room for sleep prior to the dangers of night time. Or maybe you are clinically insane and have ALOT to do so you stay up for all 24 hours performing actions. Just remember, Break Events cancel the majority of actions after they occur, so take caution when staying up for long periods of time as you may lose alot of effort for nothing in the case of a Break Event.
3. What if somebody Breaks me?: While Break Events stop everyone globally, it would technically be possible for just one person to suffer a break. Such as one person getting KOed as they leave their room in the morning and losing a key item that defined their day's actions. This is bad for both that player and the group in general, as either that player has to redefine their actions for the day or the whole group has to start over from there. In order to fix this certain countermeasures must be introduced. Essentially, any action that would Break a single individual requires a motive. If the intent is to murder then its fine as that means the individual need not redo their action. Motives such as base robbery or to troll will be rejected as it results in the whole group suffering for something that basically results in nothing.
4. Lunar Skype: Since this hosting period requires more planning on a players side, feel free to communicate and decide on how to act together. Since you all are playing on your own times you will have to discuss when you want to try and do group tasks. So if the whole group wants to have a party at X time, then you guys decide the in game time and then individually on your own Lunar PMs you can go and contribute. Use skype to plan if you want to plan as a group, just assume all planning occurs just around 8:00 AM prior to anyone actually doing anything.
Alright, I think that is everything I have thought up so far for the Solar/Lunar Phase Hosting Style. Like Eclipse Time was, its just an idea right now. So please throw suggestions at it and mention any possible issues that you think could arise. I think its a reasonable way to let players plan out actions and feel the tension of the game at their own pace when the mastermind is missing in action. I know this setup causes a ton of tension since I felt is personally in Season 2. Knowing that the game is running in time with you is a huge bundle of nerves, since every minute someone could be acting against you and you may not know it since you are not visibly playing or are away from your computer. The 24 hour day system hopefully would allow players to decide when they want that tension and keep people interested about what happened even while players are away. What the system doesn't do well is help really busy people. Since its a 24 hour period, someone who is busy and/or sleeping for most of any one 24 hour session has a tough time keeping up with it. What I think it does help is players who have little tidbits of free time over the day, they can just hop on, make a move, send a search action and let that go for a couple hours. The player also doesn't have to worry about being punished for not being there at the exact minute something happens, since nobody really knows how things go down until after the Lunar Phase ends.
That is one idea on how to allow activity for people at their own pace at their own time especially when the mastermind is away. As I said earlier, I think you are overthinking the time availability a little C, since you are now seeing the problem from a different angle where you are affected to a greater extent. Prior you never really pushed for a solution as you were not one of the people who suffered from the problem, self included in that group. This isn't a new problem, its been around since we started, and C bringing it up here is our chance. Its high time to find an answer and see if we can incorporate a play style that doesn't force masterminds to live in a way that is cruel and unreasonable to them but still allows players to participate regardless of their time zone. If you read all of this then congratulations, it is quite a text wall.
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