[AW] Question about healing

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This sounds good on first read, but, what happens if those 24 hours take three sessions to play through?

The MC has a lot of options to prevent this if it isn't working for them. It's hard to imagine a case where the MC wouldn't be able to control the flow of time. Just saying "A couple days later, October approaches you..." before a scene shoots you forward two days. And if you get an opportunity to make a hard moves, you can capture people and separate them and make everything unstable before you bring the hardholder back.

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Also, if the hardholder is going in and out of consciousness for a week, they're not necessarily out of the action. They can still make Leadership moves with their gang if it's intact. They can still make Barter moves from their bed if they come to. They can still manipulate people in their lucid moments.

[JMendes]

Hoy,

The MC has a lot of options to prevent this if it isn't working for them. It's hard to imagine a case where the MC wouldn't be able to control the flow of time. Just saying "A couple days later, October approaches you..." before a scene shoots you forward two days.

Yea, that was sort of my point. If you're in the middle of the thick of things, this is pretty much unfair for everyone else, as it robs them of the chance to address whatever interesting is going on.

(I should point out that we're a rather slow-playing group. We generally don't gloss over stuff and it takes us a bit of time to get through a scene. This is not a bad thing, it's just how it is. )

Also, if the hardholder is going in and out of consciousness for a week, they're not necessarily out of the action. They can still make Leadership moves with their gang if it's intact. They can still make Barter moves from their bed if they come to. They can still manipulate people in their lucid moments.

This. This is entirely true. Sure, they may be shorter scenes, but that's part of playing the character like a real person.

Cool. Thanks for the input, guys. Good stuff.

Cheers,
J.

[Noclue]

Yea, that was sort of my point. If you're in the middle of the thick of things, this is pretty much unfair for everyone else, as it robs them of the chance to address whatever interesting is going on.

Hey J, I'm not sure if you were done with the thread, but I'm interested in why you think this is so. I'm not following. How does time dilation rob people of the chance to address stuff?  October still comes to you, only it's two days later. Whatever interesting things need addressing still get addressed. Everybody's still in the think of things.

If not. If something really needs resolving right then and there, the players can resolve it. Then have the next thing happen two days later, or whenever. The MC can move countdown clocks forward, advance threats, etc. Obviously, we don't have an example of actual play to work with, but I think most conflicts would remain interesting.

Time is dilated all the time in games. We don't tend to spend time with characters while they nap quietly, or eat breakfast alone. We move to the next important thing.

[JMendes]

Ahey,

Hey J, I'm not sure if you were done with the thread, but I'm interested in why you think this is so.

I was, but I can come back.

Anyway, to answer your question, yes, time dillation happens all the time in RPGs, but so does time compression. And by "thick of things", I mean the type of sessions that it takes a full 3+ hour session to play through about half-an-hour's worth of game time.

Naturally, that's not all the time. Our games AW or otherwise, are by and large fluff-free. Sooner or later, things will quiet down enough that it's ok to move forward a couple of days.

Thing is, this is my intuition at play, and I can't really demonstrate, but I have a nagging feeling that PCs are more likely to get seriously injured during the former type of sessions, than the latter. In case, if we were talking about the more pliable sessions, this whole issue would never have arisen anyway. (And by the way, in that case, it really doesn't matter which option(s) the MC chooses, anyway...)

To give you a bit more actual play info on what I mean, the Angel character (incidentally, being played by my wife) is in hot pursuit of a kid that was grabbed by Bad Guys (tm). The kid is important for his knowledge, but is also personally important for the player. The kid's badly hurt, too, so his life is at stake. Now, sure, the MC can skip ahead two days by simply announcing that she lost the trail, and that two days later, she happened upon a clue. But, given the frantic nature of the action so far, it would be a jarring break of pace. It would, at the very least, rob her of the ability to engage with the frantic. I'm sure we could gloss over it, but it would be unfair to do it just because I'm out of action.

The other characters had other equally pressing things going on, involving a drug dealer chase, generalized kidnapping, and a biological treasure of some value.

The entire three hour session took maybe just over an hour of game time. The next session promisses to be equally dense.

Cheers,
J.

[Mathew E. Reuther]

Which sounds to me like it's interesting enough to be in a state of low- or non-activity. Good stuff.

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Cool. So, just riffing off of that as an example:

Since everyone's busy doing their own things that don't seem to directly fuck with the hardholder's world, maybe I don't lay him up for a week. Maybe I just knock him out for 24 hours. Then I turn to the Angel. She comes upon the bad dudes with the wounded kid. He's bleeding out bad and she's got no time to fuck around. What does she do? Let's say she goes aggro and threatens the bad guys somehow (like no medical treatment for any of their gang if the kid dies). We resolve that with a roll and she rolls awesome. She takes the kid and scurries into the waste, but the kid needs rest and treatment. So she decides to hunker down for a bit. Okay, she's good.

Then I turn to the others and deal with their shit. Just to get them to a natural stopping point. The Chopper chases down the drug dealers and there's a gunfight. The Savvy Head is dealing with the biothingy and needs something from the nearby ruins. Whatever they decide.

Then I go back to the hardholder and wake him with something nasty. Someone he cares about is wounded, but the Angel is out saving a fucking kid. Or his hardhold is under fire and the damn Chopper is off chasing drug dealers. Or a piece of necessary gear is broke and his damn fool of a Savvy Head is playing in the ruins. The hardholder player really hasn't been "out of the action" for any longer than usual when you're resolving other player's shit. But the hardholder character has been down, without any say in what all these people he is forced to rely on have been doing today.

[JMendes]

Hoy,

Yup, James, that's pretty much how I (we?) expect things to go down.

Only thing is, there are a lot of balls in the air. Maybe many of them can be brought to an acceptable rest as neatly as you described, but maybe a few of them won't, and so ongoing action will go on for a bit longer. Like maybe a session or so.

But that's all good. Even if my character is out of action, as long as the game still engages me, as a player, I can still kibitz and cheer and whatnot.

In other words, Mathew, yes, what you said.

Cheers,
J.

[Paul T]

I think it would also be kosher to do one of those Angel healing situations:

"He looks like he shouldn't be moving for the next week or so."

"How can I get him up-and-moving-around faster than that?"

"Well, maybe if you could talk Plover into handing you a share of his hyperstim needles, you could try to see what that would do."

That seems like a fun and interesting fix that doesn't violate the ficiton, just complicates it.