From:	Justin Fang <justinf@****.CALTECH.EDU>
Subject:	Re: IF: Summary (sort of)
Date:	Tue, 15 Oct 1996 13:18:48 -0700

Just a couple of comments...

Sascha Pabst wrote:

>3) The "unknown" fire elementals. Bull (or was it Johnny99?) suggested they
>remembered him of Mantises, and that he already had contact with mantis-bugs.
>(Well, most here should know Bull's Background .-) This would mean Bugs can
>use hermetic magic, which is unknown so far (and could be another info Bull
>brings out - see 1) )

If you want to say that there's a (meta)human(s) collaborating with some
bugs who's a hermetic and summons elementals that look vaguely like insects,
that's fine. I happen to think elementals are highly variable in appearence
myself.

If you want to say that bugs can use hermetic magic themselves, that's not
so fine. Someone turned into a fleshform will lose all magical ability.
Insect spirits can summon only other insect spirits of the appropriate type,
and I don't think there's such a thing as a "insect elemental".

>We have to find some kind of protocol to handle situations where more then one
>character is at one place. this is problematic, especially if the people
>acting "together" are living in different time zones.

Note that you can backdate messages if you have to.

>If no "fast action" is needed, both players may conference via Private
>EMail (or even IRC)

For people using Unix systems, the talk program and its derivatives, such as
ytalk, may prove useful.

>and one of them is offering a summary, either in form of a short story (this
>seems to be possible, I have seen one of these on TK without the author
>being flamed on Plot-D) or as video-sequence, or ... well.

Actually, short stories aren't within the allowed format. Having a character
who attended the meeting send a summary or report to someone who missed it
is a standard technique. So are eye-camera or security videos kept for
private archives (use "*****INTERNAL: Secret Blackmail Material" or something
similar for those.)

>Otherwise I'd suggest to keep the characters physically seperatedand give
>small jobs to individual characters, like "You go and look at this and/or find
>out that" and the player then gives the rest of "us" a summary (and
now, there
>we _can_ use Shadowland! :-)

One final note: not everything that happens has to be in a message to the
list. Lots of stuff can be assumed to happen "off stage" with the
consequences only appearing at some later point.

--
Justin Fang (justinf@****.caltech.edu)
This space intentionally left blank.