The Continuum roleplaying game has been in existence for about five years now officially, and there are many elements of the game system that have aspects to them that make the players, and GMs, think a little bit. This Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page is designed to answer some of the commonly asked questions about one of the more complex Continuum game elements - actually running the Continuum RPG.
Expect the characters to frag themselves and each other a lot. Their mentor should be there for them to answer questions and to fix really nasty causality problems, but the chronies should really be getting themselves out of their own messes.
Later, once the players have gotten used to the possibilities and consequences of spanning, start to spring the more complex stuff on them. This is when bringing narcissists actively attacking them into the picture is a good idea. Find some important events in the locality of your spanners' corner that some narcissist might want to alter, and base a scenario around that. Maybe the chronies are fragged and have to stop the narcissist from changing things.
Other general advice includes... Think a little about the neighbouring corners, including the ones Up and Down from the player characters' corner. The PCs will start looking for fraternal help sooner or later.
Take notes! Keep a log of everything the characters do. It doesn't have to be quite as detailed as their Span cards, but it helps to have notes to refer to when the players mess something up on their cards and you have to remember what really happened.
Draw a map. If some action takes place in a particular location, draw a map of that location, and make notes of things that are known to happen, and at what time. If the PCs have learned that a narcissist appears in the driveway of a house one minute before a fire starts in that house, mark the narcissist's location and time. As the spanners flitter around a particular event, the location as well as time of everyone will become important.
Motivations are more important than events. Don't feel you have to pin down a particular event to a specific time. You can't create a timeline of everything that will happen in the scenario (because the characters aren't restricted by time!), but you can create a "Likely Span of Events" like in the rulebook, sort of a checklist of things to happen. Whether or not something happens is more about the personality and motivations of the characters (including the NPCs) than about cold, hard facts.
Don't overwhelm the players. Let them learn things as you play. They don't need to know about the Societies and the Eras and the Inheritors and the War with Antedesertium and Atlantis all at once. Let them discover these things as they go. For them, it will be much more fun to discover these things themselves than to have you tell them everything all at once.
Lack of regular play activity: While this can kill any game, it will kill Continuum faster. Why? Because you constantly have to come up with a reason why characters are missing rendezvous or not able to do something at any given moment in time. Characters in Continuum should be able to do anything, anywhen, and anywhere they like. If you don't hear from someone for a few days or a week, it's much harder to simply ignore them or say they got "held up" or do something else.
Record keeping: This is an enhanced function of Continuum, but it can be a logistical nightmare, despite everyone's attempts to keep things simple and understandable. While the SpanCard product from Aetherco is a terrific game aid, it still necessitates that the players and their characters have a good idea of what Span Logs, Yet notations, and the like are all about.
Time Combat: Do *not* jump head first into Time Combat. Let the player characters gain and resolve Frag in a couple of different situations before springing Time Combat on them. Give them some accidental Frag because of lax item discipline or something, and see what they do. Throwing narcissists at them early on is a sure-fire disaster in the making. This isn't like most roleplaying games, where you can throw enemies at the players and then ad lib the story from there. It doesn't work that way.
Let the characters get to know their Corner early on: The very first story that one is tempted to run in the game will take the characters outside their Corner. Unfortunately, this means that the group had little to hold them together. They have no shared "home," and no real attachments to the places they will span around, because they probably won't be spending time in these areas for a while. There was no incentive to learn about and explore this new place. A better idea would be to send the characters on a journey _somewhen_, off in a strange time, but still within the boundaries of the Corner.
One should also realize that the process of learning about the spanner way of life is identical for players and characters. Instead of explaining everything ahead of time, have their characters ask their mentor questions. Everything can be learned in-character. (One exception is Time Combat. Type up the Time Combat section and make copies for the players. Time Combat is too abstract and complicated for simple verbal explanations.)
The rules "mechanics" of the game are so easy to learn that even traditionally stubborn players, who constantly ask what they're supposed to roll in other games pick up Continuum 's rules in just one hour.
Just be sure to explain the circumstances under which the players were Invited. You don't have to describe the exact scene, just explain what the Invitation process was like, in general terms.
The bottom line: the players don't need to read the rulebook, or even a rules abstract. Introduce it to them as they go. Make them learn the game *in character*.
"In a film, you don't often see the characters eating or going to the bathroom, yet it's assumed they do. When you *do* see this stuff (or anything in a novel, play, film, or other narrative), it's necessary to reveal information or move the story in a particular direction. This economy of information flow makes the story more exciting (I personally do not want to see Luke Skywalker take a crap behind a tree on Dagobah, for every day of his Jedi training, for one thing, it would take a week to watch). How you run your campaigns is ultimately up to you, but judicious editing of assumed character actions seems to me to become more necessary in this game, lest your game sessions revolve around Alice's hot dog fun.
"I'm not bashing your game, we've had similar experiences, and fun, with the mental acrobatics of mundane events becoming problematic from potential frag. I'm simply trying to give some advice on keeping the game moving along at an exciting pace for everyone. Getting back to asking Alice's player what she's hungry for, when it's a player character you need an opinon from, sometimes going straight to the "horse's mouth" (sorry Alice), is the best source. I wonder if Occam's wife used his razor on her legs?"
Plus, setting the game in your home town means you don't have to design the setting! David Trimboli has run all of his Continuum games based in the neighbourhood (specifically, Long Island; even "The Death Hand of Saint No-One" takes place on the island proper), and I've run most of my games in the Ottawa area, simply because it makes life simpler.
"The Scribes are fanatics for Truth, due to their work, but it's the thing they're most into. But most loyal Continuum spanners don't like to lie, since it muddles information. Lying may not be explicitly forbidden by the First and Third Maxims, but it makes them messy to maintain, since the truth will out. In any case, saying "Further information is not available here," tends to keep most spanners happy, and the recriminations to a minimum.
"Always tell the truth? Not really. The Universe Is. This means there is only one set of events that actually happen. Lying about it doesn't change the event. The act of lying is an event in itself.
"Let's take an example. Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf appears and tells you that tomorrow the U.S. troops surrounding Baghdad will be routed with burning fire and death.
"You have your doubts. But being a spanner, you go Up a day to find out.
"On this day, Minister al-Sahhaf is in the rubble-strewn street, informing you that the armour brigades that have invaded the capital have all been surrounded, and that by daybreak tomorrow all will have been driven out or destroyed.
"You're less convinced now. But you go Up a day, just to see, and can't find al-Sahhaf anywhere. There are American soldiers all over the place, though.
"Well, that's not good enough. So you go back Down a day, watch al-Sahhaf addressing your junior self from a safe hiding place, and then follow him as he leaves. He skips into a taxi, but you're able to teleport at will, so you easily tail him to the building where he's hiding, and then span in there.
"It takes a few blind tries, but eventually you appear in the dark empty closet where Minister al-Sahhaf, sitting on the floor in his dress uniform, cleaning his glasses and muttering to himself about all the decisive Iraqi victories he's witnessed, and how swiftly and mercilessly the Republican Guard has destroyed the infidels in that little broken parallel universe he believes in so completely. After a few minutes, he notices you standing there, and puts his glasses back on, where he squints to see you in the hot, still darkness. You give him a very serious look, and inform him that tomorrow, you weren't able to find him anywhere in Baghdad.
"Moral of the story? If something is really easy to check on, you can find out who's lying and who's telling the truth.
"Spanners can always go and look. And the Continuum is ultimately more mighty than all the non-spanner armies ever assembled."
When the chronies split up, I recommend giving each group turns lasting five real-time minutes each. If someone takes a lot of time to do something, he's going to miss out on some of the action because he's got his own action going somewhere else. Not every spanner is present at every corner activity.
Why do you need to keep everyone "in sync"? This is a time travel game we're talking about. Being out-of-sync is natural!
This approach allows players to handle things in their preferred way. If I'm interested in problem-solving, I can spend my turn doing that. A role-player can spend his turn interacting with other characters. And so on.
So don't worry about keeping the chronies' Ages synchronized with each other. They aren't. Allow players to make whatever choices they want. Control the flow of the game, not their choices.
And always prepare your scenarios or events in such a way that allows them to happen at variable times. Don't say that the chronies *must* go to June 1, 1990. Perhaps plan on that date, but be prepared for unexpected moves by the players, and be prepared to move that event to another date as appropriate.
Think of Cynthia in the rulebook. When she's Invited, she knows nothing about spanning, and is surrounded by her chronies who know a whole lot more than she does. For instance, Sven is there, being helpful and supportive.
Now think about it. Once Cynthia gains expertise as a spanner, she can go and visit her chronies when they're just starting to learn. Span 3 Cynthia is present when Span 1 (I think) Sven arrives at the corner Cynthia mentors. She gets to tell him a thing or two.
Don't think I'm ignoring the social aspects of time travel. I'm not! I'm trying to show you some of its implications. One of those aspects is having a relationship with someone that, from your perspective, doesn't "grow." It exists. Your participation in the relationship on different levels lets you see aspects of it that you hadn't seen before.
You will still be playing out this social aspect of Continuum life, but you need to do it only for certain things. Design your scenarios to include out-of-sequence friendships and so on. Don't play out the stuff the characters experience in down-time, unless there are no player characters whose Yets you'd be messing with.
For instance, consider the example in the book where Evana is teaching Cynthia about housework farther Down. This probably isn't something you'd design into a scenario, but it might happen during the time when a spanner is resting, or between scenarios. Now, if Cynthia is a player character, and Evana and Charlie are NPCs, then there's no problem. The GM is in control of NPCs, so it's not necessary for any player to play out those characters' experiences.
Suppose Cynthia and Evana are both player characters. If both players arrange for their characters to rendezvous at that level, then play it out as normal. Charlie is still an NPC, so he's not part of the consideration of playability. However, if Cynthia's player sent her character to that level, and Evana's player did not, then the scene should not be played out, or even detailed. To do so would put a Yet burden to Evana's *player*, but not her character.
If you're careful about it, you can even cheat. You might mention that a player character sees another player character (not being played) at a certain, unimportant locality. If the second player isn't around to hear this, and if the first player won't have any reason to mention it, you might get away with not telling the second player about it, and not making it a requirement that his character go there. If no one is the wiser, you might be able to cheat like this. I don't recommend it. Besides, you can also explain it away by suggesting that it wasn't actually the spanner he seemed to be. Maybe someone in disguise. Of course, you'd better be prepared for that locality to suddenly be swarming with the chronies, trying to figure out who the intruder is!
So, you should indeed play out the social aspects of the Continuum, but choose your scenes. Don't force the players into actions the characters wouldn't necessarily take. Abstract scenes that aren't important, but that would complicate play that way. Besides, there's only so much TV-watching, bathroom-cleaning, and grocery shopping that players will be able to stand. Go ahead and abstract the rest, and get back to the adventure.
Special thanks to Chris Adams, Dave Fooden, Barbara Manui, David Trimboli, and the folks on the Continuum Mailing List for their help in the compiling of this FAQ information.