The Corners FAQ

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 - Corners.

Corners Frequently Asked Questions

What is a Corner?

A corner is a homestead or equivalent establishment where spanners of a particular locality (see FAQ Answer above) can be themselves without leveller scrutiny. In essence, it's a local safe house or home base for spanners.

How frequent are known spanner Corners in the late Piscean Era?

Fraternal corners might be one per city or possibly state. It seems likely there would be a corner representing each Fraternity in New York City, Boston, Los Angeles, London, Berlin, etc.

Smaller corners are likely to occur in ratio to population... possibly over both time and space. NYC might have dozens (but not hundreds), or perhaps only a dozen total. Somewhere in that range makes sense to me.

Of course, there would be variations; maybe Washington D.C. has an abnormally large number of corners because of political significance. Maybe London lacks a Quicker corner in modern times, for no particularly good reason (less people joined the Quicker, they moved elsewhere, etc.). Or Paris has three Scribal corners, just because.

Europe might have less corners per population, since things are closer together (and therefore you can span to where you need to get easier).

In general, whatever the range you choose, I think that having variations is a good idea.

What is the actual lifespan of a Corner? It seems to me that a corner is set up by a Mentor, and defends and works with a certain region of spacetime, but what happens when all the Span Ones are now Twos, and the Twos that were there have gone on to do other things with their lives? Does the Corner continue, with the Mentor being replaced by a different Mentor, or does the Corner shut down or what?

This is a good question, and Further Information takes a good long look at Corners. As a general rule, I've always pictured it as one Mentor, one Corner for Novices. The Fraternities run things a little differently, depending on need, and most importantly, depending on culture.

I could picture many - maybe even the majority of - novice Corners in most cultures having two mentors, one male and one female, to resemble human family structures.

Novice Corners tend to be about 20-70 years, depending on lifespan expectancy of the surrounding levellers, and how the Corner hides its true nature. Fraternity Corners vary wildly from narrow Foxhorn military positions in the Geminid, to the millennia-stretching Dreamer strongholds in Australia and Delphi. And the Inheritors easily treat spacetime as the Rubik's Cube it is, with Corners existing across notable gaps of time and outer space.

The Corners are always there, of course. However, the player characters and their mentor move on after living there, both out of human instinct and the absolute necessity of avoiding frag. The chronological "borders" are just that: boundaries of the "domain" of the corner, like the boundaries of a homeowner's property, or a city's limits.

As a would-be GM for Continuum, I've got to put together a corner and a mentor for the corner. However, there do not seem to be any rules for generating higher level Spanners. Can you give some guidelines for what the typical Span 3 ought to have as stats and skills?

The minimum requirements for increasing in Span detail the necessary Skills for a character of that rank of Span. Other Skills naturally depend on the spanner's experience in his Age, his current spanner occupation, and other normal details of developing a roleplaying character, i.e., player's discretion.

The minimum requirements are spread throughout the main rule book, though, so here's a cross-reference and recommended Character Points list from Further Information, page 16:

Span One: As delineated in the main rulebook, Ones begin with 25 character points and 1 free Benefit.

Span Two: 35 character points and 1 free Benefit. (See Continuum , pg. 59 for minimums.)

Span Three: 50 character points and 1 free Benefit. (See Continuum , pg. 87 for minimums.) At Span 3 and above, character should also roll on the Yet of the In-Between Table (see Continuum , pg. 176) for some instant, if generalized, events awaiting in his Yet.

Span Four: 75 character points and 1 free Benefit. (See Continuum , pg. 93 for minimums.)

Span Five: 100 character points and 1 free Benefit. (See Continuum , pg. 100 for minimums.)

Character points may be spent as per the rules in Continuum , page 11.

All requirements (but not points!) are cumulative. Further Information has further information on this subject, like calculating a higher Span character's Age. It also has a complete example corner, and some prep sheets to help a GM write up his own.

What about the *society* aspect of time travel? Why organise yourself in Corners if you don't grow together?

It's all about society. Give some good thought to how a corner must exist, and you'll see that people just won't be learning the same stuff at the same time. At one level, you may be the novice and your buddy is the expert, and at another you're the expert and your buddy is the novice. You learn from each other.

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.

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.

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