So, I've made it clear I intend to run a year's worth of stories concurrently.
There are a couple of reasons for doing this. One, it allows players of different posting frequency an opportunity to play as deeply as they wish. The other is it moves Magus development along quicker. There may be cases where we have to retcon something (a grog dies in one season and isn't available in another season where he's also currently making an appearance), but I think those things are likely incidental to the story the Magus is involved in. One of my frustrations as a pbp player is that there is a tendency to see a Magus develop very slowly, I'm hoping this solves that issue, by and large.
I need a little bit of player information to sort things out. The first thing is your posting frequency. I have a sense of that for many of you already, I'm just looking for something in your own words, to confirm my understanding. Additionally, I need a general idea of your location, if it's not listed in your profile. Those two items dictate how fast a story progresses, just as much as frequency, since it appears we have people in vastly different times zones (I'm eastern time in the US, btw, I know there's an aussie and a couple of players from Europe). I'd also like to, ooc have you guys sort out a season where your character agrees to manage the covenant. Since there are five players, one player will not manage the covenant during the year. You can expect a story related to a flaw to happen concurrently with other events for the year. I'd like to more or less keep this order and rotate it through, so if you manage spring in year 1, you'll manage summer in year two and progress through until year 5 where you don't manage anything (20 seasons). As it stands right now, I have 15 story seeds involving my own ideas, and your story flaws. That leaves 5 seasons where I can drop in stories related to my overall arc for the saga.
Advancement is the stickiest thing I'm contemplating right now. Focusing on magus characters only, it is entirely possible, should a player wish it, that he may be involved in elements of stories in other seasons. Tracking advancement under those conditions is challenging at best. Part of me wants to go with an annual advancement model where players pick 3 things to do during the year, and everything gets resolved at year end. This way, I have only one character sheet to track per player. This nerfs things a couple of things, though. The two keys being item creation and spell invention/learning. Arts and abilities probably aren't a HUGE deal at present character development levels. If you would normally be able to create an item, prepare it for enchantment and invest effects desired in three seasons, the item would be fully created at year end. If you are increasing an art, so as to increase your LT to learn spells, all that would be accomplished at year end. This is a bookkeeping (and sanity keeping) issue, more than anything.
For grogs and companions I will go with an annual advancement model and allocate xps to them at the end of the year, it's just easier bookkeeping since many of them will end up in stories throughout the year, and as zlorfik had suggested, their advancement in abilities, isn't usually so vast as to make a huge contribution in stories. More than likely if it would've made a differene for a companion, a Confidence point could've been spent to achieve the same result.
Have at it...
