Quote:
Originally Posted by AsenRG
I'm sure I don't need to say anything about "a persuasion attempt".
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Yes! In the real world, persuasion (intimidation, etc) turns on understanding the personality and personal situation of the person you're talking to. There's no such thing as generic persuasion: an argument that works on one person won't work on another
because it worked on the first person. (Think of, oh, any given election result that surprised you because you personally thought the winning candidate was unappealing.) This is why I loathe the term "social combat" - it imposes a really unhelpful model.
So a really important persuasion attempt should turn on finding out information about the other party, and that can be an adventure goal in itself. Social interaction shouldn't be as subtle, complicated, and interesting as combat - it should be
more subtle, complicated, and interesting than combat.
With regard to the wilderness travel, there's not going to be an ideal solution there, beyond stating the problem up front to your players and asking them to behave like adults. I.e., if the story demands a time skip for some players, and...
1) There really is nothing for them to do while others are doing things. (You probably can't have every journey involve being attacked by bandits, finding mysterious ruins, or being diverted by the need to find a lost child. Although you can certainly do it once or twice.) (=Expand the story to match the other players' story.)
2) What the other players are doing can't be meaningfully summarized to make it take less posting time (=Compress the rest of the story to match the first players'.) As AsenRG has noted, you can expand activities, but you can also shorthand them.
...then (as long as you keep the timescales consistent, rather than having things move at the speed of drama - and I can absolutely see that "real" time might be essential to the sandboxy feel) -
- I think you might just have to establish in advance with your players that, when a situation like this comes up, you will all discuss how to avoid it, and at the end of the day, some solution will be found, by your GM fiat if necessary.
Either by the players who are going to be "absent" delaying their travel plans (or whatever) until a moment when the others can synchronize with them by doing some "compressable" activity. Or, alternatively, there will be some mysterious and narratively convenient delay that prevents the others from going ahead with what they were going to do until everyone can be synchronized. ("You were all set to explore the Lost Ruins of Doggone Evil, but then Sally the Warrior had news that her Aunt Meg was very, very ill, and you had to wait while she sat by her aunt's bedside. It was very worrying for Sally, but luckily her Aunt Meg is better now.")
Sometimes, the only solution lies in everyone's commitment to providing an enjoyable playing experience for others.
EDIT: Or - and this is the traditional tabletop solution and I probably should have said it first - have backup characters, so that a player whose "main" character will be out of the action for a while can play his or her "other" character in the meantime.