[mark12_30]

I've also been thinking whether we want to compress time. I lean away from this in general, but in a game where this much distance is covered I felt I should think it over. I came up with a few ideas.

The obvious one is the old "And then after a whole month had gone by, our heroes found themselves at such and such a place." I grant that sometimes this approach is very neccessary, especially for games with a tight time-limit. I suppose it'll do in a pinch... However, as a writer, I've never cared for it.

But another option would be, when we reach a section of the journey where we want to really make tracks, each writer could describe one full day of travel, as briefly or as detailed as you like. I confess I like this option a great deal.

For an extreme moment, let's imagine the game from here on out as as Amroth's entire 2000-mile journey. Let's say he *just * started out. On horseback (good old Echo!) and guessing 25 miles/ day, that averages out to 80 days, or a little under three months real-time.

Amroth is combing river banks and searching hard, whereas Ravion's group is just trying to find Mellon-Amroth. So even if they are on foot, they can take certain short-cuts. And they may not be on foot for very long depending on the generosity of Rohan's East Emnet.

Gondor games have no set time limit. If we want to, we can cover the entire 2000-mile journey, both groups, in hour-by-hour detail, and take as long as we want to do it. That's up to us as a team. We can stretch this out for nine months if we want to. (Yes, once I was in a game from February to November. And I was the short-timer rookie in that game. Others were in it for much longer.)

I say all this mostly because the idea of a game that went on forever was stressing me out! But if we shoot for a day per day (so to speak) we're still looking at about three months from now. If we want more detail, fine. But we've got other options than the "disappearing month syndrome."

Thoughts and comments?