Day 51: Early Exits

Over at the TAG forum, Ron said:

Early PC exits are something to consider. Is there something like a way station/shelter of some kind to hide out during a storm? A scurv outpost? Underground waterway? Some temporary dumping ground out in the wastes for a PC type of mechanic. But I take it this has to be an in-game-outta-game co-ordination thingy for this to be accomodated tho, eh?

The Tag’s Folly game is based on the players making groups that do sorties out into the wilderness, so a single player making an early exit is really hard to make coherent.

At the table, this is pretty awkward.  As GM I have my hands full with monsters and the set.  Even if we had another player play the missing character, the tactical effectiveness of the party drops significantly without the “it’s my character” level of mastery.  Otherwise, the players suddenly lose a major portion of their combat effectiveness – a deadly prospect.

In the fiction, the situation is even worse.  A bold adventurer joins up with an expedition, heads out with a group to stay alive in the Wastes, and then… maybe halfway out… disappears.  Now, you could say he decided to go home, or got lost, or whatever, but it stretches believability that:

1. The character is competent
2. The other characters would want to bring him again.

But I think Ron’s also asking whether there are safe zones out in the wilderness where a party can rest, and if it’s possible to make a safe route home.  The answer is yes, those are out there, but they haven’t been discovered or made yet.  The players may decide to invest some of their gold in making a waystation, or a player may set a retiring character to patrol a certain stretch of the Wastes.

Here’s a freebie:

Take 10, Arcana: One of the wonders of the old Domes was a network of magical conduits which could allow nearly instantaneous travel between destinations.  Some of these were reactivated for a time in the early days of the Big Tribe.