Time Locking Characters

Absenthia · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Absenthia** on Mon May 30, 2011 2:46 pm

This is something I've encountered on the site, is that people will "Time Lock" or "freeze" a character in a particular plot/setting.
Do you think it can be beneficial to a plot and development or is it just a pain in the rear to deal with?

I find it a bit of a pain, especially if your needing to finish something up and are waiting for roughly a month or longer.

RedRaine · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **RedRaine** on Mon May 30, 2011 4:26 pm

I'm sorry, I'm not exactly sure what you're getting at. Do you have any examples of this?

Absenthia · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Absenthia** on Mon May 30, 2011 5:47 pm

I'm sorry I should have been more clear.
Say you or the other person whom you are roleplaying with has to go, they decide to freeze the character(s) at the point you stopped until next time. This "Time Lock" prevents you from using the character elsewhere in the Multiverse, or wherever you might be roleplaying. It's basically saying lets hit pause and not use our characters elsewhere until we finish this.

Patcharoo · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Patcharoo** on Tue May 31, 2011 1:06 am

It's an issue that comes up when a character is confined in jail or alternatively in a situation where the outcome is questionable, IE a fight to the death.

You technically don't know when your character will get out/if your character will survive, so they might be timelocked into that position until a conclusion is reached.

This can vary from entirely reasonable (sorting it out in a few days) to rediculous (I know people who have had characters locked for 6 months!). I personally believe any time lock that goes over a week is pushing it. If a person plans to lock your character for more than a month they are entirely unreasonable.

Exceptions exist, but not many at all for me. One exception (and possibly the only I can think of) is if they are in an active forum roleplay that may change something important, but even then I totally think if you're involved in an RP on the Multiverse you should be fine to continue using them, the forum topic acting as a sort of 'This will happen/has happened/is happening' situation.

I don't mind timelocking a character for up to a week for one off events.

LawOfTheLand · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **LawOfTheLand** on Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:44 pm

I see time-locking characters as a necessary evil. Sure, it's undesirable, but the alternative is to create a plot hole by going on without a key character that, for all intents and purposes, has inexplicably vanished in the middle of the scene. Several people have anticipated this situation and come up with creative solutions, often by making such disappearances a fixture of the setting or something the character just does.

Another idea is that by the many-worlds theory that one must subscribe to to fully embrace The Multiverse, there is a different world where a character didn't make the choice that got him embroiled in a situation another of his incarnations now must face. In this way, one can play a time-locked character in a different scene entirely, the only hard and fast rule about the practice being that he can't influence the situation in which any of his other selves are time-locked. I find myself doing it all the time with Cryoface.

Time Locking Characters

a topic in Game Design Workshop, a part of the RPG forum.

Time Locking Characters

Re: Time Locking Characters

Re: Time Locking Characters

Re: Time Locking Characters

Re: Time Locking Characters

Post a reply

Make a Donation

Who is online