> So you're assuming that if they're not being played,
> their actions somehow teach them less? Not just
> different things (farming, not fighting), but at a
> different rate?
Jane - I think David and I handle this quite differently. In our games, there is no real link between time passed and HPs received. For instance, sometime during the year (and sometimes twice during the year), I make my players engage in an "economics" contest - basically, to figure out how hard or easy it will be to feed themselves, their familes, dependents, retainers, herds, and so on. That's one contest that seasons to perform. So they get directed HP for whatever skills they used.
I view this "how do you get food on your table" contest as being essentially no different from the "what did you do at the Battle of Hofstarings Flood" contest. Both are contests that help move the story along and have potential consequences for the players (killed at battle or dead from starvation). Both give you HP. The main difference is that one contest took a few hours, the other took three seasons.
If a long passage of time happened - let's say my players left Dragon Pass and decided to homestead in Wenelia for a decade before returning to the chaos of Dragon Pass, I might be inclined to abstract that decade with a "homesteading contest" and give out points appropriately (and maybe a stack of "spend-it-anywhere" points). Upon their return, the players could later spend HP to come up with new skills or improvements that "happened" while they were homesteading ("Yeah, I learned to speak Ralian from the Trader Princes while we were Homesteading and spend the HP").
Jeff
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