Sometimes, adventures need to take longer in game than a single session can cover, incorporating multiple sessions in a single days worth of adventuring - and multiple days, in a single adventure taking place.

While it is possible to scene lock characters for an extended duration of time, this tends to be unfavorable for the players and DM alike, and leads to conflicts of players wanting to roleplay their character with someone not on the adventure, but not being able to because they are scene locked and unable to log that character into the game. Players then have to wait sometimes several days, or cannot get on when the group agrees to continue, and so is scene locked for no reason.

To accommodate this, Novus Utum uses "Bubble Adventures" to offer multi-day, multi-session adventures to characters while not completely pulling them out of playing with other PC's while on the adventure. Effectively, what this does is places the adventure "Out of Phase" to the real world time that the game exists in. While your character is participating in the adventure, they also get to play (within certain limits, described below) outside of it.

Novus Utum DM's will always forewarn their players that they are starting a bubble adventure and will always permit players to withdraw from the adventure if they are not interested in being a part of the bubble. The option to swap characters at the beginning of the bubbles formation will also be provided, so that you can choose to put a character you perhaps use less or feel is better suited for the adventure into the bubble instead.

Characters In Bubbles

Once you have chosen to place your character in the bubble adventure, the following rules apply:

1. Your character is now participating in an adventure that has not technically happened yet. While the Bubble Adventure is ongoing, even if your character chooses to leave the bubble adventure, you cannot discuss the adventure or its details in character with other players. The exception to this, of course, is that you can have private room discussions with other players that are in the adventure with you.
2. You CAN still Roleplay your Character that is in the bubble with other people. This allows you to just enjoy your PC with people outside of the Bubble, and continue to gain Roleplay XP from playing your character in other rooms as normal.
3. You CANNOT participate in other scenes or adventures with the character in the bubble. While you're allowed to Roleplay at your leisure, if a scene or adventure is started in the room you're in with your character , you must withdraw. The DM's are aware that bubble adventures will cause this and will accommodate other characters being brought in instead, to participate in the scene / adventure. There are numerous reasons this rule exists, including the use of items found inside / outside the bubble, character death, and other concerns.
4. You can leave at any time, but certain rules still apply. Sometimes, you get in to an adventure, then decide you want out. It happens, and when it does, the DM's will certainly allow it. However, your character will still be asked to spend some time out of character when the bubble ends (so if you were gone for 1 of the 3 days, you'll be asked to spend a day OOC at the end of the bubble) and you'll be asked to keep details of the bubble adventure secret in character until the bubble adventure ends for the other players. You can immediately go back IC, start playing in Scenes and Adventures, and enjoy gaming as normal otherwise.
5. You will be required to spend time OOC at the end of the Bubble. Once the bubble adventure ends, the characters that have participated in the adventure will be required to "make up" the actual game time that they were on the adventure. This means, if the Bubble adventure spans a week of game time, your character will be OOC for a week. Breaching this will result in penalties to your XP from the Bubble Adventure.
6. Your characters stats are locked for the duration of the bubble adventure. Unless the DM chooses otherwise (such as arriving at a plot point that dictates reason to allow such a thing), you cannot level your character until the bubble is completed. This should not affect gameplay outside the Bubble since you are not allowed in Scenes or Adventures outside of the Bubble Adventure itself. It's highly recommended that you do NOT level up your character even if you gain enough XP to do so while you are in the Bubble Adventure, as this will affect the automatic stats applied to your rolls during the adventure itself, and cause you to have to remember to manually adjust your rolls accordingly.

Bubble Rewards

Bubble Adventures provide a unique opportunity to earn some fantastic rewards. While characters on the Bubble Adventure will be in danger that is more significant because of the nature of Bubble Adventures (multiple encounters / day, more resource management, overnight encounters, dungeon crawls, etc.) the rewards will also be more significant for the characters. Standard adventure rewards can apply to each scene inside a bubble, meaning that the end reward of XP and GP can be significantly higher than a single adventure would offer a PC, resulting in significant gold or potential unique items. Additionally, Bubble Adventures will almost always have some manner of prestige associated with them, gaining RP boons for the PC's, introducing them to unique and powerful NPC's, and many other benefits.

The spoils of Adventures are split equally amidst the players based on their participation in each scene.