As Player Characters (PCs) in "The Republic Reborn" (RR), we are trying to accomplish two tasks simultaneously: Advance our PC in the brutal world of Roman politics while at the same time we're all collaborating in an effort to tell a heck of a good story!

Just like the famous "First Man In Rome" novel series by Colleen McCullough, the overall storyline contains tidbits and details which, although the general readership/audience knows what's going on, individual characters may not.

For example, in the book, we all gasp in amazement when we find that Sulla is killing off his mistresses (Sulla, a bad boy! Who'd have thought it?), but the other characters don't have a clue.

Similarly, in our game, even though a PC may share his inmost thoughts with his fellow readers, we don't expect for a minute that the other PC's would know these thoughts, and therefore we are not free to act upon them.

Perfect Example: We all know that Brutus has been a very, very naughty boy in Asia! We know this from his storyline posts that he had the Governor-Archon of Rhodes whacked (anachronistic Mafia term) and that he "fudged" his after action report about his battle with the pirates big-time. But we know this only because he told the reader, not because he told other player characters!! That's an important distinction.

Now, Brutus may have been a little sloppy in some of his cover-up work, and some of his misdeeds may come to light eventually...an example might be that a sailor from the Rhodian Fleet, now in Ostia for ship upgrades, might get a little drunk and tell tales about what really happened at Samos, and that word might eventually get back to Brutus' political rivals...but until that happens (as a result of an Arbiter's die roll), there's absolutely no way that our PC's could know about or act upon that information! To do so would be a clear impossiblility, because there's no way we'd know.

The same is true for news (even good news) that happens at some far-removed location. Taking the example of Brutus again: we all read of his battle against the rebels and immediately knew of the outcome. Although we as readers know immediately of his heroics and well-fought battle, our PCs in Rome will not learn of events until some time later...in this case the time it would take a fast courrier to reach Rome from Asia. (For the exact time delay, consult the "Finances" thread, and look at the map there. Essentially, the time lag is one day IRL for each space you have to cross on the map.)

Hope that helps...this role-playing stuff can be complicated, but that's what makes it so fun!