You don't explicitly state it, but you appear to be programming a web game. By far the best module for the job is Apache::Session::File or Apache::Session::Database.

For each new player, create a session file and return the name of the session as a cookie (the session 'name' is a 20 char string). When they go to the next page, read their cookie and load the session, then read their values out it.

The documentation for Apache::Session goes into this in detail.

Make sure you do a search on CGI at search.cpan.org to find lots of juicy modules that will make you task easy.

Realistically, you should be able to implement this part of the program in 2-3 hours.

____________________
Jeremy
I didn't believe in evil until I dated it.