What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real
world and campaign in a game? We have been using some of this in the
games I recently have been playing
in, and it manages to make for some interesting interactions.
But on the other hand it also didn't quite interfere with the game as
much as I though it could, mostly because there was a lull in games
I think.
I was thinking lately that esp. Traveller might have been intended to
be used with something like that, as every jump between different
worlds is
exactly one week long. (allowing for players to jump into a system and
jump out at the end of the game, safely back on their ship)
So, what to do? In a best-effort hybrid approach I think we would
prefer 1:1 time passing. Then there's no discussion between the
referees of the setting. In addition to that, in a particular location
, a referee can "l ock it up" by not advancing the time between
sessions for an extended dungeon exploration. The consequences are:
the location is "off limits" for other parties while this is happening
. If, at a later date, the first party "gives up" or is slain or
imprisoned, any rescue attempts must start in real-time, so many weeks
later, even if that is also problematic. Essentially the feature is:
When the camera leaves the dungeon, time catches up. Such a setup
might work better than the two variants I'm experiencing
right now.
Cheers
Alex
What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real
world and campaign in a game?
Alex Schroeder <[email protected]> wrote:
Just yesterday players said they were unhappy with the current setup
where my region is ahead of the other regions on the timeline and
therefore just one day passes between sessions in order to give\ the
other regions an opportunity to catch up. Since I run more games than
the others, however, my players feel that effectively their high-level characters that have to travel to distant schools in order to train are
now out of the game for twenty sessions or more. And that's not cool,
either.
I'm suspecting the next iteration will be that if at the end of the
session somebody needs to go train, and there are no overriding concerns
, we will skip ahead one week and ignore the need of the other regions
to catch up.
In rec.games.frp.dnd [email protected] wrote:
What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real
world and campaign in a game?
[...]
I was thinking lately that esp. Traveller might have been intended to
be used with something like that, as every jump between different
worlds is
exactly one week long. (allowing for players to jump into a system and
jump out at the end of the game, safely back on their ship)
As one of the persons running a game with 1:1 time in a multi-referee
setup, I agree that there are sometimes very long breaks where you'd
think that people would do something. The party beats the Set cultists
and the session ends so there's no time to secure a power base and by
the time you get back, weeks have passed. Fair or unfai?
In another multi-referee setup, each referee is responsible for a region
of the setting, each region has a Discord channel and a bot keeps track
of the current in-game date for each channel. Advance the calendar as
you see fit, with the long term goals of both using 1:1 time if possible
, and catching up to the channel who's furthest ahead. Now the the
problem in AD&D is that training and travel to trainers takes more than
a week. In some cases, finding a high level magic user means travelling
to the magic university, the whole trip takes 29 in-game days. So next session, there is a little pressure to just advance the calendar by +29
days. Do this once or twice and your region plays in the future of every other region and travel of player characters between regions becomes impossible, making the unique premise a problem.
So, what to do? In a best-effort hybrid approach I think we would prefer
1:1 time passing. Then there's no discussion between the referees of the setting. In addition to that, in a particular location, a referee can "l
ock it up" by not advancing the time between sessions for an extended
dungeon exploration. The consequences are: the location is "off limits"
for other parties while this is happening. If, at a later date, the
first party "gives up" or is slain or imprisoned, any rescue attempts
must start in real-time, so many weeks later, even if that is also problematic. Essentially the feature is: When the camera leaves the
dungeon, time catches up.
I feel the real problem is, that STRICT TIME RECORS [were] NOT KEPT ...
Why is your area so far in the future? Why are other areas so far behind?
If every group agreed to share a common calender then this shouldn't
be an issue at all.
I thought Alex' ADnD game had this whole complicated setup with the
program that keeps tracking the time, just to get around all those
issues? How did this all happen to go that out of whack? Is Alex just
running that many games on that server?
(and not enough Stonehell? :P )
I guess one thing one could do is get people out into the planes for
some adventures, which just happen to be on some planes with a
completely different flow of time. Or maybe a venture into faerie. You
come back and it turns out barely any time has passed at all.
Or some good old time travel shenanigans.
I guess one thing one could do is get people out into the planes for
some adventures, which just happen to be on some planes with a
completely different flow of time. Or maybe a venture into faerie. You
come back and it turns out barely any time has passed at all.
Or some good old time travel shenanigans.
lkh <[email protected]> wrote:
I feel the real problem is, that STRICT TIME RECORS [were] NOT KEPT ...
Why is your area so far in the future? Why are other areas so far behind?
If every group agreed to share a common calender then this shouldn't
be an issue at all.
I think strict time records are kept (using a bot that keeps track of where each area is, with notes by referees about past and future events. It's
well recorded all right, but the problem is that there aren't the same
number of games per region. I run the most games, at the moment, and so – due to strict time record keeping and only loosely coupled calendars – my region ended up many weeks and months in the future. Now I'm trying to slow my region down but the alternative would be to convince all the other referees (some of them inactive at the moment) to speed up, skip ahead,
etc. But it's their region, with their own time records being kept… it’s hard, socially.
1 week actual time = 1 week of game time
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