1:1 time between campaign and real world

[s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org]

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)

[Alex Schroeder]

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
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)

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.

Such a setup might work better than the two variants I'm experiencing
right now.

Cheers
Alex

[Alex Schroeder]

Post by Alex Schroeder
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
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
When the camera leaves the dungeon, time catches up. Such a setup
might work better than the two variants I'm experiencing

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.

Post by Alex Schroeder
right now.
Cheers
Alex

[lkh]

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

Hm, I don't know. I'd probably vote for those characters to be out of
the game, and start some new characters in the meantime.

For how long *realtime* would they have to "hang around" in the future?
Three months? I think that'd be acceptable.

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.

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

Thus aggravating the time problem?

~lkh

[Kyonshi]

Post by lkh

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

Hm, I don't know. I'd probably vote for those characters to be out of
the game, and start some new characters in the meantime.
For how long *realtime* would they have to "hang around" in the future?
Three months? I think that'd be acceptable.
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.

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

Thus aggravating the time problem?

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.

[Alex Schroeder]

Post by Kyonshi
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 )

Exactly true, because on that other server, at least one player proactively
organizes dates. Yay Mad Moses!

Post by Kyonshi
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.

That would explain why the idea took hold in the first place, for sure!

[lkh]

Post by Kyonshi
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.

Good Sir, these are excellent suggestions!

[Alex Schroeder]

Post by lkh
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.

[Kyonshi]

Post by Alex Schroeder

Post by lkh
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.

I guess this is a reason why there aren't many games with strict time
records and multiple DMs. I think this is an easy problem to run into.

So what's the solution?

I don't know if there would be anything, besides keeping the regions
only loosely interconnected, with a lot of ignoring the obvious dating
problems.

[lkh]

Post by Alex Schroeder

Post by lkh
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.

Now I see the catch: "loosely coupled calendars". Keeping time records is
just one part of the deal. Keeping the game calender in sync with real
time is the other.

I'm just looking at Vol. III, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures,

Post by Alex Schroeder
1 week actual time = 1 week of game time

Note that it doesn't say actual minute = game minute, not even
actual day = game day, as that would be silly. Going by the weeks
and recording time passed carefully, taking days into account only
where necessary. That should do the trick.

As for the shared campaign. As long as player characters don't want
to travel to a different area, it should be o.k. Also players in your
area can easily afford to go in a time freeze in the middle of the
dungeon at the end of a session.

cheers,

lkh

[Kyonshi]

Post by lkh
I'm just looking at Vol. III, The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures,

Post by Alex Schroeder
1 week actual time = 1 week of game time

Note that it doesn't say actual minute = game minute, not even
actual day = game day, as that would be silly. Going by the weeks
and recording time passed carefully, taking days into account only
where necessary. That should do the trick.

I think the fuzziness of that all is needed to make it work. Gygax just
writes about strict time records, not have granular they have to be... :D

[lkh]

Post by Alex Schroeder

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
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)

yes, I am convinced it's just like that. Also finding a patron
takes one week (or rather the group is allowed one roll to find a
patron per week). Thus the referee should usually get one weeks worth
of time to dream something up, and present the group with a nice
patron encounter when next weeks session starts.

Post by Alex Schroeder
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 these cases, I would allow the group to drop back in time. And
continue where they left off last time. Same thing if we have to end the
session in the middle of a dungeon crawl. It happens, and it shouldn't
be disruptive to the player experience.

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

"YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE
NOT KEPT!"

Post by Alex Schroeder
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 try to avoid it however as much as I can. Having a group that has
dropped back to the past catch up, can be much more complicated then
having characters in the future wait until campaign time catches up
with them.

Also a group in the past is prone to lock up larger areas of the campaign
map, just as you describe. We can not know what will have happened
... gives me headaches!

When the group is in the future it's much easier to see.

cheers,

lkh

[Kyonshi]

Post by lkh

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
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)

yes, I am convinced it's just like that. Also finding a patron
takes one week (or rather the group is allowed one roll to find a
patron per week). Thus the referee should usually get one weeks worth
of time to dream something up, and present the group with a nice
patron encounter when next weeks session starts.

The idea breaks down in that way, as the adventures on a single world
might generally take longer. Also travel in-system also might take up to
a week just to get to the weekly world of adventure.
But I think the 1 week travel time to another world gives the referee a
nice framework to deal with, a marker to say: here we stop, next week is
another world.

[Kyonshi]

Post by lkh

Post by Alex Schroeder
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 these cases, I would allow the group to drop back in time. And
continue where they left off last time. Same thing if we have to end the
session in the middle of a dungeon crawl. It happens, and it shouldn't
be disruptive to the player experience.

I think it might make more sense to see it as a rough equivalent: time
flows about 1:1 between adventures, while on the adventures themselves
stuff goes differently.

Post by lkh

Post by Alex Schroeder
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.

"YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE
NOT KEPT!"

Considering Gygax put this in capitals it's very interesting how much
discussion happens regarding that particular quote.
He was a master of making very detailed rules that just happen to need
so much inherent knowledge of how to run a game that they can be
interpreted in whatever way you want.

What does "YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS
ARE NOT KEPT!" actually mean?

He was coming from a wargame background, so when talking about a
campaign, he was actually talking about a campaign.

Post by lkh

Post by Alex Schroeder
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 try to avoid it however as much as I can. Having a group that has
dropped back to the past catch up, can be much more complicated then
having characters in the future wait until campaign time catches up
with them.
Also a group in the past is prone to lock up larger areas of the campaign
map, just as you describe. We can not know what will have happened
... gives me headaches!
When the group is in the future it's much easier to see.

[John Dallman]

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real
world and campaign in a game?

It's not for me. The amount of activity in a game day varies hugely in
the games I run: if the characters are on an international journey,
several game days may pass in a minute of real time, but it may also take
several sessions to play out the events of a game day.

John

[lkh]

On Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:59:10 -0000 (UTC),

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real world
and campaign in a game?
[...]

We tried that a few times in our various campaigns. It ended up
feeling more like a gimmick than anything that made the game feel more
fun and playable.
In-session, it just added unnecessary pressure both on players and the
DM. And it didn't really make much sense, anyway, since PLAYING an
action (announcing actions, rolling dice, etc.) take more time than
actually doing them in game. And because a three-minute-in-game battle
took fifteen-minutes-in-session, the players had to rush everything
else to try to make up time.

Ah, I think here's a misunderstanding of the concept. As far as I
understand it, 1:1 is a concept for campaign management. In each
individual session it's also important to keep time records, but
things may well move in slo-mo, like a battle, or skip ahead, like
when travelling over land.

While I'm firmly in the 1:1 campaign time camp, thinks take whatever
time they need in the sessions I'm running. Thus 1:1 time shouldn't
feel disruptive but add some extra realism to a campaign. It does become
crucial, when there are more then one adventuring party roaming around
the same game world.

For example in a game I ran this last saturday the group skipped ahead
somewhat, and covered 5 days of campaign time. Right now (today) they're
still three days in the future. That's when they're session ended. On
their way they met another character how is taking part in the campaign
in play by post fashion. So this character has gotten an update, about
how he met the group, and where they wanted to go, but cannot know what
will happen to them until they return. Which will only be on thursday this
week. Lots of time for other shenaningans to happen in the meantime.

*If* the players who played on saturday, would want to play tonight, they
could only play other characters, because their saturday's characters
are already in the future.

Characters can skip to the future for significant amounts of time if
they decide to go on some lengthy but rather unadventurous errants.
Time to develop a new character and maybe start another story line.

Out-session was slightly more interesting but, again, hard to keep
synchronized. We'd take a break for a week from playing and the PCs
had a week off too; cool! But then Paul would cancel and Mary had to
go the doctor, and before you know it that next session was a month
later... what have our characters been doing all that time?

Real life things happen to characters, too?

An obvious answer for that last question would be: working! GURPS
sort of implies that characters also have a job apart from being
adventurers.

I feel 1:1 time done right rather helps in synchronizing multi-threaded
campaigns.

There are times when, as GM, I put pressure on the players -"You have
five minutes to solve this puzzle!"- but those are exceptions.
Normally there's a distinct separation between game time and real time
because it's just more fun that way.

These things *can* be fun though. I've got a ten minute hourglass I
sometimes put on the table visibly to remind the group how turns are
passing (of course they do know that each new turn triggers a roll
for random encounters). It only works for realtime activities, like
when the group is discussing or arguing in character, or as in your
case solving a puzzle.

Cheers,

lkh

[Kyonshi]

Post by lkh

On Sun, 16 Jun 2024 12:59:10 -0000 (UTC),

Post by s***@ereborbbs.duckdns.org
What do you think about using a straight up 1:1 time between real world
and campaign in a game?
[...]

We tried that a few times in our various campaigns. It ended up
feeling more like a gimmick than anything that made the game feel more
fun and playable.
In-session, it just added unnecessary pressure both on players and the
DM. And it didn't really make much sense, anyway, since PLAYING an
action (announcing actions, rolling dice, etc.) take more time than
actually doing them in game. And because a three-minute-in-game battle
took fifteen-minutes-in-session, the players had to rush everything
else to try to make up time.

Ah, I think here's a misunderstanding of the concept. As far as I
understand it, 1:1 is a concept for campaign management. In each
individual session it's also important to keep time records, but
things may well move in slo-mo, like a battle, or skip ahead, like
when travelling over land.
While I'm firmly in the 1:1 campaign time camp, thinks take whatever
time they need in the sessions I'm running. Thus 1:1 time shouldn't
feel disruptive but add some extra realism to a campaign. It does become
crucial, when there are more then one adventuring party roaming around
the same game world.
For example in a game I ran this last saturday the group skipped ahead
somewhat, and covered 5 days of campaign time. Right now (today) they're
still three days in the future. That's when they're session ended. On
their way they met another character how is taking part in the campaign
in play by post fashion. So this character has gotten an update, about
how he met the group, and where they wanted to go, but cannot know what
will happen to them until they return. Which will only be on thursday this
week. Lots of time for other shenaningans to happen in the meantime.
*If* the players who played on saturday, would want to play tonight, they
could only play other characters, because their saturday's characters
are already in the future.
Characters can skip to the future for significant amounts of time if
they decide to go on some lengthy but rather unadventurous errants.
Time to develop a new character and maybe start another story line.

Out-session was slightly more interesting but, again, hard to keep
synchronized. We'd take a break for a week from playing and the PCs
had a week off too; cool! But then Paul would cancel and Mary had to
go the doctor, and before you know it that next session was a month
later... what have our characters been doing all that time?

Real life things happen to characters, too?
An obvious answer for that last question would be: working! GURPS
sort of implies that characters also have a job apart from being
adventurers.
I feel 1:1 time done right rather helps in synchronizing multi-threaded
campaigns.

Funnily enough Midkemia Press' (later Chaosium's) famous 1979 Cities
supplement has rules for all that. It has a whole section of character
catch-up tables for what happens to adventurers between their adventures.

From the preface to that:
"PREFACE
The tables in the following section are the result of one night's
inspiration and several months of play testing. The need for these
tables became apparent in our own fantasy role-playing game, the Tome of
Midkemia, when characters that had run with different Gamesmasters and
were in different time frames wanted to run together. Normally, this
presented no problem, but in some cases several of the characters had
profoundly influenced events and couldn't be moved back in time, while
others had investments to look over, important matters to take care of,
etc. and couldn't be moved forward easily. As this situation became more
frequent, we finally sat down to do something about it, and the City
Catch-up Tables resulted."

The tables themselves go into all kinds of directions: you might have
helped an aristocrat, or maybe been accused of a crime, or joined the
military, etc. pp.

The whole section is maybe a tiny bit too complex, but it might serve as
an inspiration for stuff adapted to other campaigns.

Post by lkh

There are times when, as GM, I put pressure on the players -"You have
five minutes to solve this puzzle!"- but those are exceptions.
Normally there's a distinct separation between game time and real time
because it's just more fun that way.

These things *can* be fun though. I've got a ten minute hourglass I
sometimes put on the table visibly to remind the group how turns are
passing (of course they do know that each new turn triggers a roll
for random encounters). It only works for realtime activities, like
when the group is discussing or arguing in character, or as in your
case solving a puzzle.

I think puzzles under time pressure are a different kind of thing. They
basically take away the unlimited time element many games suffer from.
People in general enjoy being able to strategize a lot, but I have been
thinking if it might not be better to enforce a time limit for some
critical moments in game, e.g. during combat. Why should players be
allowed to strategize in the middle of heated combat?
I was thinking maybe it would be best to throw some kind of time limit
on there.