Quote from: RPGPundit on September 28, 2023, 06:47:50 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 22, 2023, 03:19:15 PM
I'm really not a fan of the way the BrOSR carry themselves. I have to be honest with you though Pundit. You've been guilty of this same behaviour of declaring your way is the only correct way and dismissing all others. 

I wouldn't call a 1:1 real time with patron play game a "fad". But I wouldn't call it "Strict timekeeping" either. Because it really isn't all that strict. It's just time. It progresses.  It's just one more way to play your games. If you don't want to play it you don't have to. 

I've now got two ongoing games using 1:1 time. Both with different rulesets. I know you're probably going to dismiss whatever I say. But I am speaking from experience. Not just nice ideas in my head. I've had to change things up a bit from the BrOSR stuff I've seen. But not much.

I think people are really scared that the timekeeping will in some way be hard to manage or ruin the game. It doesn't. But people who don't ever want to try it out assume it will and won't listen to people like me with the experience to say it's much less complicated than you make out. Just understand from the minute the game world "starts" that time progresses in real time without pauses or rewinds. It's not complicated so long as you note where various groups are and how long it's taking them to travel from A to B.

Most hexcrawl campaigns already establish that one hex = x miles or km. From that it's not hard to establish how long it will take to walk from one place to another. And how worth it it is to walk that distance. I just set alarms on my phone or Computer. If groups intersect on the map, they meet up. If not, they don't. And may never meet. If someone doesn't turn up to a session, they message me to say what they're doing. If they don't, they do nothing and stay put until they do message me. (I've never had a player just idle and starve to death by the way. At worst a player wanted to leave the game so he retired his character.) It's really not hard to keep an eye on a clock and go "hmm, we've been in this dungeon for 4 hours. We should head back and rest.". 10 real time seconds per round to say an action. And then Actions are done in a second or however long it takes me to describe the action. If for whatever bizarre and very rare reason a party decides to take longer than a couple of weeks to trek from one place to another, or is otherwise occupied for large periods of time roll up some new characters. Now one group of players has become multiple different parties in a dynamic sandbox world with lots of events happening even when the sessions are over. It's pretty cool and gives you options.  If you can manage time effectively in the real world you can GM a real time game.

Now this is the part where you tell me all the worst case scenarios that never actually happen in order to "prove me wrong."

No, I just point out that the BroSR has never managed to make a single long-term campaign work.

I hate defending the BrOSR. But I have to point out Trollopolus lasted at least a year. And a sequel campaign that also lasted that long. To me I'd say that was long term. But if you can prove they were lying about this I'd be happy to see that. My Savage World patron campaign has only lasted six months but is still ongoing and I've also been running a Star Wars D6 real time campaign for around two months. And so far neither has run into game stopping problems. In fact, both campaigns have been some of the easiest and yet most fun I've had with TTRPGs in ages. In my first campaign I had to tweak some things on the fly which lead me to my always real time rule, as opposed to real time when play is not happening. I feel any kind of abstraction of time will lead to confusion.

I get that what I'm saying may sound weird to people who've played TTRPGs one way all their life. And I do intend to do a full write up of my experiences with real time campaigns when I get the time to. I ask for open minds for that. If anyone reads it and still doesn't get it. We can all just agree to disagree. 

Yeah I dunno where you are getting the idea that the campaigns didn't last long. All the ones I've seen them talk about lasted a long while, if not still going.

Quote from: KrisSnow on September 24, 2023, 06:58:13 PM
But the time mechanic did cause problems. In particular, spaceflight even with the setting's FTL rules took at least several days to get to another star system. In my character's final series of adventures, his voyage dragged on for real-time months because we went to multiple stars and had no opportunity to get to our HQ and there was other dithering. So we missed out on some roleplay opportunities at the HQ area and were locked out of going on any other adventures while we waited for the current one to resolve.

Hell, this might be one of the *best* examples of it being workable and good at an open table type game. I can see how it would be annoying from a player perspective if you can only have a single character, but if you're running trades between players it seems like the only fair way to do it if you have a rotating cast of 20+ players. Would ratchet up the competition between groups of players to get the best deals or act on hooks before everyone else could, much like the old Lake Geneva tables.

Quote from: shoplifter on September 28, 2023, 11:54:56 PM

Quote from: KrisSnow on September 24, 2023, 06:58:13 PM
But the time mechanic did cause problems. In particular, spaceflight even with the setting's FTL rules took at least several days to get to another star system. In my character's final series of adventures, his voyage dragged on for real-time months because we went to multiple stars and had no opportunity to get to our HQ and there was other dithering. So we missed out on some roleplay opportunities at the HQ area and were locked out of going on any other adventures while we waited for the current one to resolve.

Hell, this might be one of the *best* examples of it being workable and good at an open table type game. I can see how it would be annoying from a player perspective if you can only have a single character, but if you're running trades between players it seems like the only fair way to do it if you have a rotating cast of 20+ players. Would ratchet up the competition between groups of players to get the best deals or act on hooks before everyone else could, much like the old Lake Geneva tables.

People have been saying you need multiple PCs per player for years now. It's one of the first things detractors like to ignore when they criticize Real time patron play. They always bring up this idea that players just have to wait long periods of time or need an insane amount of players. When I and others have always said it's not a problem because you can just make new characters and rotate them in and out of games dependent on location. So even if you just have one group as is the case with my campaign you still have multiple parties affecting this dynamic sandbox world. And you never just wait around. Or at the most you wait around as much as you would for your standard weekly session.

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:03:03 AM

People have been saying you need multiple PCs per player for years now. It's one of the first things detractors like to ignore when they criticize Real time patron play. They always bring up this idea that players just have to wait long periods of time or need an insane amount of players. When I and others have always said it's not a problem because you can just make new characters and rotate them in and out of games dependent on location. So even if you just have one group as is the case with my campaign you still have multiple parties affecting this dynamic sandbox world. And you never just wait around. Or at the most you wait around as much as you would for your standard weekly session.

In any campaign where there are players with PCs who want to engage in long term activities that sideline their characters for significant amounts of game time it is a good idea to have multiple characters per player so there are always characters that can adventure while the others are completing their activities.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 29, 2023, 11:15:25 AM
In any campaign where there are players with PCs who want to engage in long term activities that sideline their characters for significant amounts of game time it is a good idea to have multiple characters per player so there are always characters that can adventure while the others are completing their activities.

If I allow it I let them use a lower level NPC.  But the absence has to be for a good reason that will benefit the party as a whole somehow.

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 29, 2023, 11:15:25 AM

In any campaign where there are players with PCs who want to engage in long term activities that sideline their characters for significant amounts of game time it is a good idea to have multiple characters per player so there are always characters that can adventure while the others are completing their activities.

Literally the only way you can facilitate spell research or magic item creation if you use RAW in most systems due to the amount of downtime it causes. Works great if you look at the group in the same sense Ars Magica does.

Quote from: Scooter on September 29, 2023, 11:18:04 AM

If I allow it I let them use a lower level NPC.  But the absence has to be for a good reason that will benefit the party as a whole somehow.

I don't like to restrict what a player wants their character to attempt. So if a player wants their magic user to do 3-4 months of spell research they are free to do so. The world, however, does not stop turning while they do this. That character is simply not available for play until the campaign timeline catches up with the end of the activity. In the meantime, the player is free to roll another character to continue playing. Once it sinks in that the rest of the original party is going to keep adventuring and earning XP while their main character isn't, the player will often abandon the activity fearing getting too far behind the others in XP. So pretty much if the world doesn't stop for them then the player ends up not wanting to do these activities. No need to forbid anything at all.

error

Quote from: Exploderwizard on September 29, 2023, 11:35:35 AM

Quote from: Scooter on September 29, 2023, 11:18:04 AM

If I allow it I let them use a lower level NPC.  But the absence has to be for a good reason that will benefit the party as a whole somehow.

I don't like to restrict what a player wants their character to attempt.

I don't.  I just restrict multiple PCs per player.  If a player wants to take his PC out of play for a year it is on them.

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 28, 2023, 08:46:22 AM

Quote from: RPGPundit on September 28, 2023, 06:47:50 AM

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 22, 2023, 03:19:15 PM
I'm really not a fan of the way the BrOSR carry themselves. I have to be honest with you though Pundit. You've been guilty of this same behaviour of declaring your way is the only correct way and dismissing all others. 

I wouldn't call a 1:1 real time with patron play game a "fad". But I wouldn't call it "Strict timekeeping" either. Because it really isn't all that strict. It's just time. It progresses.  It's just one more way to play your games. If you don't want to play it you don't have to. 

I've now got two ongoing games using 1:1 time. Both with different rulesets. I know you're probably going to dismiss whatever I say. But I am speaking from experience. Not just nice ideas in my head. I've had to change things up a bit from the BrOSR stuff I've seen. But not much.

I think people are really scared that the timekeeping will in some way be hard to manage or ruin the game. It doesn't. But people who don't ever want to try it out assume it will and won't listen to people like me with the experience to say it's much less complicated than you make out. Just understand from the minute the game world "starts" that time progresses in real time without pauses or rewinds. It's not complicated so long as you note where various groups are and how long it's taking them to travel from A to B.

Most hexcrawl campaigns already establish that one hex = x miles or km. From that it's not hard to establish how long it will take to walk from one place to another. And how worth it it is to walk that distance. I just set alarms on my phone or Computer. If groups intersect on the map, they meet up. If not, they don't. And may never meet. If someone doesn't turn up to a session, they message me to say what they're doing. If they don't, they do nothing and stay put until they do message me. (I've never had a player just idle and starve to death by the way. At worst a player wanted to leave the game so he retired his character.) It's really not hard to keep an eye on a clock and go "hmm, we've been in this dungeon for 4 hours. We should head back and rest.". 10 real time seconds per round to say an action. And then Actions are done in a second or however long it takes me to describe the action. If for whatever bizarre and very rare reason a party decides to take longer than a couple of weeks to trek from one place to another, or is otherwise occupied for large periods of time roll up some new characters. Now one group of players has become multiple different parties in a dynamic sandbox world with lots of events happening even when the sessions are over. It's pretty cool and gives you options.  If you can manage time effectively in the real world you can GM a real time game.

Now this is the part where you tell me all the worst case scenarios that never actually happen in order to "prove me wrong."

No, I just point out that the BroSR has never managed to make a single long-term campaign work.

I hate defending the BrOSR. But I have to point out Trollopolus lasted at least a year. And a sequel campaign that also lasted that long. To me I'd say that was long term. But if you can prove they were lying about this I'd be happy to see that. My Savage World patron campaign has only lasted six months but is still ongoing and I've also been running a Star Wars D6 real time campaign for around two months. And so far neither has run into game stopping problems. In fact, both campaigns have been some of the easiest and yet most fun I've had with TTRPGs in ages. In my first campaign I had to tweak some things on the fly which lead me to my always real time rule, as opposed to real time when play is not happening. I feel any kind of abstraction of time will lead to confusion.

I get that what I'm saying may sound weird to people who've played TTRPGs one way all their life. And I do intend to do a full write up of my experiences with real time campaigns when I get the time to. I ask for open minds for that. If anyone reads it and still doesn't get it. We can all just agree to disagree.

A year of how much play? In any case, in my definition, any campaign that lasts less than at least 2 years (or about 250 hours of play) is not going to reach the peak state of immersion that is the apex of RPG play.

Quote from: King Tyranno on September 29, 2023, 08:03:03 AM

Quote from: shoplifter on September 28, 2023, 11:54:56 PM

Quote from: KrisSnow on September 24, 2023, 06:58:13 PM
But the time mechanic did cause problems. In particular, spaceflight even with the setting's FTL rules took at least several days to get to another star system. In my character's final series of adventures, his voyage dragged on for real-time months because we went to multiple stars and had no opportunity to get to our HQ and there was other dithering. So we missed out on some roleplay opportunities at the HQ area and were locked out of going on any other adventures while we waited for the current one to resolve.

Hell, this might be one of the *best* examples of it being workable and good at an open table type game. I can see how it would be annoying from a player perspective if you can only have a single character, but if you're running trades between players it seems like the only fair way to do it if you have a rotating cast of 20+ players. Would ratchet up the competition between groups of players to get the best deals or act on hooks before everyone else could, much like the old Lake Geneva tables.

People have been saying you need multiple PCs per player for years now. It's one of the first things detractors like to ignore when they criticize Real time patron play. They always bring up this idea that players just have to wait long periods of time or need an insane amount of players. When I and others have always said it's not a problem because you can just make new characters and rotate them in and out of games dependent on location. So even if you just have one group as is the case with my campaign you still have multiple parties affecting this dynamic sandbox world. And you never just wait around. Or at the most you wait around as much as you would for your standard weekly session.

Most of my Lion & Dragon campaigns have multiple PCs per player, and there's nothing in that which requires the arbitrary notion of playing in real-time.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 20, 2023, 11:25:19 AM
This whole debate makes me wonder...

The DMG has rules for aging.

If you always play 1-to-1, most YOU AND YOUR PLAYERS will be dead before you ever get to play a venerable dwarf...

(yes, I know, unnatural aging, which also improves your wisdom. Makes perfect sense. )

Unnatural aging is another rule in AD&DS 1E which makes certain undead terrifying (ghosts -- aging 10-40 years per touch plus 10 years on sight) and makes certain spells silly to cast (that haste spell almost needs to be saving your life; gate was already incredibly reckless but now add in 5 years of aging).

Well, except for the elves in the party . . .

Quote from: Votan on September 30, 2023, 12:11:33 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 20, 2023, 11:25:19 AM
This whole debate makes me wonder...

The DMG has rules for aging.

If you always play 1-to-1, most YOU AND YOUR PLAYERS will be dead before you ever get to play a venerable dwarf...

(yes, I know, unnatural aging, which also improves your wisdom. Makes perfect sense. )

Unnatural aging is another rule in AD&DS 1E which makes certain undead terrifying (ghosts -- aging 10-40 years per touch plus 10 years on sight) and makes certain spells silly to cast (that haste spell almost needs to be saving your life; gate was already incredibly reckless but now add in 5 years of aging).

Well, except for the elves in the party . . .

Its still bad for the elves, iirc any magical aging causes system shock.

Quote from: Slambo on September 30, 2023, 07:18:24 PM

Quote from: Votan on September 30, 2023, 12:11:33 AM

Quote from: Eric Diaz on September 20, 2023, 11:25:19 AM
This whole debate makes me wonder...

The DMG has rules for aging.

If you always play 1-to-1, most YOU AND YOUR PLAYERS will be dead before you ever get to play a venerable dwarf...

(yes, I know, unnatural aging, which also improves your wisdom. Makes perfect sense. )

Unnatural aging is another rule in AD&DS 1E which makes certain undead terrifying (ghosts -- aging 10-40 years per touch plus 10 years on sight) and makes certain spells silly to cast (that haste spell almost needs to be saving your life; gate was already incredibly reckless but now add in 5 years of aging).

Well, except for the elves in the party . . .

Its still bad for the elves, iirc any magical aging causes system shock.

Yikes. Makes Haste/Potion of Speed seem even more insanely dangerous. And, yes, this is hiding right there under constitution, with a 10 Con having a 70% death rate.

Add in this rule and we can forget the vampires; it's the ghosts who are the scary undead. A failed save and a single blow would be 2 system shock rolls and 20-50 years aging. A 20 year could die of old age. And there are very limited options for reversing aging in AD&D.