The closest I've ever been to playing with 1:1 time is by progressing time in the world at the same rate as between sessions. This means 1:1 time was only ever relevant for downtime. That worked reasonably well for me.
One thing that's never been clear to me about 1:1 time - I've seen it implied by some groups that they assume one session = one day in the game world. That would seem to make sense with some of the aspects of the game - the proximity between dungeons and town, the X/day abilities, and how some groups roll on a table when the party fails to return to town by the time the session ends. The assumption seems to be that your simply don't do multi-day delves where you camp someplace near the entrance of the dungeon. This is very different from how I've always played - dungeons were a destination. You'd form an expedition, travel to the dungeon, and camp there for several days until it was clear you needed to return to town to lick your wounds or sell your loot. Getting lost, wasting time on wild goose chases looking for alternate dungeon entrances, or pacing the delve across several days was normal.
If players cannot fast forward beyond the current date in the game, that seems very interesting and I'd like to try it out. But I don't know how to make this work in practical terms. If the party says they want to set up camp out in the wilderness and return to the dungeon the next day, I don't feel like "no, you can't" is a reasonable response and if the DM told me that I'd feel ripped right out of the immersion of the game. Players fast forward actions all the time and we abstract a lot of it away with the dungeon turn. It seems reasonable that the party would want to pace themselves. If the party wants to go back to town, assemble a work party to go and rebuild a bridge or clear a minor cave-in or something, should the answer be "no" or "wait until you let me know your actions during downtime" or something? If the party says they want to thoroughly search a hex during a hexcrawl and repeat that process to explore a frontier, you'd need to fast forward several days? I just don't see an alternative.
I know how to make this work if I keep 1:1 time restricted to downtime. I just can't make it make sense outside of downtime even though I've heard too many stories of people playing this way for it not to exist. Has anyone played this way and how did you manage time or situations where players wanted to fast forward time? Did I misunderstand something about this playstyle?
I'll deviate from 1:1 time during a session or across sessions as necessary, but the clock catches up. So eg if you spend 8 IRL weeks on one battle, that adds 8 weeks to the downtime once the battle ends.
I use 5e D&D with 1 week long rests, and Dragonbane with full rest only at a place of safety, so I don't see many attempts to 'camp out' during the session. A session might take 4 hours IRL and say 3 days in-game, usually from extended travelling to/from the delve site. The world clock adjusts back to 1:1 once the PCs return to a place of safety.
In the extreme case where the players are effectively demanding downtime mid session, like a 1 week long rest or even training/study time, I will say "OK, see you in a fortnight!" and end the session - if they're just trying it on then the threat is normally enough to have them say "OK, just one more room..." etc. If they really truly need a break, say their PCs are mangled, then we will indeed end the session there. That doesn't commonly happen until pretty near the session's natural end.
One big benefit of the 1:1 approach is that PC & player are aligned in seeing time as a limited resource. I definitely find this enhances play.
With 1:1 time I think it's important to distinguish between (a) the natural progression of time, which might mean the session goes over a couple game days, and (b) players wanting to disengage from play and take significant downtime/resource recovery time. These need to be dealt with differently IME.
"If the party says they want to set up camp out in the wilderness and return to the dungeon the next day"
Well, IMCs camping out in the wilderness as a small group is usually a resource drain, not a resource recovery, so PCs are motivated to complete the mission and get home ASAP. Camping out near the dungeon entrance is often close to suicidal. Those aren't videogame sprites in there, they'll come get you! ;D If the PCs bring along such a sizable camp & followers that they can actually long rest, that is treated as a mobile home base for downtime purposes.
"If the party wants to go back to town, assemble a work party to go and rebuild a bridge or clear a minor cave-in or something, should the answer be "no" or "wait until you let me know your actions during downtime" or something?"
That would typically a downtime activity IMC yes, and involve a major resource expenditure in hiring the workers, guarding them while they work, etc. To be practical you'd need to have cleared/secured the local area, which usually is a major undertaking. If the dungeon was that safe, it would have been cleared already. ;D If the work is so trivial it can be done in a few hours, I'd expect the PCs to do it themselves.
"If the party says they want to thoroughly search a hex during a hexcrawl and repeat that process to explore a frontier, you'd need to fast forward several days?"
Maybe because I'm British, the idea of wilderness so empty that nothing is encountered for several days in a row never sits well with me. My wilderness maps are typically 2 miles/hex or 5 km/hex, and there is a lot going on. A PC group may expect several encounters/day, I'd say 2-3 is typical, not all being hostile of course. So I don't see any 'fast forward several days' unless it's an extended ocean voyage. Even high level flying PCs are probably seeing several things on the ground each day, though they may not need to engage.
(https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEiPfvYU6DqGmPbv5ej-2QqRufXA25Yzm01oXmUnfySEf1x8UY1eih8iE1Qabt9bEDV8IbJjb6t3B95QbedJSDxMkf_srvI6esuOxG-57nIvcHZAAbTimg_aLyfo7mZxYZQXgs1nb1mV-eeqt93N2x7tWBamWJeRag2eUAIWhmN3aiFfOldT-coxbgLZ5g=w640-h360)
Quote from: S'mon on July 05, 2023, 05:32:29 AM
I'll deviate from 1:1 time during a session or across sessions as necessary, but the clock catches up. So eg if you spend 8 IRL weeks on one battle, that adds 8 weeks to the downtime once the battle ends.
Right - not so different from how I made it work when I was doing 1:1 time purely for downtime.
Quote from: S'mon on July 05, 2023, 05:32:29 AM
One big benefit of the 1:1 approach is that PC & player are aligned in seeing time as a limited resource. I definitely find this enhances play.
Yes, this is my interest in trying to pull it into the session itself and not just downtime. I find the dungeon turn, wandering monsters, etc. makes time a crucial resource to manage, but the time resource for an expedition feels less restrictive.
Quote from: S'mon on July 05, 2023, 05:32:29 AM
With 1:1 time I think it's important to distinguish between (a) the natural progression of time, which might mean the session goes over a couple game days, and (b) players wanting to disengage from play and take significant downtime/resource recovery time. These need to be dealt with differently IME.
I normally handle them differently - I'm trying to grok this idea I've seen about a playstyle where a single session lasts for 1 in-game day. If you aren't back in town by the end of the session then you're lost out there in the wilderness and you roll on a table to see what kinds of unfortunate mishaps befell you before you wandered back into town. The idea seems to be that you need to keep delving until you no longer want to play anymore and then you end the session. So if the players try to rest mid-session, you essentially do the same thing you do when somebody tries to do training mid-session. It's totally foreign to me because I don't know how to square this concept with any setup other than the dungeon being a few hours walk away. If I'm doing a hexcrawl, that feels like a thing that's happening at the table and we need to be able to fast-forward time over the course of several days. If the players get some scheme and need to go back to town to arrange it and that takes a few days, that again feels like a thing that might make sense mid-session but is impossible in this playstyle. If the players need to travel overland to the dungeon as a destination, that seems difficult here too because sleep is going to naturally be a part of the journey.
Quote from: S'mon on July 05, 2023, 05:40:08 AM
Well, IMCs camping out in the wilderness as a small group is usually a resource drain, not a resource recovery, so PCs are motivated to complete the mission and get home ASAP. Camping out near the dungeon entrance is often close to suicidal. Those aren't videogame sprites in there, they'll come get you! ;D If the PCs bring along such a sizable camp & followers that they can actually long rest, that is treated as a mobile home base for downtime purposes.
I don't play 5e, so long rests are not on my radar. Most other editions of D&D allow recovering some spells and some HP (though a paltry amount) from a night's rest. In 2nd and I think especially 3rd ed I remember a lot of abilities that have a limitation of X/day. So if you're playing in an older edition, it's more likely resting will recuperate you (assuming the rest doesn't kill or seriously debilitate you with a wandering monster or enemy raid or something). The connection between resting for the night and regaining some resources is why I was thinking this 1:1 delve time might make some sense - your players have time and resources directly connected in a way that feels pretty tangible. If you have 2 slots on the sleep spell, then you have 2 sleep spells for the game that day. At the very least, the natural cycle of day/night introduces the potential that the party might want to hold off on a particular action until they safely have daylight backing them up (of course it won't matter much for the dungeon, but wilderness and overland play to me seems like too big of a part of the game to ignore).
I agree that obviously you can't sleep outside the dungeon entrance if you hope to survive. Nevertheless, if you can tolerate the several-hour walk to and from town to the local dungeon in principle, I don't see why in principle it's much different from setting up your encampment a few hours walk away. Unless you leave a trail (and to be fair you might with all those coins), it seems unlikely the dungeon denizens will track you several miles overland to raid your camp. I guess it depends on what lives in the dungeon and how much of a mess you've made in their home. Regardless, I personally enjoy the camp element because it means you can't delve to exhaustion - you need to leave some in the tank to survive the wandering monsters or what have you. Town being categorically safe is IMO a little less interesting than the setup that a camp involves. Our group plays with hirelings so it's not unreasonable to have some people tend to camp.
Quote from: S'mon on July 05, 2023, 05:53:55 AM
Maybe because I'm British, the idea of wilderness so empty that nothing is encountered for several days in a row never sits well with me. My wilderness maps are typically 2 miles/hex or 5 km/hex, and there is a lot going on. A PC group may expect several encounters/day, I'd say 2-3 is typical, not all being hostile of course. So I don't see any 'fast forward several days' unless it's an extended ocean voyage. Even high level flying PCs are probably seeing several things on the ground each day, though they may not need to engage.
I simply mean that if we assume one session is one day, then a hexcrawl procedure seems difficult. Even with several encounters, it's entirely possible for the players to miss details in a hex, or choose not to engage with them, or even simply engage with them and move on to the next hex before the session is drawing to a natural close.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on July 05, 2023, 02:08:54 AM
The closest I've ever been to playing with 1:1 time is by progressing time in the world at the same rate as between sessions. This means 1:1 time was only ever relevant for downtime. That worked reasonably well for me.
Unless you're running multiple tables in the same shared setting, then there's really zero point to 1:1 time.
The original point of it was that the expectation was that the GM would be running multiple groups in the same setting at the same time and the players running multiple characters of different levels. In such a case 1:1 time is just the easiest way to keep track of what is happening when in relation to everything else.
If you've only got a single table where everyone is running a single PC where they're nearly always together as a group, then 1:1 time is either useless or outright counterproductive.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on July 05, 2023, 06:27:36 AM
[I'm trying to grok this idea I've seen about a playstyle where a single session lasts for 1 in-game day. If you aren't back in town by the end of the session then you're lost out there in the wilderness and you roll on a table to see what kinds of unfortunate mishaps befell you before you wandered back into town.
I tend to be very generous with that bit, often not even rolling for wandering monsters on the way home if we're out of time. I generally prefer to incentivise using all the available session time then reset at the end, if at all plausible. And assuming it's me that ends the session, it would seem unfair to penalise the PCs for eg my need to go swim before the pool closes.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on July 05, 2023, 02:08:54 AM
The closest I've ever been to playing with 1:1 time is by progressing time in the world at the same rate as between sessions. This means 1:1 time was only ever relevant for downtime. That worked reasonably well for me.
One thing that's never been clear to me about 1:1 time - I've seen it implied by some groups that they assume one session = one day in the game world. That would seem to make sense with some of the aspects of the game - the proximity between dungeons and town, the X/day abilities, and how some groups roll on a table when the party fails to return to town by the time the session ends. The assumption seems to be that your simply don't do multi-day delves where you camp someplace near the entrance of the dungeon. This is very different from how I've always played - dungeons were a destination. You'd form an expedition, travel to the dungeon, and camp there for several days until it was clear you needed to return to town to lick your wounds or sell your loot. Getting lost, wasting time on wild goose chases looking for alternate dungeon entrances, or pacing the delve across several days was normal.
If players cannot fast forward beyond the current date in the game, that seems very interesting and I'd like to try it out. But I don't know how to make this work in practical terms. If the party says they want to set up camp out in the wilderness and return to the dungeon the next day, I don't feel like "no, you can't" is a reasonable response and if the DM told me that I'd feel ripped right out of the immersion of the game. Players fast forward actions all the time and we abstract a lot of it away with the dungeon turn. It seems reasonable that the party would want to pace themselves. If the party wants to go back to town, assemble a work party to go and rebuild a bridge or clear a minor cave-in or something, should the answer be "no" or "wait until you let me know your actions during downtime" or something? If the party says they want to thoroughly search a hex during a hexcrawl and repeat that process to explore a frontier, you'd need to fast forward several days? I just don't see an alternative.
I know how to make this work if I keep 1:1 time restricted to downtime. I just can't make it make sense outside of downtime even though I've heard too many stories of people playing this way for it not to exist. Has anyone played this way and how did you manage time or situations where players wanted to fast forward time? Did I misunderstand something about this playstyle?
Well, what are you really trying to achieve? One-to-one time was a way that EGG used to make sure that the multiple tables he was running were invested in the game and didn't do things in his shared world that were contradictory. For example, if party A cleared half a dungeon and then went back to town to rest (ending the session), when they met again in a week, party B might have finished clearing the dungeon during their sessions so party A would just find empty rooms.
The utility of 1:1 time is in organization and structure, not in resource management. Remember, EGG had dozens of players playing at all different times (some every day[!] and some once a month when they could travel down), and he wanted to use the same campaign for all of them. So he needed some way to organize the campaign so he wasn't stuck in the middle of a dungeon for one player, while another had cleared it and moved on. Also, he ran sandbox campaigns mostly, so the needs of a plot didn't weigh into his structure. And think about the context. If a player showed up at EGG's house, went down in a dungeon and got mauled in the first encounter, the player could have the character go leave and the session ended, even if this only took fifteen minutes. For EGG, what's the big deal? He might have another group that night, and he'd surely have someone else playing the next day. In the context of my singular, weekly group, we're not stopping after 15 minutes. We only get 4 hours on the one night a week it works. So 1:1 game time would be a detriment...
If you want to make time important, there are much more effective ways to do so. Limiting rests and healing, creating events at predictable intervals (so players can't just decide to rest willy-nilly), giving no experience for wandering monsters or only for "mission-based" activities (think about it before you reject it out of hand, as it's really worked at my table), etc. Unless you have multiple groups in a shared world, or some other reason to try and keep your world time flowing for your players, 1:1 time really doesn't solve many problems.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on July 05, 2023, 02:08:54 AM
The closest I've ever been to playing with 1:1 time is by progressing time in the world at the same rate as between sessions. This means 1:1 time was only ever relevant for downtime. That worked reasonably well for me.
That is exactly how it works BtB. Ever since 1:1 time has become a key word, though, there's been a lot of garbage attached to it. If doing things some certain other way works for a lot of other people, then great. But it's not what's actually being talked about in that section of the DMG. You have it correct here.
QuoteIf players cannot fast forward beyond the current date in the game, that seems very interesting and I'd like to try it out. But I don't know how to make this work in practical terms. If the party says they want to set up camp out in the wilderness and return to the dungeon the next day, I don't feel like "no, you can't" is a reasonable response and if the DM told me that I'd feel ripped right out of the immersion of the game.
The key issue that answers a lot of your other questions/points/objections is right here. Feeling ripped right out of immersion is a perfectly valid feeling, but it is not a valid game consideration. And let me give you a simple example to show why, something pretty much all of us face.
Splitting the party. One PC wants to stray off to do god knows what. I, as GM, do not want to run for split parties for any prolonged period. I'm just not going to do it, period, end of story. It's a lot of extra work for me. And the players who do not have characters in the scene get bored, start scrolling through their phones, etc. So what, I'm supposed to cater to one jack-off's sense of immersion to go off on his own at the expense of the rest of the table being pulled right out of immersion?
Once you get this inherent contradiction, you understand objectively speaking immersion cannot be the god of the RPG. No matter how much you enjoy immersion, no matter how much some might have entangled their definition of RPG with immersion, it can not ever be a principle to which you sacrifice other principles.
Somewhere in the realm of abstraction there might be this platonic ideal where everyone can feel perfectly immersed at all times. For most tabletop RPGs, you run into a problem whenever someone wants to break off from the party. If you play an MMORPG, you're free to party up or go solo smoothly without breaking immersion, but the limitations of the programming and not having a human GM to make common sense calls sooner or later causes some immersion-breaking to happen. I'm involved in a 1E campaign where there is no DM; each player is running their own solo adventure using Appendix A, but we're doing it all on the same map. So our characters can meet, team up, and part ways however we see fit. So that solves the problem of the party splitting, and we've got the human element in adjudication. But there are a number of other immersion-breaking issues that come with having to create the dungeon as you go and control all the monsters, and so on.
There are no solutions. Only tradeoffs.
And that's how you have to approach 1:1 time.
Because here's another thing real gamers at real game tables face. Not everyone shows up every single week. And so I learned a long time ago, even before I started using 1:1 (which itself I started using around 30 years ago), that when doing a series of dungeon crawls, I'm going to require sessions begin and end in town. Because while that may rip you right out of immersion for the reasons you state, it also rips you right out of immersion when Donnie the Cleric doesn't show up, and the DM has to come up with some goofy half-ass shit to explain his absence, and you spend the next four hours scratching your head wondering why your party would continue crawling through this dangerous dungeon without a healer. Here again, you simply do not have the choice to not be ripped out of immersion. You're going to get ripped one way or another.
What's important is that how you implement 1:1 time fits in overall with what you're doing. The impression I get from the BroSR people is that they obsess over 1:1 and go way beyond RAW to enforce it, and the benefit seems to be they can run campaigns on a much grander scale. If today is today and tomorrow is tomorrow, that makes it a lot easier to coordinate where in time all of the characters are at. And yeah, that's going to come with a whole host of problems, too, but it probably is the best way to run a campaign on a large scale.
Me? I run it by the book. Which is just that it applies to downtime. You go in a dungeon, kill some things, take their stuff, come home. In the real world, our time is up for the session. You go home, come back next week. We just assuming your character was jerking off or something for 7 days. Then we pick things up there. If Donnie the Cleric had to begin 4 weeks of training to level up at the end of that last crawl, that character is still on lockdown for another 3 weeks game time. And you have the choice now to go on another crawl without Donnie (and Donnie's player will just have to play a different character from his stable of characters), or you can opt to fast-forward the three weeks so you can adventure today with Donnie. Whichever player's character is earliest in the timeline has the option of adventuring, or waiting passing control off to the player with the next earliest character.
As I say, I was already requiring you begin and end in town. What 1:1 added for my campaign was keeping time flowing forward, so that if we play weekly for 3 years, somewhere around 20 years will pass in game time. Character's age. Finding a mate suddenly became a goal, so you can have children to pass on your cool swag and wisdom to have a massive leg-up when starting over at 1st level with a new character. And so what started as a series of dungeon crawls that even the reel roleplayers, who refused to admit that's the more fun way of playing, showed up a lot more reliably than when we were doing more complex story arcs, over time this latent reward cycle revealed itself broadening the range of play goals, and in the end we got something that was more than just a series of delves. But you have to learn to crawl before you walk, you've got to learn to dungeon crawl before you plot, and you've got to learn to in-and-out in a single session, 1:1 time, before you start doing more complex things with it.
As others have said, 1:1 ONLY happens during downtime. That means any events that happen during downtime happen in real time. If you're in a dungeon, make sure it's safe and camp in the dungeon. That might not make sense for a full week of downtime. So plan your excursions, go in the dungeon, leave when you want and return as necessary. Factoring in real time travel to and from the dungeon into the downtime so you schedule the sessions properly. If travel time is consistent it's just a regular weekly game at that point. So plan your dungeons for times you know you're going to get your group for a regular amount of time. And stress that it's the player's responsibility to decide where they want to go, knowing how much time it will take and that the game session will be at the scheduled time. If they can't make the session next week, don't travel somewhere that will take a week to travel to.
Basically 1:1 is a wonderful way to schedule things and give the players responsibility. I guarantee you will avoid the dreaded "that day isn't good for me" if you use 1:1 time correctly. Your players play when it's good for them to play. If it's not, they can't travel until it is. Simple.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 05, 2023, 08:59:58 AM
The utility of 1:1 time is in organization and structure, not in resource management.
That's certainly the main benefit. Making time a limited resource for player as it should be for PC is for me a beneficial side effect that helps with immersion. I also find that players very much enjoy being told they have X weeks down time & deciding how to use it, and having X keyed to real time progression just seems to work better and more fun than anything else I've tried, as well as making organisation of my many play groups much easier.
I'd love to know how many normal two-to-six player campaigns happen with 1:1 time. I can't imagine it is all that many. I'd also love to know how many of them happened back in the day- that number also seems low. By contrast, teams of people who run megacampaigns likely run this sort of thing. Those are rare, but this is about the only way to do it right.
Here's why I'm not sure there's much honest conversation about this topic.
1- A lot of people are going to associate 1:1 timekeeping with the "BrOSR". These guys advocate this (and several other things, but this one is likely the most obvious and impactful rule change). Since this group is effectively a highly-online, highly-political group, much of what's discussed in favor of them and opposed to them is going to be determined by real world politics. This means that a lot of opinions and interpretations are going to bleed over very heavily.
2- I've not seen anyone recommend a constant, non-1:1 timekeeping scale. For instance, if every day in the real world is a week in the game world, then the world will progress through decades rather quickly, with character aging and passing inheritance from PC to PC would come up too. Sounds kinda interesting right? And a player would need to quickly describe what is going on for their character's month-long downtime, for instance. Or the reverse, a game where each real world day simulates only a few hours in the campaign world, allowing for a detailed treatment of a specific important time in the campaign.
3- I've not seen anyone recommend real time timekeeping (or constant scale timekeeping as in (2)) for certain sections of the campaign, then freezing time until every group has gone, then unfreezing after an event, etc. I would expect this to come up pretty early in these sorts of things.
4- This is an MMO. Everyone doing this is building an MMO. Maybe it's a "private server" for just a 4 man party or maybe it's a megacampaign for a hundred dudes. Really it's a MUD- a non-electronic Multi-user Dungeon.
5- I don't see people bringing up the world of darkness campaigns that ran throughout the mid and late 90s, all of which covered just TONS of people and told stories, some of the geographical areas having links to each others. This was effectively also a MUD. Wouldn't we hear from the storytellers of this golden age of WW LARP? There's a lot of conceptual bleed-over right? Unlike taking a line about downtime and building an online identity about it, why not take a lot of input from these leftwing wiccan-adjacent 40-50 year olds who actually ran something very successful for over half a decade?
Anyway I think the 1:1 timekeeping discussions are an exciting way to try to run a large campaign for some people, but many discussion participants are using them as a proxy for real world politics.
Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 05, 2023, 08:59:58 AM
In the context of my singular, weekly group, we're not stopping after 15 minutes. We only get 4 hours on the one night a week it works. So 1:1 game time would be a detriment...
Same here. We operate on fantasy time. A particular game session could be weeks of travel time or several hours of dungeon exploration or both. Even though we play weekly, seven days of game time does not necessarily pass between sessions. It could be one day or several weeks depending on what players decided to do on their downtime, healing, research, etc. In the 40+ years we've played AD&D, I don't believe any of those in our group who have DMed have ever used 1:1 time.
Quote from: Venka on July 05, 2023, 05:29:46 PM
I'd love to know how many normal two-to-six player campaigns happen with 1:1 time. I can't imagine it is all that many.
Well I only have one 5-PC group each in my two Dragonbane settings (Xoth & Misty Vale). Xoth always used 1:1 time, Misty Vale I went over to 1:1 time after the urgency of the "Save the World!" quest was done. I just like how it feels, how it takes away the burden of declaring an arbitrary time passage, or conversely seeing the entire campaign play out in a few weeks of game time. But I'd probably not have tried it if I hadn't been using it in my Faerun campaign, which at one point had over 20 players & PCs interacting across three main PC groups. For that kind of thing it's pretty much vital IME.
Quote from: Venka on July 05, 2023, 05:29:46 PM
I'd love to know how many normal two-to-six player campaigns happen with 1:1 time. I can't imagine it is all that many. I'd also love to know how many of them happened back in the day- that number also seems low. By contrast, teams of people who run megacampaigns likely run this sort of thing. Those are rare, but this is about the only way to do it right.
I've been using it since ~1993, and I don't recall ever being involved in a campaign with multiple groups or multiple game days or anything like that. I was running "normal" campaigns.
Now I think average group size has gone down over time. 2-6 may be normal range for a group today, but I feel like 4-8 players (plus the DM) was more the norm back then. There was significant shrinkage. I just want to be clear up front in case it comes up later on that I'm using "normal" to refer to 4-8 players. 2-3 players was regarded as more of a pick-up game back then that wasn't to be taken seriously and would render much of this discussion moot. If you've got 2-3 players and 1 doesn't show up one week, putting the campaign on pause seems like the most obvious solution, whereas it would be pretty lame if you tried doing that with 7-8 players. So there is qualitative weight to this bickering of the exact number range.
Was 1:1 time a common thing back then? Nope. Before BrOSR came about, I literally heard about no other groups at all (other than the ones we imagined Gary running) that were doing it. But I don't think lack of utility was the reason for disuse. Because it absolutely has utility in "normal" campaigns, some of which I alluded to in my earlier comment here. I think the reason for disuse has a much simpler explanation. Because the vast majority of gamers are mentally obese slobs who are too fucking lazy to read the same goddamn books they obsess over. And included in this number are a huge chunk of the industry's brain trust--designers, bloggers, critics, and other assorted forum loudmouths. They frequently have no clue what they're blabbering about.
I think that was main part of the allure to the BrOSR's of the 1:1 rule. I think Jeffro has even literally said he felt he rediscovered a rule no one knew about. So that's really the key. Gamers just didn't know. They should have. But they didn't. And Jeffro managed to grab some clout because of it.
Quote
Here's why I'm not sure there's much honest conversation about this topic.
1- A lot of people are going to associate 1:1 timekeeping with the "BrOSR". These guys advocate this (and several other things, but this one is likely the most obvious and impactful rule change). Since this group is effectively a highly-online, highly-political group, much of what's discussed in favor of them and opposed to them is going to be determined by real world politics. This means that a lot of opinions and interpretations are going to bleed over very heavily.
I don't actually know anything about BrOSR's politics. I could take a guess. And I'm extremely confident my guess would be correct. But it would still be just a guess. Because as someone who hasn't been obsessively pro- or anti- BrOSR, someone who hasn't cared enough to track down everything they're saying, just a regular gamer who happens to be paying attention, their politics have never actually been mentioned any place where I would normally come about them. And I've had some interactions with a few of them. It may be enough on their sleeve that you can defend your assertion impressively. But it's not enough on their sleeve that people who don't really give a shit know about it. I'll also say I've seen their ideas heavily criticized by personalities that whose politics (as far as I can guess) are fairly aligned.
I do, however, think that BrOSR being an identity does carry a lot of baggage with it. I think that 1:1 time is a huge part of that identity. I think they've adopted a handful of items simultaneously, and I don't even think it's the 1:1 time that's behind all the positive experiences they cite. I think it's one of the other things they adopted. But those other things don't seem nearly as archaic or odd as the 1:1 time. I think people who want to rag on someone else's jam finds a lot more meat to chomp on with the 1:1 time than the other things that make the BrOSR style work. A lot of what's happening there is style over substance. Heap big smoke but no fire.
Quote2- I've not seen anyone recommend a constant, non-1:1 timekeeping scale. For instance, if every day in the real world is a week in the game world, then the world will progress through decades rather quickly, with character aging and passing inheritance from PC to PC would come up too. Sounds kinda interesting right? And a player would need to quickly describe what is going on for their character's month-long downtime, for instance. Or the reverse, a game where each real world day simulates only a few hours in the campaign world, allowing for a detailed treatment of a specific important time in the campaign.
I don't know there's any pressing need. 1:1 is sort of a ratchet. Time elapsed from end of session 1 to the end of session to is AT LEAST 1:1, but not necessarily 1:1. Session 2 we all decide to take 2 months of downtime to do training, make some potions, recruit henchmen, etc, then time elapsed from the bottom of Sesh 1 to the bottom of Sesh 2 is 2 months and a week. You can always go faster. You can't go slower. Except intra-session. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the net effect of this in my experience has been that time flow tends to be 5-10 times faster than real world time, 6-7 being most likely. Mileage may vary.
Quote
3- I've not seen anyone recommend real time timekeeping (or constant scale timekeeping as in (2)) for certain sections of the campaign, then freezing time until every group has gone, then unfreezing after an event, etc. I would expect this to come up pretty early in these sorts of things.
I'm not really tracking what you mean. I mean in my multi-player solo adventure mode of play, we keep time coordinated among players by having each individual use a hand counter while there's also a sand-timer for the table. In AD&D 1E, you've got 15 minutes on the sand timer to play out 3 turns/30 rounds. If you use up your clicks, you have to stop until either all the other players use up their 3 turns, or until the sand runs out. It's enough time that 80% of the time the various activities average out just right (combats a lot of real time relative to in-game time, searching for secret doors take a lot of in-game time relative to real time). This is also the burn-time of a torch, making those bad boys easy to track.
Quick, active players will get more done than dawdlers and cross-talkers, but this difference is reasonably bounded. So as far as this goes, though, every hour of real time actually represents 2 hours of in-game time. It's sort of by design. But it's also sort of this ratio is the one that works given how long it takes to actually play things out. So it's not exact a dial you can just set to whatever you want. It's grounded in the reality of the mechanics. Ratios might vary according to the rules you're using, but if you're going to do something like this, you have to figure out what the right rhythm is. And there *is* a right rhythm.
Quote4- This is an MMO. Everyone doing this is building an MMO. Maybe it's a "private server" for just a 4 man party or maybe it's a megacampaign for a hundred dudes. Really it's a MUD- a non-electronic Multi-user Dungeon.
I don't think so. As I say, 1:1 time is a ratchet. It's not consistent 1:1 flow, which is why I hate that we've adopted "1:1 time" as the shorthand for the actual rule. You can move faster, but not slower. MUD times run consistently.
Quote5- I don't see people bringing up the world of darkness campaigns that ran throughout the mid and late 90s, all of which covered just TONS of people and told stories, some of the geographical areas having links to each others. This was effectively also a MUD. Wouldn't we hear from the storytellers of this golden age of WW LARP? There's a lot of conceptual bleed-over right? Unlike taking a line about downtime and building an online identity about it, why not take a lot of input from these leftwing wiccan-adjacent 40-50 year olds who actually ran something very successful for over half a decade?
Not to stir up shit, I actually have a lot of respect for the WoD stuff, but part of their success was massive appeal to people who didn't actually game. Also with the rise of yammering on the internet via usenet, during a decade in which the hobby was at a low, I think there was a massively disproportionate level of talking about the game far in excess to actual play. Yeah, I'm sure a lot of people did a lot of stuff. But I don't think that happened in WoD commensurate with it's overall success or popularity.
You also had 2E snark. If you know the 1E books forwards and backwards like I do, then you read the 2E manuals, you'll find it's loaded with passive-aggressive digs against 1E. And to this day, I see certain memes that emerged from that still mouthed word-for-word by gamers who genuinely think they're expressing their own opinions. Not using the disease tables saying it has no place in heroic fantasy is one of those things. But most of them tend to rag on any sort of meticulous obsession with anything having to do with the game that is not in your face. Story, stats, and combat are in your face when you're playing the game. Meticulous timekeeping is not. Even though if you're serious about logical consistency in your campaign, that is something you obviously want to do. The WoD culture was 2E culture on steroids. If they're happy using a half-ass game system, if they're not even requiring full-ass mechanics, they're not going to sweat the absence of meticulous timekeeping.
QuoteAnyway I think the 1:1 timekeeping discussions are an exciting way to try to run a large campaign for some people, but many discussion participants are using them as a proxy for real world politics.
I don't know about real world politics. But they are definitely using it as a proxy for identity, and it does represent style of substance.
Quote from: Chris24601 on July 05, 2023, 08:25:49 AM
Unless you're running multiple tables in the same shared setting, then there's really zero point to 1:1 time.
I do sometimes run multiple groups in the same region simultaneously, and 1:1 time basically necessary to handle that (had a campaign crash and burn when I wasn't using it). I don't think the benefits are purely restricted to multiple groups - 1:1 time creates a time budget for downtime which makes time a more valuable resource. If the book says it takes 3 months to build a castle (just an example), then in 1:1 time you'd need to actually wait a while IRL to see the fruits of your labor. In the style which I'd say is more common, you could hypothetically fast forward to the completion of the castle and it'd be up to the GM to introduce events which happen in the meantime to enforce a sense of natural pacing (or just tell the players no).
Quote from: Eirikrautha on July 05, 2023, 08:59:58 AM
Well, what are you really trying to achieve?
...
In the context of my singular, weekly group, we're not stopping after 15 minutes. We only get 4 hours on the one night a week it works. So 1:1 game time would be a detriment...
...
If you want to make time important, there are much more effective ways to do so. Limiting rests and healing, creating events at predictable intervals (so players can't just decide to rest willy-nilly), giving no experience for wandering monsters or only for "mission-based" activities (think about it before you reject it out of hand, as it's really worked at my table), etc.
My current campaign is winding down and my next campaign will likely start this winter and will be derived from Greg Gillespie's Dwarrodeep. I usually play with 3-8 players at the table and it's possible that splitting the groups into 2 groups of 4 might make it easier to schedule games. I've also considered recruiting a friend to help run a table and we can blend the outcomes of these events and share notes. Given the setup I'm prepping for the campaign, it seems quite plausible that these two groups will come into conflict or try to align with different factions and their conflict needs some kind of mediation that can happen without gathering everyone at a table. I've been thinking through how to manage it, and 1:1 time does a decent job during downtime. However, I've heard of other playstyles which suggest that 1:1 can apply outside of pure downtime. The descriptions I've heard never made sense to me unless I had several strong assumptions (close proximity to dungeon, every session ends back in town, players cannot fast forward within a session to the next day -at all-). These seem like extreme restraints from what I'm used to, so I'm trying to understand how this could work.
The reason why I'm thinking about repairing bridges, procedures for crawling a hex, etc. is because this is the kind of thing you might plausibly be doing in the game. If they come across a ruined bridge, and wanted to construct a crossing that could bear weight, that's going to be something you'd need to spend time in town organizing. I'd normally let them return (random monsters etc), recruit their people, go back, and then deal with whatever dangers might await them for the duration of the construction. But we'd do that in the span of maybe an hour or so at the table, depending on how the dice were looking and how complex of a task they're trying to accomplish. Repairing a 15-foot span seems more straightforward than a 50-foot span. If I were playing with 1:1 time at the session-level, then these kinds of procedures would have to be delayed until the end of the session. If they came across a chasm they couldn't cross personally, they'd have to explore alternatives and just make a note that they might want to do something about that crossing. I see the appeal in that but it also seems like a major hassle for the players who are used to having more control over returning to town and coming back with a plan.
I agree the idea of just stopping playing after 15 minutes is a non-starter for me too. I want at least 4 hours to game or else I start to wonder if it's worth the organizational overhead. I already have my systems in place to keep resources relevant (many of them are the rules you've indicated, some are my own procedures). One thing I've learned is that changes to structure and organization sometimes enable innovations in procedures. So if 1:1 time could rework my structure without breaking down my expectations and playstyle, maybe I could further improve my procedures.
As a concrete example, I rewrote my time tracking structure for my table so I can essentially pre-roll and prep a session from top-to-bottom so I'm not doing any rolling or table/rules lookup during the game, but still react as the players make different choices. That kind of thing is only possible if you change assumptions about how you resolve something like a wandering monster - from pure chance at set intervals to (in my case) certainty of events with an uncertain time of arrival. This has also enabled me to grant players more satisfying access to magic spells that can see the future, for example.
Quote from: King Tyranno on July 05, 2023, 04:21:00 PM
Basically 1:1 is a wonderful way to schedule things and give the players responsibility. I guarantee you will avoid the dreaded "that day isn't good for me" if you use 1:1 time correctly. Your players play when it's good for them to play. If it's not, they can't travel until it is. Simple.
I'm not sure why the alternative isn't just that nobody steps up to take responsibility and the campaign dies. That feels just at least as likely to me, given how much of a headache it can be to deal with scheduling. I feel like it might be more successful to just designate somebody as the "scheduler" similar to the caller/mapper roles but non-fictional.
Quote from: Venka on July 05, 2023, 05:29:46 PM
I'd love to know how many normal two-to-six player campaigns happen with 1:1 time. I can't imagine it is all that many.
...
1- A lot of people are going to associate 1:1 timekeeping with the "BrOSR".
I'm obviously aware of the connection to the BrOSR, but importantly, I've seen this trend both before I even knew what the BrOSR was (or likely anyone else), and I've seen it outside of typical RPG spaces or wherever the BrOSR would plausibly have any influence. The term "1:1 time" was not often used, but there was definitely some kind of playstyle out there in the wild which assumed some stricter adherence to the passage of time in the real world. Recently, in a wargaming facebook group I lurk, I saw some people recruiting for the equivalent of an online west marches hex-crawl and it seemed like there was a 1:1 time system implied to negotiate the outcome of contested actions and the pace of activities like raising armies, but the posters closed down invites before I could get any answers. Whereas before, when I saw people talking about this style, I dismissed it as a curiosity, I'm more interested in learning how in the world this is supposed to work.
As for me personally, I don't play strictly with 1:1 time, but I have tried it out before for downtime and it worked reasonably well. I will pause fictional time however if letting time pass is unreasonable (they're still camped out in the wilderness, whatever else). The idea of having a group camp in the woods for 2 weeks straight with no forward progress seems unreasonable. But when the players were in town, time between sessions passed at the real-world rate. I let players fast-forward their activities, within reason, so a single session could span 2 months of time, whereas there was only a week-long IRL gap between the previous session and this one. The fast-forwarding was especially necessary when someone got beaten nearly to death, because one person would spend a month bedridden while others went about doing their downtime stuff they got for free, essentially. If somebody nearly dies in the first encounter in the session, I just figure it's not worth it to slam on the brakes and reconvene in another week or two. I want to play everything out for at least a few hours, and that means there needs to be a way to hit fast-forward (which seemingly destroys the concept of 1:1 time outside downtime).
It's also worth mentioning that ShadowDark has me thinking a little more about the relation of real-world time to fictional time. I don't personally like the torch mechanic in that game and won't be using the ruleset for my campaign, but I think it's worth considering that there may be a broader trend than just what one tiny faction is pushing.
So it seems the consensus position is that 1:1 time is indeed best restricted to downtime and while the players are at the table, they can have longer spans of time pass than a single day. I'm still curious how in the world some of these people are playing out there that I've seen in passing, but for now I think that 1:1 time can be kept to downtime for my upcoming campaign.
If Group 1 & Group 2 are playing on alternate weeks, Group 1 can have days 1-7 in session time, Group 2 Days 8-14, Group 1 Days 15-21, and so on. Just don't let them overlap if you can possibly help it.
Quote from: S'mon on July 06, 2023, 07:06:49 AM
If Group 1 & Group 2 are playing on alternate weeks, Group 1 can have days 1-7 in session time, Group 2 Days 8-14, Group 1 Days 15-21, and so on. Just don't let them overlap if you can possibly help it.
How would you integrate a single party session adventures with Domain play being run with other players that cannot make the regular sessions during 1:1 downtime?
I'd think that you'd have to give the weekly session PC's precedence in any potential time-paradox situation.
i.e. The domain game players would occasionally lose time vs. the PC's.
PC group adventures for 7 days in the session, then there are 6 days of 1:1 downtime before the next PC game session.
Theoretically 13 days for the domain players to act, but in order to avoid paradoxes with the PC group they may be fast-forwarded in time and lose the days that could cause a potential paradox with the PC group...
The GM would have to make a judgement call how many of those days the domain players can use that wouldn't clash with the PC groups.
So the domain players may only get 2-3 days added to the 6 days of 1:1 time between sessions just to avoid possible paradoxes.
So the domain players would only get to use the last 9 days out of the 13 setting days to act to avoid paradoxes.
Does that seem like a viable solution?
Quote from: Jaeger on August 02, 2023, 06:18:00 PM
Quote from: S'mon on July 06, 2023, 07:06:49 AM
If Group 1 & Group 2 are playing on alternate weeks, Group 1 can have days 1-7 in session time, Group 2 Days 8-14, Group 1 Days 15-21, and so on. Just don't let them overlap if you can possibly help it.
How would you integrate a single party session adventures with Domain play being run with other players that cannot make the regular sessions during 1:1 downtime?
I'd think that you'd have to give the weekly session PC's precedence in any potential time-paradox situation.
i.e. The domain game players would occasionally lose time vs. the PC's.
PC group adventures for 7 days in the session, then there are 6 days of 1:1 downtime before the next PC game session.
Theoretically 13 days for the domain players to act, but in order to avoid paradoxes with the PC group they may be fast-forwarded in time and lose the days that could cause a potential paradox with the PC group...
The GM would have to make a judgement call how many of those days the domain players can use that wouldn't clash with the PC groups.
So the domain players may only get 2-3 days added to the 6 days of 1:1 time between sessions just to avoid possible paradoxes.
So the domain players would only get to use the last 9 days out of the 13 setting days to act to avoid paradoxes.
Does that seem like a viable solution?
Respectfully, you are over-complicating things. It's real time WHEN PLAY IS NOT HAPPENING. Domain play does not count as "play". Domain players aren't playing full sessions of DnD. They mostly order other pieces around similar to a wargame. The DM messages the patron to ask what they want to do. And then the patron responds. This takes seconds. And is great for people you want to involve in your games who otherwise wouldn't have the time.
Example:
The PCs raid a tomb that was occupied by the forces of Overlord Tim the Lawful Evil Wizard patron. This counts as a full session of DnD. The DM calculates that the raid on the tomb took roughly 3 hours real time. After the session, the players decide to go to a nearby town and leave. Play stops and real time play resumes. It takes the party 4 days real time to get to the village. And once they are there they can message the DM what they want to do next to arrange another session. Overlord Tim is informed his tomb has been raided. And orders his army to attack the PCs who are in a nearby town. It will take 7 days real time for the army to reach the town. The players do not know this. When the PCs arrive, they message the DM they want to go somewhere else for their next session. This takes 3 days real time. And that will be the date for their next session. Meanwhile Tim's army arrives and sacks the village. Finding no players. He finds out that they went north. During the next session of PC play, by coincidence, the travel times of the PCs and Tim's army overlap. PCs run into Overlord Tim's army and fight. The players win and flee. The DM informs Tim that his army was beaten and asks what he would like to do next. And so the game continues.
That's how patrons interact with the game. It's not complicated. Make notes and keep track of everything. If things overlap that's just how it's got to go. Like in real life.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
Respectfully, you are over-complicating things.
Quite possibly. Hence the brainstorming questions.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
It's real time WHEN PLAY IS NOT HAPPENING. Domain play does not count as "play". Domain players aren't playing full sessions of DnD. They mostly order other pieces around similar to a wargame. The DM messages the patron to ask what they want to do. And then the patron responds. This takes seconds. And is great for people you want to involve in your games who otherwise wouldn't have the time.
For me this is the big hook idea - to get people I know involved in a campaign that cannot regularly make a weekly game session.
I think that the multi-tier level of interaction would open things up situationally in the campaign that I as a GM would never do. It has the added bonus of being transparently "fair" as well. The weekly PC's would know that there are potential PvP patrons out there in the wild, so they are aware of the potential consequences.
I'm looking to dip my toes into the Multi-Tiered campaign pond using the players that I currently have.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
Example:
The PCs raid a tomb that was occupied by the forces of Overlord Tim the Lawful Evil Wizard patron. This counts as a full session of DnD. The DM calculates that the raid on the tomb took roughly 3 hours real time. After the session, the players decide to go to a nearby town and leave. Play stops and real time play resumes. It takes the party 4 days real time to get to the village.
So here's a difference for me.
I would count the travel time to the safe haven of the town as part of the PC game session, advancing the game calendar accordingly, and only trigger 1:1 real time play when the PC's hit town.
As the weekly session will be on the same day each week; so the 1:1 down time between my weekly sessions would be regular.
It's accounting for potential paradoxes that is the only real concern.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
And once they are there they can message the DM what they want to do next to arrange another session. Overlord Tim is informed his tomb has been raided. And orders his army to attack the PCs who are in a nearby town. It will take 7 days real time for the army to reach the town.
The players do not know this. When the PCs arrive, they message the DM they want to go somewhere else for their next session. This takes 3 days real time. And that will be the date for their next session. Meanwhile Tim's army arrives and sacks the village. Finding no players. He finds out that they went north.
While I get that Domain players would be doing most of their travel/movement in 1:1 time.
Does the PC's travel all have to occur in the 1:1 downtime interval?
If one has a regular weekly session, a lot of travel would invariably be done during the variable game time session.
I have outside commitments - PC play has to occur at the scheduled time. The weekly session time cannot be a variable for me.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
During the next session of PC play, by coincidence, the travel times of the PCs and Tim's army overlap. PCs run into Overlord Tim's army and fight. The players win and flee. The DM informs Tim that his army was beaten and asks what he would like to do next. And so the game continues.
I agree this is absolutely straight forward.
Patron players must be willing to be run by the GM as NPC's when inevitable overlaps occur.
I'd assume they could give the GM some short notes on how they might act in specific situations - but must ultimately relinquish control when they cross paths with PC's during the weekly game session.
Quote from: Jaeger on August 03, 2023, 05:58:58 PM
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
Respectfully, you are over-complicating things.
Quite possibly. Hence the brainstorming questions.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
It's real time WHEN PLAY IS NOT HAPPENING. Domain play does not count as "play". Domain players aren't playing full sessions of DnD. They mostly order other pieces around similar to a wargame. The DM messages the patron to ask what they want to do. And then the patron responds. This takes seconds. And is great for people you want to involve in your games who otherwise wouldn't have the time.
For me this is the big hook idea - to get people I know involved in a campaign that cannot regularly make a weekly game session.
I think that the multi-tier level of interaction would open things up situationally in the campaign that I as a GM would never do. It has the added bonus of being transparently "fair" as well. The weekly PC's would know that there are potential PvP patrons out there in the wild, so they are aware of the potential consequences.
I'm looking to dip my toes into the Multi-Tiered campaign pond using the players that I currently have.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
Example:
The PCs raid a tomb that was occupied by the forces of Overlord Tim the Lawful Evil Wizard patron. This counts as a full session of DnD. The DM calculates that the raid on the tomb took roughly 3 hours real time. After the session, the players decide to go to a nearby town and leave. Play stops and real time play resumes. It takes the party 4 days real time to get to the village.
So here's a difference for me.
I would count the travel time to the safe haven of the town as part of the PC game session, advancing the game calendar accordingly, and only trigger 1:1 real time play when the PC's hit town.
As the weekly session will be on the same day each week; so the 1:1 down time between my weekly sessions would be regular.
It's accounting for potential paradoxes that is the only real concern.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
And once they are there they can message the DM what they want to do next to arrange another session. Overlord Tim is informed his tomb has been raided. And orders his army to attack the PCs who are in a nearby town. It will take 7 days real time for the army to reach the town.
The players do not know this. When the PCs arrive, they message the DM they want to go somewhere else for their next session. This takes 3 days real time. And that will be the date for their next session. Meanwhile Tim's army arrives and sacks the village. Finding no players. He finds out that they went north.
While I get that Domain players would be doing most of their travel/movement in 1:1 time.
Does the PC's travel all have to occur in the 1:1 downtime interval?
If one has a regular weekly session, a lot of travel would invariably be done during the variable game time session.
I have outside commitments - PC play has to occur at the scheduled time. The weekly session time cannot be a variable for me.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 03, 2023, 11:07:58 AM
During the next session of PC play, by coincidence, the travel times of the PCs and Tim's army overlap. PCs run into Overlord Tim's army and fight. The players win and flee. The DM informs Tim that his army was beaten and asks what he would like to do next. And so the game continues.
I agree this is absolutely straight forward.
Patron players must be willing to be run by the GM as NPC's when inevitable overlaps occur.
I'd assume they could give the GM some short notes on how they might act in specific situations - but must ultimately relinquish control when they cross paths with PC's during the weekly game session.
A big point of 1:1 time is you don't have a weekly session. You have sessions when your characters reach destinations. If it takes 2 weeks to reach the dungeon, then the session in the dungeon is in two weeks time. If you need to leave the dungeon and resupply that is also accounted for. So don't go into big dungeons that are far away from any means of resupply.
What this does is give the players the responsibility to schedule sessions. The players all decide half of them are busy next week so they should go somewhere that takes two weeks to travel when everyone is free. If someone can't make it than that player can be left behind in the village for the session. And the DM asks the PC what their character is doing whilst the player is absent. All the GM does is facilitate the player decisions in the sandbox. Which means players don't bitch at the GM for running the game on a Saturday which is never good for one guy or a Friday which is never good for another guy. The players all decide. The players get to bitch at one another as opposed to the GM and live with the consequences.
The point is, in order to keep things from going weird. Keep to 1:1 time. No exceptions. No abstractions for anyone doing anything. Even when play is happening it should at least roughly coincide with real time. If the session in the dungeon was 3 hours and 45 minutes. That's how much time has passed when they emerge from the dungeon. The rule of "Real time when no play is happening" is more there in the very unlikely chance you do have to abstract time. But I don't think I've ever run into something where I needed to do something. It's always just been real time.
Basically, if you can manage and understand the concept of time in the real world, you can plan and GM a 1:1 time campaign.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 07, 2023, 02:19:18 PM
A big point of 1:1 time is you don't have a weekly session. You have sessions when your characters reach destinations. If it takes 2 weeks to reach the dungeon, then the session in the dungeon is in two weeks time. If you need to leave the dungeon and resupply that is also accounted for. So don't go into big dungeons that are far away from any means of resupply.
What this does is give the players the responsibility to schedule sessions. ...
The point is, in order to keep things from going weird. Keep to 1:1 time. No exceptions. No abstractions for anyone doing anything. Even when play is happening it should at least roughly coincide with real time. If the session in the dungeon was 3 hours and 45 minutes. That's how much time has passed when they emerge from the dungeon. The rule of "Real time when no play is happening" is more there in the very unlikely chance you do have to abstract time. But I don't think I've ever run into something where I needed to do something. It's always just been real time.
Basically, if you can manage and understand the concept of time in the real world, you can plan and GM a 1:1 time campaign.
Well, that makes running 1:1 time this way impossible for me.
I have other outside interests and commitments. Game day is game day.
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This went from the BrOSR's trying to convince people 1:1 time was RAW (it 'aint - show me the text) to all this BS meandering.
1:1 time IS NOT RAW. Gygax stated in the AD&D 1e DMG preface that the RAW material only applied to tournament play and what we did at our individual tables was up to us. Hell, Gary didn't even play D&D RAW.
And even though this was pointed out on page 1 of this thread ... IT continues. Feels like someone has a BrOSR agenda here ;D
(https://media.tenor.com/Fkp8SBZB11EAAAAC/i-think-weve-somewhat-missed-the-point-here-jesus.gif)
QuoteA big point of 1:1 time is you don't have a weekly session. You have sessions when your characters reach destinations. If it takes 2 weeks to reach the dungeon, then the session in the dungeon is in two weeks time. If you need to leave the dungeon and resupply that is also accounted for. So don't go into big dungeons that are far away from any means of resupply.
But that's not point of 1:1 time. Your variant maybe but it has little to do with common concept discussed. In 1:1 OSR games, travel happen on session, according to travel rules.
And I think it's way more rational because travel in DnD can be eventful and if you push very eventful travel into time between sessions, that's kinda make travel boring and rules for it useless.
How you gonna react when during day 10 gods of dice will say party meet small army of pinkogoblins if you are scheduled to play in 3 weeks because you counted it takes 3 weeks to take to town.
That seems just castrating opportunities to play and world to live.
Quote from: Wrath of God on August 08, 2023, 10:30:06 AM
QuoteA big point of 1:1 time is you don't have a weekly session. You have sessions when your characters reach destinations. If it takes 2 weeks to reach the dungeon, then the session in the dungeon is in two weeks time. If you need to leave the dungeon and resupply that is also accounted for. So don't go into big dungeons that are far away from any means of resupply.
But that's not point of 1:1 time. Your variant maybe but it has little to do with common concept discussed. In 1:1 OSR games, travel happen on session, according to travel rules.
And I think it's way more rational because travel in DnD can be eventful and if you push very eventful travel into time between sessions, that's kinda make travel boring and rules for it useless.
How you gonna react when during day 10 gods of dice will say party meet small army of pinkogoblins if you are scheduled to play in 3 weeks because you counted it takes 3 weeks to take to town.
That seems just castrating opportunities to play and world to live.
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
Quote from: DocJones on August 08, 2023, 12:03:01 PM
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
The assumption is that there are numerous other things happening in the world at that table or other tables, and that players will use other characters while the ones mentioned are in 'time jail.' Like so much of AD&D (at least as read by the BrOSR), it really seems to be built around the large-scale, multi-DM campaigns of the wargaming hobby club era.
(Note that I have managed to be alienated by much of the BrOSR, Pundit and other OSR members, WotC, Paizo, and numerous others in the hobby/industry. I have no dog in this fight. :) )
Quote from: DocJones on August 08, 2023, 12:03:01 PM
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
Indeed, 1:1 time seems ridiculous to me. And inconsistent: How the hell do you run a round of combat in 6 or 10 or whatever seconds?
If I want to experience 1:1 time in a game, I will go LARPing.
Quote from: DocJones on August 08, 2023, 12:03:01 PM
Quote from: Wrath of God on August 08, 2023, 10:30:06 AM
QuoteA big point of 1:1 time is you don't have a weekly session. You have sessions when your characters reach destinations. If it takes 2 weeks to reach the dungeon, then the session in the dungeon is in two weeks time. If you need to leave the dungeon and resupply that is also accounted for. So don't go into big dungeons that are far away from any means of resupply.
But that's not point of 1:1 time. Your variant maybe but it has little to do with common concept discussed. In 1:1 OSR games, travel happen on session, according to travel rules.
And I think it's way more rational because travel in DnD can be eventful and if you push very eventful travel into time between sessions, that's kinda make travel boring and rules for it useless.
How you gonna react when during day 10 gods of dice will say party meet small army of pinkogoblins if you are scheduled to play in 3 weeks because you counted it takes 3 weeks to take to town.
That seems just castrating opportunities to play and world to live.
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
You have two options, don't do something so ambitious and time consuming. Or do it and play as other characters. The only people who really need castles are patrons. And the majority of the time they already have one or more when the game starts. Players can be gifted an existing castle or even get involved in a seige depending on how the game goes. But for the most part, trying to build a castle as a player is a complete non issue. No one does that. Why do detractors consistently seem to think if one character is doing something you can't just make more characters? In something like BECMI it's pretty easy to generate a new character in half an hour. If you know your character is going to be busy for a long period of time it should be obvious to just make new characters.
I get that the BrOSR are a distasteful lot with their twitter antics and obsession with gay porn but 1:1 time works as an option. AN OPTION. I decouple it completely from those closeted and obnoxious men. I don't believe it's "As Gygax intended". Nor the only way to play DnD. Yet people sometimes come into these discussions annoyed that people aren't playing DnD the way they want it. At the end of the day, you really don't have to play with 1:1 time. I won't force you. Nobody can. I just like discussing it as a concept because it's fun and I'm actually using it in a KotBL Savage Pathfinder campaign. It's a cool idea for multi party campaigns. Lots of dynamic player driven stuff happens that you're just not going to see in regular games. And despite what some of you believe, you won't go for extended periods without playing the game so long as you're willing to make multiple characters. That's it. That's how you sort out the Time Jail. If you're worried players will make dozens of throw away characters, I find at best Players have three characters. No more. They have their main guy and two alts they can slot into when needed. It's not rocket science. It works well as is.
Quote from: DocJones on August 08, 2023, 12:03:01 PM
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
Gotta chime in on this one.
Because first of all, the subject of the thread is "How can 1:1 time work during a delve?" The subject is not "What's the stupidest, most retarded way of implementing 1:1 time?" As a technical matter, I take that to mean post something useful. Not post a random negative opinion.
But second, what you describe is just not what is in the rules as written. I realize BrOSR has muddied the waters on this. And that's where this idea of scheduling sessions comes in. It has nothing to do with the actual rule, though. That's just how they (BrOSR or anyone else who chooses to do it that way) manage a large-scale campaign.
1:1 time is a misleading term because the overall flow of time in a campaign is usually not going to be 1:1. You can always slow down and fast forward during play. The 1:1 applies during down time, keeping the flow of time in the campaign moving forward at a certain minimum basis. Adding to that the game-time that passes during play, over the course of playing a campaign for 3 years in real time, I'd expect somewhere around 20 years of in-game time to pass.
If you want to embark on a 3-year castle build--and this is something that actually did come up in a campaign when I was 12--what that actually means is regular adventuring and play for the next 3-8 months real time while the construction is ongoing. Some of those sessions will be the usual adventure stuff. But some of them could also address some need related to the construction. Building a castle provides ready-made motives and challenges.
Quote from: Old Aegidius on July 05, 2023, 02:08:54 AM
I know how to make this work if I keep 1:1 time restricted to downtime. I just can't make it make sense outside of downtime even though I've heard too many stories of people playing this way for it not to exist.
It doesn't make sense outside of downtime. And you'll never see such a game being played for long.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 09, 2023, 12:50:03 PM
Quote from: DocJones on August 08, 2023, 12:03:01 PM
Players: We have decided we are going to travel to the Emerald City.
DM: Okay fellows. See you in 4 weeks.
Players: We want to build a castle now.
DM: Okay your next session will be in 3 years.
I cannot think of anything more stupid and retarded as 1:1 time.
Gotta chime in on this one.
Because first of all, the subject of the thread is "How can 1:1 time work during a delve?" The subject is not "What's the stupidest, most retarded way of implementing 1:1 time?" As a technical matter, I take that to mean post something useful. Not post a random negative opinion.
I don't think it even works in delves. I have characters spending hours prying gems off statutes, searching rooms and crypts, and then finally hurrying back to town after dark. Spending 12-14 hours of delve time, 8 hours of travel time from town and back in four hours of real session time. Furthermore if they decide it would be better to stay the night in the dungeon and barricade themselves in a room, when we pick up the session the next week we're going to begin where we left off and roll for that nights encounters... not pick up 7 days later.
Oh and another DM started a Shadowdark campaign with this rule that torches last one hour of session time, which I thought was silly.. No they last for one hour of game time. So my player group above is going to go through 12-14 torches during their delve (perhaps more if they get some wet).
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 09, 2023, 12:50:03 PM
But second, what you describe is just not what is in the rules as written. I realize BrOSR has muddied the waters on this. And that's where this idea of scheduling sessions comes in. It has nothing to do with the actual rule, though. That's just how they (BrOSR or anyone else who chooses to do it that way) manage a large-scale campaign.
To be honest I had just come back from reading this blogpost before my last post:
https://bdubsanddragons.blogspot.com/2021/07/jeffrogaxian-time-keeping-vs-variable.html
So apologies to others who are not retarded dickheads and argue these concepts in somewhat good faith. :-)
Quote from: DocJones on August 09, 2023, 05:57:21 PM
I don't think it even works in delves.
I've been doing it for about 30 years. And it does work.
QuoteI have characters spending hours prying gems off statutes, searching rooms and crypts, and then finally hurrying back to town after dark. Spending 12-14 hours of delve time, 8 hours of travel time from town and back in four hours of real session time. Furthermore if they decide it would be better to stay the night in the dungeon and barricade themselves in a room, when we pick up the session the next week we're going to begin where we left off and roll for that nights encounters... not pick up 7 days later.
You may have to go back a page or two, but my initial comment on this thread is you do have to figure out how to adapt the idea to how you play.
For myself, I just don't allow sleepovers in a dungeon. That has nothing to do with feeling like I need to conform to 1:1 time. It's for a completely different practical reason. Namely that in the real world, sometimes players miss a session, and I don't think that should hold up those who showed up. And I don't want to make up weird reasons why a character suddenly isn't with the party. Players often don't like someone else playing their character, especially when something bad happens to the character. And I really don't want another character to control myself. I've got enough to do as DM.
The thing is, when I started insisting on each session beginning and ending in town, I actually noticed player attendance improving. I think it's because players understand that they have a certain obligation to show up for the sake of continuity, and the sense of obligation can sour the fun. And so I find everyone has more fun, myself included, when I insist we always begin and end in town. A lot of the benefits I've heard Jeffro attribute to 1:1 time I actually think is more accurately attributable to always begin and end in town. End of side bar.
But if I were running delves more like you're doing it, I wouldn't advance the clock 7 days while the PCs are sleeping in the dungeon. I'll wait until they're completely finished with the delve and then tack on those 7 days to downtime between adventures. So if you played on Aug 5th, ended the session in the dungeon, then end up finishing it up on Aug 12 and head back to down, the campaign clock will move forward 2 weeks during the time between the Aug 12 session and the Aug 19 session.
QuoteOh and another DM started a Shadowdark campaign with this rule that torches last one hour of session time, which I thought was silly.. No they last for one hour of game time. So my player group above is going to go through 12-14 torches during their delve (perhaps more if they get some wet).
*shrugs*
For a couple of years I was doing a "multi-player solo dungeon"--this involved all players running their own solo game using DMG Appendix A with the twist being that we're all doing it on the same map. So we can party up, split up, et cetera. It allows a lot of freedoms that aren't so practical in standard play. In order to keep everyone coordinated time-wise, everyone used a hand-counter, one click for each round of activity. And the table also has a sand-timer. It was a 15-minute timer, in which everyone got 30 clicks. When you got to 30, you had to stop and wait for everyone to catch-up. But if you don't use your 30 clicks before the sand runs out, you lose the rest. The idea is so no one gets too far ahead in time, and no one holds the entire group back too much in time.
These time intervals worked usually worked out pretty smoothly. Obviously you're not going to resolve a 10-round combat in just 5 minutes. But your very next action might be searching the room, which is a 10-round action resolved in a single die roll, and so it usually balances out.
The torches had a half-hour burn time in-game. So every flip of the sand-timer (every 15 minutes real time) used up a torch. Instead of a 1 in 6 chance of a wandering monster every hour, we did a 1 in 12 chance for each half-hour of game time (15 minutes of real time). It made everything really easy to track.
Now this has absolutely nothing at all to do with 1:1 time which only applies between sessions, not during. But it does share the same stated purposes as the section in the DMG on timekeeping where 1:1 time is mentioned.
QuoteTo be honest I had just come back from reading this blogpost before my last post:
https://bdubsanddragons.blogspot.com/2021/07/jeffrogaxian-time-keeping-vs-variable.html
So apologies to others who are not retarded dickheads and argue these concepts in somewhat good faith. :-)
Yeah. I mean, hey, I think these guys are having a lot of fun with how they're playing. It sounds like they've drummed up some good excitement and energy, and I'm 100% in favor of that.
I do think it's a bit disingenuous when they insist their interpretation of 1:1 time is *the* interpretation. I think Jeffro read the section, was inspired, did his own thing, and then did a post-hoc justification.
I also think whether it was intentional from the jump or something he just stumbled upon, he's aware that he's getting attention by painting a bullseye around 1:1 time and insisting it's BtB. He views 1:1 time as something he uniquely rediscovered. And he's correct to a degree. Even though I've been using it for 30 years, I don't recall anyone else ever talking about it before Jeffro started talking about it. It's good casting in terms of having an obscure and arcane rule to hang your hat on. It does generate recoil from gamers who haven't thought it through--and almost no one has.
And playing strictly by the book itself is weirdly a hot-button issue. I play 1E exactly by the book because I happen to really like every last bit of it. And I frequently get reactions from other gamers that by my merely enjoying the rules as written that I'm somehow telling others how to play. It's such a strange disconnect, it only ever comes off like stinking of insecurity and envy. And that insecurity and envy is really low-hanging fruit for generating heat.
Jeffro's problem is that he comes across not so much as "here's a good way to play," or even "here's the best way to play" or "here's the One True Way to Play", but "here's the Only Way to be a gamer, a contributor to Western Civilization, a good Christian, and a human being." :)
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 10, 2023, 12:51:42 AM
I've been doing it for about 30 years. And it does work.
So, start of gaming session:
PC's: "we want to ride to Moronberg about 50 miles away.:
DM: "Ok, we'll meet up to play again in 2 days and 6 hours from now."
::)
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 10, 2023, 09:21:30 AM
Jeffro's problem is that he comes across not so much as "here's a good way to play," or even "here's the best way to play" or "here's the One True Way to Play", but "here's the Only Way to be a gamer, a contributor to Western Civilization, a good Christian, and a human being." :)
Maybe. I don't really follow the guy. The thing of it is, I see claims by gamers that others are telling them how to play far, far, far, far more often than I ever see anyone actually saying you have to play a certain way. So I'm inclined to not believe this without receipts. And for all the bitching about this guy I've seen, I haven't seen receipts. Maybe this guy is one of the rare weirdos who do this shit. If this guy is really that bad, it shouldn't be that hard to find and post clear receipts without any murky context.
Quote from: Scooter on August 10, 2023, 09:52:53 AM
So,
No.
Quote from: Scooter on August 10, 2023, 09:52:53 AM
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 10, 2023, 12:51:42 AM
I've been doing it for about 30 years. And it does work.
So, start of gaming session:
PC's: "we want to ride to Moronberg about 50 miles away.:
DM: "Ok, we'll meet up to play again in 2 days and 6 hours from now."
::)
You don't need a whole session just to do that. The DM simply messages the players asking what to do on your chosen internet messaging platform. The players respond. And everyone knows they need to turn up IRL or on Discord in 2 days time. It's really simple. If you know you're only going to be in a place for a little while you don't schedule a whole session around it you just do some messages on Discord to tell each other what you want to do. It works when you understand it's a sandbox world with dynamic player choices and the consequences of those choices. And real time = game time. The end. Not complicated.
It's frustrating that the only people who are adamant it doesn't work are those refusing to even try it. To the point of making up scenarios that "prove" it doesn't work. I've been running a real time game for around 6 months now with 10 rambunctious and very intelligent kids ranging from 8 - 16 years old. They get it. They don't need it explained multiple times. They understand that they need to manage their time in sessions. They clocked on that they needed multiple characters without me even telling them. They're even planning a castle siege as we speak to get rid of the goblins who've taken the Keep on the Borderlands. It's been very cool and rewarding to see them get into the swing of sandbox play with 1:1 time. I'm telling you all from experience that it works and doesn't need any tinkering to go well. But people without experience of this are telling me that 1:1 time is terrible and doesn't work.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 10, 2023, 02:08:40 PM
You don't need a whole session just to do that. The DM simply messages the players asking what to do on your chosen internet messaging platform.
LMAO! No, that's cheating and moving the goal posts. HUGE fucking fail. AT THE FUCKING TABLE is where it is tested to work or not. Get it, or are you really this stupid? And who the fuck knows if the players are only going to be somewhere for a few minutes? You don't.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 10, 2023, 02:08:40 PM
It's frustrating that the only people who are adamant it doesn't work are those refusing to even try it. To the point of making up scenarios that "prove" it doesn't work.
I don't need to actually stick my hand in a blender to know it's not a good idea. There are fact patterns where it's perfectly reasonable to not even try.
The thing about this one is, if it makes sense to you and I, and if we use it and it works, then it makes sense, period. It works, period. Those are objective facts. When people claim it doesn't make sense, that only means they lack the ability to understand it. When people claim it doesn't work, that means they don't know how it works. There is no argument that can refute it when there are observable instances of it working with an internal logic. The only tact a dissenter has left is to pretend what's happening isn't happening.
Which is why it's not just made up scenarios. When I think a rule is really cool, I welcome oddball cases to put it to the test. That's not what these people are doing. They are making up scenarios while also insisting on how they must be resolved. All that does is show just how desperate and weak the con position is.
It doesn't mean they have to like it. They just need to be honest enough to say it's a great rule even if it's not how they prefer to play. I don't get what the big deal is.
QuoteI've been running a real time game for around 6 months now with 10 rambunctious and very intelligent kids ranging from 8 - 16 years old. They get it. They don't need it explained multiple times. They understand that they need to manage their time in sessions. They clocked on that they needed multiple characters without me even telling them. They're even planning a castle siege as we speak to get rid of the goblins who've taken the Keep on the Borderlands. It's been very cool and rewarding to see them get into the swing of sandbox play with 1:1 time. I'm telling you all from experience that it works and doesn't need any tinkering to go well. But people without experience of this are telling me that 1:1 time is terrible and doesn't work.
Glad to hear you're all having fun.
And that's just it. People act like 1E is full of obscure and mysterious rules. The fact is, me and millions of other people played this game as kids. If that many kids can figure it out, it's really not all that hard to understand. Gamers just too often allow their pettiness to get in the way of seeing clearly.
Quote from: Scooter on August 10, 2023, 04:25:49 PM
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 10, 2023, 02:08:40 PM
You don't need a whole session just to do that. The DM simply messages the players asking what to do on your chosen internet messaging platform.
LMAO! No, that's cheating and moving the goal posts. HUGE fucking fail. AT THE FUCKING TABLE is where it is tested to work or not. Get it, or are you really this stupid? And who the fuck knows if the players are only going to be somewhere for a few minutes? You don't.
It's been a while since I've read the 1e DMG. Since you've clearly read it more than I have, if you could just point me to the part of it that says you aren't allowed to use 1:1 time via mail and have to do absolutely everything on the table I would be most grateful.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 13, 2023, 01:12:41 PM
It's been a while since I've read the 1e DMG. Since you've clearly read it more than I have, if you could just point me to the part of it that says you aren't allowed to use 1:1 time via mail and have to do absolutely everything on the table I would be most grateful.
In AD&D 1st edition it took on average 3 days to send and receive mail.
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 13, 2023, 01:12:41 PM
It's been a while since I've read the 1e DMG. Since you've clearly read it more than I have, if you could just point me to the part of it that says you aren't allowed to use 1:1 time via mail and have to do absolutely everything on the table I would be most grateful.
I think what you're missing is that it was a trick question all along. Pay close attention to the details. He was saying he wanted to travel to Moronberg. Obviously he's already there.
Quote from: Armchair Gamer on August 10, 2023, 09:21:30 AM
Jeffro's problem is that he comes across not so much as "here's a good way to play," or even "here's the best way to play" or "here's the One True Way to Play", but "here's the Only Way to be a gamer, a contributor to Western Civilization, a good Christian, and a human being." :)
Theres a rather scathing commentary on this now.
https://archive.ph/0ZxRN (https://archive.ph/0ZxRN)
Quote from: DocJones on August 13, 2023, 07:45:10 PM
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 13, 2023, 01:12:41 PM
It's been a while since I've read the 1e DMG. Since you've clearly read it more than I have, if you could just point me to the part of it that says you aren't allowed to use 1:1 time via mail and have to do absolutely everything on the table I would be most grateful.
In AD&D 1st edition it took on average 3 days to send and receive mail.
I was just generalizing. I watched the Blackmoore documentary and even though it didn't mention 1:1 exactly, from what I understand back in the 70's there was a lot of correspondence between RPG players through telephone and some mail. I also recently met up with my very first GM for the first time in nearly 15 years and he did a 1:1 game many years ago. So he's been telling me some tricks they learned to correspond with each other before the Internet.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 13, 2023, 10:54:30 PM
Quote from: King Tyranno on August 13, 2023, 01:12:41 PM
It's been a while since I've read the 1e DMG. Since you've clearly read it more than I have, if you could just point me to the part of it that says you aren't allowed to use 1:1 time via mail and have to do absolutely everything on the table I would be most grateful.
I think what you're missing is that it was a trick question all along. Pay close attention to the details. He was saying he wanted to travel to Moronberg. Obviously he's already there.
I understood it was a trick question. But I still don't understand by what rules and logic I "cheated" when I said that posting messages on discord is a perfectly valid way to reduce unnecessary sessions. I realize I'm just dealing with a troll trying to "catch me out" with standards they keep changing until eventually they are proven right. But I feel the more I explain things and the more I ask questions they can't answer in good faith, the more they are exposed as Billy Bullshiters arguing in bad faith. But I still feel the need to have good faith conversations about 1:1 time. I find the concept so fascinating and love to hear people's opinions even if they disagree. Because through those disagreements I can learn what I previously didn't see that doesn't work with 1:1 time and needs adjusting.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 10, 2023, 12:51:42 AM
I've been doing it for about 30 years. And it does work.
...
Then you are the man to ask.
Irregular game days induced by running the brosr interpretation of virtually all travel occurring on 1:1 downtime are a non-starter for me.
But I would like to run 2-3 domain level players that act during downtime, and a regular weekly group.
I'm probably just overthinking the whole thing; my original idea doesn't seem any more complicated that what King tyranno has described.
PC's must end in a safe space, Domain players get treated like NPC's during session time, and then are free to act during the 1:1 "downtime" with the previous session "days" added to that at whatever point I judge paradoxes won't happen. At most a 30sec think...
Just want to keep the calendar moving forward on downtime; running a campaign with long time passages that naturally occur.
Quote from: Jaeger on August 15, 2023, 05:32:01 PM
Then you are the man to ask.
Irregular game days induced by running the brosr interpretation of virtually all travel occurring on 1:1 downtime are a non-starter for me.
But I would like to run 2-3 domain level players that act during downtime, and a regular weekly group.
I'm probably just overthinking the whole thing; my original idea doesn't seem any more complicated that what King tyranno has described.
PC's must end in a safe space, Domain players get treated like NPC's during session time, and then are free to act during the 1:1 "downtime" with the previous session "days" added to that at whatever point I judge paradoxes won't happen. At most a 30sec think...
Just want to keep the calendar moving forward on downtime; running a campaign with long time passages that naturally occur.
1) I'm not a BrOSR guy myself. I *think* I know how they do their 1:1 time. But I could be wrong about how they do things.
2) I don't think I have ever run a game with domain-level players acting between sessions.
The Rules as Written is a lot looser and more flexible than BrOSR 1:1 time.
In the Rules as Written, there is a degree to which you jump forwards and backwards in time.
For example, suppose your regular weekly group consists of Amy, Ben, Carl, Doug, and Eva, but Doug doesn't show up this week, and when you ask the rest of the players "What do you do?" their answer involves something like travel that takes up a lot of game time. By all means play that out then and there. Even if they suck up 2 months of game time. But when you meet next week, and Doug shows up, only one week of in-game time has passed for Doug's character (due to 1:1 downtime), so rather than picking up on the timeframe where you left off last week, you would go back in time to where Doug's character is.
The way it works is, of whichever players are available in the moment, whoever's character left off at the earliest frame of time gets first say on what they want to do. But the other character's won't be available to help them. They can choose to just wait until the other characters are available, in which case control then passes to the next most retarded character as you fast-forward to their place in time, and so on.
This is something I thought was worth pointing out because it wouldn't ever come up with BrOSR 1:1 time as I understand it. But this IS something that any group could face--a player missing a session--making 1:1 time relevant even if you aren't playing with multiple groups, domain level players, or any kind of fancy stuff.
It gets trickier for Domain level players. Let's give then names. Frank, Gretta, and Hank. How do you determine who's present? Is it just whoever is texting you in the moment? So Frank blows up your phone and ends up like 2 years ahead of everyone else in game time? Or perhaps all domain players are considered constantly present between sessions. But then if Hank ghosts you, Frank and Gretta have to wait until 1:1 time pushes Hank up to their respective time frames before they act again.
It's not impossible to work this out. It just requires some thinking things through. One of the stated purposes in the section of the DMG where 1:1 time is mentioned is so that more active players are rewarded, but not allowed to get too far ahead of everyone else. Whatever you do, that's what you need to accomplish.
So if I were doing 2-3 domain level players plus a regular weekly group, I would not allow any domain-level player to act if their character is further along in the timeline than the furthest ahead members of the face-to-face group. So going with the initial example, when session 1 ends, Amy, Ben, Carl, and Eva's characters are on day 61 of in-game time. So Frank, Gretta, and Hank can text me all they want with what they want to do until they hit day 61. Then they're in "time jail" though free to play a second domain level character if they want to keep playing.
The BrOSR (as I understand it) side-steps this issue by being more stringent in the correspondence between real time and game time. For what they do, it probably is the best way to do it. For me, keeping time flowing forward is more important.
Hate to say it but alot of this "1:1 time" harping sounds ruthlessly stupid. Can loOSR NOT fuck everything up somehow?
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
1) I'm not a BrOSR guy myself. I *think* I know how they do their 1:1 time. But I could be wrong about how they do things.
2) I don't think I have ever run a game with domain-level players acting between sessions.
The Rules as Written is a lot looser and more flexible than BrOSR 1:1 time.
In the Rules as Written, there is a degree to which you jump forwards and backwards in time.
After a long think; to make things easier I'd want to minimize that as much as possible.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
For example, suppose your regular weekly group consists of Amy, Ben, Carl, Doug, and Eva, but Doug doesn't show up this week, and when you ask the rest of the players "What do you do?" their answer involves something like travel that takes up a lot of game time. By all means play that out then and there. Even if they suck up 2 months of game time. But when you meet next week, and Doug shows up, only one week of in-game time has passed for Doug's character (due to 1:1 downtime), so rather than picking up on the timeframe where you left off last week, you would go back in time to where Doug's character is.
I would not go back in time in this case.
If Doug doesn't show, then his PC is chilling out.
Doug can let me know what downtime activities he wants his PC to do for 2 months, but that's it. You snooze, you lose.
IMO: Going back in time as illustrated in the DMG is only needed if you are running multiple PC groups that are not in regular contact with each other.
i.e. I'd enforce All the PC's of a given group staying in sync in game time.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
It gets trickier for Domain level players. Let's give then names. Frank, Gretta, and Hank. How do you determine who's present? Is it just whoever is texting you in the moment? So Frank blows up your phone and ends up like 2 years ahead of everyone else in game time? Or perhaps all domain players are considered constantly present between sessions. But then if Hank ghosts you, Frank and Gretta have to wait until 1:1 time pushes Hank up to their respective time frames before they act again.
I'd apply 1:1 time the same as I would with the PC groups...
If a given domain player doesn't let me know their moves that week, then they sit idle, or I run any interactions as if they were an NPC faction should the need come up.
Also; No one gets to go further in time than the next weekly session for the PC's. Ever.
Makes it easier to stay synced.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
It's not impossible to work this out. It just requires some thinking things through. One of the stated purposes in the section of the DMG where 1:1 time is mentioned is so that more active players are rewarded, but not allowed to get too far ahead of everyone else. Whatever you do, that's what you need to accomplish.
Yeah, I think I was imagining things to be more complicated than they are.
I think reducing the complication of domain players and PC's going back and forth in time is key: Keeping 1:1 tracking as K.I.S.S. as possible is the way I want to go.
PC's always stay in sync, Domain players have some wiggle room after a PC session, but stay in sync with the PC's downtime between sessions. To me that seems a good way to keep time flowing forward...
Is the way I see doing things AD&D1e DMG RAW? No, but IMHO there is a lot of wiggle room on how it could be implemented anyway.
Quote from: Jaeger on August 24, 2023, 03:10:13 PM
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
1) I'm not a BrOSR guy myself. I *think* I know how they do their 1:1 time. But I could be wrong about how they do things.
2) I don't think I have ever run a game with domain-level players acting between sessions.
The Rules as Written is a lot looser and more flexible than BrOSR 1:1 time.
In the Rules as Written, there is a degree to which you jump forwards and backwards in time.
After a long think; to make things easier I'd want to minimize that as much as possible.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
For example, suppose your regular weekly group consists of Amy, Ben, Carl, Doug, and Eva, but Doug doesn't show up this week, and when you ask the rest of the players "What do you do?" their answer involves something like travel that takes up a lot of game time. By all means play that out then and there. Even if they suck up 2 months of game time. But when you meet next week, and Doug shows up, only one week of in-game time has passed for Doug's character (due to 1:1 downtime), so rather than picking up on the timeframe where you left off last week, you would go back in time to where Doug's character is.
I would not go back in time in this case.
If Doug doesn't show, then his PC is chilling out.
Doug can let me know what downtime activities he wants his PC to do for 2 months, but that's it. You snooze, you lose.
IMO: Going back in time as illustrated in the DMG is only needed if you are running multiple PC groups that are not in regular contact with each other.
i.e. I'd enforce All the PC's of a given group staying in sync in game time.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
It gets trickier for Domain level players. Let's give then names. Frank, Gretta, and Hank. How do you determine who's present? Is it just whoever is texting you in the moment? So Frank blows up your phone and ends up like 2 years ahead of everyone else in game time? Or perhaps all domain players are considered constantly present between sessions. But then if Hank ghosts you, Frank and Gretta have to wait until 1:1 time pushes Hank up to their respective time frames before they act again.
I'd apply 1:1 time the same as I would with the PC groups...
If a given domain player doesn't let me know their moves that week, then they sit idle, or I run any interactions as if they were an NPC faction should the need come up.
Also; No one gets to go further in time than the next weekly session for the PC's. Ever.
Makes it easier to stay synced.
Quote from: Lunamancer on August 15, 2023, 09:22:03 PM
It's not impossible to work this out. It just requires some thinking things through. One of the stated purposes in the section of the DMG where 1:1 time is mentioned is so that more active players are rewarded, but not allowed to get too far ahead of everyone else. Whatever you do, that's what you need to accomplish.
Yeah, I think I was imagining things to be more complicated than they are.
I think reducing the complication of domain players and PC's going back and forth in time is key: Keeping 1:1 tracking as K.I.S.S. as possible is the way I want to go.
PC's always stay in sync, Domain players have some wiggle room after a PC session, but stay in sync with the PC's downtime between sessions. To me that seems a good way to keep time flowing forward...
Is the way I see doing things AD&D1e DMG RAW? No, but IMHO there is a lot of wiggle room on how it could be implemented anyway.
You're absolutely right.
If there was ever a rule 0 for 1:1 time it should be this in my opinion:
"From session 1, your game world and everything put in it exists and progresses in real time. Regardless of sessions and attendance by players. There is no off button. The world never stops existing. You do not skip, or go backwards through time for any reason. Time simply progresses as it does in the real world. "
Once you realize this. Everything becomes so much simpler. As you said, if someone doesn't show up they stay behind. If they don't message you, they do nothing. Same for patrons. What ends up happening is even if you're just doing this with one group you end up with multiple parties in this wonderfully dynamic world. And your job as GM becomes much easier. You're not making complex and overwrought plots and NPCs. The players all do that themselves. You just facilitate their actions in the sandbox. You can still be creative as a GM. But you're much more of a Games Designer than a storyteller. And frankly I think we need people with game design skill in addition to the storyteller skills as GMs.
When it comes to multiple other groups. I see no reason to go back in time either. They exist and do things in the game world. They are given relevant info as their characters uncover it. If they meet up with another party that's a happy coincidence. But it doesn't really matter. Each group plays the game and reacts to their immediate surroundings. It's pretty simple. Group 1 has a session on Tuesday the 9th in the Northlands, Group 2 has a session on Friday the 18th in the City of Citytown. Their games are separate but part of the same game world occurring in real time. And things that happen in one group may affect the other group. Or not.
It's real time, the world exists and progresses regardless of what players do. That's it. That's 1:1 time.
I dunno, I feel like the last two replies got a little overly obsessed with the whole going back in time thing, to the point where it makes me wonder if what I said hasn't been misunderstood. I mean maybe it was a bad way to express it. The campaign has NOT in any way shape or form really gone BACK in time. The issue in the example I gave is that the active participants blew through 2 months of game time in-session. And in that example, it's fully resolved that way without anyone going into time jail because, in the broader campaign, there is nothing else to do, nothing else to switch to. The people who showed up to play should get to play. Time in the campaign has actually advanced according to 1:1 time, not gone backwards, when the missing player finally shows up. And it's at that point those PCs who got ahead are placed into time jail. The most behind PC has the choice whether to adventure or to fast-forward to a point when the rest of the party is out of time jail.
What would happen in a sufficiently massive campaign is, if you've got enough people involved, there's always going to be one jerkoff who's holding the whole campaign up, and so what will almost certainly happen in that case is if you play a campaign for exactly one year of real time, then exactly one year of game time will pass. Personally, I do not like that. I actually like to see a campaign we invest in for a few years real time traverse through a full 20-year active career. And in smaller games on the scale of a typical campaign--1 group, with perhaps the occasional side group for special missions, and some amount of no-shows--I usually find the flow of time to fall within the 5-10x range.
But anyway, that's not even the reason I came back to this thread. I came to mention that there is actually another official 1E publication written by Gary Gygax that mentions 1:1 time. I'm running Tomb of Horrors again for Halloween, and it pops up there. And this is an example that is spot on for the topic of the thread. It states upfront in the module that completing the adventure will likely take multiple sessions. And the reason it raises 1:1 time again is to have time indeed pass, even mid-delve, for the sake of giving the characters the 7 days of rest, or however long it was between sessions, to allow them to recover some hit points and spells.
In other words, it's used to help the PCs out. This is not a, "Oh, we packed up and went home when you were in the middle of the dungeon, well after a week's worth of wandering monsters you're all dead, LoL, next time plan better to be out of the dungeon dummy," which is a sentiment that's come up. Yeah, very clearly not the spirit of 1:1 time at all.
If I can, I like to have an in-game week pass between sessions. This allows PCs to have healed up a bit, and had a chance to in AD&D1e do various bits and pieces like sell off gear, buy new gear, look for new patrons or cargoes in Classic Traveller, that sort of thing. The stuff which their characters may need or want to do, but we don't necessarily want to roleplay through in detail.
It also gives me as DM a chance to tell them other things happening in the game world. Everyone has a sense of things happening as time passes, the world changing etc.
It's not vital, you don't have to do it, but it's something worth considering.
I know I'm late the the party with this one but here is the text from the unreleased manuscript version of Empire of the Petal Throne. It was written in the spring of 1974 so reflects Dave Arneson's influence more than Gygax.
"The referee will establish a table with the names of regular players and divisions into weeks and months. As a player character embarks upon adventures,
spends time resting in Jakálla, etc. etc., the referee will mark off passing weeks and months against his name. Players are not permitted to participate in adventures
together unless they are at the same time in the game: i.e. a player at Week 11 cannot join a party now passing through Week 21, for example. In order
to join the latter party, the player at Week 11 would be required to sit in Jakálla for ten weeks -- or go on adventures alone or with other players of the same time
frame.
In general, it may be said that an adventure into the Underworld requires one week, while an outdoor adventure requires one turn per day (cf. Sec. 821). Time
spent waiting in Jakálla, in one's fortress, etc., is adjudged by the referee in consultation with the player involved"
The second paragraph is almost identical to one in OD&D. But this idea that each adventure takes a week and players usually play once per week, is the foundation of 1:1 time. So it really isn't necessary to track day by day as their is enough slop in the rest of the week to catch everyone up. But they are keeping track of where each player is in the general timeline of the campaign.
There is a curious paragraph is The Complete Warlock (1978) which is a reflection of the gaming traditions of California (which eventually birthed Runequest).
"One real day (noon to noon) = one Game Week. This allows you to play more than one expedition or adventure in a real day and also allows expeditions that take more than one day of the characters' time without having to come back the next real day to continue.
The idea that players would have to stop playing at the end of a game day and come back the next real world day is so bizarre that someone, somewhere, had to be playing that way in order for this warning to be applicable. Note that this is 7:1 time that they are recommending.
Not surprisingly, Runequest also recommends this 7:1 time and even says that 1:1 time "makes the game drag unless one is running a campaign by mail."
I've had a draft campaign for a while where the players are sent out to establish a new settlement on the marches, and a season passes for each game session. So there'd be a game year every 4 sessions, which we'd normally expect to be every real month.
It's based on that idea of you're name level now, go build a stronghold and clear the surrounding hexes of monsters - except that rather than waiting till 9th level and then looking for your place, you just start there at 1st level. By the time you reach 9th you might actually have built a castle and cleared out the monsters.
But then, I like games with building elements in them. Ars Magica was fun for that, even if it was a bit thespy.