In-Game vs. Real Life Passage of Time

[maggot]

Sometimes it takes weeks to play out a single day as the party explores an ancient crypt. Sometimes it takes a few hours to play out and entire season as the party holes up for the winter or goes on an extended journey across the sea.

In four-and-a-half real-time years, my current campaign as moved forward about 13 years. There was at least one major surge forward of about 10 years, so 1-1 is probably about right except for hand waiving time.

 

[the Jester]

It really varies in my campaign. Sometimes the party spends multiple sessions in intensive exploration and dungeoneering, which takes a month or two of real time and 2-3 days of game time. On the other hand there have been times when the party has taken the winter off or something.

 

[Starglim]

I've run a PBeM game since 2000. So far it has covered 4 1/2 days. I agree, though, that tabletop games probably average out very roughly 1:1.

 

[S'mon]

It varies a huge amount with me.

I created my main game-world 19 real years ago; 383 game years have passed.
I ran a PBEM for about 3 real years in which maybe 8 months of game time passed.
I started running 3e in my game world a bit over 3 years ago, most of that time covered 2 game years, but with speed-up period recently about 6.5 game years have now passed.

Generally I don't like game time to pass slower than real-time for very long, if it starts to do so I'll have game-time jumps of 6 months or whatever.

 

[Ibram]

Actual game time time is one session = one week. between adventure blocks a year or more can pass:

"Ok, having returned the princesses soul to her body you set off again. your travles take you to the Valish Sea, where you are employed as a guard on a merchant ship.

In service to the captain you find yourself fighting the occasional pirate, though boredom and the tediousness of life aboard a ship is a more constant threat.

Nearly a year has passed since you joined the ship when the captain picks up a very unusual passenger...."

 

[the Jester]

Actual game time time is one session = one week. between adventure blocks a year or more can pass:

"Ok, having returned the princesses soul to her body you set off again. your travles take you to the Valish Sea, where you are employed as a guard on a merchant ship.

In service to the captain you find yourself fighting the occasional pirate, though boredom and the tediousness of life aboard a ship is a more constant threat.

Nearly a year has passed since you joined the ship when the captain picks up a very unusual passenger...."

I wish I could pull this off a little better! This is one of the areas I think I need to work on as a dm- enforcing the passage of more natural time between adventure arcs... usually when the pcs pause for a few months in the game it's because they've chosen to.

 

[Jdvn1]

So, do people have a general ratio for their own games they've noticed? What was the largest disparity you have ever seen?

In LEW, a single battle can take a month. How's that for time ratio?

 

[Evilhalfling]

Real time my campaigns tend to last 12 months
The campaigns about 2 years - and cover about 9 levels.
This still seems like unbelieveably fast leveling, but options are constrained by plot.

 

[Crothian]

Want to have some fun? Limit the availibility of teleport and other mass transit spells. My 18 month campaign covered about 20 years. They felt they had to travel a lot and 3-4 months on a ship here and there starts to add up fast. Plus they took a few months off here and there to make sure they could travel at the right times, traveling by ship in the month of storms and then winter is a really bad idea.