Passage of Time - Forked: Why Calculated XP is Important

[Lanefan]

Lanefan: I had always assumed that for EGG, one session WAS one adventure and that the beginning of a session was always entering the dungeon and the end was leaving. I thought that was why EGG dungeons always had lots of ways in and out and why the stairs to lower levels were often near the entrance.

Perhaps, and it wouldn't surprise me to learn his sessions averaged half a day long also. However, for those of us running 4-hour sessions and sometimes large adventures, having them go back to town each session simply makes no sense. Hence, the game time they leave off one session is the game time at the start of the next.

Lan-"anyone know what time it is?"-efan

 

[Ariosto]

The DMG reference is incidental.

It comes up on p. 37 -- "(and it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day where no play is happening)" -- in a section that highlights by example why keeping track of "when" different adventuring parties are is important.

Some penalty must accrue to the non-active, but on the other hand, the over-active cannot be given the world on a silver platter. ...Being aware of the time differences between groups of player characters will enable you to prevent the BIG problems. You will know when the adventuring of one such group has gone far enough ahead in game time to call a halt. This is particularly true with regard to town/dungeon adventures.

On the following page:

In effect, the key is the relative import of the player characters' actions in the time frame. Generally, time passes day-for-day, or turn for X number of real minutes during active play. Players who choose to remove their characters from the center of dungeon activity will find that "a lot has happened while they were away", as adventures in the wilderness certainly use up game days with rapidity, while the shorter time scale of dungeon adventuring allows many game sessions during a month or two of game time.

If something "makes so little sense as to be utterly ridiculous," then one just might be misinterpreting it. It is unlikely that Mr. Gygax intended to be ridiculous, and he was writing from extensive experience as a DM.

Although it may be preferable not to end a session with characters in a dungeon, it is indeed silly to assume that they spend a day or more standing (say) before a door, ready to open it. Common sense (upon the reader's stock of which Gygax often relies) suggests picking up the action in that part of the campaign just where it left off.

The real time to game time equation is a way to moderate players' opportunities for action in the campaign context. An undertaking (such as a wilderness expedition, magical research, or natural healing) that costs a significant amount of game time also has a cost in play time. If you get a month ahead of everyone else in the former, then it might take a month for the campaign to get "caught up" in the latter.

In other words, it's important chiefly in terms of nominal "campaign time." That different characters may be at different points on the time line is a predicate assumption of the whole discussion.

 

[Ariosto]

I do suspect that Gygax generally assumed that a session of dungeon exploration encompassed a single expedition, complete with return to the surface. I don't know for sure that he employed such a rule, but one can encourage alacrity by ruling that characters otherwise are reckoned as "camping out" in the Underworld, with probably disastrous consequences.

Really, I can't see holding up the whole campaign just because one group explores dungeons at a snail's pace! That goes against the general emphasis on time pressure.

I understand that Gygax at one time ran very frequent sessions, and also long ones. However, a 4-hour session is in my experience quite adequate for old-style play (even though a quarter of that time might be spent on socializing that does not advance the game). Newer rules sets can change that estimate, and we have certainly found it difficult sometimes to complete a 4E combat encounter before some players had to call it a night.

 

[Lanefan]

The DMG reference is incidental.

It comes up on p. 37 -- "(and it is best to use 1 actual day = 1 game day where no play is happening)" -- in a section that highlights by example why keeping track of "when" different adventuring parties are is important.

Some penalty must accrue to the non-active, but on the other hand, the over-active cannot be given the world on a silver platter. ...Being aware of the time differences between groups of player characters will enable you to prevent the BIG problems. You will know when the adventuring of one such group has gone far enough ahead in game time to call a halt. This is particularly true with regard to town/dungeon adventures.

On the following page:

In effect, the key is the relative import of the player characters' actions in the time frame. Generally, time passes day-for-day, or turn for X number of real minutes during active play. Players who choose to remove their characters from the center of dungeon activity will find that "a lot has happened while they were away", as adventures in the wilderness certainly use up game days with rapidity, while the shorter time scale of dungeon adventuring allows many game sessions during a month or two of game time.

If something "makes so little sense as to be utterly ridiculous," then one just might be misinterpreting it. It is unlikely that Mr. Gygax intended to be ridiculous, and he was writing from extensive experience as a DM.

Although it may be preferable not to end a session with characters in a dungeon, it is indeed silly to assume that they spend a day or more standing (say) before a door, ready to open it. Common sense (upon the reader's stock of which Gygax often relies) suggests picking up the action in that part of the campaign just where it left off.

Which by default also assumes that common sense is going to see parties drift apart in time, depending what they are doing.

Believe me, I know well of what I speak. The three major campaigns I've run have all been of the multi-party type, and after some of the headaches I've gone through trying to figure out who was where when, I could probably write a rather extensive article on in-game time management if I had to. That said, I've learned it's a hopeless venture trying to keep everyone lined up exactly in time; if I can keep 'em all within the same season, that's close enough, and from there it's not too hard to arrange things such that parties meet each other if such is desired either by me or the players.

The real time to game time equation is a way to moderate players' opportunities for action in the campaign context. An undertaking (such as a wilderness expedition, magical research, or natural healing) that costs a significant amount of game time also has a cost in play time. If you get a month ahead of everyone else in the former, then it might take a month for the campaign to get "caught up" in the latter.

A month is a relatively trivial difference. One long journey by the "behind" group will wipe that out. It's when they get a year or more apart, as happened in my Telenet game, that they might as well be treated as two separate linear parties; which is pretty much what I did.

Lanefan

 

[Ariosto]

Yeah, that seems about right. If it got to a year and we were still pushing the latest time forward, then I would rather that "beyond the event horizon" was a big geographical separation. Predestination issues are too much of a drag.

As an aside, that's one reason I would not ever feel bound to "official canon" about what happens in, say, the Forgotten Realms. Come to think of it, that's probably part of why the "shared world" approach among multiple DMs never caught on in my circle the way "world hopping" did.

 

[Wik]

We just kind of have a loose calendar that I occasionally update on the group's wiki (god, I need to update that thing soon...)

We're not particularly crazy over it... but then, it's just our one group, so it's easier. If I were running a multi-party campaign (and for awhile, my current campaign WAS a multi-party affair), I'd keep more track of the time.