Time in Shadowdark

[SpellObjectEnthusiast]

I'm just trying to figure out if there's a good reason SD has us doing both, rather than committing to the "game time equals real time" principle

Because Kelsey liked it better that way.

I'm familiar with Black Hack, but unless the answer is "because Black Hack did it," that doesn't really answer my question.

The point is that this isn't an outlier design feature of SD - other successful games do similar things.

 

[Greg Benage]

There's also the parts that talk about Time Passes and Regrouping. Those two rules (which can work separately or hand-in-hand) state that you can burn down the real-world torch timer at a faster pace when necessary, and changes when encounter checks are rolled.

Again, this can be accomplished without counting "crawling rounds," can't it? I suppose "regrouping" becomes unnecessary because it happens naturally in the flow of the game.

 

[Greg Benage]

Because Kelsey liked it better that way.

Eh, she seems very willing to overrule herself based on playtest feedback, so I doubt it's as simple as that. As such, I figured people who have actually used the rules in play might be able to highlight some advantages of using both rather than one or the other.

 

[timbannock]

Again, this can be accomplished without counting "crawling rounds," can't it? I suppose "regrouping" becomes unnecessary because it happens naturally in the flow of the game.

Taken separately, sure.

But I think the thing is that all of this stuff plays together:

• Real-time puts a meta-game pressure on the players to move forward.
• Real-time doesn't work when tedious tasks take loads of time but aren't especially fun to play out, so fast-forwarding the real-time counter may become necessary at points.
• A player's turn could indicate "tedious, long task starts now," so regrouping allows everyone to skip the boring part and reconvene, while preserving the turn order so players don't get skipped. This also has the effect of fast forwarding the timer.
• Significant time passage messes with a real-time timer, and would theoretically result in loads of encounter checks (whether you use crawling rounds or real-time as the trigger for "when to make an encounter check"). Instead of having you roll X number of checks, you just group them into a single check with a higher probability of triggering an encounter.

So I think it exists the way it does because it's a complex problem to solve. Real-time torches are a bit of a gimmick, not a hard rule, and that's apparent because there are rules that are necessary to fast forward it. Turn order is equally a bit of a gimmick, designed to ensure player spotlight and a familiar, "board gamey" way of handling who gets to do stuff when...and like real time torches, has rules to circumvent or fast forward activities that would eat up time when a player tries to hog the spotlight or when the party splits up (this happens a lot with "I scout ahead").

I think you can solve this all with a real-time system, or you can solve it all with a turn order system, but it's complex enough that in the case of Shadowdark it was solved with an amalgam of both, preserving turn order/spotlighting, preserving a (mostly) real-time pressure, and keeping it flexible enough to push either thing around to skip over any boring bits of the game.

(I'd argue that I think some people take a lot of this stuff too strictly, and learning pacing might be a better solution. But that's very much a me thing.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I'd argue that I think some people take a lot of this stuff too strictly, and learning pacing might be a better solution. But that's very much a me thing.

I think you're right, in an ideal world.

A lot of RPG rules, IMO, are there as guard rails for GMs who don't yet have the expertise to know how to adjudicate everything that might come up at the table.

In theory, an ideal GM with infinite experience might need no rules at all, because they could handle everything wonderfully on the fly. But for everyone else, the GMs and their groups need rules (or more-guidelines-than-rules-Miss-Swann) in the meantime.

 

[timbannock]

Great point, and I think that more succinctly captures why Shadowdark does clockwise turn order and features regrouping: it preserves turn order and avoids spotlight hogging "at all costs." It's such a boardgamey way of doing it, but that's precisely why it works so well and feels familiar to anyone coming from board or card games.

In the SD Discord, and in several interviews, Kelsey says she plays turn order loosely outside of combat. In my games, I actually only use the real-time torches in time-sensitive games (one-shots, mostly), and at all other times I use B/X-style turn tracking with a timekeeping sheet.

(You can find my sheets in this blog post; look for the Shadowdark and house-ruled Shadowdark versions.)

 

[Krachek]

And ultimately if the DM decide it’s time to make a check or even to spawn a random encounter then so be it.