Game Time and Real Time

[Abraxas]

I voted sort of - it depends on the situation and the complexity of the characters being played.

I've never been in a group where real time = game time was the norm. When used and in effect, it has always been explicitly stated by the DM.

 

[Rothe]

My players aren't trained combat specialists who've fought dragons, faced death together, and work as a seamlessly oiled team.

My player's characters however, ARE. For this reason- I allow quite a bit of strategy to be discussed, basically due to the fact that this is what the PCs eat, drink, and breathe. A wizard with even a 16 intelligence should be able to come up with all the pros and cons of a given plan in a few seconds... and most wizards have a 18+ int. And that needs to be represented somehow. A fighter trains for years on battle tactics- my players work 9-5 jobs. I assume the PCs spend quite a bit of time when they're sleeping, or sitting around the campfire discussing strategy- I'm not going to penalize my players for not gaming 24/7.

Vorp

QFT depending on character level of cousre. The same could be said as a DM, I take a bit o' time on what the BBEG does to reflect his decades of experience. If someone was playing me in my chosen profession, I could come up with solutions to problems in seconds that might take the untrained hours to devise if ever they could. Hence part of the vicarious experience of playing a mighty warrior is a little bit more time to decide than one-to-one correspondence. It is a social game, so how you play it is your concern, if you want a stop watch to get the feel of fast and furious combat so be it, I'll play. If we want to discuss tactics for half and hour and eat chips, that's good too.

 

[Lanefan]

Speaking in character is a 'free action' at any time, within reason, so PC's yelling at each other in mid-combat "Go left!" "Block the hall to bottle 'em up!" "Lookout, Grun, behind you!" "Ouch! MEDIC!" is always allowed regardless of initiative...I can't imagine any other way of doing this. But if they take time before a combat to make elaborate plans, then I'll often have game time roughly equal real time, with consequences if warranted. And if they stop in mid-combat to discuss options beyond the very basics, they lose initiative or even entire rounds (I use 30-second rounds). I will, however, allow time for players to look up spell effects etc., as it just makes sense the full-time PC's know this stuff much better than the once-a-week players.

I'll also sometimes (usually when I get frustrated) enforce a rule that goes "If you say it, your PC says it", leading to occasional debates among PC's in the field about what toppings to order on a pizza...

Where the bigger problem comes in is when the session ends in mid-combat, and the players have all week to talk things over if they want. That's where my game is at right now; if we'd played out the combat we might have gone all night and through the following day, so we stopped in mid-battle. There's no way to prevent this, but it's not very realistic.

Lanefan

 

[Arnwyn]

But when the Players/PCs are talking, about strategies, plans, or just gabbing about the weather, game time flows the same as real time.

Absolutely agreed. When it's discussions, then real time = game time.

I’m asking this question because I’ve been told that I was enforcing unexpected “table rules” when I didn’t slow game time down to accommodate the Players talking out plans. (These comments came from this board,

The first thing you need to realize is that ENWorld is, more often than not, wrong.

In any case, while my players may not (or may) be skilled tacticians, the characters aren't necessarily "skilled tacticians", either. They're barely sentient yahoos who run out into the wilderness, wave swords in the faces of hideous monsters, and hope gold spills out of their guts.

I don't give 'em any extra time. (And who the hell casts their buffs before planning strategy? )

 

[Rystil Arden]

Enforcing a time equivalent for in-character tactics discussion is just common sense. However, oft-times this isn't what is going on behind the table and it seems rather metagamy to charge in-game time for the out-of-game discussion (which is not to say that it is a bad idea, but that it isn't an obvious one and should be mentioned to players. Here's my example from the other thread:

"Bob, can't you pray for a spell while we're waiting?"
"What spell are you thinking?"
"I dunno, it's that one...in the Spell Compendium. I forget the name. Can you get me the Spell Compendium?"
"I don't see it. I see the Draconomicon."
"Why is that over there with you guys and not behind the screen?"
"Oh, remember--Bill has that unfair Spell Resistance killer spell from there and I have the feat that gets through DR."
"Oh yeah, right."
"I still don't see the Spell Compendium."
"Try looking harder."
"I've searched all the books."
"Well it should be there."
"It's not there."
"You're an idiot. Let me check that--oh wait, I was using it as flat surface to write on."
"Who's the dumbass now?"
"Shut up Bob. Okay, it was a level 2 spell, let me check the list."
"Was it Transmutation?"
"No, hush. I'm looking."
"Was it Necromancy?"
"No Tim, shut up! Do Paladins even have Necromancy spells on their list."
"Not all Necromancers are evil. Remember that Eberron elf Necromancer girl I made that had 20 Charisma and..."
"Shut up Bill!"
"Okay, I think it was..."
"I cast Magic Missile at the Darkness!"
"Mike..."
"What?"
"That was funny the first time we heard it online, but it's not funny now."
"Awww...okay. Can we teleport?"
"We're looking in the Spell Compendium."
"Okay."
GM: "That's 30 minutes, so it passed in character too. Your spell is gone."

 

[Arnwyn]

For me, I don't consider that strategy discussion - that's all rules stuff.

Yes, it may be an arbitrary distinction - but I know my group and what works for us, and thus I know when to "charge time" and when to let it go (and I'm accidentally making this sound a lot more technical and strict than how we really play it).

 

[Rystil Arden]

For me, I don't consider that strategy discussion - that's all rules stuff.

Yes, it may be an arbitrary distinction - but I know my group and what works for us, and thus I know when to "charge time" and when to let it go (and I'm accidentally making this sound a lot more technical and strict than how we really play it).

And I think that's fair. And heck, that may be exactly what Quasqueton does too. But in his other thread, it wasn't clear--it seemed like he had basically just turned on his stopwatch the moment he said that the spell had thirty minutes duration left and then came back to tell them it was gone. If you're going to play it that strictly that you charge for rules discussion and table talk, that's fine with me (although I wouldn't do it like that personally), but you definitely need to tell the players ahead of time if that's the case. That's the only thing people told Quas in the other thread--I don't think anyone said he did the wrong thing, just that a strict adherence to IG == OOC time should be made known to the players.

 

[Arnwyn]

Ah - now I see where you were going with that (hilarious, I might add!) conversation between players.

 

[Quickleaf]

I would give a the player of a character with high Intelligence (or perhaps a relevant skill involved in the planning) a boon: They may compress actual discussion time so that it actually only passes in a few minutes of game time. For example, a 16 Int PC might be able to reduce game discussion by a factor of 3 (based on Int modifier), dividing the amount of actual time the planning took by 3 to get how long it took in game. So 30 minutes of planning would become 10 minutes in-game.

The idea is to provide the player with a benefit relating to their character's high attributes. Skill Focus: Talking (Second World Simulations) takes this approach to social skills, and I think it could be expanded upon to provide similar player benefits in many areas of the game.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Ah - now I see where you were going with that (hilarious, I might add!) conversation between players.

Yup, it made more sense in the context of the other thread (and I'm glad someone found it funny too )