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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 5970277" data-attributes="member: 42582">As I posted upthread, not everyone who finds that certain mechanics lead to an undesirable 15 minute day is in need of player education.I, personally, have zero interest in playing a game in which wandering monsters figure prominently. They're a distraction from the real point of play.Why not? Or to turn this from question to assertion: there are multiple ways to handle ingame causation and the passage of time, and "the world not stopping just because the PCs do" is just one of them.Suppose that I want a "Balrog on the bridge of Moria" moment in my game. One way is to wait for the dice to line up so that the appearance of the Balrog, the readiness of the goblins etc all correlates perfectly with the time that the PCs happen to be crossing the bridge, despite all their prior resting, arguing etc. Another way is to stage the scene when they get to the bridge. I personally tend to prefer the latter approach.Ron Edwards has <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/15/" target="_blank">some</a> <a href="http://www.indie-rpgs.com/articles/3/" target="_blank">things</a> to say about how to handle the passage of time and scene framing:I'll discuss two elements of Resolution which are rarely recognized: the treatment of in-game time and space. These are a big deal in Simulationist play as universal and consistent constraints, which must apply equally to any part of the imagined universe, at any point during play. To talk about this, let's break the issue down a little: *In-game time occurs regarding the actually-played imaginary moments and events. It's best expressed by combat mechanics, which in Simulationist play are often extremely well-defined in terms of seconds and actions, but also by movement rates at various scales, starship travel times, and similar things. *Metagame time is rarely discussed openly, but it's the crucial one. It refers to time-lapse among really-played scenes: can someone get to the castle before someone else kills the king; can someone fly across Detroit before someone else detonates the Mind Bomb. Metagame time isn't "played," but its management is a central issue for scene-framing and the outcome of the session as a whole. . . Gygax's text [the AD&D DMG] perfectly states the Simulationist view of in-game time. It is a causal constraint on the other sorts. . .  It works in-to-out. In-game time at the fine-grained level (rounds, seconds, actions, movement rates) sets incontrovertible, foundation material for making judgments about hours, days, cross-town movment, and who gets where in what order. I recommend anyone who's interested to the text of DC Heroes for some of the most explicit text available on this issue throughout the book. . . . Concrete example[ of] Simulationism over-riding Narrativism . . . *The time to traverse town with super-running is deemed insufficient to arrive at the scene, with reference to distance and actions at the scene, such that the villain's bomb does blow up the city. (The rules for DC Heroes specifically dictate that this be the appropriate way to GM such a scene). I'm personally not interested in the DC Heroes approach. I'm happy for the princess to die, or the building to be blown up, but it's not going to happen offscreen, as a result of (what Edwards is calling) metagame time. It will happen onscreen, as an element of and immediate consequence of actual play.</blockquote>

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