How much of your character's life do you actually play out in game?

[Quasqueton]

Expressed as a percentage, how much time of a character's life gets actually played in a game?

I figured about 10% actually gets played. The other 90% being skipped in game. I actually think 10% is a liberal figure. With 24 hours in a day, and only 4-6 hours in a game session, if you play just 1 day of game time in a single game session, that alone is only about 20% (if every minute of the game session is spent playing out the character's actions). But over a couple dozen game sessions, surely more than a month game time passes, yes?

What percentage would you say you actually play of your character's life?

Quasqueton

 

[Faerl'Elghinn]

100%. We never leave the game table. My character is taking a nap right now, but fortunately I have access to a pot of Coffee of Awareness.

Honestly, though, I feel that it depends largely upon how much combat is involved in a given campaign, as a single encounter, which takes mere seconds or minutes in game time, may take several minutes or even hours to enact. With this in mind, it is probably unreasable to assume that any player even plays out a single percent of his or her character's life. This also doesn't include sleeping, traveling, walking to the equipment shop, et cetera, which are generally not parts of a character's life upon which one often dwells.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

I don't know. I don't even know how I'd begin estimating a percentage. More to the point, I'm not sure why I'd want to know.

I guess it'd be safe to say that we play 100% of the interesting times in a character's life, and just summarize the non-interesting times.

--
and i'm not going to bother trying to figure out how much time that actually is
ryan

 

[Damiar the Wolf]

It depends on what's going on. During an adventure or other "immediate" situation, we gloss over the little details (though we have plenty of in-character intra-party interaction; such as idle chatter, pointing things out to one another, helping a hurt comrade to walk, etc.).

In a restful situation, such as in town between adventures, we play much more, even up to "100%" of daily activities. Very many session have gone by played solely in this way. I feel it adds more to the characters, espescially later on when one ofthem becomes endangered. The style reuires some maturity, patience, and aboveall, a willingness to chat all session long in character. It's not for everybody.

 

[Crothian]

ACtually quite a bit. We don't need to spend 8 hours playing out the 8 hours that a character sleeps or the travel time, or the meals etc. Fast forwarding through these part s is still playing them out in my eyes. We estaplish what happens during them and then move on.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I say it's X percent, where X is somewhere between 0 and 100%.

I mean to say, that I can't really give you a percentage, and it does vary between game, action level and situation. For example, the walk to the common man's throne is practically always left out, the food only matters if the character has some hedonistic tendencies.
Generally, role playing is about heroism (or villainism), the mundane things are usually left out (for it isn't really interesting to go through all the motions how the character gets dressed in the morning and how he haggles for a bunch of grapes)

 

[Thanee]

Hmm... if you take the whole life then it's clearly below 1%, a lot less for elves.

If you mean from an average day, not counting travel times where you skip ahead weeks in a few minutes sometimes, then I'd say about 10% seems right.

Bye
Thanee

 

[Dogbrain]

Hard to say, but glossing over things like every single minute of sleep is recommended. Outhouse time is usually just presumed, as well--barring comedic necessity.

 

[Bendris Noulg]

I'm going to say, for the one PC I've been able to play during the past decade, about 50%. That is, he's a mercenary general with his own army, so he spends a great deal of time managing his forces. This includes moral-boosting, working with his lieutenants, determining logistics, and hob-nobbing with politicians that have learned that, when M'ri is around, dual-wielded maces indeed are mightier than the pen. Very little of this, in the end, actually has much to do with actual adventuring (which, more often than not, is focused on mass conflict scenarios and one-on-one confrontations with enemy generals, plus the occassional assassin, than dungeon-crawls). On the other hand, he has a cohort/lover (NE Gray Elf Witch/Shaman/Mystic Theurge with various BoVD and BoEF goodies, kinda like his own private freak-on-a-leash), and he spends more than a little time with her.

My last character would float between his professional career (read: Mid-Ranking yet popular member of the local Thieves' Guild, loved both for his friendly demeanor and high-profit liberations of wealth), his home life (married, with his father-in-law turning out to be the Captain of the Queen's Guard!), and cover (professional wine-maker, complete with chateau and vineyard). I'd easily call this a 50/30/20 split.

 

[WayneLigon]

Around about 50% of what they go through gets mentioned, depending on what we're doing in the game itself. Generally in the 'shake-down' period where we're getting used to the characters, we'll establish some habits that they have, and some general reactions to mundane things.

For instance, in my AU game I know that Mont is always going to go check out the marketplace in any town they reach, and probably play for the passersby. Vorz will go to the best tavern he can afford, and see what's on the menu. Things like that, we establish fairly early on.