Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="MGibster" data-source="post: 9850380" data-attributes="member: 4534">In most games, at least outside of combat situations, there isn't much concern among my players or I about how much time passes within the game.  i.e.  Whether the PCs are interviewing the burgomaster about local happenings, going on an epic pub crawl to tap some underworld contacts, poring over dusty tomes in an ancient library, or searching for their lost purse in the marketplace, it's just not important for me or even my players to keep track of the number of hours that pass in most scenarios.  I try to keep things somewhat reasonable, but it's not something I sweat about because it doesn't really matter as far as playing the games goes.  But sometimes time is precious and PCs can't afford to squander what little they have.  They might not even know how precious little time they have.  Does anyone keep track of time that passes in their game?  Blade Runner from Fantasy Flight Games keeps track of time by dividing the day into four shifts (morning, day, evening, night).  An investigative task (interviewing witnesses, performing an autopsy, examining evidence, researching criminal records, etc., etc.) takes an entire shift.  It's not that they literally spend 6 hours on this task, it includes travel time, stopping for a snack, doing any of the myriad of task a police officer might have at that time, etc., etc.  The PC needs to spend at least one shift in four in downtime (sleep & recreation) otherwise their performance may degrade due to stress and lack of sleep.  Why is it important to keep track of time?  I'm glad you asked.  It's not.  Not always at least.  But sometimes it's a good way to introduce a little tension into the game.  When the players know they have a limited amount of time they really need to consider what their next steps will be.  I'm sure there are other advantages to keeping track of time.  This came up because I'm starting a Delta Green campaign.  The PCs are tasked with doing something, and although time isn't strictly limited, they're going to lose Sanity for each day they don't take direct action.  On one hand, they really need to prepare, but the longer they take the more Sanity they're going to lose.  I was just thinking I need to keep track of their time spent in preparation.</blockquote>

Verification