Timezones in D&D

[Krensky]

Only if you're also going to hit them with conservation of energy. Incidentally, this is a good way to limit the range of teleportation if you're so inclined. At least until someone comes up with a giant box moored in a pool with bungie cords.

Otherwise, it's magic. Mention it in passing if it fits your cosmology, otherwise don't sweat it.

 

[fuzzlewump]

What about my poor Eberron campaign? I can't use Sigil or Sigil-times; it is forbidden!

 

[3catcircus]

I wouldn't apply a jet lag penalty, since the teleport spell specifies that the transportation occurs instantly.

I would, however, use planetary rotation (rather than timezones, per se) within my campaign world. This does two things. First, it reinforces some semblance of verisimilitude - if the PCs teleport 2000 miles away, depending upon time of day, they should expect that they'll go from light to dark or vice versa. The second thing it does is that it can act as a subtle hint that the teleport didn't go as planned when "off target" is the result of the d% roll.

 

[fba827]

a fun idea but i think it would be too little effect for the amount of work to design and track such things.

As it is, some adventurers seem to always just go to sleep in the middle of the day when they need to rest, not really worrying about a body clock timetable in the first place.

 

[Celebrim]

Not immediately. It's not like the wizard has been sitting in an uncomfortable seat for 14 hours.

Exactly what is going on here depends on how high magic your campaign world is. In a seriously high magic world, the world might be flat, and when the sun comes up over the edge of the world everyone soon gets sunshine, in which case everyone has the same day.

I would assume the wizard would be basically fine, except for the fact that his body is not operating on local time and, if in order to interact with the locals, he had to stay up longer than usual, he'd eventually suffer fatigue on account of missed sleep. But for the sake of simplicity, I'd say all penalties would go away as soon as he could sleep on the same schedule as the locals.

 

[El Mahdi]

deleted

 

[TDRandall]

Only if you're also going to hit them with conservation of energy

Don't forget bodily orientation!

You teleport to the exact opposite side of your world - you arrive completely upside down with regard to everybody and fall literally headfirst to the floor.

You teleport from the equator to the north pole while facing north - you arrive on your back.

 

[Piratecat]

In the real world, jet lag isn't due to the amount of time spent travelling (read as sitting in an aircraft), it's due to your body's circadian rhythm being out of sync with the rhythm of day/night at your new location. The sensation of Jet Lag only goes away once your circadian rhythm syncs with your new location, which depending on the person, can take a day or two, or an entire weak.

Right. It's about 1-3 hours worth of adjustment a day as your suprachiasmatic nucleus (biological clock) plays catch-up, depending on whether you're flying east or west and what you do to adjust to the new time zone.

 

[Celebrim]

In the real world, jet lag isn't due to the amount of time spent travelling (read as sitting in an aircraft), it's due to your body's circadian rhythm being out of sync with the rhythm of day/night at your new location. The sensation of Jet Lag only goes away once your circadian rhythm syncs with your new location, which depending on the person, can take a day or two, or an entire weak.

I'm aware of what jet lag is.

I however have almost no natural circadian rhythm. I'm either naturally out of synch with the rhythm of day/night, or else get easily out of synch by taking cues from artifical light. As I type here at 2 am, I can say fairly confidently that what time the sun is out has pretty little influence on whether I feel tired. And, this is actually fairly common among 'nerds'. Apparantly 'bookishness' is associated with staying up late. Go figure. 'Night owls' tend to recover from jet lag quicker and suffer fewer significant effects that your typical morning person with strong circadian rhythms, if only because they are already there. Depending on where I went, it's quite possible that for a few days (until I got out of synch again) the new light rhythm would _better_ match my sleep schedule than the local one does.

And I'm also aware of how players tend to think, and I know that they are going to argue that their characters are the sort of persons who quickly readjust to local rhythms are a basicly fine with no significant symptoms as soon as they get their sleep cycle synched up with the local population (that is, overcome the fatigue of a 'long day' or 'short night'). Adventures, they would argue, are used to sleeping irregular hours. And, sense I have no desire to maintain complex attributes describing sleep cycles along side more general ones like 'Strength', or to have sleep cycle feats (and foresee sleep cycle spells being abusable), and because I really have no desire to argue with players about something like that, I'm very strongly inclined to agree with them and again reiterate that for the sake of simplicity all penalties would go away as soon as the character could sleep on the same schedule as the locals.

And as far as fatigue not being related at all to the stress of travel or the time spent sitting in an uncomfortable seat, I strongly suggest you fly (or even drive) a long distance north/south and see how your body reacts.

 

[haakon1]

I'd say there's no jet lag, just the concept is anachronistic to the medieval world, so a "medieval fantasy" should also not be aware of it, nor of gunpowder, or how to turn "stone knives and bearskins" into a computer.

But I would make the teleporters ears pop if they significantly changed altitude -- that doesn't require high tech to notice!

In real life, I've done a lot of international travel. I think jet lag as we experience it has something to do with dehydration/compression/decompression, stress with making connections and all that, and lack of quality sleep. Though I've noticed west to east travel (i.e., wake up earlier/lose time) is more exhausting than east to west (i.e., stay up late/gain time), I think you guys are exaggerating the circadian thing, honestly -- if you get a ton of sleep, you're OK pretty fast, and 12 hours north-south (London to Cape Town) is pretty darn tiring too, despite the lack of time zone change. I've heard the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner is supposed to fight jetlag by not needing to be decompressed so much and no having as dry air.

We should ask the George Clooney from "Up in the Air", but he only seems to do shorthauls . . .