Re: 1:1 time between campaign and real world

On 6/17/2024 7:35 PM, lkh wrote:

As one of the persons running a game with 1:1 time in a multi-referee
setup, I agree that there are sometimes very long breaks where you'd
think that people would do something. The party beats the Set cultists
and the session ends so there's no time to secure a power base and by
the time you get back, weeks have passed. Fair or unfai?

 In these cases, I would allow the group to drop back in time. And
continue where they left off last time. Same thing if we have to end the
session in the middle of a dungeon crawl. It happens, and it shouldn't
be disruptive to the player experience.

I think it might make more sense to see it as a rough equivalent: time flows about 1:1 between adventures, while on the adventures themselves stuff goes differently.

In another multi-referee setup, each referee is responsible for a region
of the setting, each region has a Discord channel and a bot keeps track
of the current in-game date for each channel. Advance the calendar as
you see fit, with the long term goals of both using 1:1 time if possible
, and catching up to the channel who's furthest ahead. Now the the
problem in AD&D is that training and travel to trainers takes more than
a week. In some cases, finding a high level magic user means travelling
to the magic university, the whole trip takes 29 in-game days. So next
session, there is a little pressure to just advance the calendar by +29
days. Do this once or twice and your region plays in the future of every
other region and travel of player characters between regions becomes
impossible, making the unique premise a problem.

 "YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE
NOT KEPT!"
 

Considering Gygax put this in capitals it's very interesting how much discussion happens regarding that particular quote.
He was a master of making very detailed rules that just happen to need so much inherent knowledge of how to run a game that they can be interpreted in whatever way you want.
What does "YOU CANNOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT!" actually mean?
He was coming from a wargame background, so when talking about a campaign, he was actually talking about a campaign.

So, what to do? In a best-effort hybrid approach I think we would prefer
1:1 time passing. Then there's no discussion between the referees of the
setting. In addition to that, in a particular location, a referee can "l
ock it up" by not advancing the time between sessions for an extended
dungeon exploration. The consequences are: the location is "off limits"
for other parties while this is happening. If, at a later date, the
first party "gives up" or is slain or imprisoned, any rescue attempts
must start in real-time, so many weeks later, even if that is also
problematic. Essentially the feature is: When the camera leaves the
dungeon, time catches up.

 I try to avoid it however as much as I can. Having a group that has
dropped back to the past catch up, can be much more complicated then
having characters in the future wait until campaign time catches up
with them.
 Also a group in the past is prone to lock up larger areas of the campaign
map, just as you describe. We can not know what will have happened
... gives me headaches!
 When the group is in the future it's much easier to see.