Time in RPs.

Bosch · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Bosch** on Sat Mar 09, 2013 8:14 am

Hi everybody. I’ve been thinking about the type of RPs I usually do which seem to take place during a pretty brief IC period. For example I’ve been running an RP since Novemeber and we are only now finishing our first IC day. To be fair a lot has happened in those 24 hours but pretty soon we’re going to do a time skip forward so the characters can sleep etc.

Another RP I’m running is pretty much the exact opposite. In it RPers play assassins that receive jobs from my character they then write a short story detailing how the job pans out which goes on to affect later jobs. For example I encourage the RPers to fail missions or let their character take a beating as it will have impact on jobs they are later offered. Additionally the actions RPer take affect the world as whole. However I’m rambling now.

Point is in this RP we only see snatches of what the characters are up to. Weeks could go by while characters are travelling or healing or just between jobs. Of course this means the time line can get screwy but so far we’ve had no problems.

Anyway the point of this post is to ask how other GMs deal with time scales, in particular I’m interested in those nation type RPs. Do you use time skips or just let the RP roll.

LawOfTheLand · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **LawOfTheLand** on Sat Mar 09, 2013 7:20 pm

Most of the time, the faction types let the RP roll and try to sort it out later from what I've seen. Even the big boys like Azrican have difficulty keeping their timelines straight, whereas Barney handles it by putting a timestamp on all of his posts.

Apart from the odd tabletop session in which everything spoken is in-character unless stated otherwise, there's really not much one can do about wibbly wobbly timey wimey without strict session attendance policies. ESPECIALLY when characters go off to pursue agendas independent of the party.

ViceVersus · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **ViceVersus** on Sat Mar 09, 2013 10:05 pm

The major RP I've been maintaining over the past three or four years (IRL) stretches a timespan (IC) of ten years. It's worked pretty linearly in terms of how the story progresses, but as my friends and I write it, we jump all over the established timeline and fill in bits and pieces here and there, connect dots and write our poor characters into traps they never would have seen coming.

It becomes a nightmare at a certain point. If I had to go back I might have done it differently. I think that the only major, major timeskip I've done in one chapter of the tale was four years. Other things were happening during that period of time, of course, but in that particular train of a character's life, things were dropped for four years and were not picked up until later.

The way that the time progresses, though, is usually in snatches or encounters. Things happen "a few days later" or a few weeks later. Really the only scenes that are drawn out are ones where either battles occur, or characters have to meet and confer with each other.

This is a good question to consider, however, so I'm glad you brought it up. Pacing is important not only from the perspective of the plot, but understanding the ebb and flow of one's own story ..

VindicatedPurpose · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **VindicatedPurpose** on Sun Mar 10, 2013 12:42 am

I found this topic to be interesting, considering that I had a bit of a dilemma in one of my RPs. I think it also holds a bit of a problem in science fiction RPs in general as well. We'd have to go into a lot of science to identify the problem, but I'll simplify. In real life, we measure time via the 24 hours, the 60 minutes per hour, the 60 seconds per minute, the 365 days in year. In the end, it is based on the revolution of the Earth around the Sun.

Telling time in a faraway system, where a planet's revolution is longer or shorter than the Earth's revolution is a bit troublesome. So instead of creating a twenty seven hour day, we decided to simply organize the events into days, weeks, months, and so on.

I once attempted to create a "Milky Way Standard Time," but you can see the result as I said "attempted."

Another interesting thing is temporal warping, such as a slipspace jump seen in video games like Halo or Mass Effect. A ship's crew is launched through slipspace, slipstream, the warp, whatever people want to call it. You'd have to figure out what the distortion was, for example one day in slipspace = one month, or whatever. Or perhaps it was the reverse, a crew spends two months in slipspace, which equated to two days. Among other things, we thought about the physics of slipspace, well let's just say it's as tricky as the object itself.

Military time is also a good system.

Bosch · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Bosch** on Mon Mar 11, 2013 6:00 am

@Superstar. Yep the second people break off and do their own thing the time line goes out the window. I try to have a perpetual now that kind of works and I count on RPers not getting too nitpicky with things like travelling times.

@Vice. Ten IC years! Sounds like keeping it all in line would be tricky, I do love long running plots though.

@Vin. I never even thought of it in terms of Galaxy spanning Sci-fi. The issues you’re describing reminds me of a book called “The Forever War” which uses relativity to explore the feelings of isolation and alienation solider can feel when returning home. I’d definitely recommend it.

What about time travel?

I reckon it could work if your scale is large enough for example sending someone back a hundred years before the RP started would ensure their impact on the main plot would be negated but then what’s the point apart from a bit of back story.

VindicatedPurpose · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **VindicatedPurpose** on Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:23 pm

Yeah, I think time travel is a very tricky thing, it makes for some great story telling if used right, I would say. I think of various temporal paradoxes, and paradox in general when it comes to time. Don't even talk about time in a multiverse spanning Sci-Fi, get into Super String Theory and all of that stuff...just gives you a non-ice scream induced brain freeze.

And I would recommend the movie "The Butterfly Effect," with Ashton Kutcher. In science, the Butterfly Effect, aka Chaos theory, is a theory that postulates that a single change in the past can have dramatic shockwaves in the future. It tells of a guy who had black outs as a child and began writing journals to keep track of things. Later on he finds the journals and manages to travel back in time for short bursts in order to make a simple change that drastically alters his future each time.

Just got an e-book copy of "The Forever War," excited about what it holds, perhaps some shock and awe, or some inspiration, who knows.

PulseTrick · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **PulseTrick** on Mon Mar 18, 2013 4:39 pm

You know, instead of timeskips, why doesn't the community just use the quests feature? We could just fit in any activity from one time frame into a quest margin.

Zixii · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Zixii** on Mon Mar 25, 2013 4:37 pm

I've always found time ICly difficult to manage. It's led to numerous debates (and arguments) about how a character would age if A happens instead of B. Chaos/String theory in a lot of ways can be method I guess of saying how a time line scifi wise works, but that just gives me a migraine.
I think the trouble with time is it doesn't exactly fit into nice neat little packages like we want it to, it's really rather messy by it's nature alone, and when attempting to write with it certain ideas in mind they can easily go out the window; at least they do for me.

VindicatedPurpose · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **VindicatedPurpose** on Sun Apr 14, 2013 4:50 pm

Just finished "The Forever War."

I have to say, the awards that the book has, were well deserved. Joe Haldeman is a brilliant writer, and the story could not have been written better. I highly recommend it to anyone who wants a Sci-Fi story with some kick in it.

Bosch · **Tips:** 0.00 INK by **Bosch** on Mon Apr 15, 2013 10:43 am

Glad you liked it. It's one of my favourites and a great example of SF done well. It comments on contemporary (for 1974) issues in a method that's not entirely obvious on a first read.

Time in RPs.

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