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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Feb 26, 2023 16:56:23 GMT -5
This guy says "The Most Important D&D Rule You Missed: 1-1 Time" I beg to differ, but watch the video and then I will post my thoughts in the second post in the thread.
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Feb 26, 2023 17:22:19 GMT -5
The whole premise of the video stems from Gygax and his insistence that every moment between games is time that passes in the game world equal to the real world.
When I first read that years ago, my response was Gygax must be drunk. I have never used this at all. Zero time passes between games in my campaign. We play a game during the eight hours of the game we play through a couple of months of game time, then we spend about 4 hours (game time) in a dungeon and then the game needs to end for the day.
The 1-1 time folks take the position that if the characters don't get out of the dungeon and back to town before the game ends then they are in that dungeon or part of the wilderness for the next week or two weeks or however long it is in the real world helpless before all the random encounters that happen during that time period. He even tries to claim that it is more fair that way. He lies!
No, the fair way is that no time passes in the game world between games under normal circumstances, you are in the dungeon and you pick up right where you left off. Now if you were back in town and you characters planned to do something during the time between games, nothing wrong with having time pass for that, but to have time pass between games if you are in a dungeon just means that even though we have two hours of time to play the game, because that is not enough time to go into the dungeon and get back out before we adjourn for the day, we have to stop playing because we can't get caught in the dungeon. Stupid rule, shame on Gygax and his soapbox and the St. Gygax zealots that think his word is law.
What you do is handle time in a way that benefits the game, the campaign and the players. If what you are doing does not benefit all three, then you need to fix it.
Now in my case I ran one group of players, I did not have multiple groups that I ran in the same real estate and those groups had a different mix of players in each session, so that having the groups out of sync would be a problem. But I think the "1-1 out of game Time" is a silly way to fix the problem. After all one of his points is to have more characters per person. You don't need "1-1 Time" for that. Just tell the players that we keep track of where you are and if you in one adventure right now, then to play in this game session you have to play a different character.
Now as far as having the various players out of sync, if the players want two specific characters to game together, then one will hold that character out until the other character gets back if he survives.
We also had another rule, if you character was part of an ongoing adventure and you could not make the game, then the other players ran your character for you. I can see some people reacting to that with horror. But you have to remember that we were in our late thirties when D&D came out and we were life long friends. We could trust each other. Few people these days, especially among the new school crowd know even one person they can trust.
Yes, we played a lot of pranks on each other in and out of game. But that never extended to getting a character killed or damaging their place in the game.
So much of what I hear and listen to and read these days just boils down to "these people just need to grow up."
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Feb 26, 2023 17:33:28 GMT -5
Crimhthan The Great That rule is TOTAL CRAP! Even at our young ages back in the early 1980s, we could tell when it was best to just ignore something. We definitely ignored that one. I can remember reading it in the rules and thinking "Nope, not going to happen.". We always treated the end of the session like pushing the PAUSE button on the VCR or a video game. We would keep track of the overall passage of time in the game but it was more of "yeah, that sounds good" sort of thing. By the book is absurd in this case.
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Feb 26, 2023 17:35:53 GMT -5
Crimhthan The Great That rule is TOTAL CRAP! Even at our young ages back in the early 1980s, we could tell when it was best to just ignore something. We definitely ignored that one. I can remember reading it in the rules and thinking "Nope, not going to happen.". We always treated the end of the session like pushing the PAUSE button on the VCR or a video game. We would keep track of the overall passage of time in the game but it was more of "yeah, that sounds good" sort of thing. By the book is absurd in this case. IMO BtB is often absurd. Why some people think making the rules like cells with iron bars and locked doors and straitjackets is a fun way to play is something that I will never understand. |
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Post by The Semi-Retired Gamer on Feb 26, 2023 17:40:56 GMT -5
Crimhthan The Great That rule is TOTAL CRAP! Even at our young ages back in the early 1980s, we could tell when it was best to just ignore something. We definitely ignored that one. I can remember reading it in the rules and thinking "Nope, not going to happen.". We always treated the end of the session like pushing the PAUSE button on the VCR or a video game. We would keep track of the overall passage of time in the game but it was more of "yeah, that sounds good" sort of thing. By the book is absurd in this case. . Why some people think making the rules like cells with iron bars and locked doors and straitjackets is a fun way to play is something that I will never understand. YES! When I first picked up Villains & Vigilantes the first rule I changed was determining attributes. V&V wanted you & the GM to assess the players and base attributes off that. No thank you. We're playing larger than life superheroes. There's no reason we can't just roll 3D6 for abilities. That's what we did. |
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Feb 26, 2023 19:56:30 GMT -5
IMO BtB is often absurd. Why some people think making the rules like cells with iron bars and locked doors and straitjackets is a fun way to play is something that I will never understand. YES! When I first picked up Villains & Vigilantes the first rule I changed was determining attributes. V&V wanted you & the GM to assess the players and base attributes off that. No thank you. We're playing larger than life superheroes. There's no reason we can't just roll 3D6 for abilities. That's what we did. Wow, I would hate to have to use my current real life stats in a game. That would suck. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Feb 26, 2023 22:13:44 GMT -5
YES! When I first picked up Villains & Vigilantes the first rule I changed was determining attributes. V&V wanted you & the GM to assess the players and base attributes off that. No thank you. We're playing larger than life superheroes. There's no reason we can't just roll 3D6 for abilities. That's what we did. Wow, I would hate to have to use my current real life stats in a game. That would suck. The 20 year old me would have been good, but the almost 67 year old me, nah! |
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Post by mao on Feb 27, 2023 11:20:23 GMT -5
Time keeping is one of my weakness'. I am terrible at it,always was always will be Every once in a while I would say"A year passes". but ia never kept records. My opinion on this is null and void. In a perfect world I would be great at it. Given that, it's silly to think that a group would hunker down in the dungeon for a week.
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Post by JMiskimen on Feb 28, 2023 7:05:26 GMT -5
I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting here, because it's not a hill I'll die upon, but I'm in the 1:1 time keeping camp. The campaign, which is really misunderstood as a concept by most folks these days, has lots of moving parts beyond the current groups of players at a session - who may be a different group of players tomorrow night. Handwaivia doesn't cut it for me and isn't fair to any of the players.
Just my 2 electrums ....
JM.
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Post by Morose on Feb 28, 2023 15:16:18 GMT -5
I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting here, because it's not a hill I'll die upon, but I'm in the 1:1 time keeping camp. The campaign, which is really misunderstood as a concept by most folks these days, has lots of moving parts beyond the current groups of players at a session - who may be a different group of players tomorrow night. Handwaivia doesn't cut it for me and isn't fair to any of the players. Just my 2 electrums .... JM. I would agree if you have multiple groups of players, but if you only have a single group of players, I don't see the point in having time pass between games. |
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Post by The Perilous Dreamer on Feb 28, 2023 18:54:55 GMT -5
I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting here, because it's not a hill I'll die upon, but I'm in the 1:1 time keeping camp. The campaign, which is really misunderstood as a concept by most folks these days, has lots of moving parts beyond the current groups of players at a session - who may be a different group of players tomorrow night. Handwaivia doesn't cut it for me and isn't fair to any of the players. Just my 2 electrums .... JM. I would agree if you have multiple groups of players, but if you only have a single group of players, I don't see the point in having time pass between games. I think it makes a difference how many players you have, how often you play and if you ever run more than one group or not. We always played until we had to stop, so coming back and picking up right were you left off, seemed a lot better than wasting time traveling to and from town. I don't think that is handwaivia and I don't think it is unfair to any of the players. That said, if I had enough players and was running multiple groups it would be run differently, but I've never gotten to do that. |
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Post by Crimhthan The Great on Mar 2, 2023 22:45:24 GMT -5
I'm not exactly sure why I'm posting here, because it's not a hill I'll die upon, but I'm in the 1:1 time keeping camp. The campaign, which is really misunderstood as a concept by most folks these days, has lots of moving parts beyond the current groups of players at a session - who may be a different group of players tomorrow night. Handwaivia doesn't cut it for me and isn't fair to any of the players. Just my 2 electrums .... JM. My campaign has been really consistent and rarely are all the current players not there for the game. Of course, at this point only three of us are still alive out of the original group. I do run a game for other family members, but they are on the opposite side of a very big planet, so we really don't have to worry about them ever meeting at this point. |
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