Quote:
Originally Posted by Exallted
Right. Time keeping is interesting to me as I think it leads to very interesting situations, and also it potentially is the one resource a well prepared party might be short of.
I think I saw someone mentioning that AD&D 1e of something had dedicated rules for time keeping inside the dungeon, so that's where the question came from.
|
To what end do you need detailed time keeping? I see two general scenarios as the GM that I use ... I tend to play more to the story than the mechanics though, so my style may not apply to you.
1) General keeping track for food, rest, healing, exposure... At my table I don't track this meticulously, its just sort of a general per hour or so ... "your not sure how long you have been down here but you are feeling hungry" so... 3-6 hours has past. Its super vague but its also normal. If you stick people in a controlled environment without time keeping they generally fall into a rhythm that works for them (or a collective one that works for the group). It might be a 20Hr cycle, or a 26hr cycle, or a 14hr cycle. No matter, a person will tend to consume the same amount of food and drink in the same general 48hr period based on activity. The body has requirements. Even if a PC has time senses, when they ask what time it is I usually say something like "It feels like its near lunch time" or "your not really hungry but you feel tired". If the player wants a specific time, I tell them to work it out on a piece of paper and I'll approve it (or not), if it isnt an important factor in game play I wont spend much time on it as a GM either.
2) You are using time to put pressure on the players to force them to perform "under stress". In this case I find it easier to time the players than the PCs, simply because normal play is not 1min play time=1min game time. Build your scenario, get an idea for yourself about how long it should take, then figure out how much real world table time you want to give for decision making. You can find some great examples of this all over the web, I think that the best Youtube example I have seen, probably comes from a Critical Role session where the GM (Matt Mercer) had really done a great job building and scripting the encounter to push the players into fast decision making and honest stress at the table.
https:/youtu.be/hdtabnXnckw about 1:37:00 is right around the start of the encounter. Fair warning, I intend this as an example of the mechanics of encounter building not a "Matt Mercer or D&D discussion". The good points are the encounter are:
1) Its broken into 3-4 sets (blocks of space) that have to be moved through using movement as your "timer", not keeping track of actions.
2) There is a real time timer that represents a 'global' effect that is damaging the PCs. Irrespective of the number of decisions made BOOM. Even if they just dont make a decision...
3) The effect scales so the players have a moment to get used to the stress, and realize its getting worse before they push into playing the encounter.
4) There is a distraction to waste time on (in the NPC that keeps attacking randomly) and really has nothing to do with the "time portion" of the encounter. This can also be a puzzle that has no point but diverts the PCs attention in a non-productive way.
5) there is a simple mechanic to control the pace if the GM sees the need to ... each time the timer runs out it doesnt have to represent damage... IE timer end BOOM, reset, timer end "the hum increases to a loud whining pitch", reset, timer ends Boom... you have effectively given the players double the time to get through the trap without them knowing (they dont know the mechanics). You can vary this as needed with dice rolls "is it full charged" (if rolls are real or not is up to you).
I dont know if this was of help to you, but thats how I generally deal with "time in the adventure".