Alternate Ratio for Game Time Modifier

[Sindri]

The game time modifier for traits such as Luck has a lot to recommend it. If nothing else it's pretty much required for a pbp game. There is a disadvantage though since this means losing the tie between amount of rerolls and implicit interest in the events being played out. Thus the inclusion of the rather obvious "The GM may adjust these ratios."

Personally given the sort of campaigns I've been involved in historically only a small minority of characters wouldn't be seriously disadvantaged by the switch from real time to game time so I'd like to adjust the ratio.

Has anyone experimented with this?

[Gnome]

One thought is to measure time narratively rather than game time vs. real time. For example, you could give Luck x uses per encounter.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by Gnome

One thought is to measure time narratively rather than game time vs. real time. For example, you could give Luck x uses per encounter.

Oh certainly you could have them recharge by encounters, or more generically by scenes. It's kind of awkward to introduce scene counting to a game only for a small subset of advantages though and scene counting seems to me to promote a sense of distance from the character even more than meta advantages like (most varieties of) luck do in the first place.

What I had in mind was something in much the same vein as the normal game time modifier but. say. 24 times as fast in recharging. This is the sort of thing that can really use practical reports though.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

What I had in mind was something in much the same vein as the normal game time modifier but. say. 24 times as fast in recharging. This is the sort of thing that can really use practical reports though.

The difficulty is the enormous variation in the rate of passage of game time. Significant amount of time passing between scenarios should not be a problem, but it's very easy for "You travel for two nights and hide during the day" to happen during one session, while another session only lasts ten minutes of game time. So it's going to depend a lot on campaign style, and still more on the individual events of a session. If they're similar enough to generalise across, you may have a cliché problem.

[Sindri]

Originally Posted by johndallman

The difficulty is the enormous variation in the rate of passage of game time. Significant amount of time passing between scenarios should not be a problem, but it's very easy for "You travel for two nights and hide during the day" to happen during one session, while another session only lasts ten minutes of game time. So it's going to depend a lot on campaign style, and still more on the individual events of a session. If they're similar enough to generalise across, you may have a cliché problem.

Well yes it's going to depend on campaign style, that's the point. I'm hoping someone has tried out different ratios to reflect campaign paces other than the implicit one chosen in gurps powers.

You can always generalize a rate no matter the campaign although, of course, some will function better having done this. I also feel that regularity of time passage is far too abstract a feature to be a cliché.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Sindri

I'm hoping someone has tried out different ratios to reflect campaign paces other than the implicit one chosen in gurps powers.

Yes ... but meaningfully describing campaign pace, so that you can scale it to yours, may not be trivial. Describing your campaign style up front would avoid getting less-relevant offerings.

I also feel that regularity of time passage is far too abstract a feature to be a cliché.

If, however, your session structure always goes something like "Small fight, travel, larger fight, search, boss fight" that gets to be a cliché.