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Another little RP poll!
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What do you guys think about a tailored pacing to the game? Like, it's not a set IC = OOC days ratio but say you split things into like a week at a time, and that week lasts for however long it needs to to make sure that players don't get too backlogged with events and stuff like that.
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Well, I mean, it'd be within reason LMAO.
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One week going for six months would be ridiculous.
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I just know that I can personally get overwhelmed with plot heavy games that are on even a 1 IC = 2 OOC day ratio.
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So just having the option to extend things if needed could be nice.
aglovale ⚔
i was in a musebox where they ditched the idea of timing in general
aglovale ⚔
and went with "you can assume the time" so it's kinda like, real time for big things but otherwise everything else you can wing it
aglovale ⚔
which after getting used to it, it worked out
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That's... interesting.
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Not sure I get it LMAO.
aglovale ⚔
by ditching sense of time, as in like, catering events to how schedules are instead of going by IC = X-OOC time
aglovale ⚔
YEAH
aglovale ⚔
it;s easier to explain in practice
aglovale ⚔
but it's kinda like, we don't keep track of time IRL as much as we do in a game
aglovale ⚔
so it's more doing it like that
aglovale ⚔
STILL keeping time like we would, but not so completely locked into it
aglovale ⚔
an example is, logs don't have a "When" anymore
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Hmm I see.
aglovale ⚔
it's definitely something i think would be easier to consider if there was more of it, but i feel like stuff like this is what we need, to experiment outside of structured time
aglovale ⚔
(since we already have structured time, we know how that works 
)
)
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Fair.
ʟᴇɢᴀʟʟʏ sᴏᴜᴘ
Personally I could only see it working in a very small private game where everybody has roughly the same schedule.
ʟᴇɢᴀʟʟʏ sᴏᴜᴘ
In a big game you’d run too much into the issue of very diverse tagging speed and not everybody might be involved in a particular event so then you might end up with people who cannot do anything new until something they aren’t even involved in wraps up.
ruxi
think most folk struggle to recall even a non 1-1 ratio, unless it's 1 irl week = 1 day.
ruxi
I wouldn't mess with timing too much, if you can help it. too high a risk people would lose track. not a huge deal if it's pwp, but in a plotty game, that could backfire.
Elle
I think the only way to do something like this would be to divorce it from reality entirely. Rather than say a "week" takes however long and it's like a month, as in your example... Doing something completely new.
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Hmmm yeah that's not really what I'm looking to do.
Elle
The only thing I've ever come up with that could work would be to give players a reference point but still keep it nebulous (as people here have mentioned).
Elle
And that was to have "seasons" and just have more than real life and decide what fits your setting. You don't have to have the standard winter spring summer fall. And you also can remind players that the weather isn't just HOT SUMMER or FROZEN winter since most places aren't like that IRL and have rain in January or an unseasonably cold week in August.
Elle
But my thought was you could do something like "monsoon season" "blossoms season" "festival season" (use this for November/Nanowrimo/etc and December since so many RPers celebrate a wealth of holidays/have exams/deal with the New Year) "winter season" "autumn" and on and on.
Elle
You could mix it up between weather seasons and more "things happen in the locale" seasons. And that gives players a generalized reference point of when things have happened in the past or loosely when an event is but it's also malleable enough that they know based on the RL associated time brackets that there's a finite window they should complete things.
Elle
It's completely different than anything games employ here but it's something similar to an idea I used in an original RP I ran years ago on Greatest Journal that was historical fiction incorporating elves into modern day and how they'd reconcile their own time keeping and traditions if they came out from the underground.
Elle
That was over ten years ago but I've often thought a similar concept could be made to work for DWRP (without being based on an entirely made up society and all that stuff of course) as a way that would help bridge the pace between various speed taggers, and also give sort of mental reference points to time periods in the game over all.
Elle
The 2-3 events thrown in X season might be easier remembered data points. And again, given most places have implied cycling weather patterns (maybe not Snowblind lol) and the mods can choose if there's background society stuff that's not worth an event but just exists, you can flex the idea of a "season" to be whatever you want without having to write up
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It's a very neat idea!
Elle
more than a sentence or two because it'd be self explanatory and it's just flair and flavor, not an event, and not even a guideline. Just there for associative ease.
Elle
The DWRP game I ran was set in an urban fantasy/sci-fi cross and was log based and a sister game to one that closed years and years back though, and players very much wanted to keep the 1:1 cycle. Given it was log based (there was a network but it wasn't the primary RP mode in the game before so we kept that going) only a few tagged fast and the few who
Elle
tagged very slow didn't hold the median speed taggers up because it meant those folks would just get so far behind no mechanism would've mattered, y'know? Barring a very few fast taggers that hit each other up while they'd wait on their other folks, the stride stayed pretty even. But we also didn't have a heavy concentration of events either because of the
Elle
fact it was log based. So that was another reason not to ever see if we could or should convert the playerbase to a different ratio.
Elle
So I'd also say it's worth considering if you plan on following the typical allowing logs OR networks formula for AC, if you'll take action spam for AC, if you're going to want people to mix it up and not just always send in the faster obtained short network stuff (or like some games don't allow IC inbox tags to count as AC). Also I think EWay is the game
Elle
where they collect AC every other month? Not sure if any other games do that. But if you decide to adopt that strategy, that might influence how you want to do your Calendar/ratio method.
Elle
I know you've got TONS of DWRP experience though, so if anyone is equipped to know all the ways it's been done, you are. Interestingly enough, this one topic I don't think I've ever seen discussed on the RP Anons Game Ideas subthread. They definitely discuss stuff besides story ideas because I've seen concepts for AC trackers and stuff hashed out there.
Elle
Might be worth popping up ideas or a query there if you want more inspiration or feedback?
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Yeah probably. I was mostly pondering the alternative because I plan on having a pretty plot heavy game so maybe the time could be tailored around the plots/events rather than a set system, but I do also want to leave it open for people to do other things so it might not be the best idea.
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It's based on an MMO though and timelines are usually kinda vague in video games so maybe something similar wouldn't be too bad for the RP game either lmao.
ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴀɪɴ ʀᴜᴅᴇ
i actually really like the idea but that's me :|a sure it's impossible to play out every single thing your character does but you'd think there should logically be something more to show for say a plot heavy month than one conversation (exaggerated, but still)
ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴀɪɴ ʀᴜᴅᴇ
iirc Damned did something like that - not tailored time per se, but one day was a month (i think?) and like, day was one week and night was three weeks as it was more plot heavy. or was it the other way around... but basically it's doable
ᴄᴀᴘᴛᴀɪɴ ʀᴜᴅᴇ
mostly afaik people don't really give a shit about time nowadays
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:|a