Despite hearing about the arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping recommendation that Brody Bunch tourists keep pretending is a rule around I think a year ago (probably sooner, just never blogged about it), I've yet to hear even a single reason to justify its use over, well, playing the game normally. Tourists continue to blindly praise the recommendation, but their anecdotes are utterly bizarre and it makes me wonder how they might have run a normal game, assuming they even play.
For example, here's rdubs, who apparently thinks that picking different routes when traveling somehow doesn't matter in a normal game:
"They saved some time resource I'm sure."
Well, they had a choice of going nine days one way, and a total of nine days the other day, so...no, it looks like they spent the same amount of "time resource". Additionally, I find it...strange that he says "time resource", instead of just time like a normal person, and I wonder if, assuming his players haggle and manage to save some cash, he says they saved some "gold resource". If he's driving somewhere and takes a shorter route, does he tell people that he saved some "gas resource"?
I wanted to say that I'm not sure what the hell having players choose between two routes that take the same amount of "time resource" has to do with arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping, but I know that it has nothing to do with that and so am only really curious why or how, were rdubs to just run a normal game, how he would interpret or distort the rules to such a degree that it wouldn't, or rather, couldn't matter.
Because in a normal game you still have random encounters, food and water (or, rather, "food and water resource"), etc, and characters can only travel x miles in a day based on terrain traversed, so players would still select routes based on the time it takes, supplies, risk, etc. The only difference is that the players wouldn't have to rush through anything to get back to town or wherever, so that their characters don't just arbitrarily stand around and die, even though they would normally defend themselves. They also won't just stand around in town doing nothing for days, weeks, maybe even months, while the world passes them by.
But maybe rdubs grew up on vapidware trash games like
Mork Borg and
Troika, and so thinks that no games care about logistics? But then, the arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping recommendation doesn't tell you to do any of that. Hrmm...maybe someone should show
actual rules to the Brody Bunchers, have them give playing the game normally a shot?
Then there's this one. It's quite a long post so I broke it up into parts in order to make it easier to respond to:
Having timed events integrate more smoothly only makes sense if you for some reason
aren't bothering to track time when playing the game normally, or aren't doing so even somewhat accurately. Arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping has nothing to do with that, so I wonder if this is such a big deal to you why don't you also track time when running the game like a normal person.
Because in the games I run we have a calendar and whenever the party hunkers down to sleep, or we fast-track through x days for whatever, I also advance the in-game calendar by an equal number of days.
The benefit is that, while the players
can elect to do nothing in particular during that time, except perhaps for some odd work in order to scrape together some cash, they are never arbitrarily cheated out of their time, and their characters are never stuck standing around doing nothing while various events occur.
As for encounters, what I think she means is that, because when using the Brody Bunch recommendation players cannot "log out" in the wild, lest their characters be gobbled up by monsters that they would normally flee or at least attempt to defend themselves from.
So, you have to artificially reduce the number of encounters, or find a way to speed through part or all of them. This is of course not a problem at all when you play the game normally: you can just make a note and get back to the game when you get back to it, so there's never a worry that your characters will suddenly, mysteriously become immobile while monsters devour them.
I'm not sure what she means by "debuffs" being handled differently. Maybe when playing by Brody Bunch recommendations you have to reduce the efficacy/duration of debilitating effects because players only have so much time, which is necessary to speed towards the dungeon, explore a few rooms, and zip back to town before "logging out": can't have your toon standing around in the wilderness or dungeon, dying to the elements, starvation, and/or monsters...even though he would normally seek shelter, eat, and fight back or flee.
I can't imagine how this can possibly be true, as in another post Ginger states that she is going off of another recommendation and using a real world calendar (ie, the laziest of options), which means that unless her games just so happen to also fall on those days, the characters will miss them. In a normal game that also isn't a problem, as players aren't cheated out of time and so would at least be controlling their character on any given day when an event would occur.
Wizard needs to wait until a full moon in order to perform a ritual? Whelp, if you're going off Brody Bunch recommendations hopefully your game day happens to take place during a full moon. Playing the game normally? Not a problem, just wait until then. You know, just like your wizard could and would.
This is only an issue with arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping, because it is arbitrary and pretends to be otherwise, so your brain might be suffering from some cognitive dissonance due to the fact that you are trying to compress hours or even days of game time into a real-time session that likely only spans a few real-time hours.
So, for example, even though a total hour of conversation "in-game" would only eat up a fraction of time across a "game day", in "real time" it can account a quarter or more of your "game time". Conversely, even though combat might only amount to like ten minutes in "game time", it can take much, much longer to fully resolve in "real time".
But then when you have to stop for the night in "real time", the characters have to scramble back home in the game world. Not because it's bed time for them, or any particular "in-game" reason. No, they are only heading back to town for reasons they cannot explain in the game world, which is that otherwise they will remain perfectly still until the controlling players return, starving to death if they aren't slaughtered by a monster, first.
Of course, none of this is a problem when you just play the game normally. Time still advances, events still occur, and the characters continue to behave normally. You can spend however much time you want roleplaying, because there's no arbitrary, out of game constraint forcing you to bizarrely adjust your behavior.
You can spend an entire session roleplaying, go home, come back, pick up where you left off, as opposed to your character stopping mid-conversation and just standing there with a blank expression on his face, while the NPCs all continue to act normally, time progresses, villains advance and achieve their goals unchecked, etc.
By "stop-time" I assume she means playing the game normally. Anyway, this makes no sense because why the hell would players stand around for days on end healing "debuffs" when they can just use magic? Magic that has no meaningful cost and can be replenished the next day without any problem? This isn't a feature, it's a profoundly retarded bug.
Of course, players can also heal naturally when playing the game normally. In our game clerics aren't an adventuring class, so the characters either do this or buy more expensive mending potions to speed things up a bit. When resting normally, we just make a healing check every day, they spend money on food and rooms, and other characters can work odd jobs to make some extra cash, investigate rumors, etc.
It's actually easier if you just play the game normally, as you don't have to sometimes pretend that you're adhering to the real-world calendar: just say you're resting for x days, make whatever checks you might need to, and carry on.
While training is retarded, you can also train and engage in side activities when playing the game normally. It's also easier, because as with healing you don't need to sometimes pretend to adhere to the real world calendar, and can just say that you're training for however many days you want, and then move on with the actual game. Arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping doesn't make this easier or more intuitive or even more interesting.
This makes absolutely no fucking sense. How does resorting to a recommendation where the characters cannot behave and react normally to in-game events make the campaign world feel more alive? How does a mere recommendation, where the characters stand around doing nothing for days, weeks, or months at a time grant them more control?
I would love to know how you could possibly arrive at this utterly absurd conclusion, where you think playing the game normally, where events still transpire, where you can skip forward in time to avoid monotony, avoid the tedium, somehow results in a world that feels less alive than one where characters have to behave irrationally due to out-of-game restrictions and obligations, and can very easily "miss" in-game events if they don't happen to fall on the days that you're playing.
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