Bro Invent Pros To Justify Their Retarded Recommendation

When I'd initially heard of arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeepingarbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping it primarily consisted of Brody Bunch tabletop tourists trying to convince people that it was any sort of actual rule. It is of course not any sort of actual rule, and didn't even merit a recommendation in editions two and up, which isn't surprising given the myriad of issues it imposes without any unique benefits.

Not that this would stop the Brody Bunch. After all, they kept trying to repeat the lie that it's a rule, and whether that preposterous position has been played out or not they're now trying to gaslight gamers into believing that certain aspects of play can only be achieved if you advance the game day each time a real-life day passes, but only when no one is playing, of course.

For example, planning, researching, spying, and ordering troops:

Despite Wannabe Wargamer's asinine assertions it's trivially easy to engage in any of those activities when playing the game normally: you just tell the DM what you want to do. This would actually be far more difficult using arbitrary kinda sorta bu not really 1:1 timekeeping, as you have to tell the DM what you want to do, leave, and hope that come game day things are resolved or at least at a point where you can provide additional input.

Worse, if you don't make it, or the DM doesn't just arbitrarily declare that whatever you want to do conveniently aligns with your gaming schedule, then your character will just stand there, unable to react to in-game events. So, enemy spies can come and go, and enemy troops can continue moving about, and you can't do anything about it because for no in-game reason your character is unable to act while the world passes him by.

This is all resolved much more smoothly when you just play the game normally: tell the DM that you want troops to go from A to B, he tells you how long that takes, enemies can react, you can react to their actions, and you don't have to wait days or weeks between "moves" (during which enemies can keep doing stuff). If you're doing research, you can tell the DM what you want to do, he can mark the passage of whatever time it takes, and then you get to keep playing.

Sounds like a much more efficient use of my limited free time.

Except no one said or even implied that, for example, if the DM says that the time between research checks is a week, that everyone else just has to stand there while a week zips by. Wannabe Wargamer is confusing that behavior with Brody Bunch arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping. See, when you play the game normally, the DM can say, okay, you're doing research for a week: what is everyone else going to do in the meantime?

Hell, you can also have the player whose character is engaging in research grab a different character, and go adventuring with the rest of the party if they want to keep doing that. When you play the game normally, no one gets screwed out of time, and characters always have the opportunity to react normally to in-game events.

While Eveilcharm is correct that most players and DMs have lives beyond the table and/or like to engage in other hobbies and interests, it should be noted that arbitrary kinda sorta but not really 1:1 timekeeping imposes a myriad of drawbacks without any unique benefits, so even if I had the time and interest to consistently and frequently run one or more games, I would still simply play the game normally.

This way players wouldn't have to, for example, wonder why the fuck their characters are sitting around in town for days or weeks not adventuring at all, even though it's what their characters would be doing.

Characters would also progress in "downtime" activities while playing the game normally. They just wouldn't have to worry about missing a session, or a session running short, so their characters need to flee back to town to avoid dying for no reason. They also wouldn't have to worry about in-game events occurring and their characters being able to react to them, because they happened while they were "logged out" at the time.

I find AlchemicFaker's brief recap amusing because the player only had to send in NPCs to do his work for him, because the controlling player wasn't present to do it himself. Feels like one step away from just telling the DM to "run your character for you" next session, which doesn't sound rewarding or interesting. Also comes across like the DM "putting his finger on the scale" quite a bit.

Something to note is that this could also have been done by playing the game normally. Nothing prevents a player from hiring NPCs to go do something. The difference is that the player could also be present, interacting with them and directing them about in real time. Additionally, if shit hit the fan then the character, and even the rest of the group, could have gone in to save them. Sounds much more engaging then just telling the DM to run some NPCs while you're away.