Episode 30: Time
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Dan and Paul discuss the passage of time in D&D games, from hours of torchlight, to weeks of spell research, to what their game calendars look like.
Wandering DMs
Insightful Discussions About Old School D&D and TableTop RPGs
4 Comments
JB
Hmm…good episode with regard to “Time.” I will say that back in the AD&D days of my youth, we were not fantastic timekeepers (as teens, we weren’t all that organized), but we *did* track it somewhat as we would sometimes have portions of our characters off on one adventure when other players were unavailable. It wasn’t that we had dozens of people stopping by the basement every night of the week…but as KIDS beholden to parents/families and who lived fairly far apart (and who did not have access to cars) we did not have regularly scheduled meet-ups. “Haphazard” was more our style, though we played as much as we possibly could, including playing over the phone or via (snail) mail correspondence when forced onto out-o-state family trips. Likewise, most of the players in our group (we had eight at our largest size, of which only four-five were “regulars”) possessed multiple characters…for a variety of reasons (ranging from “my PC died so I’ll make a new one, oh you raised my old guy? Cool!” to “Ooo I want to play a Drow/Barbarian/Acrobat that’s presented in this Unearthed Arcana/Dragon magazine/etc.”). Having a stable of characters allowed players to go on adventures while their main characters were missing, doing downtime business, or otherwise “busy.”
For a look at someone running this kind of (AD&D) campaign as an organized, serious adult, check out Anthony Huso’s excellent blog, The Blue Bard. It’s pretty darn inspiring:
https://www.thebluebard.com
Paul
Thanks for listening! I’m certain games in my youth were far more haphazard as well, but I don’t recall ever having to move back in time, or reconcile conflicting timelines. I suspect that’s the best way to do it still – always move the timeline forward.
Erick
Hey, I really enjoy this show and look forward to painting minis and listening every week. Paul was showing off his time tracking sheets in this episode and it reminded me of how I track time. But instead of using paper, I click a button on a little application I wrote: https://github.com/erickveil/TimeTracker
At the end of each session, I just write down where we left off, then set the time on the app at the start of the next session.
Paul
Nice! There was a time when I was running WFRPG and I had wiki-based calendar that I used. Though I’ve had a kind of love-hate relationship with having a computer on the table as part of my RPGs.