'Fuzzy Time' in long-term rpgs
spike369 put out a call for submissions the other day, and there was something that I wanted to raise, but it's big enough to warrant an entry of it's own, and I would welcome thoughts and/or wild ideas from fellow GMs
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Sadly, in-game time, Eve had actually just had a barney/Angst-filled revelatory period with Fowler, had left his car and went to get trashed with the resident NPC Dipsomancer (alcohol magician). Yeah... not the best move for a mother to be.
So... from getting pissed out of her gourd one night and not sleeping for Some Hours due to Angst and Worry, she became 2 months pregnant.
A second example of how time moves in interesting ways is that Suzanne (Mish's character) has just embarked on some crazy semblence of NaNoWriMo and has, in fact, managed to achieve her 50k goal.
OOC, Mish has done this within the month of November.
However, IC, the US elections just took place six days ago, thereby making it Monday, 10th November. I know this, because Fowler's father has just been to visit, and Eve/me threw a dinner party to meet him and two of our friends and share the news of the pregnancy.
So, either time is going to have to fuck itself again and allow Mish's stunning 50k achievement work into the plot despite Suzanne having been as active as she usually is on a day-to-day basis (meeting people, travelling to get charged etc) for the last week. Or, equally as poo, she's going to have to wait for a month to pass in game time before she can reap the benefits of her accomplishment. This would, of course, render her damned-near incapable of mixing with the rest of the PCs as she locks herself away - unable to do much else other than write - thereby unable to progress her grander plans.
As a player, the fudging of time is frustrating in a number of ways because we seem to go from the extreme of a single IC day taking a fortnight OOC, to glossing over grand tracts of potentially interesting development in the name of keeping up to date with current affairs.
Despite having "re-set" time at the beginning of November, come a few session's time, we'll probably be another month behind. And then it'll be Christmas and New Year, and we'll have to do another big jump.
As a player, the opportunity to really experience my characters in this way has been unbelievably deep and involving. I've never felt this consumed by a game.
But, as a character, making plans and sticking to schedules is impossible. If time were really running in-synch with real life, we'd lose out so much of our development time and the IC moments which have given this game the unique flavour it has.
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