Moving Time On

I have started a land-based thread on the 25th June, skipping forwards a week.

I think part of the reason StC runs so slowly, in-game, is that people have felt it easier to RP out the 1st, followed by the 2nd, followed by the 3rd. And usually there are several threads per day, and maybe even per character per day.

I am not sure what to do as regards this, because I think it's partly this that is making the game 'drag on'. I don't want people to feel rushed, or that they can't make a thread starting the day after one with the same character.

I would like IC time to run a bit faster in comparison to OOC time, though, so that we don't feel that the only threads a character can have is a conversation - those can get boring if there's nothing else to RP.

So far, we've got a dinner between Vickery and Torrington on the 25th, and a runaway ox destroying the camp on the 26th... which could work out to be a really good fun thread!

If anyone has any ideas on how to make in-game time run a little faster than one IC month per OOC year, I'm open for suggestions!

The second, and more important, question is: What do YOU want to see? How can we improve StC and revitalise it?

Please reply in a comment to this post if you've got any ideas.

Sharpie

I'm actually having quite a lot of fun right now. *evil grin*
I would love to see some real action on the British side, and I think moving the game forward is good in that respect.

I am hoping to get to Talavera relatively soon - the battle was in July, and I certainly don't want to have to wait another six months OOC before we get there. But I don't want to rush people and make them feel they have to drop threads and plots in order to keep up with the site plot.

Proper action is always fun!

All RPGs have realtime/gametime problems, it is a part of the system I guess. I was once in a yahoogroup western that took 9 1/2 months REAL time to do one game day.

Im only running one char but even with that I'm in a couple of threads and enjoying myself.

I too am looking forward to Talavera also.

No great suggestions for how to move things along except maybe declare a sudden time jump ahead but dont let it affect current threads going on. I mean anything still going on, just let those threads play out at their pace but don't start any new threads then plop Talavera (or the day before or whatever) into the game.

Hope some of that made sense?

I'm thinking about asking folks if they really NEED to RP out every day... if we skip days here and there in an IC month, hopefully things will move a little quicker without leaving characters and plots behind. After all, in a novel, you don't see a character 24/7, as it were - you see the main events that the author wants to show.

It did all make sense, and I'm glad you're all having fun. After all, that's the whole point of RPing at all, isn't it?

My solution to the 'having time drag' feeling that I think we have all experienced on StC to some degree:

Every IRL month, we move time on to a new IC week. Threads do not have to follow on, one thread to the next... Characters can have their own minor timeskips within the IC week (so they're 'onscreen' in a thread on, say, the 1st July, but they don't have another thread open till the 4th).

Threads can remain open until they're finished, if finishing them will take longer than a month (we're not all on every day, after all), but there would be no need to feel as though everyone has to RP out every single moment of every day, because we'll just run out of plot ideas like that.

I'm asking for your views and opinions on this, and if you have anything else to suggest to help keep things moving, please post them. Just remember that we want people to be able to jump back in if they've been away for a bit - RL is nasty but it can't be avoided, after all.

Sounds absolutely reasonable to me, especially, if I understand it right, we are free to tie up threads that are running on, but people don't have to wait around for us to do it and are free to move on.

Yep, that's pretty much how I see it.

On the first of the new IRL month, we start a new IC week... but unfinished, hanging threads from the previous week can still be posted to. But people don't have to hang around until those threads are done.

It's a little like having a mini-timeskip every month, instead of a huge one every six months or a year.

Yay for Sharpie's great ideas!

Does the constraint apply specifically to motion forward? Ie. if the current IC week = July 1-7, I cannot start a new thread set on July 10, but I could start one set on May 16? Or are all new threads to be bounded within the current IC week?

Sounds good to me! I'm all for seeing things move forward.

I don't visualise it as a constraint, more as a device to get people and/or characters moving forwards where otherwise they would be stuck on the IC same day for a month or two IRL, if that makes sense.

Though I think that to have characters moving forward together would be better - if one or two characters post a new thread set on July 16th and partway through their thread they start talking about a thunderstorm, other characters who may be on the 10th July may start talking about bright blue skies when they reach the 16th July in three weeks' time IRL.

I hope that makes sense, anyway. I don't want to stop people running ahead, but then I don't want people either getting left behind or feeling they've got to drop a thread just to catch up with everyone else. If we move in one-week chunks of time every IRL month, hopefully we'll all be happy. Or at least, equally upset. Or something.

So... I think I'm saying all new threads should fall within the same IC week - though if we're at the end of the month and there's a vital plot point that means a new thread needs to happen in the IC week we're about to leave behind, there's no reason to not play that plot out. It's about being flexible, and having fun, after all.

So other than open threads that have carried over, time before the IC week would essentially be locked?

I'm in two minds about that.

One one hand, 'yes': people wouldn't get left behind/too far ahead and threads wouldn't drag on forever.

On the other hand, 'no': It wouldn't then matter if people are away because their threads would still be playable (though that would count as 'open threads that carry over', I think.) And not everyone can have a really high rate of activity all the time.

I'm leaning towards 'no' at the moment, experimentally. If we end up with half the characters at the end of July and half the characters still in June, we may have to rethink things.

At the end of the day, there's no system that is a perfect fit for everyone; we just have to go on a 'best-fit' system and hope that people realise it may not be perfect for them, but that it's not likely to really be perfect for everyone else, either.