Been tinkering with some advice for pacing a game of Intergalactic. I suspect I'll go a bit further than this, but it's a start.
The speed at which the group moves through events in the
game world can shift between slow and fast tempos. The Referee should use the
fastest tempo that feels appropriate for the situation, and might find it
useful to tell the players when the tempo is shifting.
The names dictate the units of time that are being
individually tracked, each of which usually presents a decision point for the
players.
1. Rounds - Individual combat rounds, typically in the heat
of battle. Slower than real time, where life and death decisions require
precision.
2. Moments - The closest to real time, advancing through
time until the next decision point, for exploring, socialising, and planning.
3. Watches: The three watches that make up a day: Topwatch,
Midwatch, and Bottomwatch. This tempo is used for activities that span many
hours.
4. Days: Used for moving through the individual days of a
long journey or layover.
5. Phases: The three phases of the wheel: Transit, Dock,
Layover.
If things feel like they're lacking momentum, try shifting to a higher tempo. They all have their uses, so try out the tempo most unfamiliar to you.
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This looks like a really usable system. I also like how you are not trying to do anything unnecessary here like "how many rounds in a moment."
ReplyDeleteThough I would be interested in hear how a "Watch" differs from a "Phase."
So in Intergalactic Bastionland a watch is essentially a third of a day, think of it like morning shift, afternoon shift, night shift. This matters if you're in a situation like "I want to go down to the commons deck and try to catch the Purser when they're on their break"
DeletePhase in IB refers to the three phases of the wheel: Transit, Dock, Layover. Transit and Layover in particular are several days long, so that tempo would be used in situations where you're halfway to your destination, with several days of travel left, but it feels right to just skip ahead to the ship arriving in dock rather than play out each remaining day of transit individually.
Phase is actually of a poor choice of word for those familiar with Mythic Bastionland, as in that game it means morning/afternoon/night, so perhaps I'll change the wording for the next release.
Hey Chris! Just recently became aware of your work, and bought Mythic Bastionland (stupidly through Magic Madhouse, before realising you have a website, so I mieed on that free pdf... sigh. You live and you learn). Georgeous work! As someone that really suffers from overthinking and overplanning (and everything going up in flames anyway), do you have a suggestion on how to train yourself out of that mindset? Even with the roll tables I feel like I have to roll far in advance, let's say.
ReplyDeleteLooking forward to Intergalactic, as sci fi is usually my favourite. I havent really thought about handling time in a structured manner depending on different things like that, always just moved on when it "felt" right.
Hey, thanks for picking up the book. If you email me at bastionlandpress@gmail.com I'll get you a pdf key.
DeleteIn terms of managing how much to prep, elmcat touches on that a little in this fantastic post: https://elmc.at/running-mythic-bastionland/
A good start might just be to challenge yourself to run a very low-prep one shot and see how you find the experience. You don't want to overcompensate and find yourself under-prepared at the table, so it's really about finding the sweet spot that works for you.
I've been thinking a lot about the relation between what Justin Alexander calls "game structures" and this concept of tempo, units of fictional time and what kinds of statements of intent from players can be resolved in each (as opposed to having to break an intent down into smaller actions, or asking the player to clarify what the overall intent of a series of actions is to more readily resolve it in a quicker 'montage' pace). This breakdown of tempos is interesting because it seems like most game structures select for one of them.
ReplyDeleteThough I find interesting that the "moments" size can be quite variable, depending on what circumstances are: if the PCs are attending a party, for instance, you could equally play out a conversation in real-time with everyone speaking in character and abstract a whole hour of talking with multiple NPCs in a couple of sentences, depending on what the focus of these conversations are. It feels a bit like the tension between the dungeon-crawl structure for exploring places room-by-room and exploring places sector-by-sector in Hill Canton's pointcrawls or Whelan's Flux Space - they'd both fit the "moments" tempo in this model.
It doesn't necessarily seem right to break this size tempo down into two or more distinct tempo units, since often we really alternate between different size "moments" very interchangeably. But at the same time, it feels important to me that we recognize that "moments" aren't really quite as tidy as the other units of tempo.