Membership Time in RPs

[Morrigan 1,826]

As a staff members and member I like fluid real time. Basically to the point that if it's August 3rd and a post is made on that day then it's happening on that day unless otherwise stated. Now that doesn't mean that if it would fit better elsewhere in your characters timeline then you can't move it but I like the real time forward movement of life. I hate to be stuck in summer when it's freezing outside. I would rather be in winter in the game.

 

For some people this doesn't work as they don't post as often or something but I was curious as a member, as a staff member what are your preferences?

[Elena 546]

The time moves according to the story, and to how quickly the people post. Each thread has a timestamp, listing when it takes place, and all of them are listed into a board calendar, chronologically, so we know any moment what a character knows already and when they are on x island.

 

We are writing in liquid time, ie while it is June 1720 in our calendar now, there are threads written in March, April and May too. 

[Death Kitten 200]

While I prefer a fluid time, with the way plots tend to flow in star trek we end up needing a lot of writing time to cover events that take place in the span of hours, so it's hard to have ic match ooc on flow. I try to fold time between plots to balance, but players sometimes have a hard time keeping up with "off screen" time passage, and I've long since given up on policing it... So time just flows however it does depending on the needs of the story.

[Dawn 1]

When I used to run an animal RP I used time that was set up. I would set up times that it would be summer and times that it would be spring and etc. But that was such a pain to do, everyone got confused on what season it was, and because the seasons changed so quickly we would end up with all the threads in the season before. So now I just use fluid real time, and it is so much nicer. As a member and a staff member, I defiantly prefer fluid real time. 

[Rune 1,099]

Fuck having to date posts.

 

I adore fluid 1:1 time. One day in real life? One day on the board. It makes keeping track of everything so much easier and it's far less of a hassle for everyone involved. Plus it keeps the feeling of having to rush threads to a minimal.

[iReadYerMind 2]

The most I do on my site is mention seasons.  We try to keep it as close to real life as possible, but letting members know what season we're currently in helps with setting up your thread's atmosphere.  That's not to say that we cut everyone's threads off when we're moving into a new season, we just remind folks that new threads started after, say, summer's cut-off date are considered to be Autumn threads.  Everything is archived accordingly.

[Elena 546]

2 hours ago, Rune said:

Fuck having to date posts.

 

I adore fluid 1:1 time. One day in real life? One day on the board. It makes keeping track of everything so much easier and it's far less of a hassle for everyone involved. Plus it keeps the feeling of having to rush threads to a minimal.

I think by contrary, dating them prevents having to rush them, because the slot for the thread is already marked and you know that things might happen before or afterwards. Keeping them in real life makes it rushed. When getting one post a week, how can you keep the thread "in real life"?

Edited August 4, 2016 by Elena

[Morrigan 1,826]

I can see both sides of the argument. By dating thing, for me, it makes it not fluid enough. Sometimes a thread can drag on for too long and the original date makes no sense because events have happened since that were technically an affect of that thread but nothing is shown in there.

 

What I mean by this is that I post a thread and in this thread they punch someone, well I have a thread for the next day and they don't have bruised knuckles then the consistency is gone so it's better to wiggle that after that thread and use those bruised knuckles for another thread.

[Rune 1,099]

I should probably clarify my hate of dating.

 

Every time I've seen a board make you date a thread they've had their own super special calendar that didn't follow the real world at all. So not only did you have to go find the magical time on this calendar, you had to make sure that you/anyone else taking it had no threads anywhere that could have possibly occurred on the same day/overlapped at all. (One board had admin actively chewing people out for any potentially overlapping threads.)

 

There's a huge difference between "this thread happened in early March, this one a week after that one" and "This happened on the seventh day of Septober at 11 AM when it was sunny because that's what the weather widget said."

[Death Kitten 200]

I had kinda a similar problem with a past game that drove pretty much everyone crazy except the CO and her inner circle. She'd write logs way ahead of when they'd actually happen, hold them, and then anyone who has to write with her ahead of it had to be so very careful about whatever happened between so as to not break anything in her logs.

 

I hold a policy on my game, one that most people get intuitively, is that until a log is released (since Nova is closed writing), anything within is in flux, and if something releases that affects your unreleased log, you have to edit to adjust.

[Elena 546]

Nova is more problematic, indeed, because there everything is sequential anyway, and it depends on the time of posting, not on the time of actual writing. Plus that nobody can read it before it is posted. These two are major inconvenients of Nova in my views.

 

As for fluid vs dating, even if it is dated, it is fluid because threads might be started before and after. Just that you know what the characters know and what they don't. No matter how long might a thread last in writing it, the basics of it are mentioned in the threads which are supposed to happen afterwards in the calendar. E.g. said bruise is mentioned in the "upcoming" thread being written, since we agreed the thread would end in a fight (this is something major; it has to be agreed beforehand between writers) even if the fight scene per se wasn't actually written yet. So yes, the major things are mentioned, the minor details not (because these are at the moment's inspiration).

Edited August 5, 2016 by Elena

[Honorem 219]

My approach is the same as Morrigan's. The day the first post is started on is the day it occurs in the setting.

 

Which means the liquid time works without any problems, because you can start another thread a week later, and it's as if that is occurring a week later.

 

But then again, I'm not fussed if members want to rejig when their threads happened themselves, so it's not enforced. Just more like if they don't state exactly when it's occurring, it is assumed to be on the day the opening post was made. If members go back or forward a few months or even a year, I don't mind that either.

[CovertSphinx 710]

I've always done things completely fluid to the characters involved in the threads. Certain larger plot events that would influence other threads in the area are of course noted and archived with a notation of what directly affects everyone else, but I've never had the need to set up an actual calendar, season, etc in the timelines. And nobody's yet had a major issue with filtering events in their personal character's timeline.

 

So I guess our passage of time more or less emulates a novel in the sense that we use Storyline Points to illustrate passage of time rather than anything close to resembling real-world.

 

 

[PERSEPHONE 1]

Fluid time is so much easier to deal with but yeah, some times I wanna pretend it's winter out when I'm sweating in the summer. xD

[Kieran 15]

I prefer and in fact simply can not write in any other format than one where time stands still. That is, that your free to set a game event to absolutely any point of the site timeline any time you want, and in any timeline order. Preferably also outside of

 

I write my characts' whole lives and like to do a lot of research while playing, and sometimes take days or even weeks to cook up a really good next response. There is no way I could fill in a year in my character's life and further develop their personality to a satisfactory degree within an actual year, especially when the game events' advancement rate depend also on a co-player. This is especially crucial with child characters, I write their childhood years thoroughly first and it couldn't be done if the time flow constantly forced him or her to have experienced a whole year no matter how little or much I was able to write that year.

 

My own sites are ideal to me, of course. On them I have a 12 years long timeline and a 17 years long timeline plus freedom to set events to absolutely any point of your character's life and in any timeline order. As in, time doesn't flow but instead you're free to write about any point of your characters' lives you currently are inspired to, and at any rate you currently can as long as you follow the activity requirements which are very laid-back yet reasonable.

 

This is especially important because I rp on three sites with on average 3 characters on each. On one of them, right now I'm writing an event wherein my character is five years old and his daddy is 34 years old. In the next event I start for them, they could be ages 8 and 37 or maybe ages 2 and 31- depending on what the next event idea will be.

 

Though I d8 find ie. a real-time flow style an interesting concept, I have no need for time flow as I am in no hurry to see my characters age but rather want to thoroughly get to know them and take my time to vision a full life for them. A time flow just isn't my cup of tea and would never meet my needs as a writer.