RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes

Candor · **03-16-2014, 03:46 PM**

This may have been discussed before on an older thread, but I can't find it, so I'm going to start a new one (or the first one.)

Right, so, time. How do you treat RP time? Do you act as if RP conversations last as many days as the in-game day-night cycle passes? Do you treat the in-game time as corresponding to your own time? Do you never think about time, and exist in stasis?

I'm curious how the various RPers of FFXIV treat time, the rate of it passing, and all of that in regard to RP.

Nhago · **03-16-2014, 03:51 PM**

I think it's all based on the situation. For the most part I think it takes place in whatever time you start, and then you use real-life time after that. So if it's morning in the game, say 8:30 AM, and we talk for an hour IRL, even though it'd probably midnight by then in game by the time we finish, I treat it as though they stopped talking at 9:30 AM.

Naunet · **03-16-2014, 03:53 PM**

The biggest thing I do not do is pay any attention to the in-game day/night cycle. I'ts impossible to do a reasonable scene in that short amount of time.

Sometimes a scene's time is set by the general time of day it is IRL; other times, we have to "fluid time" it in order to maintain coherency in a story. I've taken weeks IRL to cover events that occurred over days just because it was humanly impossible to do everything in real time. It's also important to take into account the time expansion that occurs with roleplay. Conversations that would IRL take maybe 20 minutes to go through could potentially take hours to roleplay, for a variety of reasons (including speed of typing, time passed between posts, any breaks or OOC discussion, etc).

Basically, how we treat time depends on the needs of any given scene and/or future scenes. I've known people who try to follow very strictly to the "every day that passes IRL, another day has passed IC", and while that can work when considering a timeline in a large temporal scale, I've found it almost impossible to keep up day-to-day with those people in RP when something OOC causes a delay in finishing/continuing scenes. It's led to some frustration in the past, when some people just kept moving on with rp, leaving plotholes in the rp of those left behind.

allgivenover · **03-16-2014, 04:23 PM**

I ignore the ingame day/night cycle and consider time passing in Eorzea as 1:1 compared to Earth time unless SE states otherwise.

DreamedReality · **03-16-2014, 04:31 PM**

Ah... time in mmos. So screwy. It's something that usually ends up getting hand-waved here and there. And I try to be flexible with how I perceive time passage in order to include others.

As a general rule I follow a day ingame is roughly the same as a day in the real world. Unless whatever storyplot I happen to be in alters that in some way. And the folks I RP with generally seem to follow this as well.

If it's technically morning in my corner of the globe and I'm RPing a scene and get asked: "How is your evening going?" I'm -usually- just going to roll with that scene taking place in the evening of that day. The only time I'd maybe send a /t to the other person and dispute that is if there has already been something going on that conflicts with that time in whatever storyline I happen to be in.

However I will sometimes use ingame time as a measure of time when, say, traveling a bunch or fulfilling a 'quest'. And sometimes the RP itself dictates the passage of time. Because good researching/spying and the subsequent clearing out a camp of cultists might only be a single 4-hr RP session. But if we RP watching the camp 'all night' to see how guards rotate and such... well that's what happens.

When I'm in casual/random RP I personally try and avoid mentions of time and time passage, simply to not create conflicts for the other person(s) or myself. If it's been 2 RL days and to them ICly it's been 2 days. Yet for me and whatever story I'm tied up in its been closer to 7 days... well. That's why I try and avoid things like: "How have you been? I haven't seen you in a week!"

So I've rambled a lot. But time can be quite fluid. And if time is a factor or you're worried about it for a particular scene just send a /t to the person you're rping with and try to work it out oocly if you need to.

TheLastCandle · **03-16-2014, 04:46 PM**

(03-16-2014, 04:23 PM)allgivenover Wrote: I ignore the ingame day/night cycle and consider time passing in Eorzea as 1:1 compared to Earth time unless SE states otherwise.

Pretty much this.

Aysun · **03-16-2014, 06:20 PM**

(03-16-2014, 04:23 PM)allgivenover Wrote: I ignore the ingame day/night cycle and consider time passing in Eorzea as 1:1 compared to Earth time unless SE states otherwise.

This. With the addition of using EST as Eorzean standard time, not just Eastern. Smile

Kage · **03-16-2014, 07:13 PM**

Right now, since i haven't had many 'big' RPs, I just treat it fluidly. Time is a trivial matter at the moment.
The times I've had to consider time, I just use RL time. So "the other day" or "last night" type of thing.

Hunfrid · **03-16-2014, 07:27 PM**

(03-16-2014, 04:23 PM)allgivenover Wrote: I ignore the ingame day/night cycle and consider time passing in Eorzea as 1:1 compared to Earth time unless SE states otherwise.

This and I usually keep it loosely relative to the time it is on earth, in my timezone.

Nebbs · **03-16-2014, 07:36 PM**

I have created this space [Nebbs was here!] and will go back in time to fill it in.

Time Travel RP! Yes thanks to a crazy wonderful RP partner (Ilwe'ran) have just done this.

Oh was that not the question.. dang.

Sometimes a day is a day, sometimes we skip forwards to the next happening. Keep a list of events that happen and every so often assign a time to it. I think we are running a 3+ years so for on our story.

Rythulian · **03-16-2014, 09:23 PM**

Depends on the situation.

If it's a conversation, like one conversation, I tend to ignore the day/night cycles.
If it's more along the lines of an active, moving plot, i'm more likely to go off of the in-game cycles.

Really it just depends on what i'm doing and whether RP sense works with the in-game time sense.

***Maril*** · **03-17-2014, 05:12 PM**

I use the OOC clock, so 24 hrs for a full day->night->day thing. When roleplaying with my own FC, we usually end up mentioning that it's evening because we're europeans, but when roleplaying in bigger hubs and that I try not to comment on what time of day it is at all. Because well, when it's evening for me it's like afternoon for the rest of Balmung >.> If someone else mentions that it is afternoon for example, I just roll with that.

Good thing my character is so fond of wine that there isn't a wrong time to consume it in xD

So, all in all it's terribly complicated but yeah. I try not to think of it.

Steel Wolf · **03-18-2014, 10:56 AM**

Unfortunately, I am among those who RP in stasis or a claustrophoic low-ceiling tunnel where the sky isn't even acknowledged.Â I say unfortunate, because a genuine day/night cycle would be really really nice.Â I'm not a terribly huge fan of handwavium.

Though I will acknowledge the sky if the weather is poor.Â Hard to have a standard conversation in tincan armor when the rain is pelting the hell outta you.

Magellan · **03-18-2014, 12:43 PM**

I use the time of day and weather conditions at the start of the conversation. It just seems a little odd to start a conversation mid-morning, and then rp 20 minutes later that it is night, when you haven't been talking that long :/

Though if someone does acknowledge 'oh hey its night!' Or ' oh hey its raining!' Then I will just go along with the flow.

I also wonder how people rp distance. The ability to insta-travel and be anywhere at the drop of the hat makes Eorzea feel very, very small to me. Personally, I like to rp airships as cost prohibitive, and crystal travel as being bad for your health (aether sickness and ur body breaking down kind of thing) i'd love to see travel between towns actual mean something, and make the world feel like a bigger place.

Dogberry · **03-18-2014, 12:48 PM**

I treat time with suspicion bordering on contempt.

Actually, I tend to treat eorzea time like Earth time, much like Rakka'li has stated. Makes it confusing when RPing with Europeans, but then I just pretty much follow their lead for their comfort.

« Next Oldest \| Next Newest »
Pages (2): 1 2 Next »

How Do You Treat Time?

RPC has moved! These pages have been kept for historical purposes