Journey lengths?

[Aris]

Hello! 

 

I wondered if we know how long it would take to travel across Eorzea (or across a map, e.g. Central Shroud).

 

In game, if I were to take a Chocobo Porter from Ala Mhigo to Ul'dah it would take about 3 minutes, but IC that's incredibly short and not much of an adventure at all.  Or do we go by this IC as well? 

 

I'm still new to RP, and it's the first time I've thought about this sort of thing properly. I know the devs have provided some lore on teleporting. I imagine it's been discussed before - if so I apologise for the silly question!

[Berrod Armstrong]

Hello! 

 

I wondered if we know how long it would take to travel across Eorzea (or across a map, e.g. Central Shroud).

 

In game, if I were to take a Chocobo Porter from Ala Mihgo to Ul'dah it would take about 3 minutes, but IC that's incredibly short and not much of an adventure at all.  Or do we go by this IC as well? 

 

I'm still new to RP, and it's the first time I've thought about this sort of thing properly. I know the devs have provided some lore on teleporting. I imagine it's been discussed before - if so I apologise for the silly question!

There will always be differing opinions on how long such journeys should take -- so, in my own humble opinion, the best approach to take is the one that gives YOU a good story and a good experience. If you want a story lasting days, make the journey take days! If you just want an evening of roleplay with a two hour scene, make the journey take two hours! If your character has to RUSH to Southern Thanalan on Chocoboback to save her friend -- why not three minutes? We often like to get technical and try to play to what we think would be realistic in terms of travelling time, but I think it's always best (and convenient) to bend the time it takes around the kind of scene/scenes you wish to partake in. Do whatever results in a fun time for you and your partners -- providing they agree to take that approach as well!

 

Just my two gil!

[Volk]

Hello! 

 

I wondered if we know how long it would take to travel across Eorzea (or across a map, e.g. Central Shroud).

 

In game, if I were to take a Chocobo Porter from Ala Mihgo to Ul'dah it would take about 3 minutes, but IC that's incredibly short and not much of an adventure at all.  Or do we go by this IC as well? 

 

I'm still new to RP, and it's the first time I've thought about this sort of thing properly. I know the devs have provided some lore on teleporting. I imagine it's been discussed before - if so I apologise for the silly question!

There will always be differing opinions on how long such journeys should take -- so, in my own humble opinion, the best approach to take is the one that gives YOU a good story and a good experience. If you want a story lasting days, make the journey take days! If you just want an evening of roleplay with a two hour scene, make the journey take two hours! If your character has to RUSH to Southern Thanalan on Chocoboback to save her friend -- why not three minutes? We often like to get technical and try to play to what we think would be realistic in terms of travelling time, but I think it's always best (and convenient) to bend the time it takes around the kind of scene/scenes you wish to partake in. Do whatever results in a fun time for you and your partners -- providing they agree to take that approach as well!

 

Just my two gil!

 

:love: I love this answer very much. I know consistency seems "right", but sometimes it just isn't what the doctor ordered. Generally speaking, if my character is traveling from Limsa Lominsa to Ul'dah, I let a few IC days elapse. But there are scenarios that I can imagine Ameline mounting up on her Chocobo and riding hard for.

 

In short, I agree whole-heartedly with Berrod!

[Naunet]

Personally, I try to be as realistic as possible with travel times, taking into account terrain and need for rest and... yes, the probable size of Eorzea. It's generally safe to assume that MMO worlds are actually larger than how they appear in-game, so my friends and I sat around and brainstormed what would be a reasonable time to travel a particular distance. We make sure we're consistent in RP and that's that. The general rule of thumb for us is it takes a couple days to travel across a zone, though that time could shorten significantly depending on the path taken and means of transport. If a character has enough aether reserves to make use of aetheryte travel, then of course moving around is a lot faster, but we know according to lore that such a thing is not common.

 

That said, we know it's kind of impossible to get roleplayers to agree on things, so I don't get fussed with whatever times other people use.

[FreelanceWizard]

Here's the dev lore post on Aetherytes and teleportation. There's also some additional lore in the 2.4 story quests. How often you can teleport depends on where the "heroics dial" is for your character; if your character is a mundane being, the answer is "basically never," whereas if your character is a heroic adventurer sort, the answer is "fairly regularly."

 

In general, I go with "characters move at the speed of plot," which is to say, travel times aren't relevant as characters are where they need to be when they need to be there. If your story is travel, then it takes as long to get across as zone as your desired narrative pacing. If you're looking for more specific bounds, consider that in-game Eorzean time is greatly compressed (20x, IIRC) compared to RL time and not every location that exists in the world appears in game for technical reasons. To that end, in my mind, I usually assume travel times in game are somewhere between 200 and 600 times faster than they "should" be -- but again, I usually eschew specifics and just go with what's necessary for the story.

[Dasair]

Though I agree with the 'trying to be as realistic as possible' thing, there are actually a lot of time discrepancies when Rping in a game.

 

The first most obvious one is the passage of time.  Days last only a number of minutes in Eorzea.  Time is sped up in the game so players can experience both day and night, instead of having the game set in any timezone so players who log on at consistent times are always logging in the night/morning/whatever.  Now, this can be taken further, and somewhat expanded upon, if someone wanted to compare the length of an In-Game day to the length it would take one to travel from one place to another, then they could always use that sort of determining ratio.  And yes, it wouldn't be followed by everyone, but hey, someone would have a 'system' considered to be realistic with a base in the world beyond their whim.

  

But the thing that people often forget to take into account in terms of time and RPing, is that typing out, and reading replies take a lot longer than the time it would take for someone just speaking words.  Likewise, some actions take a lot shorter to type out than they would actually take to perform; or longer, such as a simple gesture, or a hand flick, or something.  And that said, no matter what you do, your RP isn't going to be fitting any real-life sort of time frame.  RPs that take a few hours might only have a small conversation take place; reading only the dialogue outloud afterward may take mere minutes, which would have been closer to the time it took to speak, and what it would have been for the characters.

 

So because of this, since text / MMO RP is already somewhat of a medium with a degree of separation from time, I stick with the whole 'do what makes for the best story' or 'what makes most sense for the players involved' kind of thing. And basically support all the points already made for it.  It's up to you how you want to go about it anyway, since, try as you may, getting a realistic timeframe on anything in this kind of RP, by its design, is likely to be difficult unless you're LARPing.

[Sounsyy]

Personally, I go with what's already been said. The travel time takes as long as is necessary for the scene. However, if you do wish to estimate travel time based off of distance, I can tell you (from 1.0) that each of those squares on your map is 100 square yalms, and that there are 1760 yalms in a malm.

 

So if you take a zone like Eastern Thanalan. The Central Thanalan zone line is at X:8 and the South Shroud zone line is at X:30. So 30 - 8 = 22 x 100 = 2200 / 1760 = 1.25 malms (miles) give or take, because you know you're also not traveling in a straight line and you have to veer off course or follow the road etc. So maybe closer to mile and a half or two mile travel.

 

Then from there you can estimate how fast it would take you to travel that distance on foot or whatever. But hope this helps! ^^

[Naunet]

Personally, I go with what's already been said. The travel time takes as long as is necessary for the scene. However, if you do wish to estimate travel time based off of distance, I can tell you (from 1.0) that each of those squares on your map is 100 square yalms, and that there are 1760 yalms in a malm.

 

So if you take a zone like Eastern Thanalan. The Central Thanalan zone line is at X:8 and the South Shroud zone line is at X:30. So 30 - 8 = 22 x 100 = 2200 / 1760 = 1.25 malms (miles) give or take, because you know you're also not traveling in a straight line and you have to veer off course or follow the road etc. So maybe closer to mile and a half or two mile travel.

 

Then from there you can estimate how fast it would take you to travel that distance on foot or whatever. But hope this helps! ^^

 

The thing is, this just makes no geographical, ecological, or geological sense whatsoever. There is no possible way Eastern Thanalan is 1-2 miles traversed while managing to maintain a distinct geography, support several herds of large, grazing mammals, and maintain its own weather patterns.

[Aris]

Thank you all for the replies! I'll just take it as it comes with each RP then. 

 

I mostly wondered if there was already a general consensus as to how long things took, but I'm glad to know it isn't looked too closely at.

 

.. I'm worrying too much and should just get on with writing. :roll:

[Berrod Armstrong]

Personally, I go with what's already been said. The travel time takes as long as is necessary for the scene. However, if you do wish to estimate travel time based off of distance, I can tell you (from 1.0) that each of those squares on your map is 100 square yalms, and that there are 1760 yalms in a malm.

 

So if you take a zone like Eastern Thanalan. The Central Thanalan zone line is at X:8 and the South Shroud zone line is at X:30. So 30 - 8 = 22 x 100 = 2200 / 1760 = 1.25 malms (miles) give or take, because you know you're also not traveling in a straight line and you have to veer off course or follow the road etc. So maybe closer to mile and a half or two mile travel.

 

Then from there you can estimate how fast it would take you to travel that distance on foot or whatever. But hope this helps! ^^

 

The thing is, this just makes no geographical, ecological, or geological sense whatsoever. There is no possible way Eastern Thanalan is 1-2 miles traversed while managing to maintain a distinct geography, support several herds of large, grazing mammals, and maintain its own weather patterns.

Which is exactly why it's a great idea to just go with the time the scene requires! Days, hours, a 30 minute shuffle. In the end, the roleplay gets going and fun is had!

[Sounsyy]

Personally, I go with what's already been said. The travel time takes as long as is necessary for the scene. However, if you do wish to estimate travel time based off of distance, I can tell you (from 1.0) that each of those squares on your map is 100 square yalms, and that there are 1760 yalms in a malm.

 

So if you take a zone like Eastern Thanalan. The Central Thanalan zone line is at X:8 and the South Shroud zone line is at X:30. So 30 - 8 = 22 x 100 = 2200 / 1760 = 1.25 malms (miles) give or take, because you know you're also not traveling in a straight line and you have to veer off course or follow the road etc. So maybe closer to mile and a half or two mile travel.

 

Then from there you can estimate how fast it would take you to travel that distance on foot or whatever. But hope this helps! ^^

 

The thing is, this just makes no geographical, ecological, or geological sense whatsoever. There is no possible way Eastern Thanalan is 1-2 miles traversed while managing to maintain a distinct geography, support several herds of large, grazing mammals, and maintain its own weather patterns.

Which is exactly why it's a great idea to just go with the time the scene requires! Days, hours, a 30 minute shuffle. In the end, the roleplay gets going and fun is had!

 

^ What Berrod said, entirely. I'm just telling you what lore says, which is that each map square = 100 yalms. What you decide to do with that is another matter entirely.

[Iex]

Generally, I may look at the size of the zone presented as actual size, but the area between zones I imagine is quite a bit more vast. A similar concept I apply to Ul'dah, it is suppose to be a massive merchant city so I assume it is really quite big in areas we cannot physically go to on our characters.

 

A journey from Ul'dah to the Forgotten Springs may be a short run once you are in the Southern regions, but I tend to treat the longer part of the trip to happen in the loading screens.

 

Someone I know Rped a good couple day Journey between Northern Shroud and Coerthas, If you want the 'loading screen' rp to take place in game just find a place in the zone you want that fits your idea for the scene.

 

The concept of time in RPing is really quite bendable, as you can be RPing for a couple hours and technically only said enough ICly for 15 minutes of time if it was occurring IRL. So really the safest thing to do is just give the concept of time the boot and RP it at your tempo rather than worrying about how true to life things are being.