How You Deal With Passage of Time

[Tiergan]

I know we've had this discussion once (or twice?) before, but I've never actually seen it as a poll.

 

Lately I have just been aging up Tiergan every time his birthday comes around in real life time. However, I'm no longer sure if that's really the way to go and am interested in seeing how the majority of RPers in the community deal with time as a way of helping me decide.

[Berrod Armstrong]

I take the time bubble approach! If new content comes out that specifically stating that X years/months/weeks have passed, I move my character forward to the most current time bubble and adjust his age accordingly.

[Tiergan]

Herp derp. My poll things were too long so the website wouldn't let me insert them. JUST A MOMENT.

[Iex]

Honestly, none of the characters have a defined age.

 

Grave is somewhere around in his forties...  I just consider him a mature adult. A few big events I in his life have defined years since, but in general I don't really apply an age to him outside of being an adult.

 

Sarij is an adult, younger than Grave but older than Cursed.

 

Cursed is probably my youngest character... he is a very young adult, but an adult.

 

Vulgar... uh... who knows. Just an adult.

 

I rarely mark off another year of life as anything other than: well he has been around some more, had some adventures, and will have more in the future.

[Tiergan]

H'okay. Poll has been added!

[Flickering Ember]

I go by in real life years. I admit I am stuck in my old ways. World of Warcraft had one expansion per year.1 expansion usually came out each year and would last one year in game time. The idea of doing it differently feels too unnatural for me.I know not every game does it the way World of Warcraft does but World of Warcraft was my first game I roleplayed in so I choose to do it that way.

 

I know this is Final Fantasy and not World of Warcraft but I haven't seen any evidence to suggest that" 1irl year= one in game year" doesn't work.

[Salinas]

Currently, Caelia will stay in limbo with her age because I'm still confused if I'm actually role playing with the current timeline or disragarding it completely until further notice.

 

Since most of my sessions were always starting off with these question: "How long has it been since the last met?" And I could never answer it properly so I always settle with "Lets just say it's been some time." 

 

.. I'll catch up with the timeline someday.

[Dogberry]

I deal with the passage of time with anxiety bordering on abject terror.

 

And in character, I age my characters by year unless there's a worldwide time skip.

[Kinono]

Real time! Best and simplest way to do it. At the very least, SE has said a year has passed.

[Mae]

I age alongside RL years.

 

Using FFXI as a precedent, SE is... kinda bad about how they handle time. Twelve years and six (or seven, if you count Abyssea) expansions later, SE's official stance on why they haven't updated dialogue/text when it comes to dates is that a Vana'diel year has not passed yet... despite holiday event dialogue that contains things like "every year" and "last year" and "remember in years past--"

 

I also think it's an easier way to keep the people who do keep an actual tally of their years on the same page. If new content/expansions say X-amount of time has suddenly passed when you do Y-event, there's no real way to reconcile or enforce it for people who haven't done that content yet (or don't acknowledge content).

[Maril]

I age mine alongside RL time. It's easier, and stuff about time can get really complicated, so I like to keep it simple.

 

However, when something big happens.. Like say.. Uh. Something changes politically, or some big evil guy is slain in the main scenario quests, I do not instantly take that info in icly - if at all. Like, some others may take things in on every patchday, but I like to wait before mentioning that my character heard about x and x, because my character isn't likely to know a lot of the things that happen. She can't read, so the only source of news she has about the world is through travelers, bars and the likes, and anyone who frequents bars would know to take stuff that's said there with a pinch of salt. So in that sense she's a few months behind on current events. Mind you, if something VERY big happens like I don't know a round two of Bahamut raining fire everywhere, that would obviously be taken in instantly.

 

That said, my Main and my primary alt do not know when their namedays are, so I have nothing to icly mark them as being older. I tend to adjust Wiki's and profiles after the anniversary of the game.

[ArmachiA]

Real-ish time. I stick with the real time until devs come out and say a certain time has passed then I adjust accordingly. It only wonks out birthdays so I'm generally okay with it.

[PerkPrincess]

Discreetly, I avoid the issue entirely by playing an older character. Years tend to blend together and become meaningless in comparison to how a younger character might develop from it.

 

But to be consistent I'd use IRL years unless an expansion is a time skip forward more than a few years. But past experience with previous MMO's ( WoW, ) has made me prefer the iRL approach.

 

I mean come on Blizz please sort out your timeline, we're lost and confused.

[Marisa]

Right now I'm going off of real time, which is painfully slow because Ryoko won't even be 15 until next October. If we are informed of a sudden leap ahead in game time, I will adhere to that, but until then I'm going by real-world time. 

 

Fortunately for me, Ishgard begins training priests and knights at around 11-13 years old, so Ryoko's age doesn't really limit her service to the church. 

 

(I have no confirmation for the apprentice info, but my personal policy on Ishgard is to assume it's identical to the Holy Roman Empire unless stated otherwise.)

[Delilah Scythewood]

Eh, it varies for me. I use a combination of most of the above depending on the material given to me and those in the game. Like with pregnancies, I don't go as long as nine months. Usually 4-7 depending and move from there, only because of the fact that there are those time bubbles in game where things'll change and events will jump skip. I also very it with how the game does its time passage system. It can be a matter of days in the game in an hour or so of real time.

[Kailia]

My character's in game namesday is 1/20, which is my real life birthday, so I age the character the same day I age in real life. I always go by real life time.

[Gegenji]

I haven't played long enough with Chachan to consider birthdays and such, but I would probably age him up based on RL time, unless something major in-game happened. I just hope he's grown as a character enough to reflect that as well!

 

For everything else, I try to keep things relatively fluid just due to the nature of so many characters doing so many things. How quickly time passes is left to the narrative, though I tend to refer to events that occurred the previous real days as "last sun" just for simplicity's sake. Plus I've been bad at keeping notes on everything Chachan's been doing, so trying to keep tabs on how many suns he's spent in transit from point A to point B would probably get lost in the mix.

 

 

(Thank god for Aetherite being an IC thing...)

[FreelanceWizard]

Generally speaking, I stick with real time, even though I know SE is guaranteed to throw a wrench into that; Fernehawles has stated (in a post I'd have to dig up) that time progresses by "comic book time," with years moving forward as the plot requires. We'll find out that Heavensward is like... 6 months from the start of 2.0 or something.

 

So, I more or less play fast and loose with time progression. If the game requires I retcon or finesse something to make it work, I've resigned myself to that.

[D'aito Kuji]

I have D'aito Kuji age in real time, using my own birthday as a reference point.  D'aito is a couple of years older than me because I felt she needed a couple extra years to be a little more believable as an adventurer.  So D'aito ran away from her tribe sometime during her 18th summer and is now experiencing the beginning of her 20th winter.

 

It's possible, even likely, that the story itself could time jump and I'll make adjustments if necessary.

 

Time is always a bit complicated in MMOs. When everything is laid out, all the adventures a character has, all the places they go, all the creatures and people they encounter, it's not really possible to do all those things in a lifetime, much less in a year or month or whatever the timeframe.  Maybe not impossible, but extremely unlikely.

 

So there are obviously some things that I count and other things that I don't.

 

Some things like, recovery from injury, are too inconvenient to the mechanics of gameplay and roleplay.  I doubt many of us are so dedicated that we'd take weeks of time to recover or essentially play a bed-ridden character for a long period of time.  So some stuff is going to get time-compressed and while it might "have happened" during D'aito's year, exactly when and the length of time it occurred might be difficult to pin down.

[Kinono]

Generally speaking, I stick with real time, even though I know SE is guaranteed to throw a wrench into that; Fernehawles has stated (in a post I'd have to dig up) that time progresses by "comic book time," with years moving forward as the plot requires. We'll find out that Heavensward is like... 6 months from the start of 2.0 or something.

 

So, I more or less play fast and loose with time progression. If the game requires I retcon or finesse something to make it work, I've resigned myself to that.

 

I know some people don't see the in-game events as being related to in-game time or anything like that, but The Rising was meant to be the 6 year anniversary of the Calamity, making it (hopefully) a canon year passing. If they really do throw some wrench into that and say "hold up, go backwards six months" I'm... more likely to just ignore that at this point. I celebrated my birthday and everything. >

 

Some things like, recovery from injury, are too inconvenient to the mechanics of gameplay and roleplay. I doubt many of us are so dedicated that we'd take weeks of time to recover or essentially play a bed-ridden character for a long period of time.

 

I know this is really boring for some people but given the connections and an attitude for drumming up roleplay, it's not hard to play a bed-ridden (or, at the very least, house-ridden) character, especially given houses and personal quarters. I find it a lot of fun to play a frustrated, pent-up-energy-ridden character myself, and it may be surprising how willing people are to come to you if you ask really nicely!

[D'aito Kuji]

Oh, I've seen it done and done really well.  It probably helps if the player has a number of alts.  I basically have only my main character so leaving her wounded would seriously cramp my style.  Then again, I'm still leveling so...a lot of RP depends on the point of view. :blush: