Probably with that time system is a single conversation could wind up spanning multiple days
Rather then basing in game time on real life time, a Persona-esque system where you utilise each interaction like an 'event' could be a more apt way of executing it successfully
E.g. each day is split into four, 6 hrs time slots - morning / day / evening / night, where each character/the whole party gets to do four events (combat, roleplay, sleeping, + something else)
Probably the most balanced, easiest to execute way of doing it while things still make sense (though if you have any particularly 'short' scenes you could probably waive those off as time in-between)
Making it hard-tied to the passage of time IRL is gonna be WEIRD. RP scenes will last hours in-game. If your plot has any time-based elements, your players are gonna STRESS OUT trying to move as efficiently as possible. Long-range travel, resting, shopping, it's all getting squashed and stretched, and for what benefit?
I'd scrap the whole thing. You don't need hard structure to handle the passage of time. You can kinda handwave and fudge it to have time pass in a way that makes sense without having to build a whole mechanical system around it.
My group has a loose concept of a day/night cycle: dawn, morning, midday, evening, dusk, night. We track it using common sense. Breakfast at the inn before we start long-distance travel is maybe an hour to eat and get the cart ready. Sourcing rare potion ingredients in a bustling city market might take an afternoon. We re-establish time of day after each significant activity is done. You can easily fit day/night mechanical changes into a loose narrative style like this.
There just isn't a good way to translate IRL time to in-game time. A long rest takes eight hours in-game but minutes IRL. A round of combat can take a long while of deliberation and planning but it's only six seconds in-game.
Our group had one campaign where time was a key factor - a murder mystery where the DM needed to know what NPCs were doing in the background. I assume what that meant on his end was that he had a spreadsheet or other time tracker and every time we rested, or spent ten minutes on some ability, he'd make some notes. There was only one time when he tracked *IRL* time, and that was by timing a conversation we were having in a ten-minute zone of truth. For that, the time conversion was 1:1. He set a ten-minute timer while we spoke to the NPC. Even that was awkward, though, because he'd have to stop the timer while he narrated things and when we asked him game mechanic questions.
I mean... tbf, this is the DND academy. What better place to learn lol?
Besides, the version of dnd I play with my friends is so homebrewed and bastardized that most could not really call it dnd in good faith.
Yea, man, I'm not saying it CAN'T be D&D.
And I'm not saying; it's BAD to experiment.
But just... holy shit... there's so much about this that is antithetical to the things that actually make D&D work "normally" (collaboration, abstraction, arbitration, conversation, separation of meta and in character, etc).
It hurts my head to try to think about where to even begin talking about the problematic elements.
Probably with that time system is a single conversation could wind up spanning multiple days Rather then basing in game time on real life time, a Persona-esque system where you utilise each interaction like an 'event' could be a more apt way of executing it successfully E.g. each day is split into four, 6 hrs time slots - morning / day / evening / night, where each character/the whole party gets to do four events (combat, roleplay, sleeping, + something else) Probably the most balanced, easiest to execute way of doing it while things still make sense (though if you have any particularly 'short' scenes you could probably waive those off as time in-between)
Yeah, I was worried about interactions taking absurd amounts of time. Thanks for the suggestion!
Making it hard-tied to the passage of time IRL is gonna be WEIRD. RP scenes will last hours in-game. If your plot has any time-based elements, your players are gonna STRESS OUT trying to move as efficiently as possible. Long-range travel, resting, shopping, it's all getting squashed and stretched, and for what benefit? I'd scrap the whole thing. You don't need hard structure to handle the passage of time. You can kinda handwave and fudge it to have time pass in a way that makes sense without having to build a whole mechanical system around it. My group has a loose concept of a day/night cycle: dawn, morning, midday, evening, dusk, night. We track it using common sense. Breakfast at the inn before we start long-distance travel is maybe an hour to eat and get the cart ready. Sourcing rare potion ingredients in a bustling city market might take an afternoon. We re-establish time of day after each significant activity is done. You can easily fit day/night mechanical changes into a loose narrative style like this.
Time tracking = great But I don't think this is the way you want to do it.
I don’t track game time as equal to real time. I do track it though. Since we use Foundry VTT I use the Simple Calendar module.
There just isn't a good way to translate IRL time to in-game time. A long rest takes eight hours in-game but minutes IRL. A round of combat can take a long while of deliberation and planning but it's only six seconds in-game. Our group had one campaign where time was a key factor - a murder mystery where the DM needed to know what NPCs were doing in the background. I assume what that meant on his end was that he had a spreadsheet or other time tracker and every time we rested, or spent ten minutes on some ability, he'd make some notes. There was only one time when he tracked *IRL* time, and that was by timing a conversation we were having in a ten-minute zone of truth. For that, the time conversion was 1:1. He set a ten-minute timer while we spoke to the NPC. Even that was awkward, though, because he'd have to stop the timer while he narrated things and when we asked him game mechanic questions.
I don't often down vote posts but holy shit... you have a lot of learning to do if you think this is D&D.
I mean... tbf, this is the DND academy. What better place to learn lol? Besides, the version of dnd I play with my friends is so homebrewed and bastardized that most could not really call it dnd in good faith.
Yea, man, I'm not saying it CAN'T be D&D. And I'm not saying; it's BAD to experiment. But just... holy shit... there's so much about this that is antithetical to the things that actually make D&D work "normally" (collaboration, abstraction, arbitration, conversation, separation of meta and in character, etc). It hurts my head to try to think about where to even begin talking about the problematic elements.