Had a little chat about 1:1 Pacing on a discord, and thought I’d share some of the thoughts here, too.
First of all, 1:1 Pacing means locking the in-game calendar to the real-world calendar. Characters can use as much in-game time during a Session as they need, days or even weeks, but if they play out into the future, beyond the next session, those PCs aren’t available for the next session. Your players will use other PCs, with their own goals and objectives.
I wrote about this a while back, with regard to having multiple PCs for each player: How to Manage Multiple PCs in a Setting of 1:1 Timekeeping
Here is a link to the first Session Report from the old Campaign, after we switched to 1:1 Pacing: World of Weirth Campaign – Downtime Session Recap – 36 Zazel – 5 Hielik 573
Here are the posts I made in the discord last night:
To keep things moving, AND zoom out for downtime stuff, I use 1:1 Pacing between sessions & “Time Jail”. This is to say (for weekly play) that if there are 4 characters on an adventure, and it takes four days of game time, then they have three days of downtime before next week’s session.
As an example, my players have to make a decision this weekend, after tonight’s session. These PCs (Party “A”) went out to a ruined castle, infested with Undead.
Scribbles Dex 16 Ini 14 AC 18
Broketooth Dex 14 Ini 8 AC 12
Korgoth Dex 13 Ini 13 AC 15
Deimos Dex 13 Ini 14 AC 16
Korgath Dex 11 Ini 13 AC 20
Hernan Dex 11 Ini 10 AC 15
Tiago Dex 10 Ini 10 AC 14
Nik Dex 11 Ini 11 AC 13
They cleared out the surface stuff, to the best of their knowledge, and kind of ran out of session time trying to decide whether or not to do a Ritual to cleanse a Chaos Fountain that creates more undead. It will take 2d6 days, so they are trying to decide if they should start today (6 Nov in game and IRL) or if they should go home, rest up, gather some more men, and return to do the ritual next week (13 Nov in game and IRL).
If they decide to start “tomorrow” (7 Nov in game) and the 2d6 comes up 10, then the ritual will take until 17 Nov. Since the next session is on 13 Nov, Party A is in Time Jail & the Players will have to use different characters (Party “B”) and pursue a new adventure with them for that session. On the 18th the first group (Party A) will RTB & have 2 days of downtime until the next session on the 20th.
If Party B uses game time from 13-17 Nov, they will have 3 days of downtime before the session on the 20th.
When the 20th comes, the Players can choose which of their characters (A or B) they want to use and which adventure hook they want to pursue. The PCs who don’t go out on the 20th can continue doing downtime things until the 27th.
I’ve been running my campaign with this timekeeping system for the past four years and it’s been really exciting!
It makes Time into a resource that has to be used wisely, just like spells and Hit Points.
The group is under pressure because they also discovered there is a powerful NPC making moves against the Barony they are building, and they need to address that problem at the same time. They have two conflicting goals, both with time pressure to address, and they need to figure out the best way to use their personnel and material resources to keep their villagers safe.
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One of the guys had a comment and question:
This sounds fantastic! Do you use “real life” time? As in one day in real life = one day in game. Or does time stop between sessions and you’re just using the Gregorian calendar?
I would love to do something like what you’re doing. Multiple characters per player and different ways to spend their time.
My reply:
In a way. The in-game calendar is matched to the IRL calendar in the sense that you always know what day it will be in-game. For example, we play on Thursdays, so if a Player is going on a family vacation one week and knows they won’t be able to attend on 4 Dec, they can have their PC (or maybe a group of PCs) extend their adventuring on 27 Nov to go past that, in-game. Then they get downtime and can resume play on 11 Dec without missing out on anything.
Another benefit is that if a PC wants to do a Major Research project that takes 3d6 weeks, say 12 weeks, then the Ref will know that PC is “out of action” for session play from 6 Nov to 29 Jan, in-game AND IRL. This creates a few opportunities for RP and “wargaming style” play:
- Since the Player doesn’t know how long the research period is, it creates tension, especially if there is some other deadline looming, such as an eclipse prophesied for “the first full moon of the second month in the Year of the Manticore”,
- The Player can focus on developing another PC in this time, but has to dedicate resources to funding the research (100 SP/week) & possibly protecting the MU while the research is being done, as the PC could have enemies/rivals looking for the same Grimoire!
- The campaign world keeps moving for the rest of the Players, who can pursue their own goals during this time, instead of doing a “time jump” to accommodate the MU. These time jumps rob the other players/PCs of the chance to get treasure, hire troops, build a house, go on a pilgrimage, etc.
- This works great if you use the old AD&D “level training” rules.,
[User] is right, too. It’s tricky at first! I had a hard time understanding, and transmitting it to my players. But once we switched, it is so fun. I also borrowed some Downtime activities from ACKS, like Spying and Treasure Hunting, so PCs have more opportunities to create RP & adventure hooks for themselves.
Keep in mind, though, 1:1 Pacing is not a suicide pact! If an adventure session is cruising along and y’all lose track of time and they can’t RTB, it’s OK to “press pause” sometimes. Pick it up next session and catch up the calendar during the following downtime. The fly in the ointment is if you pause and a Player can’t make it. It’s important the Players know the Back to Base rule is going to be used.
Back in May, I had surgery and was out of the Ref chair for a month. One of the Players took over and ran some one-shot stuff, and we slowly caught back up over the next few months.
