[House Rule Discussion/Design] All Narrative Time (from the No Excellencies Thread)

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts
  • Heavy Arms
    Member
    • Nov 2013
    • 11511

    [House Rule Discussion/Design] All Narrative Time (from the No Excellencies Thread)

    So, this is the core concept of the house rule:

    The game's mixing of narrative time units (ticks, turns, actions, scenes, sessions, stories) and chronological times (hours, days, weeks, months, seasons, years, etc.) is an inherent cause of a lot of other issues in Exalted's systems. What started this specifically was the "slow" mote regen out of combat still generally being fast enough that the PCs can just rest for an hour or two between scenes and top up motes. This leads to a difficulty challenging PCs because they have no need to ration motes unless you constantly intrude on scenes with chronological time constraints. Charms might have a reset of "once a session." Two sessions might each cover a day back to back in-game time, allowing you to use the Charm once a day, while another session might have a 3 month hand-waved sailing journey that means you only get to use the Charm one in a season.

    You can also see this in things like training times (yes, a lot of us aren't fans of them in general, I don't use them as they are) and house rules to them. Fast paced games where multiple sessions cover a very short period of in-game time either allow minimal to any character advancement, or the training times need t just be house ruled out. Slow paced games with massive down times can mean the training times are largely superfluous as your character's will regularly have months to train.

    The proposed solution start's simply:

    No mechanics reference chronological time units. Obvious in-character the characters experience days and hours and so on, but the rules only use narrative time units. Any current rules that reference chronological time units will need to be redone to use narrative units instead.

    Some secondary solutions necessary to implement that successfully:

    1) Session is replaced with "Act" as a narrative unit that isn't tied to RL time. An Act is a series of Scenes that resolve a significant part of a Story. Normally an Act takes a game session, though sometimes an long session might allow for two Acts o be covered, while shorter sessions might spread an Act over two or three game nights. I feel this is a fairly self explanatory change (also, it helps stress that a Chronicle is supposed to have multiple Stories in it as the three act and five act structures are relatively well known ideas of how many Acts should make up a Story even without setting a specific number).

    2) Downtime needs to become more rigorously defined in the rules to make it easier for STs and players to communicate how much narrative can happen during a downtime, and to keep make sure time-gated systems functional. As such downtimes would get divided into different tiers based primarily on narrative on-screen time, with a guide to what sorts of chronological time unit mechanics they'd be used for (so Exalts naturally regen 5m per short downtime as regen is normally done over an hour, or 10m with a medium downtime if they spend it resting). If a mechanic specifies it requires a given amount of downtime, on-screen time does not count towards the requirement (if it takes two medium downtimes to travel between two cities, five scenes of events along the way do not reduce it to one medium downtime to get there); though some sub-systems might make an exception if it suits the purpose (enough action scenes that a crafter can work their current project into and make significant progress towards such as finding rare materials to include in an Artifact, or helpful diagrams in a First Age lost library could reduce downtime requirements).

    The current proposed expansion of downtime stands as:

    Short Downtime - 2 Scenes worth of non-downtime mechanics (such as mote regen), or replaces an a few hours.
    Medium Downtime - 5 Scenes worth of non-downtime mechanics, an Act, or replaces a few days.
    Long Downtime - 15 Scenes worth of non-downtime mechanics, 3 Acts, a Story, or replaces a few weeks.

    Possible addition (instead of just stacking X Long Downtimes to fairly high numbers to cover a year):

    Extreme Downtime - 50 Scenes, 9 Acts, 3 Stories, a seasons worth of time or longer.

    -----------

    Obviously a lot of work would need to go into editing all the books to fully implement it this. Though I feel each individual edit is simple enough that it would be more time consuming than brain wracking. I also feel its worth it because having all mechanical time units working on the same type of time smooths out the mechanical experience, while making the game more flexible to different playstyles.

    That said, I'm still very much spitballing the numbers based on my own impression of what the system tends to value, and how games seem to run.
  • Critian Caceorte
    Member
    • Jul 2020
    • 208

    #2
    I know you're also thinking of replacing training times with this new system, I take it that, for example, a Favored Ability will take [Medium Downtime] amount of time to raise by a dot, Non-Favored Ability will take [Long Downtime], etc? Will this substitution take the form of a singular, longer amount of time (as I mentioned before), or smaller chunks based on how high the Attribute/Ability/Whatever already is?

    Comment

    • Heavy Arms
      Member
      • Nov 2013
      • 11511

      #3
      I haven't really decided yet.

      Of course, there's nothing that stops something like: 1 medium downtime + X short downtimes, where X is based on the current rating (scaled up as appropriate).

      Comment

      • Critian Caceorte
        Member
        • Jul 2020
        • 208

        #4
        Originally posted by Heavy Arms View Post
        I haven't really decided yet.

        Of course, there's nothing that stops something like: 1 medium downtime + X short downtimes, where X is based on the current rating (scaled up as appropriate).
        I think that either a small and variable amount of time or a longer single amount of time would be better because it'd be less for people to remember, it's easier to memorize when it's either or.

        Comment

        • Heavy Arms
          Member
          • Nov 2013
          • 11511

          #5
          True, like I said, it's definitely a part of things that aren't solidified in my mind.

          My personal preference is to get rid of exponential XP and training time increases anyway.

          Comment

          • Kyeudo
            Member
            • Nov 2013
            • 1722

            #6
            How would you handle Craft projects under this house rule?



            Forged By Purpose: The Alchemicals
            Dead But Not Gone: Ghosts
            Ghosts: A Revision (2nd Edition)
            Masters of the Industrial Elements
            ​From The Crucible: Crafting As A Struggle

            Comment

            • Heavy Arms
              Member
              • Nov 2013
              • 11511

              #7
              My default instinct (without trying to address other concerns with the Craft system) would be to redefine the time to begin a Craft project to be based on a number of scenes actively spent pursuing that project. These could mix normal scenes if the ST deems they qualify as making progress towards the project (that is, it can't just be time passes, something in the action has to push the project forward), or scenes awarded via downtime.

              I think to keep to the intent of the RAW system, I'd have to go against Critian's objections about complexity vis-a-vis training times, and have additional requirements of downtimes for higher level projects.

              As an off the cuff example:

              Superior projects would require 5 scenes + [a # that best matches the current rules] long or extreme downtimes. This means if you want to do level 2 Artifact completely with downtime actions, you could apply a full medium downtime towards the project, and then three long downtimes to it, and then get to the rolling part as normal, or over four long downtimes with some downtime scenes to spare, or one extreme downtime. But if some active scenes would justify progress, you could potentially not dedicate a medium downtime to the project (unlikely to be a huge benefit really, but it's a way to provide some incentive towards in-action crafting activities that aren't just being MacGuyver).

              To keep with the delaying part, a character that doesn't dedicate at least 5 scenes worth of time (active, or from lesser downtimes) between the long/extreme downtimes towards a superior project adds an additional long downtime to the requirements.

              Personally I find this overly clunkly, and would rather take the chance to streamline this particular aspect of the system with the chance to put more stress on active efforts over downtime ones.

              Comment

              Working...