The Twenty-Minute Hour

[Kest]

Always figured lengthening the in game hour to twenty minutes would be an acceptable compromise between game mechanics and roleplaying.

Current: 7min/hr (2.8hrs/day)
Proposed: 20min/hr (8hrs/day)

Pros
Time doesn't fly by as quickly when roleplaying. A DM session at day/night can take place without worrying about time.
Longer spell durations give casters a little breather.
A lot easier to work out in your head. Whatever you did yesterday happened three days ago ingame.
DMs able to schedule the ingame time of their sessions.

Cons
Resting. Where a player might be resting twice in 5+ hour session, it would pretty much be a one shot here.
Possible time zone issues?

[Magile]

Always figured lengthening the in game hour to twenty minutes would be an acceptable compromise between game mechanics and roleplaying.

Current: 7min/hr (2.8hrs/day)
Proposed: 20min/hr (8hrs/day)

Pros
Time doesn't fly by as quickly when roleplaying. A DM session at day/night can take place without worrying about time.
Longer spell durations give casters a little breather.
A lot easier to work out in your head. Whatever you did yesterday happened three days ago ingame.
Day/night cycles still alternate, so people don't get stuck always playing at the same time ingame.

Cons
Resting. Where a player might be resting twice in 5+ hour session, it would pretty much be a one shot here.

I would love to see a change to the in-game hour.

[AsteroidX]

There is timezones to figure when applying this. That is the main difficulty if my memory serves me correct. Some folks wind up stuck always at night/day whichever due to playtimes.

[psycho_leo]

There is timezones to figure when applying this. That is the main difficulty if my memory serves me correct. Some folks wind up stuck always at night/day whichever due to playtimes.

That was one of the main reasons this was done as it is IIRC. I think buff durations were considered as well, though most being min/lvl instead of hour/lvl like it was in NWN it's much less of a problem.

[AcadiusLost]

One problem with 8 RL hour game-days, is that they divide evenly by our 24-hour days, meaning that if you always get home to play at say, 7 PM, and that's midnight server-time...

It also means tomorrow, when you get home from work to log in at 7 PM, it's again going to be midnight on-server... just 3 game-days later. You might only see daytime on-server at the weekends, at best.

Choosing something slightly less or more might help mix it up a bit for variety's sake, especially important for any servers that are considerably more dangerous by night by canon (I'd expect this to me most servers?).

[zicada]

Double to 14 ?

[Kest]

One problem with 8 RL hour game-days, is that they divide evenly by our 24-hour days, meaning that if you always get home to play at say, 7 PM, and that's midnight server-time...

I was mistaken in the math and figured cutting time down to a third would have the day and night cycle still alternate ingame...

Even so, that's three windows of daytime right there. Surely that's enough to accommodate all timezones...? And having regular cycles may even be beneficial - DMs could schedule their event to take place during the day or night.

If three is too inflexible, you could always cut it to four and have fifteen-minute hours.

[Brokenbone]

<SNIP>
A lot easier to work out in your head. Whatever you did yesterday happened three days ago ingame.
<SNIP>

The IG clock is not necessarily agreed to be useful for anything other than stuff of immediate tactical urgency, like timing on spells and rest cycles and whatnot.

DMs control time in their campaigns, if they run a dungeon crawl over five, once a week, three hour sessions, cliffhanging each time at the door to the next room of a dungeon, that does not mean the party has been in a dungeon and "away from everyone else" for fifteen weeks... they may have been there for as little as 15 hours, i.e., if it was a crawl without even a spot of resting / camping along the whole way. When they return to town, having people say "you've been missing for 105 days!!!!" is silly.

Same goes for infrequent (weekly or less) players. "Where were you all last month?"... about as painful as having to make up excuses for missing the grand denouement of a server wide plot since you weren't able to make that session ("Why didn't you raid the (insert lair) with us, you are obviously a craven coward!")

Time is always fluid.

...

That said, as to the other reasoning etc. in the proposal, it can all boil down to one question: do we wish to triple any "duration based" spells of most casters, but cut their ability to "recharge" (whether on duration based or instantaneous spells) to a third of existing as well? I.e., if you do play a caster, you'll kick ass (as relate to duration-based spells, most notably hourly based buffs) as long as your batteries don't run out... but if they do, you'd better run and hide for a much longer time than you do presently.

I am unclear how anything other than "hourly" spells factor into the IG clock.

My present belief is anything with "round" based timing is absolutely tied to whatever parts of the engine work with combat rounds. The clock doesn't touch it. Turn based I think is based on a RL minute, again, no relation to the IG clock. Min/level or variants (like 10 min/lvl etc.), I'm clueless on. The hourly ones though, same with the 24 hour ones, definitely tie to the IG clock. Since people like riotnrrd and AL seem to be tinkering in spell guts at the moment, maybe they know and could share what parts of the above are correct / incorrect. We may find that stretching out IG hours only "helps" a very small subset of buffs (i.e., possibly only the hourlies), but it will impact resting in a completely predictable way (i.e., longer waits til next rest).

[Brokenbone]

Postscript - do the DM wands not have any clock-management functions, whether advancing the clock an hour or more, or toggling day/night? Commonly used in NWN1, beats me what NWN2 DMs have in their toolbox.

[AcadiusLost]

BB has a solid handle on the duration issue; it's the Hour/Level and 24hr durations that get extended by the game-clock ratio. The round/level, minute/level etc ones all go on RL time; so they're pretty constant.

One thing to keep in mind with the spell restoration thing is that we've got the offline resting system going, so casters who have been offline at least a game-day (8 RL hours for the 20 min gamehour, 6 RL hours for 15 min gamehour, 2.8 RL hours for the current 7 min gamehour) log in with spells auto-restored, and with the capability to rest/restore them once at a time of their choosing before running afoul of the "game-day". So, the changes to spell restoration aren't going to be acutely felt by the majority of our players, who game in 2-4 hour blocks daily or every few days, but it would somewhat limit those few who pull 8+ hour marathon sessions.

[edit: regarding the time adjustment by DMs, the DMFI tools for NWN2 which we use on the server have buttons for this, but they have a lot of unwanted side effects, so we generally discourage their use ingame. Basically, it throws off spell restoration for everyone onserver, often pushing the game clock a full day or two ahead. Will get worse if we sync the clock up between servers.]

[Riotnrrd]

Another thing I haven't seen mentioned here is natural healing.

Don't know how ALFA2 implements healing, but there is some standard isn't there? 1 / level per hour plus con bonus or something like that?

What are the pros and cons of extending the game day to 14, or 20 minutes per hour? What about a 1:1 correspondence (1 hour RL = 1 hour game)?

[AcadiusLost]

Currently, "resting" heals 1 HP / character level; and is performable once per game-day (2.8 RL hours currently, longer by the proposed changes). This healing is also calculated on login, based on how many "game-days" you've been offline. Eventually this will have bonuses from high-quality inns, or PCs performing "longterm care" via the Heal skill as well.

I expect changes to the natural healing to be minimal for most players (though someone logging off while greviously wounded might still be somewhat injured on logging back in the next RL day, depending).

[Kest]

Don't know how ALFA2 implements healing, but there is some standard isn't there? 1 / level per hour plus con bonus or something like that?

That's something I suggested way back when for ALFA1, I don't think it was ever implemented.

[Keryn]

Even though i understand whats being discussed. I cannot agree with it. i wouldn't go over 10mins/hour Why?

Lets not forget the fun factor in here guys... I have not felt to this day that time was going to fast, it seems right if you ask me, what motivates this proposal? I mean is it to allow mages to buff and see their spells last longer? if this is the case 10/1 hour seems quite enough, a should a lvl 6 be able to cast a spell that lasts the whole day? ok so what about a level 12? I mean they would have all spell that are hour/lvl being persistent like... IG time will never be comparable to RL time.. most people play what? 1hour/2hour per day how can that reflect IG if IG time is closer of RL time...

I don't think this would be a great addition really. Not to mention casters would benefit a bit on the buff but would loose in terms of offensive spells that they need to recharge after casting them.. making them less effective in combat,

Then we have healers who would be seriously affected not being able to get their powers back, and those playing healer in the party would soon be drained and useless. this would maybe be one of the worst problems... I dont know about this really...

I agree on this though, even more if we extend the ig time.

Riotnrrd wrote:
Don't know how ALFA2 implements healing, but there is some standard isn't there? 1 / level per hour plus con bonus or something like that?

[Kest]

Lets not forget the fun factor in here guys... I have not felt to this day that time was going to fast, it seems right if you ask me, what motivates this proposal?

Time does go too fast and is so very abstract that it has become meaningless. Better to have it abstract only with a DM. Of course it's not enough to make this sort of change based on one person's opinion, which is why I included the other points.