001: TIME

Time will pass differently during a game depending on what is currently going on.  Sometimes seconds of game time will pass, like during combat, while other times months may pass in a few minutes of real time.

To help maintain a sense of the passage of time without resorting to tedious charts and the like, we use six basic units to describe game time:

• Turn: The amount of time you need to take a simple action. A turn can range anywhere from three seconds to three minutes, depending on the pace of the current scene.
• Scene: Like the basic division of plays and movies, a scene is a compact period of action and interaction that takes place in an individual location. This could be the storming of an enemy citadel or a moonlit conversation on a parapet. There are exactly as many turns in a scene as the scene requires. A scene might not even have turns if it consists of nothing but dialogue and character interaction.
• Chapter: An independent part of a story, always played out in one game session. It consists of several scenes interconnected by downtime. A game chapter is like a chapter in a novel or an act in a play.
• Story: A full tale, complete with introduction, rising action, and climax. Some stories can take several chapters to complete; others can be finished in one.
• Chronicle: A series of stories connected by the characters themselves and their ongoing narrative, even by a common theme or overarching plot.
• Downtime: Time that you gloss over with description rather than playing it out turn by turn or scene by scene. If the Storyteller says, “You wait in the courtyard for four hours before the lord’s servant summons you,” rather than letting the characters play out their wait, the Storyteller is invoking downtime. Downtime allows trivial or tedious passages of time to go by quickly. One can also use it to let several months, years or even decades pass between stories in a chronicle.

Time in Stralaara is based off a 90 minute hour, an 18 hour day, a 9 day week, a 3 week month, and 15 months make a year.  There are 5 seasons counting the monsoon season that overlaps with summer into fall.  The Fall and winter do see occasional snow fall, but the temperature drops can be quite alarming.  The monsoon season has near constant rainfall in certain areas, but it does rain in most months regardless.