4.1. The Passage Of Time

| Chapter 4: Time and Plot |

| 4.1. The Passage Of Time

A game that makes heavy use of time may want to give the player a hint that time is important - and an easy way to keep track of how it's going - by adding the current time to the status line, instead of the score. To do this, we would write

> When play begins: change the right hand status line to "[time of day]".

All else being equal, time passes at a rate of one minute per turn. But this need not be so: we can imagine a game where turns take much less time, or much more; or a game in which the passage of time was sometimes suspended, or one in which different actions required different amounts of time to perform.

Situation Room provides a way to print 24-hour time, while Zqlran Era 8 implements a completely new measurement of time, for a game set on an alien world.

Uptempo and The Hang of Thursdays speed up time's passage: turns take fifteen minutes in the former, or a quarter day in the latter.

Timeless makes certain actions instant, so that they don't count against the clock; this is sometimes useful in timed situations where the player needs to review the situation before going on with a tricky puzzle. Endurance systematically extends this idea to allow us to assign different durations to any action in the game. The Big Sainsbury's goes the opposite direction, and meticulously adds a minute to the clock for all implicit take actions, just so that the player isn't allowed to economize on moves.

An alternative approach to time is not to tell the player specifically what hour of the day it is at all, but to move from one general time period to another as it becomes appropriate - when the player has solved enough puzzles, or worked his way through enough of the plot. To this end we might use scenes representing, say, Thursday afternoon and then Thursday evening; then our scene rules, rather than the clock, would determine when Thursday afternoon stopped and Thursday evening began:

> Thursday afternoon is a scene. Thursday evening is a scene.

> Thursday afternoon ends when the player carries the portfolio.

> Thursday evening begins when Thursday afternoon ends.
> When Thursday evening begins:
> say "The great clock over St. Margaret's begins to chime 6.";

Though this gives time a loose relation to the number of turns played, it feels surprisingly realistic: players tend to think of time in a game in terms of the number of significant moves they made, while the random wandering, taking inventory, and looking at room descriptions while stuck don't make as big an impression. So advancing the game clock alongside the player's puzzle solutions or plot progress can work just as well as any stricter calculation.

See Passers-By, Weather and Astronomical Events for cycles of day and night scenes

See Waiting, Sleeping for commands to let the player wait until a specific time or for a specific number of minutes

See Clocks and Scientific Instruments for clocks that can be set to times and that have analog or digital read-outs

See Timed Input for discussion of extensions allowing real-time input

142
| Example Situation Room Printing the time of day in 24-hour time, as in military situations. |
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249
| Example Zqlran Era 8 Creating an alternative system of time for our game, using new units. |
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391
| Example Uptempo Adjust time advancement so the game clock moves fifteen minutes each turn. |
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Suppose a game in which all actions take a very long time. Here's a simple implementation: "Uptempo" The fast time rule is listed instead of the advance time rule in the turn sequence rules. This is the fast time rule: increment the turn count; increase the time of day by 15 minutes. When play begins: now the right hand status line is "[time of day]". The Temporal Hot Spot is a room. Test me with "z / z". This works fine as it stands, but we may run into some difficulty with it if we add scheduled events: At 9:30 AM: say "Two turtles run by, almost too fast to see." At 9:37 AM: say "A snail blitzes past." At 9:42 AM: say "The grass grows." At 9:50 AM: say "Several flowers burst open." Time is counted forward after the schedule has already been consulted, so that only the 9:30 AM event happens between 9:30 and 9:45; the next two appear to occur between 9:45 and 10:00 AM, and the 9:50 AM event is not reported until the 10:00 AM to 10:15 wait. To get around this, we might schedule events only on the fifteen-minute mark when we want them to occur. Alternatively, we might try instead "Uptempo" The fast time rule is listed before the timed events rule in the turn sequence rules. The advance time rule is not listed in the turn sequence rules. This is the fast time rule: increment the turn count; increase the time of day by 15 minutes. When play begins: now the right hand status line is "[time of day]". The Temporal Hot Spot is a room. At 9:30 AM: say "Two turtles run by, almost too fast to see." At 9:37 AM: say "A snail blitzes past." At 9:42 AM: say "The grass grows." At 9:50 AM: say "Several flowers burst open." Test me with "z / z / z / z". This time our revised time-advancing rule is listed just before the event scheduler, not just afterwards.

183
| Example The Hang of Thursdays Turns take a quarter day each, and the game rotates through the days of the week. |
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397
| Example Timeless A set of actions which do not take any game time at all. |
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400
| Example Endurance Giving different actions a range of durations using a time allotment rulebook. |
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363
| Example The Big Sainsbury's Making implicit takes add a minute to the clock, just as though the player had typed TAKE THING explicitly. |
WI

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