Time flies when you’re having fun, or so they say. In a Storytelling game, time not only flies, it slows, crawls and warps. During the course of your game, you’ll find that time does some strange things. How you control the passage of time affects the smoothness of play. You and your players imagine events as they transpire, talking them out and rolling results. Thus, real time and your game’s imaginary time differ. When your characters enter combat, it may take many real-time minutes to roleplay mere seconds of game time. Alternately, you may wish to cover weeks of game time in just a few real-time minutes, assuming nothing worthy of attention occurs in that period. As in a novel, the authors of the story — you and your players — can gloss over intervals between important events or slow the progression to a crawl when detailing critical moments.
Six basic units describe the passage of time. Like puzzle pieces, these small units combine to form larger images until you can see the big picture.
- Turn — The smallest increment, and often the most important, a turn is three seconds. It’s the amount of time it takes a character to perform a quick action, called an instant action (see p. 126). Turns are mainly observed in combat, when the action is fast and furious, with all characters doing something dramatic in a short timeframe.
- Scene — A scene in a roleplaying game resembles a scene in a theatrical play. Your Storyteller sets the stage, and the players take their roles. The scene evolves in one location and usually encompasses a single, specific event. The flow of time within a scene may vary greatly. It may be played out in turns, it may run parallel to real time, or your Storyteller and fellow players may choose to fast-forward through parts of it, so long as the location and general events do not change.
For example, a scene may begin with combat, which is measured in turns. It may then slip back into real time as your characters discuss what to do with the corpses they’ve created. After a fast-forward through loading the bodies onto a truck, the scene may return to real time as your characters argue over who will drive. All events occur in the same scene, at the same location, but time warps throughout to focus on the fun and important parts. Your Storyteller determines when one scene ends and when another begins.
- Chapter — For the most part, a chapter represents one game session. From the moment you sit down and assume your role to the moment you pack up your dice, you play out a chapter in the story. Your Storyteller has specific challenges planned for the night’s episode. The end of each chapter should leave you wanting more, asking questions, and with a sense of the session’s relative completion.
- Story — A story tells one entire tale, whether it comprises several chapters or is completed in a single session. It has an introduction, a plot arc that involves rising conflict, and a climax that brings events to a conclusion.
- Chronicle — In the big picture, the term “chronicle” refers to a collection of stories, a saga. Your Storyteller has a goal in mind for the chronicle, a possible destination for your characters, or a theme or overarching plot line that connects all chapters of the proverbial novel together. As your game progresses, you and your fellow players write your chronicle, linking parts and pieces together and developing a full-blown epic.
- Downtime — When your Storyteller decides to fast-forward and skim over a period of time, he invokes “downtime.” You may summarize events that transpire during downtime, but you do not actually play them out. Your Storyteller may say something like, “Okay, you spend the night in the warehouse. At dawn, voices in the alley outside wake you.” Nothing happens while your characters sleep, so there’s no reason to play it out. Your Storyteller leaps ahead to the next interesting event.
Look for more on chapters, stories and chronicles in Chapter 8: Storytelling.