On Mon, Feb 5, 2018 at 9:02 PM, Kurt Feltenberger <xxxxxx@thepaw.org> wrote:

On 2/5/2018 1:59 PM, Catherine Berry wrote:

Joss Whedon once said that spacecraft in "Firefly" travel at the speed of plot. That to me captures perfectly the narrative approach to role-playing. The GM decides how long the trip should take, within broad parameters of plausibility and consistency, and the players take that as a given and create their narrative within that framework. "Gaming" players would instead start pulling out rulebooks and calculators to second-guess the stated duration.

While I tend to agree with this (despite despising Whedon), there must be some framework for future continuity or the "world" (i.e. the system, stellar arm, etc.) suddenly ceases to have any real form other than GM fiat.

Oh, definitely! That's what I meant by "within broad parameters of plausibility and consistency". The world of the story has to feel consistent and predictable to seem (sufficiently) real, and to allow players (and their characters) to predict and plan. But there's a qualitative difference between making it generally take 1-2 weeks for a 2G ship to go from the habitable zone to an outer gas giant, and maintaining ephemerides for every system so that you can model specific travel times to within an hour for all conceivable journeys. :)

It's the equivalent, for a present-day-Earth based campaign, between saying "It will take you an hour to drive from Santa Monica to Koreatown during the evening commute" and pulling out Google Maps to model the specific trip, between specific addresses, down to the minute. In story terms, what would the latter really contribute other than breaking the flow and immersion? But in game terms, the difference between 60 and 54 minutes could be crucial. As I said, neither is better or worse. It's a difference in direction and goals.

"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake