20/02/2024
1:1 Time
I've been asked what Ernest Gary Gygax Jr. would say about pages 37 and 38 of the DMG and the whole kerfuffle about so called “1:1 Time” in OSR circles of late. After reviewing the paragraphs in questions (see screenshots), I think I have a pretty good sense of what would be said, and since I tagged him on my post, he'll be free to pitch in if he feels like I've gotten something wrong or gotten out of line.
The whole idea behind the record of time in the campaign has two main concerns :
(1) Events in the campaign unfold following an in-world timeline, and you can not believe in the actuality of the game world if the events unfold in a way that makes logical, internal sense to the the campaign and the world as it lives and breathes around it. Remember, in the Lake Geneva “0/1e” type game, the campaign is about the world as events unfold and characters go on adventures into it, change things, dungeon environments and factions move accordingly, with often multiple parties adventuring at the same time, some with the same players playing different characters and so on. This is a different beast than the “modern” adventure path style campaign where the focus is one a single cast of character trying to accomplish a goal, and that goal is “the campaign”. Not so in Lake Geneva Gygax campaigning : there, it's the world that is the focus and its continuity through multiple parties and generations of players and characters. Not a single thread or “story” - the actual stories of the game being entirely emergent from the act of play and the adventure where neither the PCs nor the DM will know exactly what is going to happen during the game session. So for the world to make sense, and be believable on the mid and long term you need to keep track of time.
(2) You don't want the players to abuse the meta-game point of view by doing multiple things mucking around with the time line. Like creating magic-items, going to see a sage, and being conveniently back JUST in time to adventure on the week-end to get to the big loot. You want to do things in the world, there's always a price to pay for it, in time, in resources, in obstacles to be faced. Even the more powerful player-characters won't have the gift of ubiquity (though clone shenanigans can always happen, Grognards will know what I'm talking about here), and just because the possibilities to affect the world in different ways open up to them as they gain double-digit level doesn't make them psychics able to show up because of some meta-game knowledge to be part of every expedition that'd be convenient to them.
Since you need to track time in the campaign, you record things as they unfold in the game sessions you run. We are here in a campaign set up where the action revolves around a (mega) dungeon – Castle Greyhawk, Castle El Raja Key, Castle Celadon, the default session goes this way : PCs start at the home base/village, where they gather and decide to explore some part of the dungeon. They go through the wilderness. Explore the dungeon until they hit some treasure. They go back to town to be able to gain sell the treasure and gain XP from the loot. This format allows the compositions of groups to change from one week of real time to the next, you don't HAVE to have the same players show up all the time, etc.
Though 90% of sessions will end neatly that way, because everyone's aware of the format of play and remind each other when it gets late, and because you don't get any XP and have no chance of natural recovery if you're still in the dungeon by the end of the session, sometimes the sessions allow for several tries and several expeditions, or for side treks in the wilderness and whatnot. THIS is where the example on paragraph four of the screenshots kicks in : you keep count of the days past doing other activities, going back to the dungeon, and you record all that for future use with other groups and players active in the same world and the same time frame.
Since the DM isn't psychic in the real world and can't go back in time to change things when later groups are adventuring where some previous PCs have ventured and already done some things, you have to keep track of all this and sometimes come up with explanations as to why things would unfold the way they did despite a later group exploring the same area at a time EARLIER in the campaign. That's how you get the example of the monster not being there, the first party having in the world explored later facing the monster when it came back, and the later group in RL finding the lair devoid of the main enemy and facing alternate obstacles to some loot.
This is why counting days in the game world like days in the real world is useful : because it allows you to abstract down time and know at any point where characters on and off camera are supposed to be doing in the campaign world. You can then articulate the actual sequence of events in the game world based on this, with parties having each a delay on each other because of the different paces of their actions when they are playing the game in live sessions, with one session for group A say just taking one day of game world, while group B in the session two real world days later spends a total of four in-world days making a first attempt at the dungeon, coming back to town, healing two days, and then going back for a fourth day (not counting wilderness travel – that would add up too).
This is the meaning and the usefulness of counting 1 day “off screen” in the game world as one day in the real world.
When you don't have multiple parties and characters doing multiple things in the game world at the same time, when the focus of the game is not the game world but some story arc or path of adventure, these elements can in large part take a back seat, and off screen time can be hand-waved however the DM sees fit. Like everything that has to do with the AD&D game, its advice and “meat” aside of the rules, it is predicated on a specific campaigning style that has many interlocking parts that are all explained throughout the DMG and working together to give you a game that is close to the way it was played and run on the big tables of Lake Geneva at the time of Gary and Rob running Greyhawk, various characters swapping seats in different game world at a heart beat, adventuring from Greyhawk to Newhon to Blackmoor to this and that table and back to their home world after a while. This type of campaigning is just as fun now as it was then, it's very different from the adventure paths of today, and it's worth discovering and playing on its own merits !
The 1:1 time thing isn't meant to an absolute barometer of a DM's worth or the quality of a role-playing game's design. Different games function using different assumptions and likewise, the organizations of individual campaigns vary widely. Leveraging the advice on page 37-38 of the DMG to make them say more than what is meant – to organize and keep track of the actual so it came be made sense of as the campaign grows and develops through multiple characters and parties, is really a disservice to the play style and to AD&D in general. It's like saying that anyone who doesn't use “scenes” and “X cards” in their session is a bad GM, that their games are bad, and that they should feel bad about what they do, the games they like and whatnot. This just isn't what's intended with the DMG advice on Time record. Let's not get over ourselves, here. Let's enjoy the games and their different specifics instead.
