Time During Adventures

Combat is played in “slow” time. A
turn in combat equals one second, but
it might take a minute or more in the
real world to resolve that turn, especial-
ly if the players are inexperienced or the
battle is a large one. Since combat is
usually a life-or-death situation, you
need to give your players time to think.
Conversations, planning sessions,
attempts to escape from traps, and sim-
ilar situations are played in “real” time.
If the players spend 10 minutes dis-
cussing how to best approach an NPC
merchant . . . their characters spent 10
minutes talking outside the shop.
Routine travel, long tasks, etc., are
handled in “fast” time. For instance,
when the party is walking along a trail,
the GM can simply skip the time
between encounters: “You walk for
another two hours, and then, coming
toward you, you see two young
women with long poles . . .” Tell the
players when they meet someone,
when they enter a town, when night
falls, and so on. Just compress the rest
of the time. Under some circum-
stances – a long sea or space voyage,
for instance – the GM could compress
months
of uneventful time into
“Nothing happens until July, unless
you make it happen yourself.” This is
a good time for the characters to