Advancing Time

Play

Tal: Did we say about doing a time skip?

Ref: Oh yeah, that was the plan. We said we’d move onto the next Season. Are you happy with that?

Moss: Hm. Yeah. We have some loose threads but it’d be fun to move things along.

Tal: Yeah let’s do it.

Ref: Right, so first of all restore your Virtues and next game Winter will arrive. What are you both focusing on before then?

Ref shows them both the list of pursuits.

Tal: “Service” means I can make a small improvement to the Realm. I’ll take that.

Ref: Sure, what are you actually doing?

Tal: Could I spend some time with those hunters we met, using my raven to help them find some new hunting grounds?

Ref: Yeah that sounds good. Maybe it goes further and they set up a proper outpost. We’ll mark it as a Dwelling on the map.

Moss: Can I do “Courtesy”? Perhaps not in this horrible swamp.

Ref: No it’s fine, we assume you both travel about a bit and then reconvene next time.

Moss: Great, well my rank is Knight-Gallant now that I have 3 Glory, so could I use this favour to actually get a place in Court?

Ref: Sounds reasonable! We’ll come back to that at the start of the next game. Okay, we’re done!

Thoughts

Timekeeping can be difficult enough with an RPG session, and the end of my sessions often feel rushed, hurrying to get to some sort of suitable conclusion.

With Mythic Bastionland it’s worth “finishing” the session with sufficient time to discuss Season or Age changes. In this case it sounds like Ref is perhaps rushing before they miss their last bus home.

Although moving to the next Season was agreed upon beforehand, we see a moment of hesitancy from Ref, offering the players the chance to change their minds. I suspect Ref forgot that this was the plan right until this moment where Tal reminded them.

Luckily the players are both in agreement, but I’d encourage Ref to stick to the original plan here and move ahead with the time skip. It can be tempting for players to want to continue the moment-to-moment story of their characters, picking up the next session right where they left off, but I think the progress of time makes for a better campaign in the long term.

When choosing their pursuit between seasons I like that Ref pushes Tal to describe what she’s actually doing, rather than just picking her choice from a list. It’s also a nice little reward to have this action create a new Dwelling on the map for the players to make use of in future.