Mar29
on March 29, 2018
Time Sink
No matter how fast you travel, you’ll get there when the DM needs you to. You won’t be late or early, and won’t miss the planned event. And if the ocean voyage takes longer than expected then that one-a-century celestial occurrence will be delayed by a miscalculation or calendar error.
Probably.
Maybe.
Unless your DM is one of those ones who lets time pass if you choose to become distracted and go on side quests. In which case, you might not make it in time after all.
Yeah… better to be safe than sorry and worry a little.
I always disliked PC’s-centered campaigns… I usually run a timeline when I write a new adventure. It is something like: on day N, X happens in a certain place. On day N+3, if no one does anything, Y happens in another location. And so on…
Once my players barely succeded to save an entire continent from the evocation of Orcus; another time, we had to keep track of the movements of two scattered armies on a reign’s contended territory, just to determine who the PC would meet if they got in a place, depending on the moment. This time, too, they saved the kingdom at the last moment.
In both cases the players felt to be just a cog in a scheme, but a cog who could choose to turn its own way. They felt it to be realistic, especially when a bad decision led to losses or unexpected troubles to be solved.
Now I’m running a pirate-themed campaign in 5th ED; knowing my ways, they feel the urge to move and gather info on what’s going on around them, even if this time many events are of the “trigger” type (not that they know about it)… I do feel evil about this, but just a little.