how do I define Time & Movement in the Game?

[Gamezdude]

I noticed some Skills can be specialized on and it states a time.

How would I state time in the game, how would you normally do it.

Also with movement, we are not using a board/map, so how would I go about moving distances?

Cheers

[Ral_Brelt]

The simplest explanation is theater of the mind. For some gamers, that may not be enough though, so for chases, etc where distances are important, a simple distance grid works. Mark a sheet of paper with the ranges, extreme, long, medium and short. Associate difficulty from there for taking shots and rely on opposed piloting rolls, with outside influence modifying checks to move closer or pull away. As to the time taken, what I tend to do is pick an arbitrary number out of the sky for how many rounds or hours something will take and go from there. For the hours option..say, rebuilding the poor R2 that caught a light repeater blaster bolt, 8-10 hours. If theres nothing going on during that time, just state that if the player starts on the repairs, thats what he'll be doing during down time or hyperspace travel. In combat, well, keep track of the rounds after you declare how many it will take...say 6 rounds to hotwire a blast door on a forest moon. If the char does other things that detract from that...shooting, dodging, then the round doesn't count.

[garhkal]

often for time sensitive situations, i have pens/pencils on top of my screen (if i have one out, or counters when i don't) marking the # of rounds till x happens.

As for movement, often i use those hex map grids. 1 hex for 5m, sometimes i drop it to 1 hex for 2m.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[DougRed4]

BTW, welcome to the Pit, Gamezdude!
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Zarm R'keeg]

Possibly related... I've never paid special attention to the one-pip-at-a-time improvement rules (unless it's an attribute), or the time to increase a skill (ditto), and only focused on the need-for-a-teacher if the skill is uncommon. I've always felt that if players have the CP to spend, they should be able to.

Partly, this is because we only meet rarely (once a month at present), and so it may be several months or more before a campaign or adventure is finished; if I kept things this way, most characters would only be able to advance their characters a few pips per real-time year!

On the other hand, I've started to wonder if there was a practical reason I was missing that would make enforcement a good idea; I do end up with a number of- what was the term, Bulletproof Wookies? Or else just Matrix-dodgers who can seemingly avoid blaster shots as if they were traveling in slow motion. Not sure whether the cause was ignoring the time-for-improvement and one-pip rules, or if it was just because they chose to focus on blaster and dodge and high strength attribute at time of character creation.

Do you all abide by the rule? And if not, have you ever seen any issues or reasons WHY it is important to enforce for gameplay balance?
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Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!

[Ral_Brelt]

The way I've always gone about it as a player is if I used the skill during the adventure session, it gets priority to put a pip into. I've never asked to put more than one pip into a skill per adventure, because beyond that is a bit...silly.

I've always based it on how tough the task was...If my char has4 dice in a skill, then I don't bother raising it unless I can recall using it at an important moment, or under extreme circumstances. This, I find, keeps from a character getting bloated...

As I GM, I suggest this route to new players, or novices, and I haven't had any problems with bullet proof Wookies or the Matrix entering my universe.

[Zarm R'keeg]

How-so, silly? I ask, because I've never had a player that only wanted to put one pip in a skill at a time... after all, if it only costs 3 CP to move a skill to 3D+1, and the character has amassed 20 or more CP, why *not* use 9 to move it up to 4D instead (in their head). If I understood your rationale for only desiring limited improvement as a player, maybe I could explain it more easily to my own players...
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Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!

[Ral_Brelt]

Alright, bear in mind this is a broad paintbrush.

Say you are an ok shot (3d). You wake up one day, years into your life (say 30 cp saved up) and decide 'I'm gonna be a ace sniper!' So you dump cp into your firearms skill (I know, being broad here) to raise it up to be a fairly good shot (5d+1 for 26 of your cp, almost doubling your skill). So...folding this to real world training time...how long would that take...an afternoon contemplating how to aim, or multitudes of hours and pounds of brass shells shot down range?

Granted, some flex makes sense for oncw-a-month games, maybe cap progression at a die instead of a pip in a skill.

Another way to look at it is this...if the players can jump straight to what they want, what's their drive after they get there? They get bored with the game or start to think of ways to 'entertain' themselves...

[Zarm R'keeg]

A fair point. I think most of my players haven't thought of 3 as 'fairly good' is one of the main issues. I think a die-cap as you suggest (with 1 pip-cap in appropriate areas...) may be a good balance.
_________________
Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!

[garhkal]

[Zarm R'keeg]

And is that defined by chapter, or by module? I.E. there are multiple adventures in Operation: Elrood, Supernova, Introductory Adventure Set, etc.- is it one pip between those individual Supernova adventures, for instance, or only one pip at the end of completing the entire Supernova book?
_________________
Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!

[garhkal]

For a module such as those listed, i have always gone 1 pip per skill for the entire adventure. Some longer ones i could see splitting up into '2' chapters where each would count.
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Ral_Brelt]

I've typically gone every game session. I suppose that makes me a bit more lax than Garhkal, but I find its a happy medium for progression.

[DougRed4]

I've always enforced the rules as written, for the very reasons Ral pointed out (one doesn't go to the range one day and emerge a master sniper). Likewise a person can't become a doctor overnight, or become an expert on alien cultures, or go from being an ordinary pilot to an extraordinary one.

As in real life, it takes time and effort.

As far as the once a month playing, that's how often we play and it's worked out just fine (as others have said, if they use the skill this means they can raise it without waiting for time to pass). Despite what garhkal pointed out, I don't think I hand out excessive CP (I do exactly what the RAW suggests, giving out usually 15 CP after two solid sessions of play).

And 3D is Average level of training for a Human (so your postman who's been delivering the mail for the last decade is probably about 3D) according to the RAW (2R&E p. 207).
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Currently Running: Villains & Vigilantes (a 32-year-old campaign with multiple groups) and D6 Star Wars; mostly on hiatus are Adventures in Middle-earth and Delta Green

[Zarm R'keeg]

Oh, I know that it's average- I just don't think that most of my players would consider it something to be happy with.
_________________
Star Wars: Marvels, the audio drama: www.nolinecinemas.com

Hard core OT, all the way!