What Year Is It?

[Wes]

Today, May 21, 2005, will be the start of YE 28 in the in-character world.

Currently, the year is YE 29.

[Yangfan]

*goes to update the ages of his characters and NPCs*

[Wes]

YE 29 begins Nov 20.

[Rei]

That's an interesting point. How do we apply the changes in time if say, we're on a mission that takes a month to do, but only passes a day or so? Is there some huge space we assume normal operations in between that and the next mission? Is it the GM's discrestion as I suspect?

[Yangfan]

The Celia takes very long breaks (in IC time) between missions.

[Wes]

It's about that time, Chaps. How about YE 30 on July 20? It'll be eight months since the last IC year change. Time flies, doesn't it?

[Doshii Jun]

How do we note the change ICly? Should active ships speed through some boring parts of a plot or something, or just keep running as if nothing happened and it's the new year?

[Kotori]

Yeah, we sort of ignored it for YE 28 to 29... but if we don't get some good narration about time passing this time around, I'm going to have trouble - and a lot of it - playing a neko that's 3 years old when I've not even spent more than 3 IC weeks with her.

Not to mention I don't think enough things happened in the setting itself.

[DocTomoe]

[Magnus]

Well my thoughts on this is we could do a sort of summerized time advance. Seeing as the Mishu have gone on a slight offensive and the frontlines have been redrawn.

Meaning would could have YE 30 start with certain ships fighting along the front, recovering, finishing a long patrol, etc. I guess players could submit to their GMs how their characters react during the time passage. IE, "John Doe" would have but extremely large amounts of time into work. Or something along that lines. From there the GM or perosn writing the plotship's summary can flesh out the time passage.

That's my personal thought. *shrug*

[Kotori]

The biggest hurdle I see is in a character's growth... especially a neko. To a human, skipping the most of one year isn't all that bad since it has less impact if the said human has lived for 25 years already.

However, a neko like Kotori that's around 2 years old lives through a LOT of stuff in a single year (from her perspective, since it's equal to half the time she has been alive so far). How the character matures in this time, and more importantly, how the character deals with existing relationships is something I feel is important. I can't just pretend a character has known another for over a year when less than 3 weeks have gone by at the very start of that year, leaving nothing after that and forcing the mind to conveniently skip over it.

[Zakalwe]

I think this problem is always going to come about due to the different speeds of the various different plots, and I can only suggest this course of action:

Sure, advance a year but in the plot ships - ignore it.

It'll work, but just avoid the topic coming up. Ever. I have every intention of doing that.

Alternatively you could say your plot is still running in YE:29 and thus lagging behind the current events, but that would be somewhat complicated.

[Karma Mechanic]

I have issues with this topic, as some of you might already know.

I'm also in the same situation as Fred(Kotori) mentioned, I have a character that was started in late YE 28(OOC November 2005), but has only had about three and a half weeks of in-character time. Another year automatically causes lots of problems.

I've had a few suggestions on how to combat this trend so far but I haven't seen adoption of any of my ideas so far. Some were;

*More JPs that PAUSE somewhere in the middle after a scence is finished, then resume the next IC day.

*Less JPs that follow this predictable order ---> Wake up JP scene---> Breakfast scene ---> Random bridge small talk scene ---> Lunch scene --->(insert plot advancing scene here) ---> Dinner scene--->(repeat, or insert Mature scene then repeat)

*When on shore leave have everyone post at least a few days(IC) of there own experiences(nothing too long, just the highlights) in an SP or small group JPs.

[Wes]

I guess we should at least wait until the missions are done for most of the ships before we change the year.

[Yangfan]

Well, there are quantum consequences to traveling faster than light. ^_^ Time for the rest of the universe may be passing faster than for player characters.

But yeah. Let's have each plot-ship finish its current mission before ending the IC year. (The Celia is getting there. I swear.)

[Toshiro]

It is now November 21, 2006.

YE 29 started on November 20, 2005.

The year change was halted to let various plots conclude their current mission, which has largely occured.



So...when will we change to YE 30?

[Wes]

I suppose each ship could do it at the next convenient opportunity...the thing is, in some of the plots like the Miharu and Sakura, only a month or two have passed ICly.

[raz]

[Kotori]

Well, even though I have a day count, I am planning on hitting YE 30 within Mission 4 of the Miharu. That means I'll probably be skiphopping over a few days, perhaps even weeks. Sensor surveys, patrols, investigations, research, refits (and the Miharu will probably have its share of those) and such take time.

Once some situations are presented and that I'll know that my player base can cope well with them, I wouldn't be afraid of skipping over it ICly (a supply run escort that'd take a week, assisting on the frontline in fighting Mishhu ships if it happened once or twice before, etc...).

I say YE 29 is probably a significant year and that a lot is going on in it. I wouldn't be afraid of stretching it.

[Yangfan]