Introduction
Do you ever get a sense that in-character time is flying by? Do you wish you had more time to RP your character during the IC year? Sometimes RP threads can take months to complete resulting in a lot of time-skips, and our timeline pages for in-character years seem a little light on events. Star Army’s staff has noticed this too.
Current System & Issues
The current system, which has been in use since 2009, is a 1 year to 1 year system where IRL years line up with OOC years. This is nice for having holidays match up and years match up but since 2017, when we finally detailed the Yamataian Calendar, it’s now a little bit of a pain to keep track of what month it is supposed to be in the RP since the Yamataian Calendar has only 9 months, each with 35 days, due to the canonical orbit of planet Yamatai. Prior to this the IC year varied wildly, with years changing based on OOC events like getting a new forum or a big metaplot event ending.
The 1 to 1 system has resulted frequently in plots falling behind. Specifically, I remember the YSS Miharu plot was sometimes 1 or even 2 years behind the site’s IC timeline but other plots like the YSS Senbu, YSS Eucharis, and YSS Kaiyo I think were “playing catchup” too, resulting in large time-skips to get into the new year after each mission completion.
Proposed Changes
Star Army’s staff discussed the above issues and we reached a consensus on what we think is a good solution. Rather than align the years 1 to 1, we’d like to align the IC and OOC months 1 to 2. So, for example, the first IC month would occur during January and February of the OOC year. The second month would fall in March and April of the OOC year, and so on. Complete IC years would therefore last 1.5 IRL years, giving us more time to do stuff in the RP before each year is up.
There are a couple of minor downsides to this change, such as holidays not falling on their OOC dates. For that we can simply celebrate them at our preferred times on a per-plot basis. And if we can imagine our characters flying around in spaceships, surely we can imagine them being at the beach when it’s cold IRL. Another concern that was brought up was that the pace of development of IC technology might be affected. But Star Army’s technology is already very advanced (read: we’re already where we want to be) and slowing IC development of tech is probably for the best and we should be mindful that this is a character-driven RP.
How It Would Work
The way this change would be implemented is to start in YE 43/2021, change years to YE 44 in on July 1st, 2022 and continue through December 31st, 2023 when YE 44 ends. During the last part of the year we will get together as a site and decide if we want to continue using the extended 1.5 year system or if we want to adjust either back to 1 to 1 year system or perhaps even to a 2 year system if we feel we need even more IC time per OOC year.
Conclusion
We understand that any change is disruptive and that the easiest thing would be to ignore the 1 to 1 year system’s issues and keep going the way we’ve been going, but we think that the benefits of the monthly alignment (1.5 year system) will be worth it in the long run and result in richer IC years with more happening in them, and giving GMs and players the IC time they need to complete their story arcs. We will also make charts and tables available to the community so that you can easily find out what IC date it is based on the OOC date.
In the last Community Meeting, we promised to get feedback from the community as a whole before making a final decision so please give us your opinions and votes about this proposal. This poll will stay open for 3 days to allow all members adequate time to vote.
Do you ever get a sense that in-character time is flying by? Do you wish you had more time to RP your character during the IC year? Sometimes RP threads can take months to complete resulting in a lot of time-skips, and our timeline pages for in-character years seem a little light on events. Star Army’s staff has noticed this too.
Current System & Issues
The current system, which has been in use since 2009, is a 1 year to 1 year system where IRL years line up with OOC years. This is nice for having holidays match up and years match up but since 2017, when we finally detailed the Yamataian Calendar, it’s now a little bit of a pain to keep track of what month it is supposed to be in the RP since the Yamataian Calendar has only 9 months, each with 35 days, due to the canonical orbit of planet Yamatai. Prior to this the IC year varied wildly, with years changing based on OOC events like getting a new forum or a big metaplot event ending.
The 1 to 1 system has resulted frequently in plots falling behind. Specifically, I remember the YSS Miharu plot was sometimes 1 or even 2 years behind the site’s IC timeline but other plots like the YSS Senbu, YSS Eucharis, and YSS Kaiyo I think were “playing catchup” too, resulting in large time-skips to get into the new year after each mission completion.
Proposed Changes
Star Army’s staff discussed the above issues and we reached a consensus on what we think is a good solution. Rather than align the years 1 to 1, we’d like to align the IC and OOC months 1 to 2. So, for example, the first IC month would occur during January and February of the OOC year. The second month would fall in March and April of the OOC year, and so on. Complete IC years would therefore last 1.5 IRL years, giving us more time to do stuff in the RP before each year is up.
There are a couple of minor downsides to this change, such as holidays not falling on their OOC dates. For that we can simply celebrate them at our preferred times on a per-plot basis. And if we can imagine our characters flying around in spaceships, surely we can imagine them being at the beach when it’s cold IRL. Another concern that was brought up was that the pace of development of IC technology might be affected. But Star Army’s technology is already very advanced (read: we’re already where we want to be) and slowing IC development of tech is probably for the best and we should be mindful that this is a character-driven RP.
How It Would Work
The way this change would be implemented is to start in YE 43/2021, change years to YE 44 in on July 1st, 2022 and continue through December 31st, 2023 when YE 44 ends. During the last part of the year we will get together as a site and decide if we want to continue using the extended 1.5 year system or if we want to adjust either back to 1 to 1 year system or perhaps even to a 2 year system if we feel we need even more IC time per OOC year.
Conclusion
We understand that any change is disruptive and that the easiest thing would be to ignore the 1 to 1 year system’s issues and keep going the way we’ve been going, but we think that the benefits of the monthly alignment (1.5 year system) will be worth it in the long run and result in richer IC years with more happening in them, and giving GMs and players the IC time they need to complete their story arcs. We will also make charts and tables available to the community so that you can easily find out what IC date it is based on the OOC date.
In the last Community Meeting, we promised to get feedback from the community as a whole before making a final decision so please give us your opinions and votes about this proposal. This poll will stay open for 3 days to allow all members adequate time to vote.