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I have a PC that was created 2011-05-18 - He was at that time around 30.

How many years have passed from that time until today?

About twenty months, give or take?

If you're asking, does IC time pass at the same rate as RL time, I think there's no consistent answer. People seem to age IC at whatever rate makes sense to them, or fits with whatever RP they're pursuing. Like, I've seen characters age several years in only a few RL months, when a player wanted to begin playing the NPC child of some other charater as a PC, and had to fast-forward their aging a bit to make them meet the minimum age for PCs.

Myself, I tend to age my characters in real time. It just feels more natural to me. But I think you'll find that there's several different ways of approaching that question, and no official stance on it.

If you are referring to IG time, and I believe you are, the IG world has aged about two years since then. Unless I've misread, the DMs adhere to time on a yearly basis (ie this year is 1382, last year was 1381, etc), but if a plot calls for a week to actually be a week then they do that as well.

So Rigela is right in that respect. Lizzie is right for the rest, though. It's your char, so yeah, hah.

Normally: IG time = RL time unless a DM says otherwise. For example to move forward a plot. Or a "time freeze" or slow down in time in a plot. This is mainly done when there is an event supposed to happen at a certain time, but need to be postponed for ooc reasons, like time scheduling issues.

Bug your local DM to update the nice timeline we have in the Lore subforum.

TormakSaber wrote:

Bug your local DM to update the nice timeline we have in the Lore subforum.

Amarice-Elaraliel wrote:

Normally: IG time = RL time unless a DM says otherwise. For example to move forward a plot. Or a "time freeze" or slow down in time in a plot. This is mainly done when there is an event supposed to happen at a certain time, but need to be postponed for ooc reasons, like time scheduling issues.

I think I took the question far too literally >.>

Well, 1 reset (which is roughly 1 day of in game day/night shift) so that's roughly 3 in game days for every 1 RL day... I can't be bothered doing maths so I just say do what you feel is right for your characters plot!

Obviously its (y-x)*(z)

Where Z is the dm correction factor.

666WaysToHell wrote:

Well, 1 reset (which is roughly 1 day of in game day/night shift) so that's roughly 3 in game days for every 1 RL day... I can't be bothered doing maths so I just say do what you feel is right for your characters plot!

No, as said, this is not how we calculate. 1 RL Year is one year on Amia.

Not really. There's not any one way "we" calculate, as has been established.

It has been established for quite sometime now (years) that we have a 1:1 ratio for any player interactions with regard to date. It's the 23rd of Hammer 1382. 24 hours from now it will be the 24th of Hammer 1382.

Untrue, though it's become more common. Lizzie summed it up: "If you're asking, does IC time pass at the same rate as RL time, I think there's no consistent answer."

And then there's the timeline, insofar as it's updated. But it isn't applied consistently anyway, and there's no rule about it. Tracing it back to historical events in Amia's early days, the ratio doesn't always apply.

DMs have been repeating the mantra of "speed of plot" as long as I can remember. But yes, the general progress with the timeline and with things like the Cordor plot seems to have been 1:1. That's what I'd personally use. You'll probably have the least trouble with it.

Anyway I'll run with what Malandria says and if your pedantic about it like me because you keep IC journals:

Hammer:
Jan 1st to Jan 30th

Midwinter:
Jan 31st

Alturiak:
Feb 1st to March 2nd

Ches:
March 3rd to April 1st

Tarsakh:
April 2nd to May 1st

Greengrass:
May 2nd

Mirtul:
May 3rd to June 1st

Kythorn:
June 2nd to July 1st

Flamerule:
July 2nd to July 31st

Midsummer:
August 1st

Elesias:
August 2nd to August 31st

Eleint:
September 1st to September 30th

Highharvestide:
October 1st

Marpenoth:
October 2nd to October 31st

Uktar:
November 1st to November 30th

The Feast of the Moon:
December 1st

Nightal:
December 2nd to December 30th

The next Shieldmeet by Amia Canon will occur in 1385

My point was only that you are allowed to age your character and plot as seems sensible to you. Amarice implied there is a rule on how "we" calculate time on Amia and that 666's way was unacceptable. It may not follow the calendar of big events, but it seems a reasonable representation of time in game.

Though to be honest, I've come to like the idea of enforcing a 1:1 time across the board. No more miraculously growing offspring. That's something that would have to be spelled into the rules. On the other hand, I rather like seeing old PCs long on after a few RL years of inactivity and see them aged a decade or two. You can't really play on long-term character development in real time. On a server as big and persistent as ours, it's a bit of a mess. I rather liked the way EfU had three chapters, with time passing in between them so old characters would have changed in the meanwhile. That isn't Amia's concept, but doing a server-wide fast-forward in between story arcs would be pretty damn cool some time.

There is a rule on how "we" calculate time. Period. If we enforce it strictly on players all the time is a completely differnt matter.

The point is simply that so far we did not tell people usually "hey your chara is not that old" or "hey your chara cannot have that baby so soon". I suppose mostly because if that character now aged from 30 to 40 in 3 years or to 33 isn't really a game breaking difference in 99% of cases and also hard to track anyways.

Be assured however, if you would request a 5 year old child PC of a child which was born 5 RL months ago, you definately would get a no from me at least.

Amarice-Elaraliel wrote:

There is a rule on how "we" calculate time. Period. If we enforce it strictly on players all the time is a completely differnt matter.

So you are saying you have an unpublished rule you enforce selectively and have consciously voted on in the team? Despite the fact that the official timeline does not follow it consistently (there was never an attempt to match it with real time 100% when I made it with Tormak), and that DMs have continuously made statements to the contrary? Any chance the date and results of this vote could be published, just so we know when it came into effect and can adjust our perception of time accordingly?

Looking at the canon timeline, the first things specifically involving PCs happened in 1367. (The Horde appeared in the 1632, but that's more of a thing in the vague distant past.) That's 14 years. The server hasn't been around for 14 years. The game wasn't released 14 years ago. So canon lore clearly indicates years have not passed with a strict 1:1 ratio.

Searching for "speed of plot" and similar terms turns up quite a few illuminating results. But I guess y
you now better, if you state this with DM authority and a period.

Whoa now, hey, if you pull my name into this don't misinterpret my reasons and thought behind the timeline.... or worse, misrepresent them to add authority to you own statements....

The timeline covers a longer timespan as a conscious decision, if you recall, Iron. It was done because the entirety of Cordor being settled to present day covering like 7 years was patently ridiculous and silly. And so of course it's not 1-1, because it couldn't possibly have been while maintaining any semblance of narrative consistency. Older events were given a place within the timeline and spitballed into a year based on what happened and their correlations, if any, to the overall Faerun timeline, in order to fit events and create order from the madess of older events.

From there, we were able to make a springing point and from then on establish that YES, time on Amia flows at a 1-1 ratio, using the new springboard of the 'current day' (mind it was afew years ago) timeline to allow new events going forward to follow a 1-1 and be placed into an accurate timeline. In practice DMs didn't really fill in their events and I tried to keep up as best as I could. Most DM plots kept using the 1-1 time ratio for time passing in their events, outside 'speed of plot' stuffed that required a bit of imagination to make work properly, such as weeks passing while in Maztica during the Seven Star Maztica event.

On the player level, it's true PCs are allowed to age as they needed, but in the 'grand scheme', time has been 1 to 1 for quite awhile. Mosh and Malandria are right and I don't really appreciate my name being used to back a statement that's untrue on the gorunds that it was my idea behind a project.

Your post only confirms my point:

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On the player level, it's true PCs are allowed to age as they needed

That is all there is to it. That's what a "rule" means: whether or not something is allowed.

There's a dangerous tendency on Amia to confuse established practice with explicit policy and legislation. If something's been done for a while, people start to assume that's the "rule" and the "correct" way to do it. It's everyone's job to keep reminding themselves and others of this distinction to prevent practice from slipping into the normative category. Bluntly: if the DM team hasn't made a conscious decision, preferrably with a record of their vote available in their private forum, and if they haven't posted the annoucement into R&L or elsewhere applicable, it's not a rule. As a player, the rules are in place to protect me from other players and from DM whim, and thus I expect every rule that binds me to be posted publically. (That doesn't invalidate the DM capacity to make spontaneous calls, of course; it just means they need to review it later and make a decision.)

And thus I'm asking when the DM team took the vote on this explicit decision, if it is a rule. If it's just a lore answer about the timeline, then it can be answered by pointing to the timeline it was derived from. And as you can see from the timeline, the answer is not always consistent. That's OK. The general tendency is towards 1:1, and that does not necessarily apply to player plots. That's the neutral, lore answer to the original question. And further talk about "how we calculate time" and "rules" is not even a matter of the Lore forum.

And mind you Tormak, the same argument about narrative consistency applies into the future as well as the past: if Cordor being 7 years old didn't make sense a few years ago, the new settlements and storylines we introduce won't necessarily make sense two years from now. The intention was always to coordinate DM events and place them on a reasonable timescale, but there's no need for that to be strictly 1:1. Yossarin has on many occasions stated he does not want to be bound by the clock even if the Cordor bureucracy operates mostly in real time.

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That is all there is to it. That's what a "rule" means: whether or not something is allowed.

it's 3 am so I'm just going to mash keys and type "you're wrong" really verbosely in caps, ok? Sorry if it makes it hard to read, but you're being really frustrating and doing your stupid thing where you argue pointless details and semantics in a circle again just because you think that there should always be an argument for the sake of the argument, even when everyone agrees and the ruling's already been giving to you, by several DMs and the guy who actually did a lot of the the timeline work w/ you and so, knows why he did it (unlike you, who is putting words in my mouth).

asjg;lkdsgjhdslk jb;trlk jhrtkjhrt;lkjhyjujkm;lgfdh 'fs STOP MISAPPROPRIATING MY WORDS AND INTENT WITH THE TIMELINE

WE'VE BEEN 1-1 REALTIME FOR YEARS

A REALLY LONG TIME OK???

THE TIMELINE'S NOT "CONSISTENT" IN THE EARLY PARTS OF IT BECAUSE IT'S REALLY OBVIOUS THAT WE COULDN'T HAVE 50 RELA LIFE YEARS OF HISTORY IN GAME YET. NOT BECAUSE WE WERE IGNORING 1-1. BUT BECAUSE WE WERE FITTING OLD EVENTS INTO THEIR PROPER PLACE.

AT THE POINT WHERE THE TIMELINE FINISHED, IT BECAME THE JUMPING OFF POINT AND ALL FUTURE CONTENT WAS SETTLED IN AT A 1-1 BASIS.

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Yossarin has on many occasions stated he does not want to be bound by the clock even if the Cordor bureucracy operates mostly in real time.

YEAH. I KNOW. THAT'S WHY I EXPLICITLY STATED HOW HIS MAZTICA EVENT SPEED OF PLOTTED A FEW WEEKS.

THE FACT THAT A PLAYER CAN AGE THEIR CHARACTERS INDEPENDENTLY HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH THE FACT THAT TIME MOVES FORWARD 1-1. IT HAS EVERYTHING TO DO WITH NOT MICROMANAGING. THAT'S IT.

TIMELINE MOVES AT 1-1 AND HAS SINCE THE INSTANT THAT TIMELINE GOT POSTED. THAT WAS THE INTENT. TO FINALLY ESTABLISH AN OVERALL SERVER TIMEFLOW SO THAT REALMATIME COULD MOVE FORWARD INSTEAD OF BEING PERPETUALLY STUCK IN PSEUDO 1372 DR.

Quote:

But I guess y
you now better, if you state this with DM authority and a period.

SO WHY DID YOU KEEP ARGUING.

I'm not sure what you disagree with me on. We agree that in the main the server storylines tend to advance at a 1:1 pace. We also agree that speed of plot causes variances. I'm pretty sure we agree the cycle of seasons isn't very consistently represented. And we agree that players can age their characters as well as their personal stories at speed of plot, which is to say their plot. We agree the early stages of the timeline aren't consistent with a 1:1 timescale, and we agree there's no problem with that.

I'm not the one being confrontational, I simply corrected the slight inaccuracy of a potentially damaging DM statement so that it not be quoted in the future as an official "ruling." A player explained how he thinks it's reasonable to calculate time for his PCs given the actual empirical time in game (something which was just changed so obviously was thought to have some relevance; and we agree that players can age their characters as feels reasonable), and a DM retorted that "this is not how we calculate" and later that there is a rule on how "we" (not sure who's we) do it.

The only thing we seem to disagree on is what the word "rule" means. I'm not sure how an informal practice, published nowhere and admittedly not enforced, constitutes a "rule".

Edit: If it seems I'm ragging on Amarice, I'm sorry. I'm just genuinely trying to be crystal clear for future reference, because someone will be looking back at this topic sometime in the future and we must not leave vague evidence to be misinterpreted when we're gone or we've forgotten about it ourselves. The primary purpose of the forum is documentation, after all.

Wrong again.

The original question was how much time passed in the Amian timeline from date x to date y. And the answer is quite simply 1:1.

This is the correct way to calculate it. And this is the timeline Amia runs in.

Secondly, I did not correct 666WaysToHell because he said how HE calculates his character age. He stated this generally:

"Well, 1 reset (which is roughly 1 day of in game day/night shift) so that's roughly 3 in game days for every 1 RL day..."

There is no "this is how I do it" there is no "I use this for my charas".

So I corrected it and said, no. The Amia timeline is not calculated on server resets as days. It is calculated 1:1. Unless, as I already stated in my very first post, in specific DM plots.

It has never been enforced on character age because it almost never is possible. We do not know what age the character was supposed to have been the day the character was created. And the DM won't try to track it down and find it out just to tell a player "no your chara is younger/older". It would not be worth the hssle either imho. If someone wants to play his chara as a senior, I see not harm there, really. Special character requests will always be a difference there, as there it very well shows and I voiced my own opinion of how "I" and I explicidly said "I" would judge there.

All in all this topic is really settled, really.

The author asked how to correctly calculate the age in the Amian timeline and the answer to that is 1:1.

The original question, as well as the post you quoted, concerned at least partially character age. They also concerned "how much time has passed" but clearly in that context.

Either way, we've established that time moves at different paces in different contexts. You seem eager to ignore that. If specific plots can move at different speeds (both DM and player) and if different characters can age at different paces, and further if the official timeline (which is poorly updated and already has an error in the Roll of Years) has a different pace to that in game, then it seems hypocritical to claim there's one correct and universal way to calculate time on Amia, in every context. If there is a correct, rule-determined way to calculate, then you're doing a poor job enforcing your own rules and representing them in module design and storytelling.

Is the trip from Cordor to Brogendenstein instantaneous? Can you actually jog through entire Cordor in a matter of minutes, let alone cross the island in half an hour? Do characters see the sun setting and rising three times a day, and do NPCs never sleep? Was the Maztica event a time bubble that has an IC explanation? Is there a specific date you can point to when PCs and NPCs moved into sync with real time? Are PCs who age faster or who claim to go on trips longer than their actual RL duration to be treated as IC anomalies?

If you answer even one of those questions with "no", then there is no consistent answer to the passing of time. There can be a correct answer about "what is the DM practice in updating the timeline" or "what is the policy regarding character age" but those are context-specific issues - with different answers, no less. The answer to the general question "how does time pass IC" is "it depends." I don't see how you could deny that. Just saying that's how it is doesn't make it so, when the plain facts speak to the contrary. Maybe I'm "wrong again" but the evidence and arguments presented certainly don't suggest that.

.... Why are we even getting into all of this discussion?

The fact remains that, per the server time line, it has been about two years. However, a PC that was 30 then can say they are 35 now if they want. Quibbling over the semantics is pointless.

Naivatkal wrote:

The fact remains that, per the server time line, it has been about two years. However, a PC that was 30 then can say they are 35 now if they want.

Yes, but that's not trivial. Not only can the PC say he's 35, he can in fact be 35. So in that context, 5 years has passed. No matter which way you look at it; the passing of time has been real and IC. And at the same time, in the Cordor plot 2 years have passed. In relation to the Maztica event, 2 years and 2 weeks has passed. Like Lizzie already said at the top of the page: you won't find a consistent answer. And that's fine. The answer depends on context, and the timeline is only one context. And not even the one that was asked for.

It is utterly trivial how a PC ages themselves.

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and the timeline is only one context. And not even the one that was asked for.

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How much time passed from X date to Y.

Yes it was.

Suffice it to say, I am vindicated. Again.

That looks about I like how I'd end an argument if I was sick of talking, so I'm going to be you for a moment and say that means you've given up and that you're not going to post anymore. That's great. Thanks!

The goal of a debate is not to convince the opposition; usually that is impossible and the sides will only become more entrenched in their positions. I've learned years ago you cannot be persuaded by reason. The goal is to convince the audience, and you're doing the work for me.

The topic opens with: I have a PC that was created 2011-05-18 - He was at that time around 30. How is the aging issue not relevant to a question that takes age as its starting point?

I'm not sure how you can defend the claim that character's aging has no connection to time. (That's what you mean by aging being utterly trivial, I assume.) That's absurd if you understand what the word means. My age is, by definition, the time that has passed from my birth to to this moment. Further, I don't choose to age myself; my aging is a byproduct of the objective passing of time.

Even the aging issue aside, does the sun rise three times a day IC? Does a ship ride of several hundred kilometers take a matter of seconds? The passing of time in one context is clearly not the same as in another.

Need I say more?

The 'audience', quite frankly, does not care about this semantic argument which was already answered a lot of posts above.

The time progression of Amia is 1:1 to real time. Players may advance their characters at a time different to this, as long as they understand it may be contradicted by DMs if absolutely necessary.

That is all the answer this topic needs.

How much time passed from X date to Y.

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