Immersive or annoying?

[darkling]

So I am looking for opinions here while I mull something over:

Last night was my friend's weekly 4e game, and as I am won't to do I spent a decent chunk of combat concentrating on something else (seriously he has got to find a way to make that more quick and engaging, but that's a story for another post). I had just made a quick and dirty sci-fi rpg/skirmish game based off the Mass Effect series and I realized that it really irked me to be using a sexagesimal time system with 24 hour days for an RPG system where the players were never even likely to visit Earth and many of them may not even be human. So I started scratching out the basis of a standardized, metric timekeeping system. (Base unit of time was called the 'arc' which was 1,000s or 16.6 minutes. So a mili-arc is 1s, a deci-arc was 100s or 1.4 minutes, a hecto-arc was 100,000s or 27.7 hours and was the approximate 'day' measure, etc.) I was quite proud of it and was thinking about using it for a sci-fi campaign we are talking about doing.

And I was met with immediate discontent at the idea. Which baffled me a little cause to my mind it seemed nicely thematic and immersive. I couldn't imagine people in the far future completely divorced from earth keeping our time system willy-nilly and it pulls me out of the game. However, everyone else seemed to think that things like this were more of a hassle than an RP tool.

So I guess my question is, are touches like that more immersive or annoying? And don't limit this just to my example: things like using ancient or cultural units of measurement in a campaign set on ancient earth, pseudo (or in rare cases complete!) languages and etymologies for fantasy races, odd calendars (like Dark Sun's wonderful one based on the semi-independent movements of two moons), etc. Also, are they rarer today than they used to be? Or is that just my confirmation bias? Have you ever used anything like this? If so, how did your players take it?

[kesher]

Sounds awesome to me, and exactly the kind of thing that will probably happen in the future!

Tekumel, of course, is the prime fantasy rpg version of this sort of thing, but it does seem odd no scifi games (that I'm aware of) have gone this route...

Go post it over on the scifi forum, too!

[gloriousbattle]

All I can say is that not every gaming idea you come up with will be well received, or even good, BUT DON'T STOP COMING UP WITH THEM! The fact is that if, in your entire life, you only come up with one good idea, the lousy ones will be forgotten, and the good one will stick.

And **** the naysayers who shoot you down. Remember that the man who tries and fails is better than the one who snipes.

[badger2305]

H. Beam Piper wrote quite a few SF novels where the hour was the standard measure of time, e.g.spaceships were said to be 500 hours, or 1000 or 2000, "out" from one star system or another.

[darkling]

Aug 20, 2011 14:49:05 GMT -6 badger2305 said:

H. Beam Piper wrote quite a few SF novels where the hour was the standard measure of time, e.g.spaceships were said to be 500 hours, or 1000 or 2000, "out" from one star system or another.

Yes, but my point is that the hour and minute are units of time based on the apparent motion of the sun and derived from the hour and minute units of angular measure. As such they are only relevant for a society that is still centered on Earth. Which means they are great for near future sci-fi, but in a setting say one billion years from now when the scattered remnants of humanity fight tentacled monsters for survival in the sea of stars, and Earth isn't even a legend, I really doubt that people will have preserved a timekeeping system developed to track the apparent motion of our sun from our planet <_<

Anyway, I am less trying to get an impression of what people think of the idea itself here than I am trying to figure out whether y'all as gamers like this general sort of thing in your games. Do touches like this make things more immersive? Or are they a bother?

[Deleted]

Well, sure. Persistent pays.

Thomas Edison and his team of scientists went through thousands of different materials trying to find the proper filament for the incandescent bulb.

And how many house-ruled or home-grown wargames were thought up before the RPG coalesced out of the chaos?

;D

[murquhart72]

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

www.kobol.com/archives/timeunit.html

Also: can't forget Farscape:

microt: roughly a second
arn: roughly an hour
monen: a month
cycle: one year

[darkling]

While we are on the topic, what do y'all think of shifting other units of measurement? My players always groan when I want them to work with meters instead of feet, and in an Outlaws of the Marsh game I pushed for the adoption of the 'li' and other culturally appropriate distance measures to little success.

The people I play with seem to work on the 'dubbing' theory of roleplaying where the player says 'go 500 yards that way' and their character expresses it in appropriate units. I get that sort of thing for languages (who really has the time to learn Quenya just to play a Tolkien elf?) but when the only thing you are avoiding is simple math...I don't know, perhaps I am too rigid in my thinking on these matters.

[Deleted]

Also don't forget original Battlestar Galactica!

micron - centon - centar (etc.)

[talysman]

The problem is that people generally won't do a lot of work to relearn something they've learned over a period of several years. If you get a particular group thyat says "let's do a really detailed, immersive Japanese (or far future, or whatever) setting!" then you can do that; otherwise, what people want is a couple touches of paint to make the place look different. So, create a couple different names for the "real" measurements that just happen to match the U.S. or metric or furlong/firkin/fortnight system that everyone's familiar with and uses by default.

You sort of did that yourself, anyways. The second is a derived unit based on sexagesimal divisions of the hour. So why would aliens use it?

[bert]

Star Trek Stardates? Pick a number to start from, add % points of a standard Earth day as from midnight. So, Stardate 1427.52 is not long after midday on day 1427 from whatever the 0 day was - invention of warp drive maybe?

My guess would be thatin the far future the day would stay the same length whatever the system of chopping up is - it is after all what homo spaiens is biologcally adapted to, and the second would stay about the same - about the length of a heartbeat, the rest is up for grabs.

You could add some campaign colour with your terminology. One Elizabethan term for a short while was 'a pissing time', medieval monks timed things in terms of ave marias and pater nosters. One gluttonous alien species could measure time in terms of how long it took to masticate and swallow their favourite snack insect, another bunch of fanatics could have a hour-type unit related to the singing verses of their interminable national anthem, a unit that changes very few years becuase they add a verse on everytime they drive another species to extinction.

[geoffrey]

I'd probably go with a libertarian methodology:

As referee, I'd always refer to your unique units of time. If the players wanted to refer to minutes, hours, and all the rest, I'd be OK with them doing that.

You do your thing, let them do theirs. Perhaps after a while the players will catch on and start using your units of time.

[DungeonDevil]

I agree that purple, tentacled aliens from another world that orbits its star more or less than 365 days will not use our puny-earthling system of chronometry. Why the hell would they?! And perhaps their planet rotates slower than once per 24 hours. Maybe they're from a 'hot Jupiter' that whirls around its star in a few days! :shock: Maybe their time mensuration is not based on anything like what we can imagine on earth. Perhaps their planet is highly volcanic with many hot springs and they measure time by how often their 'Old Faithful' goes off.

The 1000 sec measure is used in Classic Traveller spaceship combat (LBB2, p. 26).

[jjarvis]

I like unique units of measurement. Every time I've tried to use them the players have reacted with a combination of stupidity and rebellion.

[thorswulf]

Why not use ship time? If the characters are flying all over the galaxy, the only real time is going to be whatever artificial time there is onboard of their vessel. for standing watches. Whether or not this is based on terran hours, a metric based unit or grains of sand makes little difference. On the planet the planetary rotation or "day" is equal to so many ship hours.

[darkling]

Aug 20, 2011 15:59:20 GMT -6 talysman said:

The problem is that people generally won't do a lot of work to relearn something they've learned over a period of several years.

This is a very good point. I guess I just don't get phased by unit shifts cause I work in the sciences and jump in and out of SI and non-SI units all the time.

Aug 20, 2011 15:59:20 GMT -6 talysman said:

You sort of did that yourself, anyways. The second is a derived unit based on sexagesimal divisions of the hour. So why would aliens use it?

bert actually stumbled upon it. A second is approximately the time between resting heartbeats in an animal of roughly human size which is a simple biophysical phenomenon. This should hold for most things that are humanoid with a circulatory system. It definitely holds with the super-far-future human scenario. It's a coincidental point of commonality between the two systems. Which is why in another thread on the system I mentioned that they refer to the Mili-Arc as a 'beat' or 'tick' rather than a second.

Aug 20, 2011 16:16:11 GMT -6 geoffrey said:

I'd probably go with a libertarian methodology:

As referee, I'd always refer to your unique units of time. If the players wanted to refer to minutes, hours, and all the rest, I'd be OK with them doing that.

You do your thing, let them do theirs. Perhaps after a while the players will catch on and start using your units of time.

An excellent suggestion! Y'know, the more I pick up about your refereeing style from various posts the more I like it.

[Falconer]

The original Battlestar Galactica was like that—they came up with as much alien culture for the crew as they could (fashion and slang as well as measurements), but sometimes it just came off looking and sounding too silly, and who could ever remember what a centon was equivalent to? But the new Battlestar Galactica went too far in the other direction—it was all cell phones and suits with ties and cigarettes; it was too jarring to believe an alien civilization had independently evolved the exact same culture as ours.

I would use normal American measurements for most things. If you come up with weird measurements for EVERYTHING, the game loses its immersiveness as everyone constantly has to stop and do the math. I think for flavor you can come up with one or two unique forms of measurements that everyone can remember and which would aid the feeling of being in a different time and place without grinding everything down to a halt. Everyone who has played D&D has to wrap their heads around the inches terminology (1"=10'), not to mention rounds and turns; one just accepts the conventions of the game. A lot of times in Star Trek they would measure distance in terms of “x days at maximum warp”. Would you call that “warp-days”?

[Deleted]

Things that are easy to pronounce and easy to remember and use are Immersive. Things that are hard to pronounce and hard to remember and use are annoying. Example is EPT - the setting is incredible but the biggest thing standing in the way of it becoming widely popular is that fact that almost no one can pronounce anything in the game. I played a few EPT games in and around our OD&D games back in the day and the only people in the group who got the whole language and pronunciation thing for EPT were the two language buffs in the group - one girl who already spoke over 30 languages at the age of 18 and the other a guy who had learned Latin and Greek practically from birth and knew both of them better than 99.9% of Americans know American English.

[chrisj]

My players are about as likely to embrace and use a unique calendar as they are to read a 17 page single-spaced history of hobbits in the kingdom of whatchamacallit. Frankly, thats not why they are playing the game. I'm more inclined to use units and names everyone is familiar with and get on with the game. If pressed I might say something like "the month isn't really called January in the common tongue, but that's the closest English translation." If I were to introduce custom units or names, I'd keep them very simple as others have already mentioned.

Chris

[darkling]

So we've already mentioned EPT a couple of times, and the Dark Sun calender system, and 1000s turns in Traveler. Can anyone else think of other published material that did this? I think 2e's Planescape had a fairly extensive dictionary of slang terms which could count as a more minor example.

[Deleted]

This is a perennial topic of discussion at SF and fantasy writer's conferences.

The general consensus is that if it's a four-footed quadrupedal hornless single-hoofed herbivore used for riding and draft purposes, call it a "horse" and not a "gricklesnarf."

Using made up words for ordinary concepts has been found to be usually annoying, not immersive.

[howandwhy99]

Aug 25, 2011 12:37:45 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

This is a perennial topic of discussion at SF and fantasy writer's conferences.

The general consensus is that if it's a four-footed quadrupedal hornless single-hoofed herbivore used for riding and draft purposes, call it a "horse" and not a "gricklesnarf."

Using made up words for ordinary concepts has been found to be usually annoying, not immersive.

Completely agree. This is a language game and requires all players share a common tongue. It's not about teaching a new language to others.

Imagine if you sat down at my table to play D&D and said, "My character kicks over the table, jumps atop it, and leaps three feet into the air."

And in response I told you that your character is a smeckle, the table is a barand, you karakanacacac it over, then scarfle atop it, and peripolpis *** [grunt, grunt, grunt] schalks into the flefervuse.

Who is not walking away from the game immediately?

[ragnorakk]

I might sit stunned and then politely clap for a moment before leaving...

[Deleted]

Sept 6, 2011 19:57:52 GMT -6 ragnorakk said:

I might sit stunned and then politely clap for a moment before leaving...

Have an Exalt!

[darkling]

Aug 25, 2011 12:37:45 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

This is a perennial topic of discussion at SF and fantasy writer's conferences.

The general consensus is that if it's a four-footed quadrupedal hornless single-hoofed herbivore used for riding and draft purposes, call it a "horse" and not a "gricklesnarf."

Using made up words for ordinary concepts has been found to be usually annoying, not immersive.

Right, but I'm not just talking about 'calling a rabbit a smeerp'. I'm also talking about new names for new concepts: units of measurement, calenders, etc. Which we all embrace to a certain point, unless you go through your D&D books and make sure all prices are given in US Dollars...

What I am wondering is where the tipping point between things like the 'gold piece' currency system which we all know (and most of us at least tolerate if not actually love) and the domain of the shark-jumping gricklesnarf lies.

[Deleted]

Sept 11, 2011 18:17:21 GMT -6 darkling said:

Aug 25, 2011 12:37:45 GMT -6 @gronanofsimmerya said:

This is a perennial topic of discussion at SF and fantasy writer's conferences.

The general consensus is that if it's a four-footed quadrupedal hornless single-hoofed herbivore used for riding and draft purposes, call it a "horse" and not a "gricklesnarf."

Using made up words for ordinary concepts has been found to be usually annoying, not immersive.

Right, but I'm not just talking about 'calling a rabbit a smeerp'. I'm also talking about new names for new concepts: units of measurement, calenders, etc. Which we all embrace to a certain point, unless you go through your D&D books and make sure all prices are given in US Dollars...

What I am wondering is where the tipping point between things like the 'gold piece' currency system which we all know (and most of us at least tolerate if not actually love) and the domain of the shark-jumping gricklesnarf lies.

Well a lot of us love Barsoom, so the examples of what ERB used in the books are a pretty good line to follow. If your horse doesn't look much like a horse and the name is easy to pronounce - thoat- it is not annoying. But here is the deal; before you throw Barsoom and the different words into the game you usually have players who have all read at least one of the books, then it is not a big deal because everyone has already bought in before the game starts.

Another thing to note about the Barsoom books is that all the new terms are not introduced in the first book.

If you are not doing something based on a book, then you should not introduce a lot of unique made up words unless you have some other means of getting to an upfront buy in.

[foxroe]

Sept 12, 2011 6:39:46 GMT -6 @theperilousdreamer said:

If you are not doing something based on a book, then you should not introduce a lot of unique made up words unless you have some other means of getting to an upfront buy in.

Yeah. You're players may need some sort of game/scenario guide in advance so that they can not experience the aformentioned "culture shock" (I use that term loosely). Sort of a Player's Guide to Grendelcairns & Gricklesnarves.

At least at that point you'll know if your players will be into it or not before you actually start gaming.

[DungeonDevil]

I saw an add in an old Dragon magazine for an RPG which abounded with such pretentious, impenetrable conlang -- such that the invented words in Herbert's Dune looked positively mundane. Can't remember the name of it, sadly. Carroll's "Jabberwocky" poem was marvelous, but it was mercifully brief. Imagine the headaches of trying to read an entire novel with such silliness.

I've been reading Tubb's Dumarest books, and the man was not a mean writer, but he did lack any visible ingenuity at inventing sonorous, credible names for planets (e.g. Broome, Shick, Quail, Kyle, and Toy, just to name a few).

[Deleted]

Where ERB had no trouble inventing names that sounded good and were easy to use.

RASOOM -- MERCURY
COSOOM -- VENUS
JASOOM -- EARTH
BARSOOM - MARS
SASOOM -- JUPITER

[foxroe]

Funny thing about planet names, though. We've identified most of the planets/-oids we believe to be in our own solar system, and we've used a lot of cool mythological names for them. However, as we (astronomically) expand out into the nearby galaxy, we start to use cold, alpha-numeric Greek names. If we ever venture beyond our solar borders, I'm fairly certain that those names will change to something more "human", but we will eventually lack the creativity to come up with "cool" names. I think that's what I like about the system names in Traveller's Spinward Marches...

Planetary Scout 1: "What should we call this airless rock? Lasavarian's Reach is next on the list."

Planetary Grognard Scout 2: "Screw that. It's Eugene's Bunghole."