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[No] An Attempted Simplification of Alteran Time

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
*cracks knuckes*

Note that nothing in this post reflects on the opinions of the lore management team, nor is to be considered a fact in-character or out of character until / unless @Michcat, @Naelwyn, and @Faelin give their opinions.

[| Introductory |]
Yes yes, welcome to my humble little thread.

In the following mass of words I'll be trying my damned hardest to make sense of the blatantly obvious fact that our characters age at different rates. For example, @blargtheawesome has aged only a few decades in the time that @Ddaug02 has started and ended a family line of the Wise name. As another example @Tybalt has remained aged 17 since he first joined the server and from what I understand he will not be aging any further, even now that he has a 3 year old child.

I am entirely aware that time and its flow is a tricky mess to go about unraveling - a "wibbly wobbly ball of timey wimey stuff" as Naelwyn (and the Doctor) has claimed it to be. With that in mind I will be striving to give a detailed personal analysis of the subject that can perhaps gain traction and be of agreement to the playerbase and perhaps even the lore management team.

So without further adieu, shall we get to it?

[| Alteran Temporal Years |]
After a few days of thinking on the subject, I began to believe that we should have a baseline for time flow on Altera - the equivalent of time flow here on Earth, apart from the time that elapses over the course of a year. With ample thought given to the naming of this baseline I came up with the above.

ATY (Alteran Temporal Years) would make up the rate at which the world around our characters ages. A very simple example is outlined below:

Character 1 ages from 20-26 over the course of two OOC months.
Character 2 ages from 20-22 over the course of two OOC months.
Altera ages from 0-200 over the course of two OOC months.

As you can see the actual static flow of ATY doesn't affect individual characters' aging process as that would be both a burden to enforce and heavily unwanted among the community. This was essentially the central ideology behind my decision to come up with and detail ATY - to please as many people as possible.

Of course, the rate at which Altera ages per month is definitely supposed to be static unless acted on by an outside force (such as the Gods, or dare I say the Immortal Kings), though the actual rate at which is ages doesn't have to be the example given above - 200 years : 1 month. That would be up to either popular opinion or lore management decision.

This however would not be something easily gauged by characters (with an exception to most likely Thaumaturges or Evokers over the other two schools, or the Gods) through roleplay observation or the like. So if this were to become a thing - all of our characters wouldn't suddenly go "Oh right, I forgot to mention, I'm 900000 Alteran Temporal Years old. Ain't nothin' but a G thang." That would be silly and have metagame written all over it. While some of the oldest characters still around would probably pay enough attention to notice that the people around them age at different rates, it's such a commonplace and unmentioned thing in our world that it's hardly likely anybody would notice enough to cause a scene or question it.

[| Personal Timestreams |]
This is where it gets particularly interesting.

I would dare propose that our characters are aging at a rate decided by an ethereal entity - most likely the Gods or Immortal Kings - and this rate can and will fluctuate over time or stop entirely if the entity wishes it to. I.e., we OOCly decide how our characters age and if they age, even while the sun keeps rising and setting overhead and explaining why characters like Scardrac, Naelwyn, Axex, Archaeus, Tzemik, Vorar, and so forth are still around.

There's not much more to it rather than "Within reason the effects of your decisions to age your characters are in-character."

With this being how it is I'm sure that using some sort of magic - God given or learned - one could potentially manipulate their own or others' timestreams to a certain extent with the consent of the player(s) involved.

I don't have much else to write on the subject of personal timestreams than I've already given.

[| In Summary |]
What I propose here is only with the best intentions towards all of us and holds no true effect against the world at large that would change any aspect of day to day roleplay. I ask for your feedback in the thread below and any comments or critiques of my logic or writing here.

And by all means, thank you all for taking the time to read this thread.
 

Baron

Sovereign
Retired Staff
Not addressing your post, but one of the reasons Vorar isn't biological is to entirely avoid the issue of timey wimey.
 

Scardrac

Felsummer
Eh, I age Scardrac from a 1:1 real life/Altera life time scale. Meaning that if Scardrac were to die of old age, it would be when I turned 47 IRL.

I don't think allowing people to be ageless by an entity would be that smart? I dunno.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
Eh, I age Scardrac from a 1:1 real life/Altera life time scale. Meaning that if Scardrac were to die of old age, it would be when I turned 47 IRL.

I don't think allowing people to be ageless by an entity would be that smart? I dunno.
Not to say ageless, per se, but rather.. I don't know. Ageless. I mean, we can't force people to age their characters to begin with.
 

Scardrac

Felsummer
I don't know.
Big part of the whole concept of time. People want to keep characters. People want to have characters to have for a few months just for fun, yet still have development.

I want to keep Scardrac for a while, and I don't necessarily like characters made just for the fun of a few months. However, I don't call Scardrac ageless, even if he will out-live the server. ( If he were to die of old age, that is. )
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
Big part of the whole concept of time. People want to keep characters. People want to have characters to have for a few months just for fun, yet still have development.

I want to keep Scardrac for a while, and I don't necessarily like characters made just for the fun of a few months. However, I don't call Scardrac ageless, even if he will out-live the server. ( If he were to die of old age, that is. )
Yeah, that's what I mean. I'm speaking to the effect of what you're saying there - NOT how Gelyk and Legion were ageless, but just aging at a much slower rate. Still calling themselves by a particular year, not running amok into the thousands.
 

Somnastra

Puppycat Herder
Events Staff
Lore Staff
Good
Staff
Retired Owner
Somnastra
Somnastra
Good
Care to elaborate any further than a three word shutdown phrase?
Because there is no reasonable AND logical way to standardize time, particularly when players have so much control over their characters' time streams. Which is not something I want to change. Nor do I want to get the lore team to force a supernatural explanation where one is... not needed.

Hell, if anything, the "Altera time" is 1:1 because we coordinate festivals and things to fall near similar festivals in the real world. See: Sallana-tine's Day. But does that mean it's canon? Not really, no. Making something be canon is just... unnecessary.
 

Tybalt

Lord of Altera
Actually, I started my character, Tybalt, at age 15 and he has aged to 17 since. The reason for the Three year old daughter was because Sybbyl wanted to play a "Princess Tybsies" character and understood how I age my characters and that she will not age for a long time and I told her that if she could find a way to weasel Allindra into Tybalt's backstory, I was okay with it.

To the fact of why he has a child at that age, Sybble and I overlooked ages when creating her, and due to pestering of people whining for me to age my characters, I wasn't going to give them what they want. So I stuck with it.

His actual aging is 1:1 Altera to IRL unless another character that has a huge daily impact on him I might choose to age with them, or vice versa.

Also, the more people ask me to age my characters, the further and further I extend the date of that, meaning it will take longer then a year IRL because I was annoyed by the constant complaining.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
Because there is no reasonable AND logical way to standardize time, particularly when players have so much control over their characters' time streams. Which is not something I want to change. Nor do I want to get the lore team to force a supernatural explanation where one is... not needed.

Hell, if anything, the "Altera time" is 1:1 because we coordinate festivals and things to fall near similar festivals in the real world. See: Sallana-tine's Day. But does that mean it's canon? Not really, no. Making something be canon is just... unnecessary.
The /date has been 2259 for three years now.

It can be easily and feasibly explained that people simply get together at a certain time every so often based on the aging of those closest to eachother and their own view of time passed.

And, even if an explanation isn't necessary, it sure as hell would be nice to have instead of the "Time is just a thing that sometimes happens in one place and not another" state it's in at the current time - at least, in my own opinion. I'd rather have an explanation for something than not, especially when that explanation changes not a single thing mechanically or in character and only requires minimal staff team intervention.
 

Baron

Sovereign
Retired Staff
This seems to be a case of inventing a solution to a problem that you also invented. You can have your own headcanon for how time works, but the server standard is that things are timey wimey and how you address it is up to you.
 

Somnastra

Puppycat Herder
Events Staff
Lore Staff
Good
Staff
Retired Owner
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Somnastra
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I really do understand and empathize with your desire for an explanation. Originally, I thought that there should be a single time-progression, like 1 year a month, and everyone following it. But the more I realized about the way that we approach RP here, the more I came to understand viscerally that choice is fundamental to our identity as a server. As is limiting the supernatural in everyday interactions. So writing an explanation for this would come down to one of two things. Either we would take some of that choice away (and it is crucial to the way that some people RP) and force everyone to a single time-conversion or we compromise on one of the fundamental evolutions of our server. Doing the first would be a clarion death knell to the free-form RP that we've tried to encourage, and would probably be followed by more restrictions and regulations because we'd already opened that door. Don't you think there are already enough of those? The second would mean that the lore team would have to force an explanation that goes backwards to what they've tried so hard to accomplish with magic on the server. Asking them to do that would be a slap in the face. They'd do it, but it would erode our working relationship. So I won't ask them to touch time, no. Nor will I endorse or support any attempt to do so.
 

Centurion

Dark Council Elite
I really do understand and empathize with your desire for an explanation. Originally, I thought that there should be a single time-progression, like 1 year a month, and everyone following it. But the more I realized about the way that we approach RP here, the more I came to understand viscerally that choice is fundamental to our identity as a server. As is limiting the supernatural in everyday interactions. So writing an explanation for this would come down to one of two things. Either we would take some of that choice away (and it is crucial to the way that some people RP) and force everyone to a single time-conversion or we compromise on one of the fundamental evolutions of our server. Doing the first would be a clarion death knell to the free-form RP that we've tried to encourage, and would probably be followed by more restrictions and regulations because we'd already opened that door. Don't you think there are already enough of those? The second would mean that the lore team would have to force an explanation that goes backwards to what they've tried so hard to accomplish with magic on the server. Asking them to do that would be a slap in the face. They'd do it, but it would erode our working relationship. So I won't ask them to touch time, no. Nor will I endorse or support any attempt to do so.
Seeing this in full detail is enlightening and I do agree with nigh on 100% of your points here- thank you for giving this side.
 

Michcat

i'm the wench if you're the cake ;)
I really do understand and empathize with your desire for an explanation. Originally, I thought that there should be a single time-progression, like 1 year a month, and everyone following it. But the more I realized about the way that we approach RP here, the more I came to understand viscerally that choice is fundamental to our identity as a server. As is limiting the supernatural in everyday interactions. So writing an explanation for this would come down to one of two things. Either we would take some of that choice away (and it is crucial to the way that some people RP) and force everyone to a single time-conversion or we compromise on one of the fundamental evolutions of our server. Doing the first would be a clarion death knell to the free-form RP that we've tried to encourage, and would probably be followed by more restrictions and regulations because we'd already opened that door. Don't you think there are already enough of those? The second would mean that the lore team would have to force an explanation that goes backwards to what they've tried so hard to accomplish with magic on the server. Asking them to do that would be a slap in the face. They'd do it, but it would erode our working relationship. So I won't ask them to touch time, no. Nor will I endorse or support any attempt to do so.
Som describes the stance of the lore team on this subject rather brilliantly. You can see a visual representation of our feelings on the matter earlier in this thread ...
 

Somnastra

Puppycat Herder
Events Staff
Lore Staff
Good
Staff
Retired Owner
Somnastra
Somnastra
Good
Som describes the stance of the lore team on this subject rather brilliantly. You can see a visual representation of our feelings on the matter earlier in this thread ...
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