Measuring Time In Brinewall

[Rackzul]

Ok, so I'm starting to get a feel for this whole GM thing. We are wrapping up the first leg of our caravan and nearing Brinewall Village and Brinewall Castle. As I'm reading ahead, I noticed that the creatures living in the castle behave accourding to what time of the day it is. I've not played any PF sessions yet where time has really been measured. How do you keep track of the time in an RPG? Again, I'm REALLY new to the whole RPG style and PF is my first introduction. As a "PC", I've played through the Crypt of the Everflame, and I've been a PC for a campaign that we are running now, but I've not played long enough to really know all of the mechanics of games of this nature and any advice would be wonderful!

[Darkstrom]

Rackzul wrote:

Ok, so I'm starting to get a feel for this whole GM thing. We are wrapping up the first leg of our caravan and nearing Brinewall Village and Brinewall Castle. As I'm reading ahead, I noticed that the creatures living in the castle behave accourding to what time of the day it is. I've not played any PF sessions yet where time has really been measured. How do you keep track of the time in an RPG? Again, I'm REALLY new to the whole RPG style and PF is my first introduction. As a "PC", I've played through the Crypt of the Everflame, and I've been a PC for a campaign that we are running now, but I've not played long enough to really know all of the mechanics of games of this nature and any advice would be wonderful!

It's more narrative (for me) based on common sense "these actions the group is taking likely take X time interval". Ask them when they are starting out and take it from there. Remember that getting between locations takes some time as well.

[Zaranorth]

Same here, although I find myself using one of 5 times: morning (6AM), mid-morning (10 AM), noon, afternoon (3 PM), evening (6 PM), night (usually midnight). I try for variance and find out I'm failing when my players snicker about the "scheduled 3 PM assualt." :)

As for within the castle, unless they specifically state they're staying in one spot for more than an hour or so, it'll only be a couple hours at max that they'll be in there. So once you set the time they enter, I'd say you can safely ignore all other time-dependent activities.

Of course that leaves the question, when do they get to the castle? If they don't say anything, then you can guesstimate according to where they were that morning and how long they took in the town (which probably isn't more than half an hour to an hour).

Or, you could ask them when would they like to approach the castle.

But doing something like, "the first fight was 6 rounds, so that's 36 seconds, then they went 1000 feet down a corridor, the gnome in the party makes that 5 minutes for 5 minutes 36 seconds so far..." Yeah, no. (Unless it's absolutely, critical, which I have done before.)