OK, so, fledgling GM running Mummy's Mask for my crew, and I've run into a question that doesn't affect my players so much (yet), but does seem the kind of thing that I should have in my toolkit...
What is an appropriate way to judge the amount of time spent doing things like traveling through streets, exploring dungeons, etc.? I know the six-seconds-per-round rule for combat, but that doesn't give me anything about time spent searching, looting, climbing/descending ropes, futzing around with torch sconces because OBVIOUSLY the stone wheel is a complex mechanical door and isn't just big and heavy... (seriously, my players took almost a half-hour of real time to work that one out)
Anyways.
I'm mostly trying to nail down how long my players can be in an underground dungeon space and safely get back out of the Necropolis before the gates close at dusk, but I expect this sort of skill will be useful in other situations as well.
Usually I just estimate. Giving a room a good once over takes a minute or so. Fiddling around with things, doing some complicated torch sconce dance or something might take a few minutes to half an hour. Most of the time unless they have minute or ten-minute per level spells it doesn't matter too much.
If time is an issue, like getting done before curfew, you should occasionally let them know how long it has been. Some like "Ok, after your experiments with the torches it is about noon" or "It takes you half an hour to do that."
If they are discussing things at length (not meta rules questions, but discussing the situation) it is perfectly appropriate to have the real discussion time be game time. Once again, periodically letting your players know how long it has been is good GM behavior.
It is pretty rare for characters to go more than an hour or two of focused dungeon crawling before they are out of resources and ready to call it a day anyway, so I doubt you will have too much of a problem with that.
