The world never stops even if you hold your breath; but this is hardly the case in a role play. I find that time seems to slow down whenever characters start to interact with each other in a RP world. It gets boring as other RPers will usually have to wait until all the interactions are over before they can advance time. Any suggestions on giving players more freedom on time/ advancing time in a smoother way?

I'm thinking about a non-linear time stamp, by posting events time frame beforehand, and stating a certain end result. So other RPers may skip time a bit before interactions end.


I think that this will encourage players to develop more short stories while not hindering the main story flow. Is this a good idea? or any better ways to do it?

I'd abolish many time related scenarios, leaving it to references like morning, midday, and evening at most. In a roleplay it doesn't really matter if in the time someone bakes a pie that another character flew across the Atlantic unless you reference it. What matters is the post and the event that took place in that message. Some RPs have an endless night and don't break into daylight, and it works cause of the way it's written.

Most tabletop rpgs do this right. They create a scenario and the players play out those events without referencing time. It doesn't distract from the RP and the only situations that bring up time are when sight and hearing need to be used.

The problems with sticking to a time slot is that you are micromanaging the players post. They need to calculate how much a task takes and often it detracts from what is written. Sure it works sometimes, but it's too much effort and many people won't stick to it well.

one important thing when using timestamps is to make it clear to everyone, repeatedly, that not every minute needs covering.

looks like the goal of your system is to make it so that events like a long ass fight don't hold up the entire RP. The problem with this system is that it requires the players to know exactly how long an event is going to take, what is going to happen during the event, etc. I'll use your time stamp example.

Character A and character B are fighting. A thinks it's going to be a sizable brawl, so he writes that wen the event ends, the bar is going to be a mess. But then Player B goes down in a single punch, or maybe B simply retreats outside instead of sticking around to fight. Player C would be misinformed and subsequent players would walk into an area that shows evidence of a bar brawl where a bar brawl never happened. And if the bar brawl did happen, it's still a nightmare for player C to enter the area because they don't know what exactly happened. They might spend several posts trying to retrace the events of the fight, only to realize that character B was knocked out by the doorway and probably would have been spotted much sooner.

If players want to create an isolated event, they can collab it. This keeps the event inside a single post and lets everyone know what happened. If people insist on having brawls in important locations. Find a way to bring the important event to the players. Character D might need to see an informant in the bar. Character A and B's fighting scared the informant into running outside. And so now, character D can run into the fleeing informant. Now D's story can progress while the bar brawl continues.

Time is always relative for me, and typically, this is as simple as "lets try to wrap the interaction up this week, eh?"

Once you try to regulate it to specifics, in a game inherently relative, you start running into "what if" logistical problems, and depending on players to do good bookkeeping, which... well, just don't do that.

Hum, okay so the take is don't set time too specific and find other ways to workaround simultaneous events. :o
And advancing a day can be as simple as telling people to wrap up in the OOC 👍

I flip between. Sometimes I just have a day posted, other times I have the time of day, and some we actually break it down to the minute. In some updates I color code thing if people are in different "times" - cause say someone is on a flight somewhere but someone else in the Rp is just sitting and talking. It is easier that way. Then as the times catch up with another, then the color code changes until everyone is on the same page.

Currently I have 6 rps running. Duplicity, we only go by a general time of day. Morning, mid-day, night. Same with After Miranda. The Walking Dead and Darker Than Black - we have different times for different groups and flip back and forth as needed. Deeper than the Sands we actually go down to the minute for the passage of time. Soulless Regency, since travel time takes so long, we actually shelve characters that are going through the "It's going to take 8 hours to get to the next town in a carriage" until the rest of the group gets to that point in the Rp and then bring them back out.

The main key is to flip out as you need. Sometimes you may need those down to the minute times, others you won't. So don't hesitate to move from one to the other and back again. Whatever works best for the Rp at that time. Sometimes you have to micromanage things, it sucks but it is true. Some people need a bit of a hand learning to manage the passage of time and that's okay. Other times you don't need to worry about it. It will all depend on your rpers, the Rp itself, and more.

This is a difficult but valid issue. I'm still experimenting with it in my own RP but I think I'm starting to settle down on something somewhat similar to what you are doing. But not as extensively. Basically GM goes and posts current time (something general like "Day 4, Daytime") and everything that comes before (like if you wanna write about your character having breakfast) you put it in a hider on top of your post and indicate when that takes place.

It helps significantly if your players all have some sort of private messaging system figured out. Saves tremendous amount of time and chronological screw ups. Like writing out a conversation in a PM and then someone posting it for both players.

@Traps My only advice, is time management shouldn't be done unless you're absolutely committed to it and have it be a part of your roleplays theme.

For example, I once did a slice of life werewolf roleplay that used only the concept of changing days and nights, so after a certain amount of posts, it would just shift into a day/night phase (with obvious indications when it would take place) with nothing in between and it changed who the characters were. There was a little more than that, but nothing more complicated than that. It made a clear difference in the roleplaying.

Standard roleplays that can do without time crunches, that don't really have a narrative purpose, are probably best without them.