Suggestion for consideration possiby ?

[Tessa Andrews]

So I was talking to Mel last night, in which she explained to me how the time-flow/dating of threads works. I'm pretty sure I understood her.  Like if I start a thread on today, then the time the thread takes place icc is on that day.

I rp at another site and they use something called dynamic time, or something like that. (For those that don't know what it is) Basically, take the current month, February. So for posting, any days between Feb 1 -Feb 28th are open to play all month. An example post could look something like this:

Subject: Examples are fun! [Open] - [Feb 8th, Noon]

textextexttextextexttextextexttextextexttextextexttextextexttextextext


So even if the real calendar date is the 4th, you could start a thread on that day and it would be the 8th. Or the real calendar date is the 24th you could start a thread for the first.  And then as soon as march rolls around the new posting dates would be March 1-March 31. 

The threads that are from the previous month could still be replied too/finished and such and then if someone needed or just wanted to do a thread that takes place in the past they can talk to staff and work something out.

So dynamic/flowing time are basically what Mel said, but with possible more RPing opportunities (at least thats what I see) and with the dates and times its easier to keep track of threads and character interactions and such.

And with the journal section we have next to the normal journals of the characters we can make a thread journal, in which we update with our current threads with the date and time. Like a timeline of sorts of our characters and their journeys.


Anyways, its just an idea I thought we could consider/discuss.  

[Mel *]

This has been forwarded to the rest of the Staff. Thank you for your suggestion, and we'll get right back to you!

(This is still open for members to discuss, as all opinions matters)

[Eryn White]

I'm personally a fan of liquid/fluid time. Before I try and explain why, I'll explain what liquid/fluid time is. And I'm just going to call it fluid time. Because forget being complicated.


Fluid time, on a forum board, is when you operate off of when a topic was started, and automatically assume anything that has, or does, happen in Topic A, which began before Topic B, has happened to your character in Topic B already.

For example, Blake in Topic A tells Adam in Topic A that he has a super big crush on Clara. Now when Adam starts Topic B with Diana, even if it was only started five minutes after Topic A, and poor, heartbroken Blake still hasn't technically posted and told him this information, as soon as he does, Adam in Topic B (Which was posted/started five minutes AFTER Topic A was posted/started) can behave as if he has known this for the whole topic.
Then, Topic C is started, ten minutes after Topic B, and therefore fifteen minutes after Topic A. In Topic C, Diana reveals to Emily that she also likes Blake, and Emily (Being the little snitch that she is) IMMEDIATELY texts Adam telling him... Well, even though all three topics may technically be happening at the same time, in Topics A and B, Adam DOES NOT know that Emily likes Blake back.
The one big thing to note about this, is that major events that SHOULD have been noted in the beginning of a thread, are ignored. Such as a broken limb, an obvious change in physical appearance, or other obvious difference.

Follow?


Now, the reason(s) I like this is because, for one, it very clearly prevents meta-gaming. That might not be a big issue on a SoL board, but still, I'm strongly against it.
It also means that if something major happens in one thread, it can carry over to others, but with enough protection that you won't be forced to re-do a thread if something extreme happens in another.


That all said... In an SoL board, it is unlikely to be a major issue either way. I find the whole idea of posting what day and time something is happening... Well, very tiring. I don't care enough to put in that the topic is starting at sixteen minutes past four 'o clock, on the Thursday after the finals prep session... Unless these are details that I choose to add for either plot, or flavor. In which case I'll do that because I want to. Not because it is expected.

[Erika Conner (Bellefonte)]

I personally have to agree that liquid/fluid time is a lot easier and better to use, as a lot of things can happen in some threads, thus it's easier to keep track of if you assume said things have already happened in the next. If the thread before hasn't finished until you get to the next thread, all you need to do is either avoid mentioning things from the past thread or simply being vague.

To me, I think it would be confusing to keep up with dynamic threads if we have to jump back and forth in time, and keeping track of what happened before what can be extremely difficult. We're currently using liquid time, and it has worked so far.

So I have to agree with Eryn on this one.

[Mel *]

As it is, I believe liquid time is better, since this is what we've been doing up until now. But apart from being able to write a post any time, if you want to backtrack threads, like;

Say, you did thread A, which takes several days to finish, and then want thread B to happen right after thread A, we allow for you to backtrack threads as long as the thread has a not at the top saying ((This thread happens prior to *link to thread A*))

But other than that, we don't allow jumping back and forth in time unless we host a time warp thread, which is basically an event where you can thread the past or the future, the past being canon while the future being non-canon.

However, feel free to mark your threads with the time of the day, but I'll have to say that we'll stick with liquid time to keep things easier to keep track of.