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From: erik@resonex.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: an unwitting glance on TIME
Message-ID: <132@resonex.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 6-Jun-84 21:27:48 EDT
Article-I.D.: resonex.132
Posted: Wed Jun  6 21:27:48 1984
Date-Received: Mon, 11-Jun-84 00:40:18 EDT
Organization: Resonex Inc., Sunnyvale, CA
Lines: 67


    Looking for more in gaming is a reasonable thing.  Assuming its avenues of
possibility are as broad as the imaginations of those who play it, a great   
deal of creativity can be invested and rewards returned.  My own experiences 
with frp have been very good, especially in the way my game has developed with
the input of a group of enthusiastic artists.

    There are artists I know who paint scenes, characters, events... as part of
their gaming.  There are writers who use the situations and concepts developed 
in the game as direct inspiration for their writing, or their writing is part of
their campaign.

    One thing that I have enjoyed most has been the development of rules which
are more exciting, realistic and satisfying than those we started with, seven
years ago.  I am not interested in convincing anyone of their superiority.  I
would like to throw them out there, though, because maybe you'll have fun with
some of these ideas.

    The time system that I use is not based on out-of-combat movement.  It is a
linear time scale, so that time starts at "0 seconds" at the beginning of a   
"melee" and progresses.  Each action, or move, requires time to perform.  The
time to move is based on the distance moved and the rate.  An individual moving
at 12" would move (by my reconing of 6 second melee turns (time scale) and 1"=1'
(distance scale)), 120' in six seconds at a full sprint.  This would mean that 
an unarmored human would run at 13 and a third miles per hour.  Granted, this is
a little fast, but this speed could hardly by maintained very long.  Armor and 
other encumbering factors subtract from this speed.

    So, if a dragon wanted to move 250' at 24" it would take him/her (250/240)*6
seconds or 6.2 seconds.  This is a very simply way to determine not only how 
long any given move will take, but it allows one to know where, at any given in-
stant, an individual is.  This leads to amazing situations of people getting  
caught in crossfire while moving, and it allows you to figure out questions
like "Does s/he get caught in the dragon breath, or did s/he run fast enough
to be out of range?"

    To figure out the time a character or monster takes to act, I use a curve
my friend Ethan Karp created.  The TAQ (acronym for Timed Attack Quotient) is
based on a character's dexterity.  A character's dexterity is cross referenced
with a TAQ, and the result is the number of tenths of seconds it takes to act.
A melee then can be a sequence of time counted in seconds rather than abstractly
defined as rounds or turns. 

    This is quite useful for precise or mathematical applications in the game. 
It also allows you to solve many time related problems logically, rather than 
in the terms of jargon.  For instance, one may say that a Magic Missile takes
10 seconds to cast -.3 seconds per level, and so forth.

    TAQ is an arbitrary curve on a graph.  We have play-tested it for years 
and like a particular correspondence of dexterity to TAQ.  You may have a diff-
erent preference to the scale in this or the above rate-suggestion.  If you find
it too fast, use a different ratio.  Our TAQ chart looks a bit like this:
Remember: 1 TAQ = 0.10 seconds.

   dex:  30 -----> 20 TAQ       dex:  16 ----> 56 TAQ      dex:  9 ----> 112 TAQ
         24        32		      15       60                8       124
	 22        36		      14       66                7       140
	 20        40		      13       76                6       160
	 19        44		      12       80	         5       180
	 18        48                 11       90                4       210 
	 17        52                 10       100	         3       240

WIN!         

ta ta Zen-La,
Erik Guttman