Time models

[deathwinged]

An(other) argument recently came up between me and a friend about Istarian time and aging, development, and requirements for the rite. A summary:

Points he made:

• Bipeds would die too quickly with an accelerated time model.
• The time that passes between roleplays sometimes spans days OOC, but much less time IC

My points:

• Dragons, due to their vast natural lifespans, would develop even more slowly than bipeds.
• The rite of passage has a 30 day minimum age for adulthood; any sane body of elders would require the individual to be an adult by cultural standards. Even using Dark Ages logic, this wouldn't be less than 10-12 years old, not taking into account longeivity.
• Certain biped children would not be the age they are now without such acceleration.
• Dragons, by his standard, would have to be prodigal to learn at the rate it would dictate. All of them. Yet I see no skyscrapers over Istaria... This eliminates the character type who learns by stubborn repetition, as well.

Your thoughts would be vastly appreciated. My proposed model involves taking advantage of the lore stating that Istaria is the consolidation of several other worlds, then extrapolating that the different time streams of said worlds would also be fused, forming a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey.. Stuff. I know I've seen a thread on this before, but I've yet to see a more acceptable standard..

[Hoberton]

An(other) argument recently came up between me and a friend about Istarian time and aging, development, and requirements for the rite. A summary:

Points he made:

• Bipeds would die too quickly with an accelerated time model. We're gifted and we neither age or ever really die.
• The time that passes between roleplays sometimes spans days OOC, but much less time IC

My points:

• Dragons, due to their vast natural lifespans, would develop even more slowly than bipeds.
• The rite of passage has a 30 day minimum age for adulthood; any sane body of elders would require the individual to be an adult by cultural standards. Even using Dark Ages logic, this wouldn't be less than 10-12 years old, not taking into account longeivity. Age has no meaning for Dragons either since they are gifted and the changes from Hatchling to Ancient are just through rituals.
• Certain biped children would not be the age they are now without such acceleration. We don't have an age, we are always the same age.
• Dragons, by his standard, would have to be prodigal to learn at the rate it would dictate. All of them. Yet I see no skyscrapers over Istaria... This eliminates the character type who learns by stubborn repetition, as well.

Your thoughts would be vastly appreciated. My proposed model involves taking advantage of the lore stating that Istaria is the consolidation of several other worlds, then extrapolating that the different time streams of said worlds would also be fused, forming a big ball of wibbly-wobbly-timey-wimey.. Stuff. I know I've seen a thread on this before, but I've yet to see a more acceptable standard.. Can't have a standard time since age and time don't really mean anything in this game. We are always the same age. Even though the game has night and day, at the end of it we are still the same age.

I have put my comments in red. (Just my opinion of course).

[deathwinged]

To make my point clearer, this is from the roleplaying perspective; a number of characters are, at least in-character, non-gifted. Further, I maintain that the 30-day time requirement for dragons should translate to somewhere in that age range as far as a 'hatched' dragon (one actually born ICly from two player characters), as it is only logical to ensure that the new adults have achieved a measure of maturity mentally as well as physically. A mixed timestreams approach as I have suggested would allow players to 'grow' their characters at the appropriate pace while still interacting with others. This explains how one day might pass for a single character, yet a month or more might pass in the same time for another, without having to break the fourth wall.

[Hoberton]

I would suggest moving this to the Roleplaying area then.

[Azath]

a big ball of timey wimey stuff~ the perfect way to describe istaria time from an rp point of veiw.

This is how i think of istarian time:
The rip in time on the PoS could have caused the most perplexing time scale mix upppy model thingy ever seen!
Istarian dragons - gifted or not - don't age, due the fact that to ascend and go into the adult body, by lore you must be on the PoS at the time rip to ascend (i assume that brings the age of dragons up to what they would be had the sleeper an peak story never happened) and with that the ancients ascend not because of age but just drulkars reward for being wise and experienced so dragons can murder things easier.
Due to the rip in time; it may have caused istarian time to stop working. As i think of it; anything in istaria would be affected. Thus, nothing can 'age' - not age as we think of it anyway. In this the mind imroves through study, as would behavior through maturing; getting stronger and being responsibile with your strength and knowledge (so hatchlings - from an IC point of veiw - hatched in istaria - would still be act like a very young hatchling 'till it grew stronger and more knowledgebale - just like we do irl). And yes; by istarian time not working i do mean time essentialy stopped. Which may also explain how bipeds get no taller or smaller hehe.

[Racktor]

Not sure if this is exactly what you were looking for, but an Istarian day cycle takes an hour - so take the days played of a character, multiply it by 24, and divide it be 365 (given that Istaria's year is the same as our year, since gnomekindle/fall festival/summer festival happen 'once a year').

This puts most characters at a much younger age than you'd actually think. Racktor, in-game for about 1,000 days, is only 65 or so in Istaria.

Rite of Passage happens at 2 years old.
Ancient Rite of Passage happens at 6 1/2 years old.

Makes little sense but that's kind of the technical viewpoint of the passage of time.

Edit: Now that I re-read the first part of my post, that opens up another question.. if one of our years is 24 Istarian years, then the festivals go through a full cycle back to the start every 24 years, and each festival lasts 6 years.
From an RP standpoint, you would have to speed up time to explain some things... some poeple use days as their character's age - i.e. hatchlings go into RoP at 30 years old and ancient at 100 years old.
There really is no concrete system and I guess it's up to the individual player?

[Alisto]

I just say my character is such and such years old, and they don't get older unless I feel like letting them age due to something or other purpose that would make things interesting ( See: biffday parties, that thing where you've been married for such and such years, the day you turn 100 and start getting called an old geezer and handed a walking cane, etc.) I'm sure eventually I'll create a non-gifted character who I enjoy RPing and don't want to see die of old age, so this way seemed like the best approach to things, nor did I wish to have to keep track of my characters' ages @.@ *lazy*