I posed this question over at the Tavern, but I should have asked it here.

I posed this question over at the Tavern, but I should have asked it here.

I posed this question over at the Tavern, but I should have asked it here.

 

I have a question concerning ‘Freebooters of the Frontier’ . In the rules it talks about ‘Duration’ as a tag for how long things last, for example a Torch has a duration of 3, this ‘duration’ is classified as being short (1 being brief and 5 long lasting). But how exactly do you specify the length of this ‘duration’? Does the Judge simply announce “Oh by the way your torch gutters and goes out plunging you into complete blackness”?

7 thoughts on “I posed this question over at the Tavern, but I should have asked it here.”

  1. I think that’s the idea. Duration as a resource, essentially. Whenever you would use up or take away a resource in a GM move, you tell the player to mark off one duration unit.

  2. Eric Nieudan

    I don’t understand. I get it that if as a result of a GM move you might scratch one use, but other than that I can’ get my head around duration. Is it a variable length of time? If so how do you decide the length of one use?

  3. Andrew P

     The point of making duration a resource is that you don’t have to track time. It makes sense if you look at your game as it was a movie or novel where it’s about events, rather than a boardgame with scales and measurements all over.

    You can always establish that a torch will last about an hour, but it’s never exactly that. Drafts, ambiant humidity, quality of the materials used will change that. Same with spells: who’s to say that the magic user’s invisibility will last exactly five minutes? Maybe their state of mind and the events around them will make it burn quicker.

    As the GM, whenever I get to make a move (as a result of a 6- or when the players expect me to say something), I’ll consider the option of expanding their ‘time resource’ by saying something like “as you keep exploring, time passes and your torches are burning low – tick one duration. Same for your Detect Traps spell, wizard.”

    It’s very much like being a GM in a trad RPG. You get to decide how fast time passes. Except with this system you don’t refer to time. Which is rather apt, since no one has a watch…

    Hope I wasn’t too ranty here – let me know if I’m not making any sense =)

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