Hyrule Castle has already had an in-character history of Hyrule, as well as events which have affected the lives of numerous player-characters--including the construction and destruction of Impa. Anyone who has read the Timeline knows years have passed in our version of Hyrule. Granted, I'm hoping to correct a couple things in that timeline (Kakariko mainly), and include many more events from Hyrule's history other than what Hylians and Castle Town care about... but that's the beside the point right now. I'd like to see what people think about how time passes in-character, or even if it really matters. I know other sites have explicitly have years pass in real time (and at one point the timeline seemed to be based on that). Another possibility would be that every real-life year is only a season in-character (which would allow more leeway for grand events we had in the past, namely the winter event which introduced Yeti as playable characters). So, I'd like to see what people think. Should there be a formal system for measuring the passage of years? And if so, how should it progress? Even if there is one, adhering to it on a character-by-character basis would I think be optional--but it would certainly help determine how long ago events transpired in-character. Plot events have happened four years ago in real life, but how long ago was that for Deku Scrubs and Zora?
I don't particularly feel a formal means is necessary. In a lot of ways, I think it would be too constricting. As long as its understood that time does still progress, playing loose with it should be fine. That said, if I had to make a choice, I prefer real-time year by year. With respect to plot, obviously this causes issues, which is why I'm hesitant to embrace anything particularly rigid.
...I'd personally say no, looking at how slow some of the threads are going ._. Like, for example, else Silas would've spent a year running around in a sinking Impa, so that wouldn't work out all that great. For me, at least. If you really want to include time, I'd say go for the "real year is a season"? Or maybe not have a system for it, but base it on plot things or something? (But I'd really rather not )
I'm not really a fan of realistic passage of time in RP settings. Especially on a 'calm' site like HC, it will cause characters to age more quickly than their writers had in mind, and plot things take years. How often have you seen a Quest that was finished in OOC-time as quickly as in IC-time, barring my and Squish's Moonshadow thread? I'm sorry I can't add anything articulate on the topic, there's a lot going on at the same time right now. I'll check back later and see if I can say something more intelligent then.
That's mainly why I suggested the 'every in-real life year is one in-character' idea, or some other slower passage of time. The idea was that if you started a thread in, say, Spring, it would essentially be paused in time, and be Spring throughout the duration of that thread. Anyway, responses both here and in the shoutbox so far have been completely against it. It... kind of makes me wonder if the timeline itself should even exist, or if all historical events should just vaguely be X number of generations ago; or "in recent years."
I like the idea of each ooc year being an IC season, and then we could like 'halt' the advancement of major amounts of time in that thread unless one of the players was like 'and then a month passed' or something.
I'm not a real fan of keeping time as the year goes on and you try to do season specific things say a Christmas thread and it gets finished in August it looses it's feel.
