Not A Timeskip Discussion

Okay, nothing fancy here in terms of template or anything. It's just a discussion thread. Depending on the result of it and the ideas presented, it may involve a separate poll thread being made.

So in light of the recent poll done by Slayer where there was a lot of feedback and people voting, as well as the fact that it was fairly even in terms of split between yes and no in favour of a timeskip. I come to you all to discuss alternatives, the one I presented which some people from both sides seemed to consider was the option of accelerated time. Quoted from the poll thread below:

"An alternative to a timeskip, which I forgot to add in my initial drafting, is instead of a period of going from Point A to Point B it would instead create a dialation between the time that occurs between OOC and IC. For example, a year OOC would translate to two years IC. You're free to discuss this option as it creates more progress of time, without being a technical skip going on but still speeding up the rate that events can reasonably develop."

If this were to be done, it has two real options here that I can see. Two years in-character is a year out of character. This allows for time to progress reasonably faster over the time we spend RPing without something as straightforward as literally skipping a bunch of time but still moving things along a bit faster for both micro and macro plot RPers.

The more extreme version of this would be one year every season, this would mean every three months OOC is a year IC. This progresses time far quicker and allows for macro occurances like building up of resources, establishing organisation stuff to occur within OOC time very easily but puts a lot of pressure on members because as I said in the poll thread, the average post counts for most members a month is between 15-25 by using March statistics as our basis.

I was kinda hoping someone else would respond first but no one did, so i'll throw in my two cents of agreement on:

Gamma wrote:"An alternative to a timeskip, which I forgot to add in my initial drafting, is instead of a period of going from Point A to Point B it would instead create a dialation between the time that occurs between OOC and IC. For example, a year OOC would translate to two years IC. You're free to discuss this option as it creates more progress of time, without being a technical skip going on but still speeding up the rate that events can reasonably develop."

Shit already moves so slow on PH, not to mention everything is already 1:1 unless stated otherwise and i feel this could help with people's plot to get them moving to maybe even help participate in site plot. And imma be real, I don't really know what else to say in the first place other than I really support this idea, and i don't know if others do too because i haven't really looked at the discord to see any discussions, so maybe I'm just being slow, but we need the onsite documentation anyhow.

Most threads on PH are not particularly time-sensitive to a date within a year; most of the time, the time setting of a thread is only relevant in relation to other threads prior or after, or general events occurring within that year. That said, I don't know of any particular demerits to any micro plots if we had one season (3 months) be a year, or four IC years per OOC year. The only problem might be in impacting people who take several months to complete a single thread, but PH already operates on pretty much liquid time, where dates of events aren't as important as their relative position to other stuff, and at least dating them in some general time frame like a whole year. It might be difficult for some people to adapt to, but hopefully not enough to fall behind the timeline entirely.

Alright, I didn't weigh in on the original poll as I'd barely got my foot in the door but now that the discussion is starting up again I might as well throw out my two cents.

There's always winners and losers when it comes to time skips and dilations but, at the pace that PH moves, I don't see any reason to go against speeding up the in-universe time until another major event arises. Plenty of threads can take place across a broader time span, and this could probably incentivise more roleplay by explaining away how different characters could interact in a short space of time. We're already four hundred years out from the canon timeline, speeding through a few more years to make sure the next big events are set an appropriate amount of time apart from the previous ones seems fine to me.

3 months for a year is just too short, even worse than a season equaling a year. Like, I get we wanna move stuff forward, but that's not even compensating for our slower people at all. So I can't agree on that alternative, simply because it's not compensating and the timeframe is too short even for me.

So I think that some good stuff has been said, other things that are good but I don't agree with, and some things that I just don't agree with. : ^)

First, I don't like the accelerated time idea but that's partly because I am still a bit attached to my baby, Timeskip. However, I'm not opposed to it, but would like to state that it would make things kind of a pain in the ass? Like, there's going to have to be someone that's on top of keeping track of what year it is IC, which most likely will be a member of staff I realize as I'm writing this, but the simple 400-year difference to IRL time was much easier to explain to the new members as opposed to something like "Yeah, it's 2477 now but it'll be 2479 come to the end of the year."

Second, compromise is time. 3 years a year, once every 4 months, maybe add an extra on leap years to keep a solid 10 or something. I feel like 3 months should be enough time for any plot to be started and done by someone who can post consistently but that requires a partner who can give you what you're giving them. That being said, if it takes you a third of the year to start and end a personal story then that might be something you should aim to improve. Flashbacks/liquid time rules still apply anyways, so that wouldn't be too much of an issue, especially since the reason this has been a discussion was due to site plot and not personal plot. While personal plot should be considered, I don't think it should dictate the entire conversation when it isn't the problem that needs addressing at the current moment.

tl;dr Sure accelerated time, I miss my wife Timeskip but it's time to move on, if you think the entire site should not progress faster because you post slow, consider posting faster? Consider liquid time.

In theory, I don't really have any issues with dilated time, though in practice I don't really think that it's any easier to handle with the memberbase of PH, and in many ways I think it may actually prove more difficult. There is a certain degree of understanding that comes with 1:1 years, not to mention it just sort of makes those windows of downtime with characters fairly reasonable. "Yeah, idk, nothing really happened with them for a few months" feels marginally more reasonable than "they didn't do anything all year."

While I do wholeheartedly agree with Slayer's sentiment of "if you think the entire site should not progress faster because you post slow, consider posting faster," I also don't necessarily think accelerated time will really help that much with the actual problem we face. Chiefly, it was never just "this stuff will take a lot of time," it was "this stuff will take a lot of time and writing that nobody cares enough to do." That latter half is, imo, more pressing, because even if we in theory turn every year into 4 IC years, that puts us into something of a position where we still ultimately have to write out those important narrative beats, and now we are on a more significant time crunch to do so, which makes it all the more difficult to work around the tragic reality of PH, that sometimes niggas just don't post for you no matter how into a plot you are.

So, basically, much like the timeskip, I don't think anything is actually wrong with the premise here, but I think it would end up just being worse for us in the long run on account of the atmosphere and established workings of PH. At this point we work around 1:1 time fairly well, and while I do think it's ultimately unrealistic that a lot of these things happen within the timespans they do, I also think that's sort of just part of the narrative understanding that comes with roleplaying some autistic anime shit like PH in the first place.