Building Bhakashal - Time

Art by David Bowers

The way you handle time in Bhakashal is absolutely crucial to the immersion and engagement that the setting creates. Today I will talk about time management in Bhakashal. But before I get to that, I want to address one potential time management option that Bhakashal does NOT use.

There has been a lot of talk lately about 1:1 time keeping. The basic idea behind it is taken from AD&D 1e, essentially the time between sessions (say you game once a week) is equivalent to the time that passes in the game. So if you end a session and return to the table a week later, a week of game time has passed as well. This sort of play style leads the players to spend the week in between games in contact with each other and the DM to detail tasks that their PCs will do in this “down time”. This can make for an interactive and immersive game that really draws in the players. 

As interesting as that approach can be, it requires commitments from the players outside of regular gaming time, and it forces the party and the referee to work to ensure that they are at a “safe spot” by the end of the session. I tried 1:1 time gaming with two of my playtest groups and found that these two issues made it such that 1:1 time was not for us. Most of our sessions are 2 hours long, so starting and ending at a “safe spot” is too constraining. The PCs would often rush to get things done faster and either make terrible decisions or ignore interesting aspects of the adventure to meet the “end of session in a safe spot” requirement. Also most of our adventures are not in dungeons or similar “delving” spots, so the short travel, delve, return to town cycle is not a good fit. In particular, there is a LOT of wilderness travel and ocean/river travel in Bhakashal, which means finding a “safe spot” by session’s end is sometimes next to impossible. 

Practically, 1:1 time works best for a traditional dungeon delve game, and Bhakashal is not that game.

However, this doesn’t mean that you can’t use time management to create immersive, engaging game play, you just have to do it elsewhere. The reason 1:1 timekeeping creates immersive and engaging play is that imposing time restrictions on the game makes it feel real. A week passes in the real world and a week passes in the game. But it isn’t the mirroring of real world time that makes it feel real, it’s the imposition of time constraints on the game, whatever their source. 

Time is independent of us, and by placing time restrictions in the game you create a feeling that the game world is independent of the players as well. This feeling of independence is key, in my opinion, to an engaging game. There are many ways to use time to create an immersive, engaging game experience beyond 1:1 time. Let’s take a look at a few.

A. Travel - Perhaps the single most important way that you can use time to impact the game in Bhakashal is travel. 

Movement through space takes time. 

As a lad I recall many games where my DM just hand waved travel “to get us to the dungeon”. As nostalgic as that style of play can be, it takes away from immersion and engagement in the game by “fast forwarding” to the “exciting” parts. 

Travel in Bhakashal is NEVER hand waved. If you are going from one place to another it will take time based on your mode of transportation, as a result Bhakashal has rules for PCs, mounts and ships to determine how long it takes to travel. In addition, each day of travel has four opportunities for encounters through random encounter checks. The day is divided into four segments, morning (6am - noon), afternoon (noon-6pm), evening (6pm to midnight) and night (midnight to 6am). Random encounter checks are made in each segment, and if an encounter is indicated, a d6 is rolled to determine the hour it occurs in the 6 hour span.

Note that encounters can be hostile or non-hostile. The encounter tables are weighted by hex type, in more traveled areas the tables are populated by fewer animals and monsters, in more remote wilderness areas the odds of a monster or animal are greater. 

Using this sort of system, some travel days are entirely uneventful, some have multiple encounters (some of which are hostile, some not), and you can get consecutive days of no encounters and consecutive days of multiple encounters. In short, it mirrors the pulp and fantasy literature, where the hero is often described as spending days traveling through an area without experiencing any sort of encounter at all. “Conan traveled for days along the coast without incident, until he arrived at the river mouth…”

You might say, “well, having no encounter at all doesn’t sound very exciting”, but you would be wrong. Because you roll for encounters at regular junctures, the players know these rolls are coming, and they are rolled in the open, there is an excitement to see if the encounter comes up for this segment of travel. There is also excitement over whether the encounter is with a monster/animal/hostile NPC or perhaps a caravan, a group of pilgrims or a friendly patrol. 

Rolling these things in the open makes them focal points for engagement. 

There is also room for player agency. The PCs can choose to travel on foot, on ship or by mount. The faster they travel the fewer possible encounters they will have. Also, routes matter, choosing more traveled routes will sometimes increase the time of the trip but reduce the possibility of a hostile encounter. 

So player choices are meaningful.

Also, Bhakashal has rules for exhaustion (either for the PCs or mounts) due to extended travel or weather extremes, so travel can have an impact on your PCs or mount’s effectiveness. It also has tables for generating weather, and weather, along with terrain, impacts both travel time and encounters. Fighting a monster during a torrential downpour is very different than doing so on a clear, sunny day. 

Also, refusing to hand-wave travel means that food, water, light sources and encumbrance are important, and must be managed, which is another source of engagement and immersion. Bhakashal has rules for how often PCs and mounts must rest, drink and eat, how much PCs, mounts and ships can carry, and rules for hunting and fishing for times when the party runs out of food. 

Ensuring that travel isn’t hand waved means that things like weather, rest and food actually matter to the game, and thus the environment seems real, and creates the immersion and engagement of interest. These are all really time related concerns, and the rules make time matter by giving it game-mechanical impacts. 

It also means that encounters represent possibilities, not just potential threats. PCs can encounter non-hostile groups that have information they need, they can role-play and socialize with NPCs and create alliances. Indeed, my players across groups have come to realize that a non-combat encounter with NPCs can frequently give them crucial information or alliances that aid them in their tasks. Hand waving travel, and thus time, robs the game of all of these interactions.

Surprise and encounter reaction rules in Bhakashal mean that not all monster/animal/hostile NPC encounters need to turn into combat encounters. Indeed, smart players realize this early and do what they can to avoid combat where possible. This has the effect of making the experience less like a video game and more like a role-playing game. When you don’t hand wave time, travel time leads to encounter rolls, and each combat you participate in makes you potentially more vulnerable for your next encounter. Managing all of this develops player skill, they learn to respect time and its passage, as the passage of time creates potential opportunities and challenges. 

Why would you want to hand wave that?

B. Resource Management and Exploration - I won’t say much about this as it has been covered before elsewhere many, many times, but the basic idea is that while exploring indoor spaces like dungeons and temples, lighting, rest and food are crucial. If you run out of light sources in an unlit dungeon you are increasing your odds of being surprised. If you run out of food you can starve. Also, encounters happen more often in dungeon environments (generally you are required to check for wandering monsters per turn rather than 4x a day). So when the party is exploring a dungeon environment, tracking time is crucial. If they have to “hole up” in the dungeon to heal or to regroup, the passage of time creates the risk associated with staying in one place in a hostile environment.

C. Resource Management and Logistics - BITD when we wanted to buy a horse or purchase weapons we would open the book and choose what we wanted, then deduct gold. Done and done. In Bhakashal you NEVER hand wave resource acquisition for the group, as this is just another form of hand waiving time. If you want to buy a sword, you have to find a blacksmith (which involves travel and potential encounters), interact with the blacksmith (which involves encounter reaction rolls and might necessitate finding a different blacksmith depending on their skills, resources or disposition) and pay the blacksmith.

One of the reasons I dislike 1:1 time gaming is precisely that it takes away these sorts of encounters and assigns them to “between session messaging”. It hand-waves the time you would spend role-playing these sorts of encounters and loses opportunities for world-building, immersion and engagement. 

Let me give a short anecdote. Early on in my first Bhakashal campaign the PCs arrived in the city and the first thing they decided to do was to purchase mounts. Right inside the city gates there is a large market, so this was pretty much the first thing they did as PCs in the campaign. I rolled an encounter reaction to see how the animal breeder would treat the party, this impacts price, what mounts are offered to the party, etc. I rolled a very high reaction, and the party got a very good price. Every roll has to be interpreted, so I had to decide why this particular breeder was willing to give the PCs such a good price. I decided that he had been robbed recently, so he was letting go of good mounts at lower prices as he needed the gold.

The PCs became intrigued, and offered to help find the thieves. And thus our first 4 session adventure was born. This would not have happened if we hand waved the process to “save time”. 

So Bhakashal recommends that you do not hand-wave resource acquisition in order to save time, instead you make it into an encounter of its own.

D. Solo Adventuring - Level Specific Class Roles - Another way time impacts immersion and engagement relates to tasks that the PCs take on as solo adventurers. This can come up for any number of reasons. Take our Wednesday game last week. The party found a Manual of Puissant Skill at Arms. It allows a fighter to level up after a month’s study of the tome. 

So if the PC fighter decides to use the book, what are the other PCs doing?

Bhakashal gives two recommendations in situations like these, one is to run it as an encounter and one is to run it in the background. The background option is there for solo play, as opposed to group play, for purely logistical reasons. If you run large groups as I do, running solo encounter sessions for each player, when players often have multiple PCs, isn’t always feasible. 

The solution to this problem is the patron and class role system. Parties in Bhakashal have patrons, patrons give them jobs to do that are related to faction goals on the part of the patron. But the PCs also have responsibilities outside of their patron’s tasks. Each class in Bhakashal has level specific roles outside of adventuring. Indeed, “adventuring” isn’t their “job”, it’s something they do when they aren’t performing their level specific class roles. 

So for example, a 1st level mercenary (fighter) can join a Noble House, and can sign up for placement as infantry, cavalry or as an archer. When not adventuring, it is assumed that the PC is participating in their level specific class role “off camera”. So a 1st mercenary that signed up as an archer would be on marsh patrol or ward patrol in their “off adventuring time”. 

Say the party warlock was going to spend several weeks researching a magical wand they want to find. While this is happening, the background option would be for the party mercenary to be on regular ward patrols for those weeks. There would be no rolling for encounters for the mercenary during this time, unless the player indicated they were interested in a solo play encounter while the warlock was doing her research.

So when the PC warlock does their research, it is possible for some or all of the other players to opt for background solo play, and they are assumed to be participating in their level specific class roles while the warlock is researching.

However, these same level specific class roles can be used for solo play encounters. If this was done, then the referee would roll for daily encounters while the PC was pursuing their class role. So that mercenary on Ward patrol might have an encounter with an unruly sell-sword who got drunk and started a fight in a tavern. Or the party Seer offering prayer guidance at the Temple might encounter a wealthy merchant that is praying for help as he is being targeted by assassins. 

These level specific class roles can be parlayed into encounters for the whole party, but they can also be used to give solo PCs an adventure all their own. Typically what playtesting has shown is that when a particular PC is occupied for some reason (say that warlock researching a wand), one or two of the other players will ask for solo play encounters while the rest of the party will opt for background solo play for their PCs.  

And of course there is always the case of too few players showing up for a session. Depending on where the party was when we broke last, this is a prime opportunity for solo play by the players that did show up. Or for smaller group play riffing off of a solo level specific class role from one of the PCs.

E. Solo and “Split-Party” Adventuring Outside of Level-Specific Class Roles

In addition to level-specific class role based activities, there are any number of different activities that PCs can engage in, either solo or as a split party, beyond “adventuring”. Some are encounters, some are in the background. 

Obviously the scope of these activities is practically infinite. I have had PCs decide to build tree houses in the forest, gamble at the docks, purchase art supplies to paint, virtually anything is possible. However, there are some relatively common tasks that the PCs can engage in, either singly or as split party groups, that can be pursued either as encounters or in the background. 

Some examples:

1. Information Gathering - Going to the Spider’s (Thieves) guild, meeting with patrons or allies of your patron, consulting sages, etc. are all ways to learn about magic items/creatures they have encountered, want to encounter or know they might encounter. So one solo/split group activity can be consulting with a sage/guild representative, etc., while a single party member is engaged in a particular task. This is an active task as it involves encounter reaction rolls.

2. Purchasing Items - Buying equipment/mounts, sell off items collected during adventuring. As mentioned before, individual party members or split groups can purchase equipment or sell off items they have found and do not need. These activities are role-played as encounters.

3. Create Magic - In Bhakshal PCs can create potions, scrolls or magic items.There are no “magic shops” in Bhakashal, if you want a magic item you have to find it in a treasure hoard, slay someone who has it and take it from them, steal it, or make it yourself. Bhakashal has potion, scroll and magic item creation rules for this very reason. While one party warlock is researching a magic item, another can be using that displacer beast heart they brought back from their last encounter to scribe a Mirror Image spell.  This task is best handled as an encounter, as it involves rolling against PC stats to see if the creation is successful or not, and sometimes involves interaction with patrons to access resources.

4. Learn a Skill - It takes the equivalent of a month of “off time” training (30 6 hour days)  or the equivalent spread out over more time, to gain a new skill or gain a bonus on an existing skill. A trainer must be located to do this, and it will have a time based cost. As there is no roll for this, it can be done in the background, e.g. the party mercenary trains for a week while the party warlock is researching a spell, a month later she trains for two weeks while a lower level henchman in the party does their level training, and two weeks after that she trains for a final week while the party Seer spends a week preaching and healing in the Raosk. At that point the mercenary could either add the new skill or add a point to an existing skill.

5. Learn a Language - The PC will spend [5 - (INT bonus)] months in constant study (4 hours per day - 120 hours/month), or the equivalent spread out over more time to learn to read a new language. To learn to speak, [10-INT bonus] months must be spent. Rather than roll to see if the PC is successful, there is an INT based time associated with the task, so it can be done in the background in a manner similar to skill training above.

6. Weapon Training - PCs can reduce the NPP on a weapon, for every 2 weeks spent in training the NPP for a weapon is reduced by 1. So a mercenary could gain proficiency in a new weapon with a month of training, either continuous or spread out. This is another background activity.

7. Train a Creature - Bhakashal presents many options for animal/creature domestication and training (mounts, guard animals, animal companions, etc.), this is a background activity and takes 4 weeks for animal intelligence creatures, 3 weeks for Semi-intelligent creatures, 2 weeks for Low intelligence creatures, or 1 week for Average intelligence or above creatures. A PC must have animal handling as a skill to do this, otherwise they must find a trainer with that skill and work with them to train the creature. If the creature is fantastic or very aggressive they will need a special trainer. 

8. Learn to Ride a Flying Mount - One month of training is required to learn to ride a flying mount, it requires a trainer, is expensive, and is generally done as a background activity. 

9. Learn to Shoot Missiles from a Mount -  one month of training is required to learn to shoot from a mounted position. Similar restrictions to learning to ride a flying mount, and it is also generally done as a background activity.

10. Level Training - When PCs have completed sufficient tasks and are eligible to level up, they must engage in level training. It is assumed that they are training whenever they are performing their level specific class role, so the training that happens at leveling is not complete, it is the culmination of “on the job” training and the experience gained from adventuring. Level training takes 1 week and costs 500gp per level achieved on training, e.g. a mercenary leveling up from 4th to 5th would pay 2500gp and train for one week to achieve their level based bonuses. it is also generally done as a background activity.

11. Practice PC Skills - all PCs in Bhakashal have skills outside of their class based abilities, for example, navigator, blacksmith, hunter, etc. They can take this time to engage in these skills. This can be done as a background activity or as an encounter as desired by the player. 

12. Note that any background activity can be run as an encounter if desired, e.g. if the party Caveral is engaged in weapon training and wants an encounter, then the referee can create an encounter in the training space with the trainer or another trainee, e.g. maybe a potential rival tries to make the PC look bad during training, or has some important piece of information for the PC. If desired the referee could roll to determine if any given activity of this kind is an encounter or done in the background as well.

F. Seasons and Festivals

Seasons pass in the real world, before we even had calendars people marked the passage of time by the passing of the seasons. Societies celebrate and mark important religious and social events with holidays and festivals. Bringing this to the campaign world creates real depth and engagement. The simple rule I use for seasons in my game is that the game world season matches the real world season, so if it’s winter where I live it is winter in the game world as well. You adjust the weather based on the game world, e.g., winter in Bhakashal doesn’t have snow like winter does in my part of the world. 

Festivals are also an important marker of the passage of time. Bhakashal has 10 regularly occurring festivals that mark seasons and important cultural benchmarks. In addition to giving the game world flavor and depth, they give it a sense of the passing of time and history. 

G. Persistent Encounters

Another way you can use time to impact your game is through encounters with past foes/allies. Invariably when running a long term campaign certain foes/allies escape/leave and are forgotten, but you don’t have to do it that way. Instead, you can have that foe return at a later date. Sometimes you will have a plan for that foe such that you know when they will be coming back, but other times you do not, they are just fleeing and you have no plan. For those occasions, I insert that foe into the random encounter tables in the following way. 

Every time the party rolls a random encounter roll and additional d20. If a 20 comes up, the encounter is with the past foe/ally. If you prefer to make it more likely you can reduce the die to a d12 or lower. I prefer to keep it unlikely so it doesn’t happen right away. Having an old foe return after months of play is a real kick for the players. It also gives the campaign a depth to it. 

In my Wednesday after school game the party allied with a group of mercenaries that decided to betray their employer, but later they decided to betray the party, and took off with their mounts and their loot. I have now made that group of mercenaries into a ship’s crew, and every time we roll an encounter on the high seas there is a chance the party might meet the mercenaries that betrayed them…

H. Time Management Between Multiple Groups 

As it happens I run multiple campaigns for different groups, last year there were 7 groups, this year it’s 4. They are all operating in the same game world, and two of the 4 groups share a patron. Tracking time in game can also create immersion and engagement as it positions these groups with respect to each other. A brief anecdote can show how this works.

My Tuesday group was tasked by their patron, Quin Faal the Iolite, to retrieve a powerful magical artifact that had been stolen from him and hidden in a dungeon complex. They headed in, a party of 6 with 10 henchmen. After losing 3 henchmen and almost losing two PCs they decided they were in over their heads and bailed. They headed back to their patron and told him that they were not ready for this particular job as of yet, they wanted to wait until they were more powerful to complete this task.

In standard campaign play many DM’s would set aside this adventure for them to complete later. But not in Bhakashal! Patrons don’t generally wait for the party to level up before sending them on tasks, if they aren’t up to the job they find a group who is! In this case, Quin Faal sent our Wednesday after school group into the same dungeon and they were successful (sort of, this is the group who were betrayed by mercenaries outside of that dungeon). 

The point is that the game world doesn’t simply “stop” when the party can’t achieve a goal or changes their mind. This is, IMO, one of the most impactful ways to make time matter in your game. It is also one of the ways in which “player focused narrative gaming” differs from what is on offer in Bhakashal. The game does NOT center on the PCs and the players, so the game world doesn’t wait around for them to get their act together. This, I believe, was the heart of what Gygax was getting at with 1:1 time, not the ‘day passes in the real world day passes in the game world’ concept, but the idea that the game world progresses outside of the party’s actions. 

On a similar note, if the party decides to leave a dungeon, temple, fort, etc. after delving in and return at a later date, things happen while they are gone. Factions realign themselves, monsters/animals/NPCs are added, and some new status quo reasserts itself. Things don’t remain hermetically sealed until the party returns.

Conclusion

The point of all of these ideas is to make time matter to the game. It is remarkably tempting to hand wave many things in ongoing campaigns as they don’t seem sexy. Travel from point A to point B for example can seem quite pointless, “just get to the adventure”, they cry. But removing travel from the game takes away from the adventure, and takes away from the immersion and engagement of the game. Making the PCs and players feel the impact of time, whether through resource management, travel, level specific class role activities or otherwise, gives the game world a lived in, organic, real feeling. 

It’s well worth your time.