The joy of time-skips (RPG Blog Carnival )

Of Dice and Dragons themselves give us this months prompt Time, both in world and above the table, for the RPG Blog Carnival. I have gotten a fair few strategies to make the real-world clock run - from 'run with 3' roster games, regular time slots, and a lot of practice with the same Friday-night open table time slot. That much I feel I have an approach, even if life still curb-stomps it from time to time. In game time though. That still challenges me - specifically downtime and the prying loose players white-knuckled grip on the hour-glass. I had one great experience recently where in the Hexcrawl 25 campaign the players wandered into a wizards tower held in temporal stasis and decided to thermite the widge that was making time pass very slowly inside. This effectively tossed them four and a bit years into the future which was just great as a DM. One player of the roster was still out and active for that four years and they, coincidentally, moonlighted as the local postman so they…