Alternatives to clocks

Alternatives to clocks

Alternatives to clocks

Hey folks, I’m designing a fantasy PbtA game* and it uses clocks right now. But clocks feel too advanced for the “ancient and storied” feel I want for the game. Has anyone hit on better metaphors? A simple track, like the XP track, could work. I was thinking maybe a sword or a flagon that you’d fill in vertically?

Anyone done something like this or had ideas along this line?

* Demihumans

66 thoughts on “Alternatives to clocks”

  4. Yeah, hourglass is what I thought of too. Three sections in the top half, three in the bottom. Once you start filling in the bottom is when things get serious

  6. Sundial doesn’t work for me because I feel like it’ll just look like a clock, right? I mean unless it’s very detailed and thus harder to use.

    Clearly I need to get a graphic designer already.

  11. Oh, I really like moon phases. I couldn’t find a good example, but I am imagining a circle with a series of vertical lines that you fill in with black from left to right (or vice versa), so it looks like a full moon waning.

  18. Yeah, a circle divided straight down the middle, then with the right arcs on either side of that division, becomes a moon being occluded step by step. Seems like a good way to get whatever number of steps you want.

  22. The moon is full when you start and you darken pieces as you move to a new moon. It’s pretty great.

    I don’t know if it will be as intuitive as clocks and it will require more words, but I like it.

  24. Solar ecilpse… but I guess graphically that’s about the same. except it would be a horizontal progression of one circle occluding the other rather than starting as an arc then moving through a straight line to the opposite

    arc.

  26. Hmm, actually moon phases might not work. You’ve got full, gibbous, half, crescent, and new. That’s 5, but you actually need 7 if you’re going to replicate a harm clock (with “no harm” as one state).

    I guess I can go with full, gibbous, first quarter, half, last quarter, crescent, new.

  28. Too much of hack at this stage for me to fuck with how many wound levels people get. But maybe in the future. Still, I think first and last quarter suffice.

    Now I need to draw that thing. Thank god for drawing tools.

  29. It doesn’t quite line up with traditional phases also because of the need to fill then erase.

    I’d go Full, fill in the rightmost slice, then 2 slices, then the fill right half, then the first left-side slice, the 2nd, then New. That way it’s one pass thru, even if it loses the one-to-one link with the traditional phases.

  31. Also it needs to be waxing crescent and waning crescent, not gibbous. Gibbous and crescent appear on both sides of a full moon (obviously). I suppose one could be crescent and the other gibbous but that would be confusing.

    Jack Gulick – I’m confused by your “traditional phases” comment. Can you expound a bit? What do you see as the traditional phases?

  35. Yes, I think that’s it. What I was saying you couldn’t do (without erasing) was continue from New back to Full in the other direction.

    So you have to divide 1/2 the cycle into the necessary number of steps.

  41. Oh, but flowers don’t have a direction like clocks do. 🙁 I wonder how FE deals with the directionality issue. Are the last three life-threatening dots indistinguishable from one another? Or is the language like, “if you have X dots left, you need help, if you have x-2 dots left, you need serious help,” etc.?

  44. Could move edge to center or center to edge. It’s the only inherent directionality in radially symmetrical objects. Flowers might fill from the outside in. Good visual for the sense of ‘closing in’ with the center being implicitly you.

  45. Jack Gulick That’s my thinking as well, if I understand you correctly. Don’t go from New to Full to New again; just go Full to New so you have a white circle that you darken in maybe 4 to 6 steps.

  46. I didn’t consider two rows; that’s interesting.

    Directionality may not be a concern actually. It could be “when you have only 3 petals left [condition],” and, “when you blacken your last petal, your life on this world is no longer tenable.”

  47. I really want the full-to-new moon cycle but the difficulties in freehand drawing it are a concern. The moon is way more elegant and flavorful, but maybe too fiddly.

  51. I wouldn’t be too concerned about drawing anything freehand on the fly. I’m going to make clocks (more accurately, pies) or checkboxes regardless of what the label is, and I suspect so are most people.

  56. So here’s the new harm text:

    When a character gets hurt, the player blackens one of her harm flower’s petals. Fill in one petal for each 1-harm, starting with topmost and continuing clockwise.

    Typically, when a character takes harm, it’s equal to the harm rating on the weapon, attack, or mishap, minus the armor rating of the character’s armor. This number—harm minus armor—is called “harm as established.”

    As long as you have 3 healthy petals, harm heals automatically with time. If you have only 1 or 2 healthy petals, you get worse with time, unless stabilized. If your last petal is blackened, your character’s life has become untenable.

    When a character’s life becomes untenable, the player has to choose how to continue. Death is one option, but there are others.

  60. Epyllion is a PBTA game, and uses Moons, as many have suggested. It simplifies clocks into always having 4 parts, and just splits the circle into 4 pie pieces, for simplicity. You write what each step of the clock is right inside the wedge.

  66. Very late to the party but I once wrote an Ars Magica hack where I reskinned clocks as cycles based on seasons/calendar/harvest:

    Planting

    Culling

    Harvest

    Preserving

    Rationing

    Darkness

    You’re welcome to use it if it makes any sense 🙂

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