There are many different terms for different discrete sections of time in roleplaying games. For example, a large linked sequence of stories is a campaign or chronicle.
Individual sections of a campaign might be called a story.
Sections of a story might be a session or chapter.
A session is made up of scenes.
Scenes are sometimes divided into turns.
What are some synonyms for these words I haven’t used here? What have you seen used in games you’ve played or groups you’ve played with?
14 responses so far ↓
1 Sol // Jun 26, 2008 at 3:05 am
(Story) Arc for story.
Episode for session, particularly if they are designed to be a coherent bit of story instead of just what happened until we ran out of time.
Encounter is the new term of art for scenes in Star Wars and D&D, but IMO the concept is pretty badly confused.
Round is either a turn or a subdivision of a turn.
I never really thought about it before, but scenes and rounds seem to be not typical concepts in the diceless games I play in. For instance, a very standard Amber technique would be to switch focus away from the middle of a combat to a different PC somewhere else in the game universe to create tension (and give the GM time to think out what is happening). That strikes me as nearly unthinkable in the Star Wars game I play in — but then, the PCs usually cluster as a group. (Though how much of that is because if we weren’t clustered, we’d just have to sit out the multi-hour combat session, I can’t say….)
2 Michael Martin // Jun 26, 2008 at 5:13 am
I’ve generally used round as a synonym for “turn” - the few games where “turns” are an official part of the rules, my groups have blithely ignored them.
It is also very common in my groups - especially if they’re large - to split rounds into “phases”. If a round is a span of time in-game in which all characters take one action, a phase is a span of time *out* of game in which one player takes one action. All players may declare their actions (declaration phase), followed by a resolution phase where the dice are rolled. Alternately, each player may declare then resolve immediately, and a phase is then one player declaring and taking an action.
With a small number of players or a more freeform system, I’ll usually ignore phasing until the action starts to bog down as players trip over one another.
3 Etrangere // Jun 26, 2008 at 5:56 am
Sometimes there’s Story Arcs, a subdivision of a chronicle/campaign which are made of several stories.
To me a story is made of scene. The session subdivision is only how many times players have a reunion to finish the story. (obviously seldom cut before the end of a specific scene though).
4 Liza // Jun 26, 2008 at 7:51 am
My gaming groups have generally used turns, rounds, sessions, and campaigns (going from smallest unit to largest). When I use the words, a “turn” is one person’s time to take action, and a “round” is the time in which everyone takes their turns.
And at the end of a campaign… we put away those character sheets and it’s someone else’s turn to GM.
Now that I look at the words, though, a lot of them are most appropriate for old-style “sit down with your dice and attack an enemy” gaming. Most adventures I’ve been on have been a lot more open and exploring, and we don’t go into turns and rounds except when we’re actually in combat. Maybe we need new terminology!
5 Ashley // Jun 26, 2008 at 8:28 am
My BBS never uses campaign or chronicle. We always refer to finished storylines that have included a definite battle or confrontation as an adventure, while a more character-oriented storyline is a GOOPY EMO ANGST FEST WIT’ CHEESE.
But that’s freeform roleplay without dice or dungeons, so it may not be what you’re talking about.
6 FungiFromYuggoth // Jun 26, 2008 at 8:29 am
I think the words for time often depend on what the story metaphor for the game is. Novel? Scenes, chapters, and chronicles. Television? Scenes, episodes, arcs.
TORG did a good job of cinematic roleplaying, and it had scenes and acts. The scenes were divided into standard and dramatic - in a dramatic scene, the odds were stacked against the players.
Choosing your metaphor and structure is a way of narrowing down the kind of story you want to tell, I think.
7 Rathgar // Jun 26, 2008 at 9:01 am
segment = phase as per Michael@2
adventure ~ chapter
phase for a discrete section of a campaign bound by scope
8 Swestrup // Jun 26, 2008 at 12:01 pm
In our groups, Campaigns often consist of smaller multi-session Adventure’s.
Also, in at least one game I play, Turns are subdivided into both segments and phases. (the first being a time unit, the second being an action unit…)
I’ve also played at least one game in which combat was measured in real-time units. ie, minutes and seconds so that a spell caster, for instance, may actually need to keep track of the fact that they can cast a type 1 spell in 1.45 seconds…
9 Berni // Jun 26, 2008 at 12:54 pm
I have seen the following terms..
Quest - Complete set of tasks associated with completing an objective.
Task - Specific actions to be completed.
Objectives - same as task.
10 Dougals // Jun 26, 2008 at 4:46 pm
In a more cinematic game (or one based on a TV series, such as Star Trek), you could use broadcast-ish terms.
campaign = series
adventure = episode
encounter = scene
major NPCs = guest stars
players = cast or crew
And so on…
11 Konrad // Jun 26, 2008 at 5:01 pm
The group I gamed with in college just used rounds, sessions, and campaigns. Since we met at most once a week, the campaigns never got large enough to need further subdivision.
The open source turn-based strategy game (with a fantasy RPG veneer) Battle for Wesnoth has “campaigns” divided into “scenarios”. However, I would reverse the terms, since each “campaign” is a story arc, and each “scenario” has a military objective (survive X turns or kill enemy leader).
12 GWW // Jun 27, 2008 at 11:20 am
We always called any gathering of gaming a session, regardless of what we were actually doing during that session.
I never really bothered breaking our amorphous evolving beast we called roleplaying down into names.
Don’t get me wrong… when we started characters we always said we were starting a new “campaign”. But said “campaign” didn’t really have a clear set of parameters or rules of ending.
So we just played every night we could, which was 90% of them… until we got bored or everyone died. Heh. And then we’d start a new campaign.
I think our longest campaign lasted 3 years. And our shorted like 3 minutes.
Oh to be 20 and sitting in a cinderblock chicken house turned illegal still turned roleplaying den with 4 of your best mates eating pizza and laughing again…
13 Erik // Jun 27, 2008 at 5:11 pm
Our group plays Ars Magica, where the overall level is called a “saga”. Ars Magica is also unusual in that experience is not awarded for individual encounters but per season of game time, and role-playing is rewarded while action is not (unless it’s properly in character). We have multiple internal storylines, explicit scenes, and the game-canonical format is troupe-style roleplay, where each player has multiple characters who are generally not on stage at the same time and who play off each other in subsets in a given scene. If a player has 2 characters on at a time, someone else usually takes over one of the roles. “Sessions” are just how long we end up playing on any given day.
Internal game times are measured in normal calendar units, while spells are measured in moons, suns (sunrise to sunset, 2 per day), and diameters (the time it takes for the sun to move one solar diameter across the sky, about 2 minutes). Combat rounds are a necessary evil at the bottom level to keep the sword-swingers straight.
So far, we’ve been going for 16 game years over 3 player years, and we tend to “pulse” - one session may cover a year with only 5-6 roleplayed scenes, while on other occasions a single day’s events may take one or more full sessions.
In games, time is very much what you make it.
14 John Dallman // Jul 8, 2008 at 10:44 am
I try to separate rules systems’ terms for the divisions of time, which are usually short times in combat (round, turn, phase, segment, strike rank, et al) from terminology to describe the long-term structure of a game.
I’ve used “meta-campaign” to talk about the collective history of a number of GMs with connected settings, which can span years; the games I was playing over last weekend are still in the same meta-campaign as ones that were played in 1977, although a good deal has changed.
Several people use “Arc”, lifted from television series nomenclature, with much the same meaning, for a long series of sessions that has an overarching plot or theme. The thing that provides a arc boundary generally the GM wanting to take a break and let someone else run a regular session.
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