How does the passage of time work in a tabletop RPG?

[Abelhawk]

Hey guys, I've never been able to find a D&D group despite many attempts, but I've really enjoyed reading the books and I love the ideas of having all kinds of things like generation and storytelling work using math. Anyway, I decided to make just a casual play-by-email RPG with my friend back home just to have a daily chance at practicing writing and creativity, and I came upon a problem:

How do you manage time passage in D&D or any other tabletop RPG? Some of the manuals have spells or processes that take months or years to finish, but how on earth could you implement that into a game? Time passes slowly enough as it is during a game... a battle that lasts 30 seconds could be an hour in real time. How on earth can you play a game in which the characters actually die of old age before you do (since they have that mechanic in the game)?

Are those mechanics in the games just to be covered in the event that players ever do get to that point? Or do you sometimes have to just say "You spend a month in town. You gain this much money and this much XP." I can't imagine that being a fun way to play, but maybe I'm just missing something. Long journeys also seem pretty hard to manage without just saying "You walk for two hours and make it to the next city." That's not satisfying at all.

Anyway, if anyone who's ever played tabletop gaming could enlighten me, I'm really baffled by this.

 

[Shadow Fury]

If I understand your concerns, you are not satisfied with the fact that a process that would take years in real life occurs in a few seconds in an RPG game. I don't see what your problem is then. Would you really like to wait for one long hour just to let your hero kill a bunch of monster midgets rather than one short minute? War games (or most games in general) are specifically made to speed up time while still mimicking real life circumstances realistically.

Perhaps these "tabletop RPGs" are not the kind of games you like, that's all.

 

[Abelhawk]

I'm not saying I won't like it if that's the case, I'm just wondering if that's how it works. I mean, will a player playing an elf character ever die of old age? Do game sessions ever say "a hundred years later..."? Maybe I just need to see an actual session in progress to understand.

 

[Shadow Fury]

That's how they are supposed to work. It can very easily happen that you get a message saying, "A hundred years later, you find yourself in bla bla bla..."
Also, I heavily doubt there's something called "dying of old age" in any game :3

 

[Abelhawk]

There are specific rules for it in D&D. Once you hit a "venerable" age, the DM rolls a certain amount based on your race, and you'll die at that age no matter what.

 

[Shadow Fury]

Oh well, that sounds so dumb. It is similar to having a countdown timer.
I guess I will never play a D&D game then.

 

[Abelhawk]

Ooookay then.