Time and Character Age in Glorantha/RuneQuest

[Evilroddy]

To the wise Magi of BRP Central:

A few questions about time and pre-generated character-age in Glorantha. A Gloranthan year is 294 days. A terrestrial year is 365.25 days. Thus a conversion factor of 294/365.25 can perhaps be used to convert Gloranthan character ages to their terrestrial equivalents. Thus a 15 year old new adult in Glorantha is about 12 year old in terrestrial terms and a 21 pre-generated character is about 17 years in age in terrestrial terms. 

The above assumes that Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days are the same as their terrestrial counterparts. Assuming that is true for a moment, then Gloranthan pre-generated characters seem awfully skilled and experiences for 17 year old teenagers in my humble opinion.

So are Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days equivalent to their terrestrial counterparts? What accounts for the high skill levels of such young pre-generated characters? What is a natural life span barring death by violence for a normal, mundane human being?

Cheers and good gaming!

Evilroddy.  

 

[metcalph]

Minutes, seconds, hours, days and years are the same as on earth.  Gloranthans just age slightly faster than us.

[Qizilbashwoman]

2 minutes ago, Evilroddy said:

To the wise Magi of BRP Central:

A few questions about time and pre-generated character-age in Glorantha. A Gloranthan year is 294 days. A terrestrial year is 365.25 days. Thus a conversion factor of 294/365.25 can perhaps be used to convert Gloranthan character ages to their terrestrial equivalents. Thus a 15 year old new adult in Glorantha is about 12 year old in terrestrial terms and a 21 pre-generated character is about 17 years in age in terrestrial terms. 

The above assumes that Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days are the same as their terrestrial counterparts. Assuming that is true for a moment, then Gloranthan pre-generated characters seem awfully skilled and experiences for 17 year old teenagers in my humble opinion.

So are Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days equivalent to their terrestrial counterparts? What accounts for the high skill levels of such young pre-generated characters? What is a natural life span barring death by violence for a normal, mundane human being?

Cheers and good gaming!

Evilroddy. 

I think I just assume people age differently? So a 15yo Gloranthan is identical to a 15yo human, time be damned.

[jajagappa]

A year is a year. As others have noted, there's no reason to try to work out some conversion. 

[radmonger]

Brithini are moral paragons, and so, once they attain mastery of their caste skills, don't age at all.

Orlanthi age faster than the Earth norm. Draw your own conclusions as to how moral the worshipers of the god of murder actually are .

[soltakss]

7 hours ago, Evilroddy said:

A few questions about time and pre-generated character-age in Glorantha. A Gloranthan year is 294 days. A terrestrial year is 365.25 days. Thus a conversion factor of 294/365.25 can perhaps be used to convert Gloranthan character ages to their terrestrial equivalents. Thus a 15 year old new adult in Glorantha is about 12 year old in terrestrial terms and a 21 pre-generated character is about 17 years in age in terrestrial terms. 

The above assumes that Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days are the same as their terrestrial counterparts. Assuming that is true for a moment, then Gloranthan pre-generated characters seem awfully skilled and experiences for 17 year old teenagers in my humble opinion.

So are Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days equivalent to their terrestrial counterparts? What accounts for the high skill levels of such young pre-generated characters? What is a natural life span barring death by violence for a normal, mundane human being?

The way I do it is to assume that a second is a second, a minute is a minute, an hour is an hour, a day is a day and a year is a year.

So, I don't count the number of seconds in a year and then compare the real world and Gloranthan years. If someone is 15 in Glorantha then they are the same as a 15 year-old in the real world. If you don't do that then some things can get very icky indeed.

The only place that falls down is when extending magic for long times, if it counts time in days, or whatever. I get around that by scaling the extending up to hours, then days, then weeks, then seasons, then years, so no need to measure exactly how long something lasts. 

[Qizilbashwoman]

21 hours ago, radmonger said:

Orlanthi age faster than the Earth norm. Draw your own conclusions as to how moral the worshipers of the god of murder actually are .

this is an... unhinged take, radmonger

[Evilroddy]

23 hours ago, metcalph said:

Minutes, seconds, hours, days and years are the same as on earth.  Gloranthans just age slightly faster than us.

metcalph:

Yeah, but the idea of people being the equivalent age of 12 years old who are fighting and making families is a bit off-putting to me. Also the idea that people who are the equivalent of terrestrial 17 year olds having skills at such high levels is a bit odd too. An accelerated rate of aging should not accelerate the rate of learning and skill uptake.

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy. 

[Evilroddy]

23 hours ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

I think I just assume people age differently? So a 15yo Gloranthan is identical to a 15yo human, time be damned.

Qizilbashwoman:

Good point about ignoring the time differential. So are you really an Iranian/Persian Qizilbashi with the red turban and all?

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

[metcalph]

3 minutes ago, Evilroddy said:

Yeah, but the idea of people being the equivalent age of 12 years old who are fighting and making families is a bit off-putting to me. Also the idea that people who are the equivalent of terrestrial 17 year olds having skills at such high levels is a bit odd too. An accelerated rate of aging should not accelerate the rate of learning and skill uptake.

15 year old gloranthans are 15 years old in earth years, not 12 years.  

[Evilroddy]

21 hours ago, radmonger said:

Brithini are moral paragons, and so, once they attain mastery of their caste skills, don't age at all.

Orlanthi age faster than the Earth norm. Draw your own conclusions as to how moral the worshipers of the god of murder actually are .

I spit on the ossified Brithini and their alien ways. Let the winds of change sweep them away! 😉

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

Edited April 22, 2023 by Evilroddy

[Evilroddy]

1 minute ago, metcalph said:

15 year old gloranthans are 15 years old in earth years, not 12 years.  

Metcalph:

Yes, but the year is shorter and so the effective age is lower. I know it might seem light spooky God Learner maths, but the numbers don't lie!

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

[Evilroddy]

23 hours ago, jajagappa said:

A year is a year. As others have noted, there's no reason to try to work out some conversion. 

Jajagappa:

It's a God Learner thing. Temporal mapping of the multiverse. it's a hard bad-habit to break!

Cheers and good gaming.

Evilroddy.

 

[Josh Neff]

Glorantha isn't a spheroid planet, the sun doesn't orbit the world because of gravity, and diseases aren't spread by viruses or bacteria. Glorantha isn't science. I think it's safe to assume that however many days are in a year compared to ours, the ages still match up because they just do.

[soltakss]

3 hours ago, Evilroddy said:

Yeah, but the idea of people being the equivalent age of 12 years old who are fighting and making families is a bit off-putting to me. Also the idea that people who are the equivalent of terrestrial 17 year olds having skills at such high levels is a bit odd too. An accelerated rate of aging should not accelerate the rate of learning and skill uptake.

That is why I treat a year as a year. A 17 year old in Glorantha is the same age as a 17 year old on Earth. No need to worry about adding up days to work out the age, as nobody does that in real life.

Don't forget that people learn skills earlier in ancient societies, as they learn real-life skills instead of being at school. So, what we learn in school they would instead be learning RQ skills.

[DrGoth]

I've thought about this from time to time (no pun intended) and can only come up with a few answers.

The first is you do what Soltakss and others have said

19 hours ago, soltakss said:

treat a year as a year. A 17 year old in Glorantha is the same age as a 17 year old on Earth. No need to worry about adding up days to work out the age, as nobody does that in real life.

I believe that is the official approach, as judged by my memory (grin) and the background tables in RQG.

Or you do some arithmetic. 294 days is very close to 80% of 365 days. You can throw it in a calculator or a spreadsheet for a precise number, but .8 or 1.25 (365/294) is close enough.

Then you can either say "I'm quoting all ages in earth years and if you actually want the Glorantha years, multiply that number by 1.25.  So a 16 year old in earth terms is 20 years old in Gloranthan years."

or

"I am quoting everything in Gloranthan years, but you need to multiply by 0.8 to get earth years. So when I say someone is 20, that's actually 16 in earth years."

The first choice (go with the official approach) is obviously the easiest mechanically, but it may not sit well with some people, as we've seen in this thread.

If you don't like that, I'd suggest quoting everything in earth years and multiplying by 1.25 if you really want to find out how long ago they were born. But really, it's up to you. YGWV.

Of course, you could say Gloranthan days are 1.25 times the length of earth days, but that probably belongs in the "your dumbest theory" thread.

[mfbrandi]

On 4/21/2023 at 12:46 PM, Evilroddy said:

A Gloranthan year is 294 days. A terrestrial year is 365.25 days. Thus … a 21 pre-generated character is about 17 years in age in terrestrial terms …

Gloranthan seconds, minutes, hours and days are the same as their terrestrial counterparts. Assuming that is true for a moment, then Gloranthan pre-generated characters seem awfully skilled and experiences for 17 year old teenagers

IIRC, in RQ3, Westerners had days of two 16 “hour” periods — i.e. 32-hour days if we say 1 Western “hour” = 1 Earth/IRL hour. (Even if that wasn’t the original intention, and I have no idea whether it was.)

• EARTH (actual): 365.25 days/year × 24 hours/day = 8,766 hours/year
• GLORANTHA (proposed): 294 days/year × 32 hours/day = 9,408 hours/year
• 1 Gloranthan year = 1.07 Earth years
• Starting “21” Pregen is 22.54 Earth years old

A 30-hour day would get you closer, but doesn’t have any textual support that I know of, and 32 — being a power of 2 — subdivides quite nicely (if not as well as 24).

This, it seems to me, is minimally disruptive, and if you are worried about daily travel times, fatigue is as much a factor as number of hours in the day, so you can — if you want — play it that there are about as many usable hours in the day, but with some hours in hand for “heroic efforts”. (Gloranthan animals are adapted to their longer day, but that doesn’t mean they have to be active for the same proportion of it as we are of ours.)

More time for telling stories round the campfire. Longer crepuscular periods giving humans and Uz more chance to avoid each other?

Just a thought.

[mfbrandi]

6 minutes ago, DrGoth said:

Of course, you could say Gloranthan days are 1.25 times the length of earth days, but that probably belongs in the "your dumbest theory" thread.

Well, that is my normal hang-out!

[Bren]

On 4/22/2023 at 10:26 AM, Josh Neff said:

Glorantha isn't a spheroid planet, the sun doesn't orbit the world because of gravity, and diseases aren't spread by viruses or bacteria. Glorantha isn't science. I think it's safe to assume that however many days are in a year compared to ours, the ages still match up because they just do.

I think this is reasonable. Now and again I think, "Huh, the Gloranthan year is only 294 days while an earth year is 365.25 ish days." Then I shrug and go on to worry about something more concerning, like "What does the Glorathan sky look like at night?" or "In Sartar, can you see the Red Moon in the daytime?" or "Why don't people like including the ducks in their Glorantha?"

[Akhôrahil]

On 4/21/2023 at 1:46 PM, Evilroddy said:

A few questions about time and pre-generated character-age in Glorantha.

In my opinion, this stuff has only one good solution - don't think about it too hard, and handwave away any questions that arise. It just does not make sense, and the more you try to make sense of it, the worse it gets. It boggles my mind why Greg Stafford wanted to introduce this complication, but here we are. Maybe the Lunars could HeroQuest a Moon Season into existence some day, that would help matters.

A day is a day. A year is a year. But then— hey, what did I say about thinking about it too hard?

(You probably need to nail down the length of a pregnancy, which is done in a functional way in Six Seasons in Sartar.) 

Edited April 24, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[DrGoth]

13 hours ago, Bren said:

I think this is reasonable. Now and again I think, "Huh, the Gloranthan year is only 294 days while an earth year is 365.25 ish days." Then I shrug and go on to worry about something more concerning, like "What does the Glorathan sky look like at night?" or "In Sartar, can you see the Red Moon in the daytime?" or "Why don't people like including the ducks in their Glorantha?"

In order

1. starry
2. Yes (we are all us. Including you. Get used to it.)
3. because they do not realise that ducks are a noble and tragic race

[Bren]

5 hours ago, Akhôrahil said:

(You probably need to nail down the length of a pregnancy, which is done in a functional way in Six Seasons in Sartar.) 

How does Six Seasons handle pregnancy?

[Akhôrahil]

33 minutes ago, Bren said:

How does Six Seasons handle pregnancy?

Makes it one Gloranthan year long, which makes the length in weeks about correct.

Edited April 24, 2023 by Akhôrahil

[Qizilbashwoman]

24 minutes ago, Akhôrahil said:

Makes it one Gloranthan year long, which makes the length in weeks about correct.

to clarify, a human pregnancy irl averages 280 days

[Akhôrahil]

7 minutes ago, Qizilbashwoman said:

to clarify, a human pregnancy irl averages 280 days

Which is the exact length of a Gloranthan year discounting Sacred Time, so it works out nicely.