OOC:Time

This article is written from an out-of-character perspective.

Time in the multiverse is fluid, means different things to different people, and runs at different speeds depending on various factors. Either or both the place where you were born and the place where you live may affect how quickly you experience time and/or how quickly you age.

There are many ways of measuring time. Below are some examples.

Forum time

"Forum Time" is the only technique of time measurement that is constant and can be relied upon to always run forwards. In this system, the multiverse was created on November 20, 2002 and is around 20 years old. Detractors of Forum Time state that the idea that the universe itself is younger than most of its inhabitants is stupid.

Real time

Real time uses the same rate of time advancement as "Forum Time", except with the date of the multiverse's creation being set further back to a point dependent upon the author's personal belief system and/or understanding of science. This has the advantage of the dates of events and the ages of characters being constant, which makes for more stable worldbuilding and removes the possibility of a situation where a player can be simultaneously 27 and 33 years old.

This system works extremely well in sports which have competitions happening at a pace similar to their real-world counterparts, such as cricket, rugby, and motor racing, but problems can arise when events happen more frequently than in real life; a football/soccer team running on real time would have players playing fifteen to twenty 90-minute matches on consecutive days, three times a year, which some people regard as unrealistic.

Original ordinary calendar

Both "forum time" and "real time" can be expressed in terms of the original ordinary calendar, or OOC. This method of datekeeping is the most convenient because it maintains an shared standard despite differences in the actual passage of time in the multiverse.

One month = one year

More common in ancient history than in the modern day. For a detailed description of the system see above, but multiply by a number between 28 and 31. Which number this is depends on whether you prefer Greg or Julian.

2/1 system

The 2/1 system maintains that there are two years per international cycle and one year per domestic cycle. Many sporting nations use this system, and its ubiquitousness throughout the sporting world is its own strength. It also ensures that interesting footballers remain interesting for a longer period of time.

The downside of this system, aside from no two nations being able to agree what the current year is, is that international cycles and domestic cycles are not linked to one another in any way and often travel forwards at different speeds. The domestic cycle even stopped entirely one time and had to be rebooted with a different operating system.

Audioslavian/Starblaydi roleplay time

A/SRPT was stumbled upon accidentally by the two nations it’s named after and both like to pretend it is somehow more realistic than the above 2/1 system.

In reality, ASRPT is exactly the same as the above technique but twice as slow. The advantage that both Audioslavians and Starblaydis are both in the same year is rendered moot by the fact that literally every other nation in the multiverse believes it’s a different year. Furthermore, so counter-intuitive is the idea that a domestic season might last two years that the very notion had put a stop to domestic football in Starblaydia until recently.

Mytanar-Quebecois Time

In light of recent discussions about the pacing of domestic and international football, as well as between football and other sports, the Mytanar-Quebecois Time was proposed by the two nations it is named after. This idea entails two year cycles, where domestic sports (primarily football) are played for the first of two years, to be followed by international sports (primarily NSWC), with the regionals to be incorporated under a roleplayer's pleasure.

In essence, the MQT provides multiple advantages. Given the greater parity of financials among domestic circuits compared to their real-life equivalents, as well as greater likelihood of safety risk or breakdowns of players' body due to interplanetary and interregional travels, one can argue this model to provide a more realistic, sustainable model for the players. Furthermore, the MQT also enables active interplay for nations who participate in multiple sports, and also helps in solving the misalignment over the player ages between domestic and international tournaments.

The downsides of this aging system, however, are that it may cause further complication in any situations where the domestic sports run at a much faster pace than the international pace, and also in that it may require numbering of league seasons for some associational leagues.

Koto time

"Time" is a dance music track released in 1989 by the group Koto and written by the Dutch composer Michiel van der Kuy. It provides no basis for a system of temporal progression in roleplay, but is rather catchy.

Stable present

Temporal

The notion of two years passing between World Cups (or similar) is advantageous in that it allows for a realistic aging of sports personnel, but in some cases can create difficulty if 2015 and 2065 have the same levels of technology, or are bizarrely similar in other ways besides people's ages. The approach taken by Candelaria And Marquez at one point is to continually keep the "present day" fixed, while pushing the date of the nation's emergence into international sport further and further back into the past with each passing cycle. This can lead to temporal paradoxes if the aim is to eventually synchronize one's Baptism of Fire with a long-forgotten historical crisis; whether this is a bug or a feature depends on one's point of view.

Technological

Some nations choose to match current RL technology levels with whatever year their country is in, and retroactively push technological levels backwards. For example, a World Cup 19 RP written in 2004 may include a character listening to hip-hop on their minidisc while texting their friend on their BlackBerry, while a text reporting that event, written a decade later, might change the facts, instead reporting that the character was listening to jazz on the wireless while writing a telegram.

History and Geography

Birthplace Time

Although this is not the universal rule - and it is always possible for two parties to agree something different - generally, players moving abroad from their birthplace age at the rate used in their home country. For example, if you age using the 2/1 system (see above), and one of your clubs buys an Audioslavian goalkeeper, that player would age more quickly than the rest of that club's squad. It is generally wise to keep note of how old your foreign players are and update accordingly, checking with the player's home nation as needed - some sports, such as soccer, use shared spreadsheets for a coordinated international transfer window, and these have a useful section on what each nation's understanding of time is to allow for double checking.

Localized Time

Some nations, such as the Audioslavian dependancy of Calorborne, cause all of its inhabitants to age at a certain rate regardless of the system used in their place of birth. Calorborne, for example, uses Angry Mr. Incredible Time (aka '1 day = 1 day'), meaning anyone moving to the island would age in real time - likely much slower than most characters on NS.