Time & Movement in Metamorphosis Alpha

My Musings On Time, Travel, Turns and More.

 In reading through Metamorphosis Alpha’s rules naturally some questions have come up concerning time both how it is kept on board the ship and for the purposes of game play. In my experience of playing TSR SciFi Fantasy games what the rules may imply or empirically state and what Game Masters do may not be the same thing. So we will look at what the game states, implies and what I as Starship Masters may choose to do. In games such as MA, D&D and GW time, actions, and movement are linked.

First what sort of measuring systems is MA using? Miles, kilometres, yards, meters, and feet all seem to be in use. That’s right Ship Masters’ it’s like original Star Trek you never knew what terms Captain Kirk or Spock were going to be using! Well it’s not all that bad, the game gives an easy casual hack for all that nasty conversion math. Just remember a yard is roughly equivalent to a meter in abstract game terms. Don’t over think it or rather over math it, you will need to round a bit and that’s okay. 

So let’s look at the first bit of time and distance information the original rules give us. General Movement is described as a walking speed of an average of 2 miles per hour with appropriate rests included. The hex scale used in the rules is one big hex equals 1/2 a mile, so 2 hexes is 1 mile and 4 hexes would be two miles. This basic long distance traveling speed can be increased or decreased by carrying less gear or carrying more gear and the terrain type. This sort of movement is referred to Overland Movement or Route or Wilderness Movement in other games. In addition the rules tell us the maximum time one can travel this way is 10 hours. This means a maximum of 20 miles can be walked per day on average as a base speed. After 10 hours the Player Character is affected by fatigue. 2 miles equals 3520 yards per hour. 

The second form of movement in Metamorphosis Alpha is Special. Special is Combat Movement and time. When a conflict situation arises the turn changes from a basic Game Hour to a short interval or round of 10 seconds. It is assumed the PCs have a 2 yards movement per space (graph square) in a 10 second turn. 

When I referenced Underworld & Wilderness Adventures from the original D&D rules to compare with MA and then the latter GW, the rules stated Underground movement is done in 10 minute segments in which a PC with equipment is given the base ability to move twice in that 10 minute turn and able to cover 6 inches (60 feet) each move for a total of 120 feet (40 yards). It goes on to state melee turns are much faster and there are 10 rounds of combat per Turn, this means each round is 6 seconds. Now when I looked at the Wilderness overland movement the scale for a hex was 5 miles with the basic movement before any terrain or encumbrance adjustments was 3 hexes per day for an average of 15 miles per day. The rules also go on to state the travelers must rest after 6 days of traveling for one whole day. I would rule that the characters are still resting those other 6 days it is just on day 7 a full days rest is needed. 

Underground in an hour this means an average encumbered moving PC is covering a max of 200 yards in hour. When looking at the longer overland distance 15 miles divide by 10 is 1.5 miles per hour and 15 divided by 8 is 1.8 miles per hour. More than likely 1.8 miles per hour is what they were thinking in D&Ds rules, thus rounding up to 2 miles per hour in MA is reasonable for General Movement. Remember in MA you will reach the edges of the world as it is a contained space, this maybe one reason it uses a smaller overland scale in general compared to D&D and GW. There is simply a greater chance for encounters in the open spaces and the space is less to move about in.

Now when we look at the latter Gamma World it’s Route travel is divided up into 4 hour blocks instead of an hour thus creating a 24 hour day with 6 such turns, after all Gamma World is set in the fantastic apocalyptic future of good old planet Earth. However Player Characters must rest 2 of these 4 hour Route Turns and 8 hours of sleep is specifically mentioned or suffer Double the Fatigue loss during combat and cut travel distance in half until rest is taken. Should player characters continue travelling without rest after two days rest must be taken. If players refuse to rest their characters GW rules state the GM should have them all pass out from exhaustion. So now that means as well in GW you have 16 hours in which to travel or do other activities such as eat… just saying PCs will have to spend time making camp, breaking camp, eating in addition to sleep or just strolling along and you only have so much daylight. Even if the GM keeps it simple with 12 hours of daylight between Sunrise and Sunset other activities will occur including encounters. 

As you can see all three games have similar yet different concepts of scale and turn times.

So what am I doing? Well I am going to use MAs system but informed a little from the other games. 

Overland General Travel will be the basic 1 hour big turn but with 1 required 10 minute rest out of the 6 smaller turns that make up and hour and 2 miles of travel achieved. Failure to rest 10 minutes per hour will result in fatigue penalties. I will use the 10 hour maximum travel time allowed, and exceeding it will result in appropriate fatigue penalties. I will use D&D’s rule that this general pace can be maintained for 6 days then one full day of rest is required… I would like to point out 20 miles a day for 6 days is 120 miles, when you consider the ship on average is about 50 miles long and 25 miles wide this means PCs could conceivably walk from aft to bow easily in 2 and 1/2 days. Unless the PCs end up on a planet or moon it is unlikely I will need this bigger scale other than to tell PCs if they have 6 days of a lot of activity, travel, strenuous work, combat then on day 7 they must rest. If PCs travel past the 10 hour maximum non stop without stoping, sleeping, and so on for the remainder of the day after two days I will most definitely be employing the latter GW rule of players falling unconscious from fatigue. (Clearly someone’s players pushed the fatigue rules to the point that negative this or that wasn’t a big enough penalty or concern).

If PCs suddenly are moving through dark corridors then movement will drop to D&D’s 1 hour scale of a maximum of 40 yards every 10 minutes with one 10 minute rest required, which effectively means to avoid fatigue 200 yards of continuous travel is the maximum. 

Special Movement will be six 10 second rounds creating a minute, and 10 such minutes makes a Special Turn. This turn is commonly referred to as Melee or Combat turns, but can include other fast based activities. I will be making a form.

By being clear on time I can now track effects of radiation, poison, disease, torches, oil flasks, fuel cells and more better as well as now tackle aging and ship board time. I also have a clearer idea and feel for converting concepts, monsters and ideas between the game, thus making importing things into MA easier.

So what about time on the good ship Warden? Is it using a 24 hour cycle or a 20 hour cycle? I think you could make the argument for actually either, on the one hand the planet of origin has a 24 hour total day on the other hand 10 hours of activity with breaks for rest implies a 20 hour day. The much latter Star Frontiers game used interestingly enough a 20 hour Galactic Day with a 400 day Galactic Year. A 400 day year with 20 hour days is shorter than the Earth standard 365 day year with 24 hour days. I think this is going to be a call each individual Game Master should make concerning the ship board time. No two planets will have the exact same local planetary hours of the day or year, so it does make sense that a spacefaring culture would develop a Stellar Time & Year system it uses in addition to local time and calendars just like we saw on Star Trek with Star Date references. On the other hand sticking with Earth time and calendar makes tracking time a bit easier as you don’t have to reinvent the proverbial wheel. I will probably save myself work and use for now a simplified Earth Calendar with a 24 hour day.

Also while I am at this 300 years on the Warden will be far longer for the folks back on Earth, time dilation really changes the passage of time between those traveling in space at fast speeds versus normal aging on Earth. The effect time dilation creates is Earth “ages” faster relative to the people on the ship. This means more generations occur and conceivably new technology is developed on Earth. This is why many space SciFi storylines have some sort of science magic of handwavium technology that allows time dilation to be ignored. I bring this up because the Warden is traveling slower than light and didn’t have Faster Than Light technology. Thus the stars the Warden wanders through lost could have become colonies of Earth if Earth developed FTL latter. Galactic and planetary calamities could happen to the home world or said colonies, a complete galactic dark age could occur all before the Warden ever makes it to a suitable planet or is discovered by intelligent advanced spacefaring life forms or even fellow humans. The Warden could finally arrive either at its destination or another destination to find a fully colonised planet. 

Happy Pulp Bubblegum Space Opera Role Playing folks & a Happy Holiday.