Let’s talk about control for a minute. Any time one person has a kind of control over another, there’s a power imbalance. This is constantly true about RPGs.

The heart of most RPG is a collaborative effort dictated by a conversation. The programming loop of most games is ‘player dictates own narrative, makes check, GM describes narrative until they are prepared to give it up, then they hand narrative back to players’, and it can seem jarring to deviate from that.

These notes are for anyone wanting to use time travel as an adventure option but also to people who are planning a whole weird campaign where the point is to get lost in the river of time.

RPG tips on how and why speeding up, slowing down or even cutting up the flow of time can make you a better Game Master.

If you’ve ever said ‘And we skip to the next morning’, you’ve moved the time dial up for a moment then put it back.

When we talk about the third dial of game structure – Duration – perhaps we should just pause and understand that often, this dial is dictated by people’s lives.

It’s a format I have barely ever heard discussed: The Long Weekend Game.