Time and TiDe wait for no one

Thought this would be a good time to chat about timings and the wonderful world of Drowned Earth.

Time is something few of us ever have quite enough of but at the same time entirely too much. What we need is the right sort of time.

Recently I’ve had very little in the way of gaming time, life in general now means a night of weekend free to roll dice and talk shit is a lot trickier than it used to be. (Not that this is a moan life before hobby is just a fact)

But it a have time for (frankly nonsense) blog posts like this gem.

If you’re wondering how I’m going to loop this ramble back around to TDE hold tight.

When gaming time is at a premium I like to know exactly how long things will take so I know I’m not going to waste my entire session just setting up a table.

This is where TDE shines. Not in the pinpoint accuracy of timing but in the economy of it.

I’m still learning this game and I can comfortably set up, play, and pack up within two hours with out any feeling of rush. (Could do it with in an hour with all hands on deck)

This is great because it means I can relax and enjoy the game without clock watching.

A few points about why TDE flows so well.

Now one of the biggest efforts is set up but because of the relaxed nature of terrain rules your only real concern is having more (always more!!!!!) the mat itself is already acting as your largest active terrain everything else is just cover. You could in theory just tip a box of buildings and scatter onto your mat scream “earthquake” and the table would be usable. Granted if you did that you would be a soulless monster but it’s an option.

Scenario set up in as simple as roll, choose, read, follow. (Although if TDE “future projects team” are reading, little printed A6 or so cards with the scenarios on would be great just to pop by the side of the table for reference)

Each scenario has a clear set up and also a clear end stage which which means everyone knows what they're working towards.

In game is where the time economy comes into its own, there is a very simple system on Declare, React, Test, Perform. even when you want to do something super cheesey you still follow this pattern and it doesn't take long to fall into the rhythm of it. The back and forth on action reaction fits into clear points. This clears out a lot of "ah gotcha" moments which can stall other systems.

So that's the game itself discussed but we also have that other time sink, HOBBY.

Hobby time is one of those times where it's very much about quality not quantity. I tend to break

all my projects down into 3 hour segments as thats about the limit I can focus at once. (the fact that 3 hours often falls in the small hours probably doesn't help to be fair)

The nice thing about TDE models is not only are they interesting to work on but I don't need piles of them, or even better I don't need a dozen of one model repeated over and over.

This makes hobby time a bit more interesting and also a lot more effective at at getting projects finished.

Now the was going to be a third section to this but as you can tell by the rushed finish of the last section I've run out of time (oh the irony)

Thanks for reading and enjoying your post apocalyptic paddling.