Refactoring My Brain

Dates below are in-game time, that probably synch-up (more-or-less) with the first day on which I began playing, but I often take more IRL time to play sessions than the amount of in-game time that passes. Nevertheless, I am still focusing on keeping my sessions relatively short, and ending them back in town.  2/23/'24 Even though Edelweiss took a week to recover from losing a finger in the last session, I was still able to fit a second delve into the month of February. During downtime, Chadonius looks to purchase some better armor, but since Sapperton is a class VI market (the poorest), it will have to be imported. A set of chain mail will arrive in 10 weeks (May 3rd). Since Radnor has the Healing proficiency, he buys some herbs. However, the Horsetail herb will also need to be imported, and will arrive in 11 days (Mar. 5th). This is an interesting result of using 1:1 time in combination with ACKS' market scarcity rules -- not everything is immediately available, or available ...

This would turn out to be a short delve, to get back into the swing of things, as I fumble my way through ACKS for the first time. The session occurred over a few days, roughly in mid-February , but I can't be more specific. The first new ACKS rule that I engaged with was the optional rule for abstracted monthly living expenses -- each character is required to spend a month's worth of wages (25 gp at level 1) for their downtime. (I'm ignoring the fact that I was away from adventuring for more than 1 month). This left me relatively poor, and meant the PC's would need to adventure again to fill their money purses. On the way to the shrine, the party overtakes a pilgrimage, consisting of 12 pilgrims, 4 crusaders, and an explorer. At first, they are a bit stand-offish, but Chadonius speaks with them and warns them that the shrine has been corrupted and overrun with chaotic monsters. They want no part of that, so he convinces them to redirect to Sapperton, where the shrine...

Timekeeping After the death of my Halfling Thief Timbo, I wasn't sure if I should continue the delve, or end it and go back to town. I kinda just stopped playing for a while (pause-time style) and the time eventually stretched on into a traditional Christmas Hiatus (though I did play a few other wargames over that time). In the meantime, the ACKS II playtest drafts had also come out and I was starting to look at them more closely. As the time ticked by, through January without me playing, I kept thinking about the concept of 1:1 downtime. I hadn't used it before (outside of the one month Orc Lords event a year earlier), and I hadn't yet committed to using it in this game... but could I?  If I were to start up again, was I really going to pick up where I had left off in the fall, having just exited the dungeon with a dead party member? What would the alternative look like? It would mean handwaving my character's return to town, and it would mean that my characters were ...