Two methods are used for tracking time in this game system, Chronological Time, and Relative Time.
Relative Time refers to when one action or event takes place relative to another action or event. A Scene is a basic unit of time used to resolve one or more actions or events. Conflicts are used to further break down a Scene into a number of Hands. Each Hand represents the smallest unit of Relative Time, which is one Action being taken by all Actors involved in a Scene.
Note: individual Actions take the place of Hands when the Actions are unopposed. Hands are only used when an Actor is trying to prevent the Action of another Actor. When an Action is unopposed, it is referred to as an Automatic Action.
Scenes are a discrete unit of Relative Time that correspond to an ambiguous amount of Chronological Time, in which some part of the game is taking place.
All Attribute Values bid on Actions refresh at the end of each Scene. Damage persists, however.
AV Refresh: Sometimes actors may be eliminated from a Scene because they lack any more AV points to Bid on Actions, not because they took too much Damage. This can occur just because they bid high on several actions, or it was a long scene, etc. To maintain story continuity, when this happens, the GM should inform the player of a reasonable rationale why they are no longer participating in the Scene, like, “the others brow-beat you into silence,” could be a rationale why an Actor with 0 Mind AV's remaining was eliminated from the Scene, or “you're too exhausted to go on,” when their Body AVs are all zeros, or “this all seems hopeless to you,” if their Spirit Attributes were all 0. Consult the effects of Damage for ideas on how Attributes reduced to zero effect Actions.
At the end of the Scene, any AV points bid on Actions in that scene return to the Actor's normal values. If an Actor sustained actual Damage during the Scene, that must be Healed in some way to return to the Actor's normal AV's.
When describing a Scene, the GM should always explicitly or implicitly explain where the PC Actors are, and what are their motivations, so Players can imagine Actions their Actors might take that would fit the Scene. This could be as simple as some statement like, “you come to a bridge across a river, what do you do?” But just that phrase prompts the Players to take Actions, and gives enough context to prevent Actions that don't make sense.
Using Relative Time, and our example above, at this point it isn't important to the story how much time was spent getting to the bridge, or how long the Actors may spend there. They may fight a troll, camp under the bridge, or simply walk across and continue their journey. At the end of the Scene, however it ended, if it is important to the story, the GM can summarize some amount of Chronological Time that has passed.
Conflicts break down Scenes into smaller units of Relative Time in which opposed Actions are taking place in ordered Hands. A Scene may contain no Conflicts, if all PC Actions where unopposed by an NPC Actor, or Environmental Actor, or it may encompass one or more Conflicts. The GM needs to pay attention to how many AV points PC Actors have left to bid, and break down large Scenes into a series of smaller Scenes, so that PC Actors have enough points to bid on Actions.
Whether an Action is opposed and resolved by playing a Hand, or is unopposed and resolved as an Automatic Action, both of these are equivalent and the smallest units of Relative Time (one action). Conflicts already describes the Procedure that is used to play a Hand, so we won't go over that again here, and the rules for resolving Automatic Actions are similarly described elsewhere.
A Scenario is a collection of Scenes
An Adventure is a collection one or more Scenarios
The Campaign is the collection of all adventures in the GM's game world.
Campaign
Adventure
Scenario
Scene
Actions (Hand or Automatic)
Chronological time is used by the GM to define the boundaries of a Scene. The amount of Chronological Time two different Scenes may last can vary vastly. For example, one Scene may be a whole day while the PC's rest at an inn, another may be a few seconds of combat. In all cases the GM will define how Scenes, and how many Scenes, map to some unit of Chronological time.
Chronological Time is important if the Time Extension and Abilities Extensions are used, because some Abilities will list a Time tag, like Seconds, Minutes or Weeks that an Ability takes to complete.
Eons
Millennia
Centuries
Decades
Years
Months
Weeks
Days
Hours
Minutes
Seconds