Turns
There has been discussion, as of late, regarding the length of time, spent on turns. So, in my ever helpful way, I will attempt to clarify this:
Okay...say you are entering combat.
We have Rounds, Celerity Rounds, and Turns.
Basically, we look at it like this:
A Round is a situation where, generally, everyone rolls Initiative, states actions, takes turns and rolls for resolution.
A Celerity Round is a series of actions given to each character that possesses and has spent for the Discipline known as Celerity. These are treated as seperate Rounds, within a regular Round. Meaning that they are considered to happen within the time span of a regular round, before a new set of Inits are called. Basically, they are extra actions, given to a character.
The reason that we consider them to happen within a Regular Round is because they happen at a faster speed than normal. ie: Think of the old cartoon character The Flash. He would be able to run a circle around you, punch you and then give you a big wet sloppy kiss in the time it would take you to throw a punch.
What we fail to remember is that in a round, the action is basically happening all at the same time, with just a hair's breadth of time between them. This is a big reason for stating actions backwards, in order of initiative. It means that the character with the highest inits sees what you are starting to do (ie: draw a gun) as you do it, and is faster than you, therefore, better able to react.
We look at a Turn like this:
"Tag, you're it."
It's your turn... take the turn.
Now it's the next guy's turn.
This is where the concept of taking turns comes into play.
Now, it was recently brought to my attention that the book was a little shady in the area of taking turns.
For example; it states you can spend one wp per turn.
For the sake of our IRC game, I am specifying this to read per ROUND. The reason for this is to make it fair to all the players.
Imagine yourself here:
You are Player A, a Ventrue.
Player B, a Brujah, is attacking you.
You have no Celerity.
Player B has Celerity 5.
Were we to allow them to spend a wp per turn, they could have 6 extra successes to wail the tar out of you.
But if it says in the book.....
It also says, in the book, that Celerity actions are extra actions. Now, considering that this all takes place like NOW, I am going to say that the celerity actions still fall under the character's Turn.
Another way to look at this is the fact that you cannot use mental disciplines or split pools during celerity rounds.
Think of it this way:
You're in a fight, someone baps you right in the nose....
hurts like hell. So you start swinging wildly.
That's what I tend to liken Celerity to. Wild punches...
You are moving so fast that you aren't really stopping to plan it out. You're just doing everything in your power to pop that guy right back. Consequently, you aren't stopping to spend willpower on each punch because, simply put, you are throwing so many, so fast, you are bound to hit something.... Kill 'em now and ask questions when the next inits come into play.
So just how long is a Round anyhow?
Yes, I know, in the book, it states that Rounds are anywhere from 3 seconds to 3 minutes.
For IRC game purposes, let it be known that our Rounds are generally considered to be 30 seconds long.
Mind you, if you sneeze, that's 3 seconds.
If you spend a round trying to figure out how to hack your way into the Fort Knox of security systems and the entire round is devoted to this, you are probably looking at 3 minutes.
However, suffice it to say that, unless an ST/NT tells you otherwise, a Round is 30 seconds long.
Makes it easier for everyone to follow and, hey, that's my job.