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Dumpshock Forums _ Shadowrun _ Does Daylight Savings Time exist in Shadowrun?

Posted by: bibliophile20 Mar 15 2007, 04:17 AM

I was resetting a clock that I had overlooked and thinking about the oh-so-famous Darwin Award http://darwinawards.com/darwin/darwin1999-38.html when it suddenly hit me that using some incarnation of Daylight Savings Time would be a wonderful (and potentially very sneaky) way of screwing with my players--perhaps in regards to spirit summoning, i.e. the whole sunrise/sunset thing...

But I still need to know if that particular social institution has enough social inertia to survive another 65 years into an era when the time of day in relation to the sun can have little to no effect on people's lives.

Thoughts?

Posted by: Crakkerjakk Mar 15 2007, 04:26 AM

Daylight savings saves billions, if not trillions, year round in electricity bills because people don't need to use as much light. It'd stick around, as a cost saving measure. That being said, the spirits don't care what hour it is, only when the sun rises and sets, and that changes (unless you live on the equator) no matter what we humans have to say about it.

Posted by: Casazil Mar 15 2007, 04:32 AM

Heres another question about time as far as spirits go if you were to do a run in say alaska and the sun in up and going to up for the next say 4 months can you summon a spirit and it stays till sunset?????

Posted by: Ravor Mar 15 2007, 05:20 AM

I'd rule no and limit the spirit to ~12 hours at most, maybe 24 if I was feeling very generous the first time it was brought up.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Mar 15 2007, 08:16 AM

I would have to rule yes. The rules specify sunup and sundown, and make no exceptions for extremely northerly/southerly climes. They could've just specified a time limit in hours, but no. They had to get poetical.

Use the crap out of it.

Posted by: MITJA3000+ Mar 15 2007, 09:57 AM

Actually, IIRC, Target: Wastelands for example states that spirits summoned in the arctic or somewhere else where the next sunrise/sunset is months away will stay until that moment. I don't remember if it said something about spirits getting grumpy, but ruleswise you really can summon a spirit for many months if the sun doesn't come up or go down.

Posted by: nezumi Mar 15 2007, 01:04 PM

I rather imagine daylight savings is still in use by the UCAS, not the CAS, some corporations (Ares, for instance), but not others. In other words, you'd effectively have different time zones in the same city. If people are staying within megacorp turf, they use megacorp time. If they're leaving it for any reason, they use UCAS time.

This allows each megacorp to set their own clocks to either save electricity or ease business processes as appropriate.

Of course, that would get everyone really, really confused, so we just don't mention it.

Posted by: Backgammon Mar 15 2007, 01:30 PM

QUOTE (Crakkerjakk)

Daylight savings saves billions, if not trillions, year round in electricity bills because people don't need to use as much light.

In theory. In reality, the benefits of DST are debatable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time

Posted by: HullBreach Mar 15 2007, 04:24 PM

Ive been pulling 12-16 hour shifts since monday (Im an IT guy) due to the DST, so I REALLY hope its not around in 2070, as my 91 year old self won't want to deal with it.

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Mar 15 2007, 04:33 PM

Even if it did, would it matter? I mean, by that time with all the different corp times and everything else that people mentioned, all timestamps will be in terms of GMT offset, without weird adjustments like daylight savings, and you can choose to have those times displayed to you in any timezone and with any adjustments that you like. You say in an e-mail "meet me at 4:00" which your commlink knows is your time, which it tags with appropriate GMT offset when your mail is sent. The other person receives it, and their commlink reads the GMT offset tag and displays it as "meet me at 5:30*", with maybe a tiny little note indicating that that is not exactly what the person said, verbatim, but it is the information then intended to communicate when expressed in your personal time-reference. They can click on the asterisk to see what you really said, and how it was converted if they care do, which they don't.

Just one possible interpretation.

Posted by: bibliophile20 Mar 15 2007, 04:34 PM

QUOTE (nezumi)

Which is why it could potentially be used to confuse the players! (so long as you made an off-handed reference earlier to see if any of them were paying attention).

Player: "What do you mean there are still people here! It's 1900 hours!"
GM: "Not on Ares territory, it isn't."

Posted by: Ravor Mar 15 2007, 04:51 PM

Hmm, that would make life interesting in a theorectical magic capable Space Station/Shuttle/Base depending on its orbit, ect...

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Mar 15 2007, 04:57 PM

QUOTE (Ravor)

Hmm, that would make life interesting in a theorectical magic capable Space Station/Shuttle/Base depending on its orbit, ect...

Huh? What are we talking about? Oh yeah, spirits! (I love Dumpshock)
Hmmm, if you were near enough earth you could BS some kind of sunrise, possibly, but that doesn't account for something at (for example) the L3 earth-sun lagrange point. That's not anywhere near the earth.
Do space spirits last forever? I imagine their services would fade eventually, but at what arbitrary time measure?

Posted by: Kagetenshi Mar 15 2007, 05:00 PM

You're assuming they exist. I could definitely see not being able to summon spirits, even hearth spirits, in conditions like that.

Elementals, on the other hand, are just dandy.

~J

Posted by: Moon-Hawk Mar 15 2007, 05:01 PM

Maybe the manaspace of the station would just make up some kind of reference. Like if the stations primary fusion generator did a major self-check every 80 hours that would have some sort of subtle effect on the mana that would cause spirits to reset that often.
Obviously that example was full of a lot of made-up crap, but the idea is that whatever determines the lifespan of spirits is a system that will always find a semi-stable periodic solution, in any environment, and it simply happens to pick any major cycle that it can find.

Posted by: Demonseed Elite Mar 15 2007, 05:43 PM

Keep in mind there are a lot of places that don't use Daylight Savings Time today, including Arizona and Canada. So whether or not it exists in Shadowrun is probably up to the GM; there's no real saying whether the various balkanized former-US governments would want to continue it or not.

Posted by: Crossfire Mar 15 2007, 10:34 PM

QUOTE

Keep in mind there are a lot of places that don't use Daylight Savings Time today, including Arizona and Canada.

It's weird, I live in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada and I just had to change my clock to adjust it by one hour... it was a short night, I was so tired at church that day lol

Where are you from Demonseed Elite?

Peace!

Crossfire

Posted by: tisoz Mar 16 2007, 04:51 AM

QUOTE (Casazil @ Mar 14 2007, 10:32 PM)

Yes, they stay until sunset or sunrise, the numbers representing the division of time periods does not matter.

The idea of time zones instead of local time (which everyone set by observing the apex of the movement of the sun as corresponding to noon) was brought about in the 19th century due to the advent of the railroad. Schedules were a mess because arrival and departure times were all local time. Those traveling the railway were constantly subjected to mini jet lags every time they travelled east or west.

Posted by: hyzmarca Mar 16 2007, 06:36 AM

Daylight saving time can only possibly save electricity if a facility if left to waste for half of the day. This doesn't work out too well at all. A properly productive facility will operate at full capacity 24/7 without break. Workers may be rotated if necessary.

I say that the Corporate Court mandates GMT as a single world-wide timezone for the sake of efficiency.

Posted by: tisoz Mar 17 2007, 01:47 AM

But there are many places that don't run around the clock. Schools, government, many offices, etc..

What is odd is that some places charge a premium for power during peak usage times, which are during the daytime. Power plants don't really have variable capacity, so during off peak times, night time, they actually have excess capacity.

Daylight savings time hardly helps the situation.

Posted by: hyzmarca Mar 17 2007, 02:30 AM

QUOTE (tisoz @ Mar 16 2007, 08:47 PM)

But there are many places that don't run around the clock. Schools, government, many offices, etc..

That's because they are wasteful. Every hour that these places are closed is wasted capacity,wasted potential, and wasted money.

A public school could teach three times as many students if it ran around the clock in three 8-hours shifts, for example.

Posted by: Kyoto Kid Mar 17 2007, 05:48 AM

...haven't really given the topic much thought. Rhapsody is taking place in Europe and in my SR4 scenario it is now Boxing Day.

Posted by: Fix-it Mar 17 2007, 03:45 PM

QUOTE (tisoz)

Those traveling the railway were constantly subjected to mini jet lags every time they travelled east or west.

pansies. you don't know jet lag until you've flown the pacific.

Posted by: Rajaat99 Mar 17 2007, 04:09 PM

In my game, poeple in the 2030's got smart and stopped using daylight savings. I can't see why any corp would think it would be a good idea.

Posted by: Herald of Verjigorm Mar 17 2007, 04:22 PM

QUOTE (Rajaat99)

I can't see why any corp would think it would be a good idea.

Behavior control. If you can convince people to habitually alter their definition of a day by a small unit of time, that's one step closer to constant manditory unpaid overtime.

The only fun potential would be if one of the corps were to define daylight savings in 2.5 minute increments.

It's 5:30 pm in Seattle, but here in Fuchi, it's 4:45 pm.

Posted by: tisoz Mar 17 2007, 08:32 PM

QUOTE (Fix-it @ Mar 17 2007, 09:45 AM)

QUOTE (tisoz @ Mar 16 2007, 04:51 AM)

Those traveling the railway were constantly subjected to mini jet lags every time they travelled east or west.

pansies. you don't know jet lag until you've flown the pacific.

Well, jet lag is probably the wrong term. Time lag is probably better.

I'm referring to the different times in every city that is easy or west of the point of reference. It might be 12 noon when the person leaves their point of reference, travels west for sixty minutes and arrives at the next town at 12:50 local time.

I could almost see the NAN going back to such an idea for time, as they supposedly had a problem worrying about keeping time, but looking up in the sky to see how far the sun has traveled gives a good idea of the subjective local time.

Posted by: Demonseed Elite Mar 18 2007, 11:24 PM

QUOTE (Crossfire)

QUOTE

Keep in mind there are a lot of places that don't use Daylight Savings Time today, including Arizona and Canada.

I live in New England. But I have friends in Saskatchewan who don't adjust their clocks for Daylight Savings Time.

Aha, this would explain it:

QUOTE

Some areas of Canada not using Daylight Saving Time include, Fort St. John, Charlie Lake, Taylor and Dawson Creek in British Columbia, Creston in the East Kootenays, and most of Saskatchewan (except Denare Beach and Creighton).

Posted by: Bodak Mar 20 2007, 09:46 AM

QUOTE (Moon-Hawk)

This is already what email programs do. Your computer's local time is set with a UTC offset and the recipient's computer's local time is set with a UTC offset. In your Sent Mail folder the timestamp may be 17:45 and in the recipient's Inbox the same message might have a timestamp of 09:45.

Hyzmarca is spot on. In the future, anyone in authority with even the slightest bit of nous will abolish timezones and daylight savings. The whole world will run on UTC because as a race, we are decreasingly confined by our environment, and are increasingly defining our environment ourselves. In Britain people may have a "9-5" (0900-1700) job in the Autumn, Winter and Spring and a 8-4 (0800-1600) job in the Summer. Australians would work 2200-0600 on the East coast, etc. If you want to have your international conference with your colleagues you just say "let's meet at 1700" and everyone knows exactly what time that is - none of the present-day faffing around with "Do you currently have daylight savings? By how many half-hours? And what's your UTC offset?" Amazingly enough when I try to arrange to meet to chat with people online at a specific time, many don't even know what their UTC offset is. Establishing timezones may have been "comfortable" when established, because it maintained the tradition that "midday" should be round about lunchtime and occur some time after the clock's hour hand points to 12 - but in an increasingly global world they are an unnecessary complication.