Over IRC (or the like) communication is a lot slower than face to face, so even doing what you described wouldn't have taken that long.
Looking at my notes for a game I recently GMed it took about 18 hours to do an entire year of game time. Sea season took up about 5 hours, dark season about 7, storm season and the sacred time was about 30 minutes wrap up at the end and fire and sea season took about 3 hours each.
As to the quality, you'll have to ask the poor mugs^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h^h players.
As a counterpoint, in another game I GM I often leave the players alone for hours at a time, becoming nothing more than a glorified barman / cup of tea maker as they spend hours plotting in character.* It's quite hard to keep game time up with real time as the players quite enjoy micro-managing their characters and the environment and who am I to argue?
Cheers,
Ash
*This sort of conversation can be done offline fairly well, but it's good having it happen in front of me as I can nick all the ideas they have for future events.
PS: The one-off I ran at continuum that you and Rob played in would have taken most of sea season in my campaign.
>
>
> > Game time - not real time. Pretty easy. We play
> every other
> > week and there's a lot of farming, herding and
> praying to do,
> > which goes by pretty quick. Usually one session
> (or less)
> > per season - except if it is a really busy year
> (like 1613).
>
> This sounds like a style of playing I've never
> encountered, and I'm
> intrigued. How do you even squash one "scenario",
> much less an entire
> season, into one session? Do you simply not bother
> with the nitty-gritty
> detail of IC conversations, fights, trying to get
> those pesky sheep you
> just liberated back to your own tula, and so on?
> I've read a few of your
> chronicles, and always assumed it was a highly
> condensed version of what
> happened with most of the "flavour" left out, but
> maybe not?
>
> Just thinking as an example about an encounter my
> Narrator and I did by
> a Chat session the other night - we've just arrived
> in a new land, my
> spiritist scout is taking a look at our proposed
> camp site to see what
> spirits might be around. And it turns out to be a
> Humakti burial mound,
> complete with bound protectors.
>
> We did simple contests and much IC deliberation for
> initially spotting
> the spirits were there, deciding to open the spirit
> world for a chat
> with them, freeing a fetish spirit to give me a
> better chance of doing
> that, the ritual to improve my chances even more,
> and so on. Then the
> conversation was all IC: we considered at least
> looking at her diplomacy
> skills and rolling but decided it was easier to go
> with pure roleplay
> and GM steering. It took about two hours.
>
> How would that have worked out in one of your games?
>
> (And if people want to tell me we totally
> misunderstood spirits, ghosts
> and Humakti, I suggest we take that to another
> thread).
>
>
>
>
>
>
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