In The Heat of the Moment

I got rid of the Moment.

I  just spent the last hour or so going through all the books and doing a find/replace to turn Moment into Round. I am not doing this for the blog. If in the past I have talked of moments and now seem to be babbling like a idiot (any more than usual) talking about rounds, understand that Round = Moment and vice versa. Both are two units of time three seconds in length.

It is actually a bit of a bittersweet moment because I came up with the term Moment way back in the early 90's as an alternative to words like Round and Turn hoping to provide the game with a more natural sounding word that could be used both inside and outside of a combat encounter, something to provide a more seamless transition between the two.

It has always half-worked.

Inside a combat encounter it just sounds weird to say, "okay, that moment is over and a new moment begins." What is this, International Coffee Time with General Foods? Round sounds like something filched from a boxing match, but at least it does have that connection to combat.

Outside of combat it also backfires a bit by forcing you to think around the term. When you tell the table, "hold on a moment," are you actually telling them to wait a bit or to wait three seconds? The same goes for "you pause for a moment" and "momentarily." What exactly is meant by these utterances?

In most cases it doesn't matter whether a moment means three seconds or not. The problem is that it becomes one more thing to think about, and it also serves to remind you of the artificial nature of the game. It probably would be best to not think of it whatsoever.

So?

I called a round a round.
And the moment has been retired.