Time Units
At the start of each calendar year, each character in the campaign started with 52 time units (TUs). Most regional adventures cost 1 TU to play (double if the character was visiting from another region), and most Core adventures cost 2 TUs. TUs could also be spent for out-of-adventure reasons such as crafting a magical item or being a member of an organization or a guild. Once a character spent 52 TUs, that character could no longer be played until the start of the following calendar year. This was ameliorated by the fact that each player could have as many characters in play at the same time as desired. Once one character had run out of TUs, the player could simply switch to playing another character until the start of the new year reset TUs back to 52.
While 1 TU was ostensibly equal to one week of game time, in fact this was simply an arbitrary number designed to limit how many adventures one character could play in a calendar year, and therefore restrict how much wealth and power a single character could accumulate in a single year.
After the end of the campaign was announced in August 2007, the rules concerning TUs were relaxed. From November 1, 2007 until the end of the campaign, adventures no longer cost any TUs (although "in-game" activities such as crafting magic items still had a TU cost). The effect was to allow each character an unrestricted amount of play in order to reach 16th level and "retire" by the end of the campaign.
Read more about this topic: Living Greyhawk
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