Time, Backdating & Forward-Dating
Penwick runs in real time, meaning that one year at Penwick matches 1:1 with one real-life year.
This means your character moves through the world at the same pace as the real calendar. Birthdays happen on their actual dates, holidays happen when they happen, and a full year must pass before your character advances into their next school year or stage of life.
For example, if your character’s birthday is June 23rd, they turn a year older on June 23rd. However, they do not move into their next Penwick or Sigerth year until the yearly "graduation" on July 1st.
Your character’s threads should follow a sensible timeline. You do not need to write every thread in perfect order, but you should respect what has already happened. If a thread takes place earlier, its events affect later threads. If a thread takes place later, it should not contradict earlier events.
Dating Your Threads
The first post of a thread should contain a date, indicating when that thread took place in RP time.
If you do not mention a date in your post, the date at which that post was made will be assumed to be the date that the roleplay took place at.
In other words: if you create a post on December 8, 2025, and specify no date in the first post of your thread, then that thread is assumed to take place on December 8 2025.
This does not need to be complex; a simple line at the top of the first post is enough!
Backdating
"Backdating" means writing a thread that takes place before the current real-life date.
You may backdate as far into your character’s past as you want, provided the thread still makes sense for that character.
Backdating is useful when you want to fill in your character’s history, write something you missed, or want to fill time in your character's story where you were OOC unable to write.
However, backdated threads still count as part of your character’s history. Once something happens in a backdated thread, you should treat it as true for every thread that takes place after it.
Forward-Dating
Forward-dating means writing a thread that takes place after the current real-life date. While forward-dating is allowed, you should generally be careful about setting your threads in the future since this may create timeline inconsistencies in your and others' stories.
You may forward-date up to 1 month into the future.* For example, if today was December 8th, you may start a thread dated as far ahead as January 8th.
* = During the real-life months of July and August, you may forward-date threads as far ahead as September 30th.
This exception exists so that players who join during the summer can still begin writing their characters during the active school year instead of waiting until September in real life.
On September 1st, the rule resets to be 1 month in advance.
This exception exists so that players who join during the summer can still begin writing their characters during the active school year instead of waiting until September in real life.
On September 1st, the rule resets to be 1 month in advance.