Summarizing a question
posted to BGG
here in search of additional answers:
Our party started playing LoD recently, are on our second (virtual) day in Dragonholt, and have a question regarding intended gameplay and the use of meta-information w.r.t. timing cues that one might inadvertently come across in the game.
Let's say it's the beginning of day 'n' and we go to a particular location which says that it's not available until at least 't' time has passed. For the cases like this we've found, this seems equivalent to finding an "hours of operation" sign on the location and knowing that it doesn't make sense to go back until it's open (though in the instances we've seen, it also wouldn't be a problem to go back during every time slot because trying to visit the location doesn't consume time in and of itself).
Now let's say instead we end up at a location that says "If exactly time 't' has passed then read entry 'xyz', otherwise read entry 'abc'. If we read this first thing in the day, we know that coming back to the location at time 't' is likely to be interesting. But story-wise, we haven't come across any clues in the game that suggest that it would be useful to go to that location at that time, and probably wouldn't have ended up there at that time otherwise. So my question is whether the game is meant to be played more like real-life where if we hadn't read that information, we wouldn't have thought/known to go there at that time; or whether discovering the meta-information in text itself should be considered sufficient motivation to return to the location at time 't'. Some of our party are eager to return at time 't' while others of us feel like if the story or random chance didn't lead us there at that time, we shouldn't go there just because we read this meta-information.
For slightly more specificity for those who've played the game about where we hit this:
***MINOR SPOILERS AHEAD***
It's day 2, and we had unlocked the silver mines mission on day 1, so we started our day by heading to the willow grove to tackle that mission. Upon reaching the grove, there was a "have exactly 2 time elapsed?" check, which it had not. However, upon completing the mission, 2 time has elapsed, making it tempting to go to the grove and see what would happen at that time. But realistically, our characters would not have returned to the grove so soon, as we hadn't unlocked any other reasons to go there; instead, we'd have been more likely to visit other places in the town continuing other threads.
Thanks, Brad