Campaign World calendar- Real world or Custom?
Wombat
First Post
I have found that hours and calendars are probably the hardest things to shake out of players' heads over the years. If I run a variant calendar, the players still refer to "Well, it's January" or whatever. I love the thought of playing around with calendar divisions, but players rarely, if ever, get into the spirit of it. Ditto for time -- they still talk about Noon, Midnight, 2 o'Clock, etc. Rough to break ingrained habits 
So for the last three campaigns, I have just left the calendar as is.
OTOH, I have worked up many variant calendars for my own purposes, including variants on the Mayan calendar
So for the last three campaigns, I have just left the calendar as is.
OTOH, I have worked up many variant calendars for my own purposes, including variants on the Mayan calendar
MerakSpielman
First Post
I made my own calander. When you do it yourself, you get to do fun things like make months exactly a moon long, and have the year be exactly a certain number of months.
My campaign calander is exactly 400 days long - 10 months of 40 days each. All months have 4 "Weeks" of 10 days. There are 2 moons, one which goes through its phases every month, and one of which takes exactly 3 months to go from full to full. Moon 2 is full on the first of the year every three years.
The only "real world" times I use are for days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
My campaign calander is exactly 400 days long - 10 months of 40 days each. All months have 4 "Weeks" of 10 days. There are 2 moons, one which goes through its phases every month, and one of which takes exactly 3 months to go from full to full. Moon 2 is full on the first of the year every three years.
The only "real world" times I use are for days, hours, minutes, and seconds.
Desdichado
Hero
Fictional calendars are great for flavor, but unfortunately, unless your players spend a fair amount of time getting familiar with them, they ultimately cause more problems than their benefits are worth, IMO.
MerakSpielman
First Post
You have a point, Joshua. I think I'm the only one at the table who has a clue about my calander. It doesn't come into the game that often.
Psion
Adventurer
I never really have a problem with the fictional calender. When it becomes an important background or flavor element, I am not afraid to do the exposition. In casual play, I'll refer to the season ("It's midsummer"), or amplify for clarity ("the Queen's Festival, which occurs after first thaw in the spring.") Nice flavor, not too difficult really.
My game is set in the Realms, so the calendar is built in. It's uncommon that it comes up in the game, however; rarely a reference to a date will surface or a mission will have a date that it will have to be completed by, and the players will have to dig up their calendar. Otherwise, it only comes up when I'm posting the session writeups.
Desdichado
Hero
If the calendar doesn't come into play often enough then you're not getting the benefit of having a fictional calendar either and the effort of creating one is wasted. If you do make one, and don't really emphasise it, then you're players are confused when you occasionally bring it up. If you make one and do emphasize it, then you potentially have all kinds of weird questions to answer. If your years, weeks, months, days, etc. are substantially different than what we're used to, for instance, then you don't have any frame of reference about how long things are or how old people "really" are.
I'm going through some of these same issues with a homebrew I'm developing that is a shattered world, so doesn't have any rotation. I think the best way to do it is just assume a relatively earth-like calendar, but not really emphasize it in game.
I'm going through some of these same issues with a homebrew I'm developing that is a shattered world, so doesn't have any rotation. I think the best way to do it is just assume a relatively earth-like calendar, but not really emphasize it in game.
Last edited:
silentspace
First Post
I use my own calendars. I think it adds a lot. It doesn't have to be hard to remember, if you base it off of something you already know. That depends on what you know though. For example, it can be based off of the Roman calendar, Mayan calendar, the Zodiac, birthstones, the Chinese Zodiac, Tarot cards, rainbow colors, whatever.
Time is trickier. Before modern clocks keeping track of time was difficult. Often there was only one clock (water clock, sundial, whatever) that was in a church or watchtower. They would ring a bell at certain 'hours'. In most places time was relative, based on water clocks or sundials. The Romans divided daylight into twelve hours, and night into eight watches. The length of each hour or watch varied with the time of the year (longer days in summer, shorter days in winter). So I use modern time and just forget about all the details, such as how the players are actually keeping track of time
Good luck!
Time is trickier. Before modern clocks keeping track of time was difficult. Often there was only one clock (water clock, sundial, whatever) that was in a church or watchtower. They would ring a bell at certain 'hours'. In most places time was relative, based on water clocks or sundials. The Romans divided daylight into twelve hours, and night into eight watches. The length of each hour or watch varied with the time of the year (longer days in summer, shorter days in winter). So I use modern time and just forget about all the details, such as how the players are actually keeping track of time
Good luck!
Similar Threads
