Hi Appleseeth!
Here is my campaign chronology for a Palladium campaign set in my own world I ran in 2005.
excel file here
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MHTML file here
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It is best to download the files as they don't display at all well.
This section of the campaign lasted 17 sessions or around 60 days of campaign time (some of this due to a time shift whilst the PCs were imprisoned in another world where time flow was much slower). Note that one of the major themes about the campaign was the PCs discovering Lentisi tribal culture, as they knew nothing about it before, so I could really run with it and not need the PCs to know it from the beginning.
The aim of this calendar was to make the Lentisi tribes seem more real, more distinct from a bog-standard fantasy culture and also to flesh out their beliefs. You will see that this is more to my game than a bunch of names. Inherent in these calendars are how the people using them think and what they believe in. In my game, the calendar MATTERS. The PCs could not ignore it. If they spoke aloud on Kronstag, the day of silence, they could be punished for a religious crime and be imprisoned. Build in these kinds of things to your calendar and the PCs will have no choice but to take notice. I would also always use which day it was to describe the background colour of what was going on in the tribal villages and towns whilst the PCs were out and about.
I really found it useful to have such a detailed structure, because if I was stumped, I would just run with something happening because of the day and often it would lead to an adventure seed that I could push. I did have an overarching plot but did not use this as the major campaign force on every day.
You will see that there are two calendars in this example, being tracked on the left. The Turian Calender is the main calendar of the "civilised" world and has months dictated by the phases of the Bright Sister (large phasic moon) with a year of about 402 days. The Month is coloured to indicate season so a yellowish/reddish month is summer (e.g. Mittern) and a blue one winter and spring (e.g. Lenth) and autumn are shades of green. The Turian week is 8 days, though I have not tracked this here because this was not of major concern in this campaign. Ideally I would have had another column for Turian day-names, but my players know this so well that it was unnecessary. The year changes for Turians at the Festival of Meddenyarn, in High Summer.
The Lentisi calendar, followed by the tribes that live in the Wastes, is different and uses a 5 day week (Kern). This week has a number of features and you will see the days abbreviated to the day number as follows 1K or 15Fe would be 1st of (month) Kronstag or 15th of (month) Fennistag.
I wanted my week to reflect the ordinary life of the tribes it described and so I used to map out what tended to happen on each day of the week as the Lentisi are very religious and, like all primitive socieities, have a routine.
K; Kronstag; a religious day of silence. Only sign language may be used and no lamps or fires may be lit because Kron is a god who loves silence and darkness and he dwells under the Hollow-hills.
Fe; Fennistag; washing day, because the Fennis-stone is the traditional stone used for washing clothes. Also a day when the Lentisi children tend to go a bit crazy after the silence of Kronstag.
Fi; Fishtag; A day for eating Fish and revering the God of the Rivers and Lakes, Udan. This is also the day when the Lentisi make tiny reed-boats and set them adrift on rivers and lakes, often containing a small lit tallow candle.
M; Martag; market day and the day when most people would choose to travel as it is the day blessed to Sablar, the God of travel, family and friendship.
Y; Yortag; a day of cleaning and repairing the home and of the veneration of the ancestors.
Kronstag.
Note that the Lentisi month is dictated by Kron's Eye, a non-phasic moon, with the appearance of Kron's Eye signalling the beginning of a new month. Thus Lentisi months and Turian months are not only different lengths but start at different times. The Lentisi new year begins in midwinter, as befits a tribe whose chief god is master of Darkness and silence.
At the beginning of the campaign, I would have any religious festivals, Lentisi and Turian, on a blank version of this document, that already had days, weeks, and months mapped out, as well as the phases of the moon. I would also insert some interesting things like the Triple moon conjuction (all moons in the sky at once) to add an element of the time-plot to the game. I also sometimes would map out things I knew were going to happen ahead of time and put them on this sheet, over-writing them when the time-line caught up with them.
You have no need to go this far, but just examine the principles of this and you should be fine; the calendar should be a living, breathing thing, not something esoteric. Days of the week should have different flavours and how the group using the calendar track the passage of time should be tied to their beliefs.
And it was nowhere near as flavourful; much more of a sense of fantasy is invoked by saying the game-world date is "Eolna 9" or "Lequi 15" instead of "February 6".
