Do you track the date? The phases of the moon? The weather? Holidays?

[Aberzanzorax]

Do you track the date? The phases of the moon? The weather? Holidays?

If you do, what tools do you use? Almanac? Historical records? A simple calendar? Something else?

 

[Gilladian]

I long ago made up a calendar for my world. On it, I have the months and days of the week, moon phases for the two moons of my world, all the major holy days that are celebrated by all large cultural groups, and a few other things.

When I start a new campaign, I go back over the calendar in the weeks leading up to the first session and add local holidays and historical days that are celebrated, then I add events that I know I want to have happen such as elections, births, deaths, assassinations, political upheavals, battles or conflicts, etc... for the first year that the campaign will run.

I then generate some weather for about the first three months or so. I use a world weather almanac to get a rough idea of what should be going on, and then I use the old charts from the Wilderness Survival Guide to add some variables.

Once all that is on the calendar, I use it to track what the PCs do each day or week of their adventuring career. I make notes on such things as "Val orders armor. Will be ready on Elanora's day, week two of Planting". Or, actually I mark "Val orders armor" on the day she does it, and on the day it will be ready, I mark "Val's armor ready".

I find these notes invaluable when the PCs want to know "when is my birthday?" (they pick a day before we begin, if they want to) and "Did we ever celebrate Midsummer?" (ummm... no, you were busy slaying dinosaurs that week...)

It is one of the things new players often comment on; apparently a lot of DMs don't even bother with "it is summer/winter" differences.

 

[Jon_Dahl]

I try to be a little vague with these. Not because I'm lazy, but because I like to keep doors open so I can change things quickly to support the story.

If players are planning really stupid, I add moonless nights (killing low-light vision), strong wind (interfering ranged attacks and bothering familiars), cold snaps, heatwaves and sometimes just downright thunderstorms.

With dates I just keep track of the weeks. It's a bit easier. Usually my margin of error is about one week so it's good.

 

[Bluenose]

Depends on the game. If I'm playing in Glorantha, I'll be very careful to tell people the date at the start of a session, and to remind them what holy days they have coming up or have just celebrated. And of course the phase of the moon is particularly important to Lunar cultists and their enemies. Fortunately there are several perfectly good Gloranthan calendars which I can use for this.
I'll also keep track of how much time has passed if there's something which takes a lot of time going on. If they're involved in kingdom-building, and I want to keep track of how finished a building project it, for example. Depending on the calendar used by the world, I find a cheap diary or a computer program to be effective.

 

[Dykstrav]

In D&D/Pathfinder, yes, I do. The big reason is that time is the thing that you can use to put the pressure on the group to actually get stuff done.

The evil druid will enact his ritual to spread a new plague on the night of the dark moon, so you'd best find him before then. The last ship to the Lendore Isles departs in six days, and if you miss it, you don't know when the next one will come along. The ancient white dragon demands tribute from the lowland tribes on the winter solstice, so his lair will be unguarded at that time. The gnoll horde will decimate the kingdom if they make it through the mountains, so you've got to bottle-neck them in the pass until winter sets in.

Without a strong sense of time passing, it's more difficult to put the screws to the characters and make them feel a sense of urgency about what's going on. I track the exact date using a calendar, and I start each "day" in the game with a brief description of the weather and what's going on around them. "You wake up on the sixth of Planting. It's warm within an hour of sunrise, and downright hot once you broken camp and gotten a move-on. The sun blazes through the trees and the grass is about waist-high. Mosquitos and cicadas buzz in the forest around you."

In my 20th Anniversary Edition Vampire: the Masquerade game... I'm a bit more loose about time. Part of it is because the rules are a bit more freeform and abstract, but a big part of it is also to help encourage players to get into the persona of vampires a bit more: as they get older, the nights tend to blur together. As they become less human, it's more difficult to relate to normal concepts of time passing. They feed when hungry and may not even realize what year it is after a while. About the only time that's really worth worrying about is the time of sunrise.

 

[Will Doyle]

I think the only time I ever properly tracked the date was back when I first played Enemy Within, which came with a calendar. It was cool to see what holidays were coming up, and worked well as a general log for the campaign.

Nowadays I keep it vague. It's usually just "Winter", "Summer", or whatever. That way I can time festivals to coincide with players turning up in town, say it's the full moon when they arrive outside the haunted castle, and so on. I suppose my players could calculate how long they've been playing and notice all the inconsistencies, but they never seem to.

 

[SteelDraco]

I did for my last campaign, a Deadlands game. It started in the fall and the PCs had to stop the Big Bad before he was able to complete a ceremony on the winter solstice. This meant they couldn't travel back and forth a lot or hike off to find help - they were on a timeline. I even threw in a historical reference - Deadwood had a catastrophic fire during the time span of the campaign, but the PCs helped prevent it.

In fantasy games, I never track the date or keep a calendar. I have a timeline but that's about it. My players wouldn't be interested in that level of detail, so it'd be wasted effort.

 

[Corathon]

Do you track the date? The phases of the moon? The weather? Holidays?

If you do, what tools do you use? Almanac? Historical records? A simple calendar? Something else?

Yes to all. I use a calendar for most of it (an almanac or historical records wouldn't help as I run a fantasy game). For weather, I use the random table in the Wilderness Survival Guide.

 

[Umbran]

In my current Deadlands game, I track calendar time vaguely - largely by season, so I can associate proper weather at a given time.

 

[Evilhalfling]

In my previous world I had 9 months (named after 9 gods)
each with 42 days (378 days per year). New moons were on the 1st and 21st each month (the moon was the home of the goddess of evil)

Most months had a holiday that related to their god - memorial day for the god of war. A 15% off sale day for the god of trade, the feast of fools/masquerade for the god of illusion. The world even had 3 saints days - 2 were during months that no one wanted to celebrate, (like god of hatred)

--
With 4e I just got lazy. I now use the real world calendar, and rarely mention holidays. It has the advantage of being easier to keep the seasons straight that way. I don't have to remind the players of what the weather is likely to be on the 38th day of Mytan.

They did wander into the latitudes of northern Canada, during February.
4 hours of daylight really cut into their travel time, along with the ever present snow. 3 of 5 characters obtained magical cold protection of one sort or another (which is expensive in 4e)