Campaign Calenders...

[Kahuna Burger]

I use it now. Actually having a twelve (or other number of months neatly divisible to 4) month calender really helps with tracking the seasons. I do name my own months, and often I get rid of the concept of weeks altogether.

Rav

heh, my callender is pretty much based around weeks... phases of the moon and all that.

I did a general 13 lunar month callender with names cribbed from various traditional sources. The first campaign I ran phases of the moon were very important.

Kahuna Burger

 

[jasper]

I use the real wordl calendar. I stole the 20 year calendar out of my phone book decades ago.
Changing days of the weeks/months is just not a flavor I like.

 

[Shallown]

I use a 30 day month; our world names for the months; a seven day week with sunday a holy/off day; holidays for most of the Gods.

The holidays are similiar to ours but not at the same time of the year. I also through in racial and political/cultural holidays as well. So one day may be important to the elef but the dwarf doesn't care except he can raise an extra tankard or four.

One thing I did is print a blank calender that I shaded each day with the phases of the moon. A little thing that has proved handy in when they ask how dark it is, for some clerical/holy uses and it makes the daily blocks easier to read. I also keep track with notes what the weather is like both to help decide what comes next and to remember there is such a thing as weather and it changes. The notes also include travel times, what encounters they have had and names of important people they met. I tend to run without any notes except encounter stats so this is my log book as well. Works quite well.

later

 

[Sixchan]

I've been considering just adapting the day names back to their original roots, as an inbetween. Thursday becomes Thorsday and so on.

 

[SableWyvern]

My upcoming campaign will have eight different calenders, one of which is pretty much Julian/Gregorian with altered names to serve as a baseline. There are also a couple very local variations on the standard calendars.

Some follow moon cycles, others seasons. The most unusual is the dwarven calendar. Because the dwarfies live in the arctic, their "seasons" are related to solar cycles (patterns of night/day/twilight). And, because they are mainly underground, in a region without a constant solar day, their "days" are arbitrary periods of about 27 hours.

OTOH, in my current game, dates are generally only mentioned in passing, and we just use English week/month names.

 

[Witchking of Angmar]

So far I've worked up two calendars for my own world.

The Davian calender is used throughout Eurida, the central continent. It is comprised of twelve months of thirty days each. Each month has five weeks of six days. There are six universal festival days that are between the months are denote the beginning and end of seasons. The Long Day Festival is on the summer solstice and the New Dawn Festival is on the last day of spring. The Long Night Festival is the last day of autumn and the Short Day Festival is on the winter solstice. The Planting Festival is the spring equinox and the Harvest Festival is the autumn equinox. The Long Day Festival is also the first day of the calendar year.

The Sithasian calendar is used only in one nation. It has eleven months, each varying from 32 to 39 days in length. They have no concept of weeks or even days of the week. A given day is just referred to by the day of the month. The calendar begins about three weeks before the winter solstice (a moot term in a desert land with no winter or night sky). For example, where we might say Thursday, January 23, they would simply say the 15th of Batar. Since Sithasia is a sort of theocracy the calendar is a propaganda tool filled with relgioius names related to or associated with Seth. Settal is "Seth's month", Khazal is "Khazdul's month" (Seth's mortal son), Cassala is "Cassandra's month" (Khazdul's first wife), etc.

I may develop more calendars in the future, but for now the players have only been exposed to the Davian one, and that only by my references. I think it gives the game a sense of richness, especially when they look back over the campaign synopsis and see the progression of time.

 

[megamania]

Somewhere in between. My players don't pay a lot of attention to it so it is more of a DM tool. I took the game world calender and modified it to my liking.

I list key events, holidays, festivals and moon/sun phases on it.

 

[SableWyvern]

While we're sort of on the topic, I thought I might throw in some handy info for you all.

First, the following site is great for determining moon/sun rise/set times for wherever and wherever http://aa.usno.navy.mil/data/docs/RS_OneYear.html

Handy tip: if you don't know your Longitude and Timezone, just leave both fields blank.

Second, a piece of important general info that it seems many people don't realise:

Moon Rise and Set times - a handy approximation.

New Moon: Rises at dawn, sets at dusk.

First Quarter: Rises at midday, sets at midnight.

Full Moon: Rises at dusk, sets at dawn.

Last Quarter: Rises at midnight, sets at dawn.

There seems to be a fairly prevalent notion that the moon comes up at night and sets before day, regardless of the phase.