Do you keep strict track of the date in your game world?

[ForceUser]

I absolutely keep track. It's important to maintain versimilitude for a variety of reasons--deadlines, upcoming events and religious observances, crafting, and movement of armies (most medieval military campaigns were waged in springtime and paused during winter). That said, I often handwave large chunks of time if there is nothing going on; however, I always land on a specific date and start tracking time again from that point.

 

[Ruavel]

absolutely... I used to take care of it, but in an effort to make my life easier (given I'm having enough drama with just running a high-level game) one of the players took over for me...

bless his little boots...

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Since I will sometimes run multiple campaigns in the same world and in the same general timeline... I tend to keep pretty close track of time. That way, if Lieberman, the renowned wizard is commissioned by one charcter to build a magic sword that will take 187 days to complete, another character (likely in another campaign) and commision a magic item from Lieberman the renowned wizard in that same time frame. Also, its interensting, to me, to see how the story arcs cross over one another in time and space...

Later
silver

 

[Psion]

Strict track... no.

I do have a pretty good idea where in my primary game world calendar time lies, but I only really pinpoint the date when I do periodic history updates.

 

[devilbat]

Keeping track of dates is one thing I always mean to do, but never end up doing. One of these days I'll get around to it.

 

[Mark Hope]

In general, yes, I keep a close track of the passage of time. I may allow certain periods to get blurry, but they always get centered on a particular date eventually. F.ex. I had a Dark Ages game where the PCs spent "a few months" wandering in the desert, with encounters sprinkled here and there without specifics on how long had passed between them. But when they finally reached the ruins of Ashur, I gave them a precise date to get us back on track with the calendar. I tend to vary between the micro and the macro approach like that, with more emphasis on the micro, overall.

(In my long-running fantasy homebrew I used a particularly convoluted calendar. One newer player, despairing of ever understanding it, turned to one of the veterans and said: "Of course, I imagine that you eventually get to grips with it, right?" "No. Never," was the weary reply... )

 

[ZombieButch]

I've run a couple of games where the date and the passage of time in general was important, and in those cases I tracked it.

Otherwise, I don't worry about it.

 

[Stormborn]

In my last campaign when the PCs were in the heart of civilization we kept careful track of the day and date - with a homebrew calander even - but when they boarded as ship and went off exploring I hand waved travel time and just said "it took you several months to reach X and now it is (season or month)"

 

[JoeBlank]

In Olgar's game, as diaglo mentioned, one of the party's many quests involves City of the Spider Queen, which I understand has an important timeline, so we must keep up with the date.

We keep accurate dates in diaglo's OD&D game, as a lot goes on the dynamic world around the PCs.

In my off-and-on game of World's Largest Dungeon, I keep track of the date because the PCs are stuck in the WLD with limited rations and supplies.

In the homebrew game I play in (and co-DM), we are much more lax about timekeeping, and often have to figure out how much time has passed.

 

[DragonLancer]

I generally don't worry about it unless there is something in the campaign that I need to keep abreast of the date/seasons.