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

[kitsune9]

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?

I'm running the Carrion Crown AP (actually a pre-CC module I created until one of my players comes back from the holidays to join us). I'm currently working on importing a Golarion calendar into a spreadsheet so I can keep track of the days. I actually want to do that and think it will be easy since I use a laptop to run my encounters in conjunction with the hyperlinked spreadsheet. That way, I'll know what day it is, the weather, etc.

 

[the Jester]

Weather/seasons, yes. I switched some years ago to our "Jan thru Dec" calendar (although each month is an even 30 days) for simplicity and found it really helped both my players and myself keep a better handle on the seasons.

Weather I generate through a combination of randomness, dm fiat and logic (based on where the pcs are, previous weather, etc).

Holidays I am terrible about keeping track of.

My campaign does not have a traditional moon, but when there is one (or more), I emphasize it a great deal.

 

[The Shaman]

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

Yes.

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

Yes.

 

[Alan Shutko]

When I run in Mystara, I keep track of the calendar. All of the Gazetteers had a great discussion of the calendar of each nation, with holidays, tax days, festivals, etc. I keep track of it with an app I wrote in Emacs Lisp that keeps track of the calendar, loads in the holidays and lets me track time. It actually implements the full RCD&D time system: rounds, turns, hours through years. I use it to keep track of spell effects, travel, moons (important if one of your party members is a werewolf). This reminds me, I should rewrite it into something more accessible.

I think it's important to keep track of the calendar because it helps ground the campaign in something: time passes. Without it, I find a tendency for tons of world-shaking events to happen over the course of a week or so.

Now, in the Pathfinder game I run, I don't keep track of the calendar. I don't think I've ever seen the calendar in Golarion or talk about holidays. I may be missing those supplements.

 

[megamania]

For my Eberron campaigns keep a calendar that allows me to track events both from the books (holidays) but also campaign stuff.

This allows me to "blend" one campaign onto another. Evets from one campaign can effect another.

Also major weather events (had a hurrican strike Sharn) can be tracked from campaign to campaign.

Many of my campaigns have huge world wide effects so I find this useful to use.

 

[nedjer]

Seasons and calendars mean festivals: these guys knew how to put on a festival to suit almost any occasion

 

[Smoss]

I loosely track weather - And pay a good deal of attention to the date - tracking travel time and such to keep seasons going in the right times.

Nothing too involved, though I probably SHOULD work up a calendar for my world...
Smoss

 

[Morrus]

Not really, but I'll track seasons (approximately).

 

[BriarMonkey]

Yeppers.

The last couple of campaigns I ran I kept track of weather, dates, holidays, time, the calendar, etc. In the last campaign in particular, it was extremely helpful as the party was adventuring further north. So, when it started into Fall, they knew that their campaigning season was drawing short. Winter was harsh enough that the party, and most everyone else, just hunkered down, and resumed their campaigning come spring.

Having a calendar made things much easier too when quests came along that required someone to find something within 101 days. And too, when you have armies on the move, to figure out when they would get somewhere as opposed to when the PCs would get there.

Not only did I keep track of those elements, but keeping notes on what the PCs did helped immensely too. They, and I, could look back over those notes, and in relation to time, see where they were with their own goals - or even if they missed something. It was sorta like a calenderical scribe.

Tool wise, I kept track of everything, including notes, with a Campaign Calendar application that I'd written in Visual Basic 6. With the user interface the players and everyone could see the current month and what was the current day and approximate time, as well as any upcoming events and any past events. (My calendar had 10 months, each month with 4 weeks of 10 days each, each week having 7 work days and 3 weekend days, with the full moon happening the middle of each month, with three months of winter and summer, and two months of spring and fall). I even could export the calendar to HTML files so that they could be posted on the campaign website.

Weather though, was done on the fly for the most part - keeping with the season and timeframe. That was the only part I never really handled with a tool.

I'm hoping to be running a Pathfinder campaign eventually, so I am in the process of doing a complete overhaul of the app to .NET (and using XML data files vice an MS Access DB).

 

[JamesonCourage]

I definitely keep track of the date in my game. Pretty important. In about three months of gaming once per week, about 5 years has passed in game.

I do keep a tab on weather, and of course match it to the season (I use our traditional calendar). Sometimes it flairs to the extremes, but that's fairly uncommon, and many people (and occasionally the PCs) take refuge during the winter in certain areas.

I don't keep track of the moon phases, and I lightly keep track of holidays or festivals, unless they're very important to the reason. My PCs are currently (struggling) warlords over a region, but they've just instituted four holidays per year. So, I'll be keeping a closer eye on that than some others.