Whizbang Dustyboots
Gnometown Hero
Some folks have really taken that to heart.
Some folks have really taken that to heart.
My play by post campaign (going since 2006) has characters all over the world, side campaigns, split groups, etc., and if we didn't have a detailed timeline that explains who was where when, and what they were doing, it would be a contradictory mess.
I don't know if it meets Gygax's "strict timekeeping" definition, but it definitely is important in my game, which isn't even a West Marches.
This. And from running that type of campaign for ages I second Gygax's words fully: nothing is more important than keeping track of in-setting time.That's kind of the key to the assumptions Gygax was making when he said that; that there'd be multiple characters or at least character groups operating independently where you needed to know where they were and what they were doing at any given time.
That is, if you didn't pick up next session right where you left off this one in terms of in-setting time (never did quite grok Gygax's idea that a real-world day between sessions maps to a day passing in the setting). Not a biggie in downtime but really messy if they're in mid-adventure.If you only had one group and they didn't have a huge number of downtime activities, at most you need to know time gap between one session and the next.
This. And from running that type of campaign for ages I second Gygax's words fully: nothing is more important than keeping track of in-setting time.
That is, if you didn't pick up next session right where you left off this one in terms of in-setting time (never did quite grok Gygax's idea that a real-world day between sessions maps to a day passing in the setting). Not a biggie in downtime but really messy if they're in mid-adventure.
The main reason you still need to track time with a single group is to line up with pre-planned setting events e.g. if you know a volcano is going to erupt here on June 22 then it's important to know where the PCs are on that day in relation to said volcano.![]()