Game Calendar. Do you have one?

[lordbasl]

Homebrew Calenders

My gameworld is a homebrew that combines historical elements as well as a bit of the Realms. I stick with the 365-day year with 12 x 30 day months (this allows "tenday" weeks that recognizable to the FR-aholics that play in my game) with a 5 or 6 day Holiday period called Yearend that belongs to no month (yes, the 6-day Yearend is held every 4 years...the civilization that developed the calender was incredibly advanced in terms of astronomy). The calender had been "reformed" several times in my world's history as well.

One of the advantage of my world's system is that each month uses exactly the same grid pattern, an idea I borrowed from of all places, Traveller. As for the "zero year" there are two. One dates from the discovery of the protocols that allow then recording of magical spells in written form -- the beginning of the Wizard character class that marked the end of one of my world's Ages (about 3000 years before present). This system is used mostly by historians, bards and similar Learned Folks. The second "Year Zero," the one most people use, dates from the Ascention of the deity of the predominant local monotheistic religious tradition known only as The One. As in the FR, years are sometimes named. The year of the Great Comet whose arrival heralded the arrival of demihumans and most dragonds and monster is called "The Year of the Change," is 666 AO (Anno Onem, Year of the One)

The days of the week all have local names, with one excepton: Saladay, named for the single greatest emperor / conquerer / hero in the history of this part of the world and the most recent calender reformer.

Yes, I do pay attention to the passage of time in my game world. Seasonal festivals are common, not to mention local holidays. I've run games set during Yearend -- the fourth day of Yearend is "Forgiveness Day," based on an ancient tradition (among humans) of not carrying grudges into a new year, which carried a great dramatic roleplaying element for several characters.

 

[Graybeard]

My Calendar is a basic 12 month, 30 days each. Each month is associated with a diety and there is one holiday each month for that diety. Every five years there is an extra day in the year. I also use sunsigns for the PC's. Depending on what month the PC's are born in, they get bonuses to skills at character creation.

 

[TerraDave]

Yep, the one with June, July and August (don't use AD, BC though)

Christmass has been celebrated in the past, but there where no May Day celebrations in Weston this year...maybe next year.

 

[Vraille Darkfang]

Yea, over the course of the years I've developed a pretty complex calendar.

Then, I realized I didn't want complicated. I wanted something that lended itself to easy dice roles.

My Calender:

12 Months (d12).

Each months consists of 4 (1d4) weeks, each week 10 (1d10) days long.

Thus, I can easily determine a random day by rolling 1d12, 1d4, & 1d10 at the same time.

Makes it so much easier when I need a date on the fly. Also works wells for determining PC birthdays.

Of course, then, I mapped out the entire Solar Sytem, as well as the 20 year cycle of lunar & planetary alignment.

Based my Camp World off the Prime Material Plane. The Moons off of the Elemental & Transitive Planes (6 total). The other Planets off the Outer Planes, based on the Alignment of those planes (9 total). The suns (binary system) off the Positive & Negative Energy Planes. I haven't decided about the stars & other such things.

So, my PC's get a big boost out of taking ranks in Know (astronomy)

 

[Chupacabra]

Although I don't use this calendar for my current campaign (or any calendar for that matter), my longest-running campaign from back in the day had a calendar of 365 days divided up as follows:

Twelve Months of 30 days each;
Four free-standing 1-day breaks that did not belong to any month and were considered lucky days. (These days were occasions for seasonal festivals and holidays, especially during the back-to-back Dusk Day and Dawn Day);
One day in the middle of the year that was considered unlucky and did not belong to any month either. (the legend had it that any misfortunes suffered on this day would be repeated forever, so folks just tended to stay inside and do practically nothing on this day)

The calendar looked like this (with names influenced heavily from Fritz Lieber's Fafhrd & Gray Mouser series):

Dawn Day (1 day)
Month of the Leviathan (30 d)
Month of the Kraken (30 d)
Month of the Behemoth (30 d)
Sol Day (1 day)
Month of the Dragon (30 d)
Month of the Chimera (30 d)
Month of the Roc (30 d)
Mid Day (1 day)
Month of the Griffin (30 d)
Month of the Wyvern (30 d)
Month of the Manticore (30 d)
Lune Day (1 day)
Month of the Serpent (30 d)
Month of the Basilisk (30 d)
Month of the Reaver (30 d)
Dusk Day (1 day)

Ah, the memories.

In my current campaign, things are alot more loosey-goosey time-wise. I tend to move the calendar along "at the speed of plot" to copy a phrase said by the creator of Babylon 5.

 

[Cthulhu's Librarian]

Yes, I have developed my own calendar. 12 months of 28 days each, for a total of 336 days in the year. Each month has 4 weeks of 7 days. The months are commonly known as 1st Month, 2nd month, etc. but there are other, alternate names for them as well, depending on the group refering to them (mages have one set of names, priests another). Days of the week are: Toil Day, Water Day, Market Day, Halfweek Day, Sky Day, Earth Day, Resting Day.

If you want to see my calendar, it's attached to this post. Holidays are in purple, the phases of the two moons (Red moon & White moon) are marked, and holy days are marked with the names of the gods that are worshipped on those days (often, but not always, corresponding to a phase of the moons)

 

[GuardianLurker]

Nothing inventive

12 months of 4 7-day weeks, plus 4 additional seasonal festival weeks. Gave them names and all.

But I find in practice, the calendar goes "It's a few weeks into spring", or "It's late fall", or similar. Mainly because I've gotten too many "Huh?" looks from my players when I spout "It's Chaisday the 22nd of Kiltil when you start your journey."

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I've used a variety of calendars from various settings and a few of my own devising (and additionally have devised a few that I never used) but the only one that players ever were interested in was the Gregorian calendar. For much the same reason that everyone I've ever known disliked... oh just for example, the timekeeping system from the original Battlestar Galactica, they have been at best quite uninterested in the calendar of the game world. While I've always found game world calendars at least somewhat intriguing nobody else seems to care if the year is called a Yaron, a second called a Centon, who or what the days and months are named after, whether the year is 365, 360, 480, or 2 days long with 10967 hours in each day, nor whether the days in the weeks evenly fit into the months, whether there is a single weeklong festival, 12 regularly scheduled festival days, or if the lunar cycle is coincident with the solar cycle or whether there are leap days, years, hours or centuries.

So I occasionally flirt with using other calendars, even very wierd calendars, but I generally just use the Gregorian calendar as-is.

 

[RFisher]

I've done it. I've seldom found players wanting that sort of melieu flavor, though. I typically just use the regular Gregorian calendar. (Or, think of it as on-the-fly "translating" between the game world's calendar & the Gregorian calendar. )

 

[Hussar]

Does using the Scarred Lands callender count? Been keeping track pretty well too. Helps to ground the party into the setting when the seasons actually change with the campaign and not just by DM's fiat.