I'll met you at the gate in an hour?

[Storminator]

On a related note, I tend to describe distances by pace, furlong, league or "throw"/"shot"...so a "stone's throw away" might be 50 feet or "half a bowshot" might be 400-500 feet.

~ Old One

I have two PBeM set in the same city. The paladin/priest party gets all their distances like this: man heights, spear lengths, etc.

The rogue party (3 PCs, 3 rogues) gets everything in exact measures. When the rogues size up the room, they know what they're doing.

PS

 

[Plane Sailing]

In towns there is normally a town clock with bell (or town criers) who keep track of the hours.

In wilderness PCs rely upon dawn, midday and dusk mostly.

One feature in my campaign is that all distances are measured in leagues, which are approx the distance a man can walk in an hour (about 3 miles). This has the benefit that when people are saying how far away something is they are giving the distance and the approx time to get there. if it's approaching dusk you don't really want to start out on a 3 league journey!

 

[woodelf]

Some place, whether a temple because of religion or a government building, rings a bell every hour after sunrise. This isn't precise, as you can tell, because some days will have more than others, except near an equator type place. However, like anything, the inhabitants adapt to the time keeping system. This sets up, "meet at the 6th hour", which means 6th ring after sunrise. Also, "meet at the last bell", "meet around halfway between 9th and 10th bell", etc. Again, not accurate but something they would learn easily.

Speaking historically (haven't read the book you're referring to), i suspect the bells would be based on a sundial, so the number of hours would be constant, just their duration would change. Still not that precise, but in a different way from simply marking constant-length hours from sunrise. Though it could be a time candle, or some such, i suppose.

 

[Snoweel]

We really handwave this. I know we shouldn't, but it's so much easier.

W3rd.

My PCs have too much else on their minds to slow the story down with this sort of thing.

They don't ever need to look for a bathroom at inconvenient times either.