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

[Quasqueton]

Could a blind man standing outside tell the general time of day? Could he figure morning, around noon, afternoon, evening, night? Seeing the sun is not the only way of identifying the time of day: the sound of birds/animals, the feel of the sun's heat, smells, the way one's body feels, etc.

I recently learned that geese can tell what way is north because they sense the Earth's magnetic field. The scientists studying this ability have not found any particular organ that does this -- it is just part of their brain's function.

I prefer to have time referred to in no less increments than an hour, but it is difficult to get everyone to go along with it. It is too natural to think in modern time concepts.

The PCs in my campaign have been in the underdark for weeks. I've "ruled" that the underground creatures can tell direction and time as easily as upworlders can -- be it sensing fields, vibrations, temperature, whatever. I've also ruled that the cleric of Pelor can sense sunrise (his time to pray) even underground.

My biggest problem with time and D&D is that it is so difficult to keep the time in everyone's head. The PCs wake up in the morning, eat breakfast, and go buy some equipment. How long does that take? What time of day is it now? The PCs go visit a sage. Afterwards they get ambushed by thieves. Is it dark? Are the city streets still busy?

Quasqueton

 

[Hand of Evil]

Town cryers - they have to have some function.

Mostly the players depend on sunrise, sunset and midday. In Dungeons, candles or oil in lamps (which I have defined in my games as a pint/four hours).

 

[RichCsigs]

PC1: Hey! Where have you been? We were supposed to meet before.
PC2: No. We said we would meet after. It's barely now.

PC1: What happen to then?
PC2: We missed it.
PC1: When?
PC2: Just now.
PC1: When will then be now?
PC2: Soon.
(God I love that movie!)

Anyway, I also tend to lean towards the "time is not a factor except when coordinating things" group.
I would think that as long as there is some kind of reference (i.e., the sun), a normal group of adventures would be able to hook up "in an hour." I would think that since dwarves spend most of their time underground they would be able to pull this off to (as in the bird example given before). And maybe once a group of adventures are experienced in being underground they would be able to pull this off too (maybe after 5 - 7 underground adventures)? I haven't DMed in a while so this is something I haven't really explored yet.

 

[Old One]

Town: Province of the Chuch of Light (deep peels on the hour, lighter peels on the half) and the time crier auxiliary to Lamplighter's Local 1138 (on the hour). There are also some magical light effects that can be programmed to change shade and intensity based on the hour (but the PCs have only encountered those once).

Wilderness: Primarily by sun position and light.

Underground: Hunger and bodily functions...although they do have a dwarf cleric with them now, so he bases it off of his prayer time (evening).

It is mostly a handwave, although I will often describe the sun rising/climbing/setting/dropping behind the western hills to simulate the passing of time.

I also describe shorter time intervals as "a turn of the minuteglass", "half a turn of the hourglass", "four turns of the hourglass", etc. I use "grain" for second...so the passing of a round is "five or six grains later..."

I don't know if it adds anything to the game, but I have fun doing it !

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

 

[jerichothebard]

I've also ruled that the cleric of Pelor can sense sunrise (his time to pray) even underground.

me too!

IMC, the only available god is the God of the Sun and Moon. So, all his priests are priests of the sun and moon (obviously). As a side benefit of no real power whatsoever, they are aware intuitively of the exact moment of sunrise, noon, sunset, and midnight in their latitude. Even underground or indoors.

 

[LostSoul]

Well, this is D&D, so you might as well create a cantrip for telling time. I'm not sure, but would a watch based on that spell cost 2,000 gps?

That seems pretty cool.

 

[Darklone]

My PCs use Sending and Message spells.

If not... they missed each other VERY often.

 

[haiiro]

IMC we don't handwave it, but we don't worry too much about it either. I make an effort to describe things in terms of candlemarks -- 1 candlemark = 1 hour -- and avoid very precise temporal references unless they're OOC. If someone wants to know how long something will take from a mechanical standpoint, they get a precise answer.

In general, I assume most folks use the sun during the day, and candles at other times -- or any time relative precision is required. I've always liked the idea of fantasy socieities standardizing time-telling candles to a few basic standards (and in a world with a Common tongue, I don't think it's too much of a stretch.

 

[D+1]

Mostly handwaved because it's very seldom that coordination and precise timing between seperated PC's or NPC's is important. "I'll meet you at the North Gate in an hour," carries no real, "GOTTA be there or else," baggage. But if two characters part saying, "If you're not there in EXACTLY one hour I will press the button that says, 'Do NOT press,' and end the world," then timekeeping becomes a serious matter and it's up to the PC's to explain how they intend to mark time with the necessary precision.

As a rule, my game worlds don't mark time more precisely than 24 hours in a day or "a few minutes from now" simply because accurate timekeeping methods just aren't widely available much less portable.

 

[res]

A lot of people have made points that I use. Large clocks in cities, most people could tell the time from the sun (approx, you don't know when its 8:57 from 9:04, but its close enough)

Another trick I used when travelling through the underdark, my Wizard was able to keep track of the time by the duration of his spells. We figured that a wizard would know the duration of his spells and would know that 8 hours had passed when an 8th Level Mage Armor went down.