Time Keeping In-Game

[Firedancer]

do you mean in terms of what time passes in the dungeon or how things just progress?
The means depends how time-critical things are in the game. But generally:

I have a calendar for the days, weeks, months.
The good citizens tend to rely on sand based hour glasses or church bells.

During surface travel, time is just an estimate, linked to survival.
In the dungeon its normally a function of the oil/torch burning rate.

For when it really matters some smarter than the rest, will have his own hour glass or candles.

Of course, some cultures don't care, or have a different means (water clocks, steam whistles, gongs, magic).

 

[Hussar]

I keep a calendar, but anything finer than that outside of combat is guesstimated.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

For those who do dungeon crawls, how strictly do you adhere to the rules for clerics gaining their spells back? If you do, then days pass very quickly. The party might only clear four rooms, but, they then spend the next 23 hours waiting for the cleric. :/

 

[Mark CMG]

For those who do dungeon crawls, how strictly do you adhere to the rules for clerics gaining their spells back?

I'm fairly strict with that. I've run games where players could level every couple of hours (in-game time) if regaining spells was ungoverned by time.

 

[James McMurray]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

For those who do dungeon crawls, how strictly do you adhere to the rules for clerics gaining their spells back? If you do, then days pass very quickly. The party might only clear four rooms, but, they then spend the next 23 hours waiting for the cleric. :/

We're strict about it, and that's exactly what happens.

 

[el-remmen]

I have had cleric characters be without spells for days because of the inability to sync up praye time with sleep-cycles in an extended dangerous environment.

 

[RichGreen]

Yeah, that sounds about right.

For those who do dungeon crawls, how strictly do you adhere to the rules for clerics gaining their spells back? If you do, then days pass very quickly. The party might only clear four rooms, but, they then spend the next 23 hours waiting for the cleric. :/

That sounds about right too!

Like a few others, I track rounds and days and very little in between.

Cheers


Richard

 

[Tonguez]

12 Month calender of 30 Nights (Lunar Cycle) + a 5 day Winter Festival
All adventures (including downtime) take 1 month

Daylight time is measured as
'Predawn-Dawn-Full Day-Noon-Afternoon-Evening-Night-Midnight-Predawn'

"Let us meet in the Full Day on the Quarter Moon of the Seventh Month"

 

[James McMurray]

I have had cleric characters be without spells for days because of the inability to sync up praye time with sleep-cycles in an extended dangerous environment.

Time of Day: A divine spellcaster chooses and prepares spells ahead of time, just as a wizard does. However, a divine spellcaster does not require a period of rest to prepare spells. Instead, the character chooses a particular part of the day to pray and receive spells. The time is usually associated with some daily event. If some event prevents a character from praying at the proper time, he must do so as soon as possible. If the character does not stop to pray for spells at the first opportunity, he must wait until the next day to prepare spells.

Just missing dawn won't make you forfeit your spells for that day. You have to miss dawn and not memorize at the first opportunity. It requires choice on the part of the character to not regain spells that day.

 

[Man in the Funny Hat]

I track rounds as needed for spell durations, etc. during combat, though for any other purpose the number of passing rounds in combat is immaterial to the game. I use a calendar to track passing days and campaign events out of combat using stuff like I have at the bottom of this page. Everything else is handled ad hoc; if I need to track hours as they go by, and what happens at a given point then tracking it mentally, or at worst with a bit of scratch paper is about all that I ever need.

 

[el-remmen]

Just missing dawn won't make you forfeit your spells for that day. You have to miss dawn and not memorize at the first opportunity. It requires choice on the part of the character to not regain spells that day.

"At first opportunity" is kind of a broad term.

Define opportunity. And what if you are down in some dungeon and have reason to believe your hour will be interrupted by orcs, or what-have-you? In that case you might decide it makes more sense to make your way out than to stick around in hopes of getting your spells back.

But that is beside the point for me anyway, as we use a house-rule regarding regaining of cleric spells.