Tracking time in the dungeon

[Keefe the Thief]

I´m still prepping my far-too-large Undermountain campaign, and have been thinking about time-tracking lately. Now, i´m normally not somebody who insists on tracking minutiae like food, torches, long-term spell durations and stuff like that: I simply wing it. However, for a real dungeon atmosphere, it´s pretty important to keep the pressure on the players:
Is my lamp oil running out? Enough food there? How long did it take to search that room, again? Should we take 20 on that check?
Are there any campaign management tools out there that allow to track time on that level? I don´t talk about the usual electronic calendar stuff, but more about an easy way to enter different "durations" into a tool (lamp oil will be enough for 36 hours, food for 4 days etc.), and then add "things we did" with a click: 10 minutes for running away from the ogre, 20 minutes for taking 20 on a search check and so on.
Any tools which do this?

 

[S'mon]

I've found that using old-style 10 minute Turns to track the passage of time works well, much better than trying to track everything in 6 second combat rounds. In the Turns system (see eg B/X, AD&D, etc) every combat is reckoned at 1 Turn, including the aftermath (catching breath, looting etc), and PC dungeon movement is also reckoned Turn by Turn, moving ca 120'/Turn while searching, mapping etc. This might sounds slow but it means that dungeon expeditions usually take at least a plausible hour or two, avoiding 3e's "adventure 1 minute per day then rest" syndrome.

 

[grodog]

"Time Flies..." by Lisa Cabala in Dragon 123 had nice copyable checkbox pages which summarized turns into hours into days, and was also useful for larger campaign tracking (months/years).

I still use them to this day

 

[Orius]

I used a system that I saw in the Dungeoncraft articles in Dragon right around the release of 3e.

RRR
RRR

represents six combat rounds. That makes up a minute. Cross out 1 R for each combat round. When all are crossed out, then you go to the next set:

MMMMM
MMMMM

Which represents 10 minutes. When you cross off all six rounds, you cross off an M. This countinues with turns (the old-school 10 minute increments which I kept for record keeping), hours, and then days. Though maybe I didn't cross off days.

I had a sheet set up for printing out which I used for keeping track of time. At the top of the page was a blank space for the current date in the campaign. Below that I had my sets of Rs, Ms, Ts, and Hs to keep track of the passage of time. On the left side of the page below that I a column of numbers that started at 21+ and counted down to 1 which I used to mark initiative for all combatants. In the bottom right corner was a series of boxes I used for checking off spell durations. In the middle of the paper was an empty space I used for keeping track of enemy hps and stuff like that.