Tracking Time in Your World

Remathilis

Legend
The group of adventurers stumbled back into the inn. They were worn, beaten, and one of there number clearly missing. The warrior, a dwarf with a red beard, wanders up to the innkeeper. "We need three rooms fer de night" he said. "I'm sorry" the innkeeper replied, but we're booked till..."

Thursday? Sabado? Free-day? Vor?

Lots of fantasy worlds build fantasy calendars. To be honest, January, August, Friday and Wednesday don't make a lot of sense in a world without Roman and Norse myth. However, renaming, re-arranging, or otherwise changing the calendar to something "fantastical" often leads to "You arrive on Soaralis..." "What day is that?" "Thursday" "Oh."

Clearly, Tolkien felt no need to change the calendar for his Middle Earth, but what about you?

How have you changed or replaced the calendar in your world?
What do you do to remind players (and yourself) what day it is?
What other difficulties have you encountered?
If you haven't changed, what (if anything) do you do to account for the names and weirdness (leap year?) of the Gregorian Calendar?
 

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I have names for the month but not the days of the week. The Months have significance for they are named after the 12 neutral gods (only one good and one evil god) and their portfolios are strongest during the month and the weather patterns and what can be expected is dictated by who's month it is.

The weeks of each month are always names the same. There are five weeks in a month and each is named after an element with the final week being all elements.
 

I've run into the same problems trying to rename days/months. The best I ever got and to have a "were playing a game in a different world!" feel was just naming the days what they are: Firstday, Twosday, Thirday, Midweek, Fourthday, Fifthday, Lastday. Same with the months.
 

Remathilis said:
The group of adventurers stumbled back into the inn. They were worn, beaten, and one of there number clearly missing. The warrior, a dwarf with a red beard, wanders up to the innkeeper. "We need three rooms fer de night" he said. "I'm sorry" the innkeeper replied, but we're booked till..."

Thursday? Sabado? Free-day? Vor?

Lots of fantasy worlds build fantasy calendars. To be honest, January, August, Friday and Wednesday don't make a lot of sense in a world without Roman and Norse myth. However, renaming, re-arranging, or otherwise changing the calendar to something "fantastical" often leads to "You arrive on Soaralis..." "What day is that?" "Thursday" "Oh."

Clearly, Tolkien felt no need to change the calendar for his Middle Earth, but what about you?

How have you changed or replaced the calendar in your world?
What do you do to remind players (and yourself) what day it is?
What other difficulties have you encountered?
If you haven't changed, what (if anything) do you do to account for the names and weirdness (leap year?) of the Gregorian Calendar?

I use the normal Western calendar. Greek and Norse gods exist my campaign (Greyhawk with some tweaks), so Wednesday (Odin's Day) and Thursday (Thor's Day) don't seem so odd.

Besides, you translate the rest of Common, why not the days and months?

Also, I've been known to use English place names, which can sound fantastical in a world of Gzeekborks and Flanduils -- a Beacon Hill or Stoneward actually sound more cool, I think.
 

If you want to change your calendar, and you want your players to be able to remember... You've got to keep it simple.

One calendar that I used pretty successfully had a ten day week. The days were named:

Onesday <- the first day of the week.
Twoesday <- the second day of the week.
Threesday <- the third day of the week.
Foursday <- the fourth day of the week.
and so on.

It sounds pretty lame, at first. But its something that the players can easily remember, and don't have any trouble using. Once the terms become familiar, they sound more natural. If the terms don't become familiar to the players and encourage ease of use, they're never going to get used, and you might as well follow the earthican calendar.

Later
silver
 

haakon1 said:
Besides, you translate the rest of Common, why not the days and months?

Worked for Tolkien. The appendices make it clear that he had "real" names for all the months/days/etc. in various languages, but used the names readers would be familiar with so they would know what he was talking about.
 

This was a clear advantage of the alt-earth setting I have run over the years.

I have been thinking about doing something else, and have run right into this. To communicate this "other" world, the calender should be different. It should come from the mythology of the other world. But there is clearly some inconvienence attached in actually doing it.
 

I made a calendar a bunch of years ago that was fairly simple, and have used it in every game I've run since. No wonkyness. 13 months named for monsters, of 28 days each in 4 seven day weeks. (364 days in the year, and the phases of the moon are the same every month.) The days are: Sunday, Moonday, Airday, Waterday, Earthday, Fireday and Starday. Not too difficult to remember.
 

When creating my calendar, I wanted very simple, and very close to our real calendar, so it would be easy to remember. One of my DM's has a calendar with I dont know how many months, five day weeks and 30 hour days, and it's very confusing to remember it all.

I have a very regular lunar calendar. 12 months, four weeks each, and 7 days each week.

The days: Sunday, Moonday, Airday, Waterday, Earthday, Fireday, Spiritday. None of my campaigns since starting the calendar have had a lot of time details, so the players haven't picked up on a lot of it, yet. It's more for me.

The months I named according to stuff with the seasons. The fact that I don't even remember most of the names off the top of my head is evidence enough that I need to rethink the process. I think Ima simplify it more and just go with First Month, Second Month, etc.





What kind of holidays do y'all have? I have (as a base, not counting holidays that individual races or groups might celebrate) are the solstices, the equinoxes, harvest, samhain, all "saints" day, Beltane, and new years eve and day. And each god has a holy day. I'm looking for more holidays that would be celebrated in human lands or by everyone in general.
 

I have a planar calendar that I made up by borrowing from sources on the web. I put it all together in an actual calendar pdf file. I have a link to it in my sig if anyone cares to check it out.
 

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