Tracking Time in Your World

The 12 Months are 12 Gods.

The 7 Days are 7 "Wanderers" (famous adventurers that were placed in the sky after their death).

Of course, my next campaign is going to start in the deapths of Hell, so the real answer is "You have no Today, just Yesterday, Tomorrow, and the Damned in between."
 

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I make new calendars for my campaigns from scratch; no lazy, suspension-breaking modern Earth calendar use.

I make a calendar for each significant culture that might have it's own; orcs don't tend to care much about timekeeping, for instance, so they don't bother with calendars in my campaigns, but dwarves and elves do care about tracking the passage of time and remembering important dates in their peoples' history or in their own lives.

In Rhunaria, I have 5 different calendars in use, and there are at least 2-3 others that haven't been detailed or mentioned yet, like whatever calendars dragons might use, if any, or what exactly the yuan-ti or the aquatic races use, for example. And whatever calendar the Nari once used, before they all disappeared.

I haven't finished any calendar work for Aurelia just yet, but I have calendars worked out for some other settings too, and generally I name each day of the week (in some calendars it's just referred to by a number, but others have actual names for the days), each month, sometimes each week/tenday/fortnight of the month, and sometimes the year or cycle of years (like, Rhunarian elves define time within 3 different cycles of years, based on the movements of a particular star that they associate with the Spirit King). And the Tashi humans in Rhunaria use a zodiac cycle in their calendar, as I've done for one or two other oriental-style cultures in my campaigns. I also note down solstices, equinoxes, lunar cycles, eclipses, and major holidays or the like.

It helps that I keep a separate section in my setting documents for Timekeeping, and I'm working on a direct conversion chart for translating a date in one Rhunarian calendar into the corresponding date in any other Rhunarian calendar. While I use the Common Measure calendar when informing the players of the date in-game, I've also been able to answer what that means in the Tashi Imperial Calendar for the party's one samurai.
 

I made my own calendar.

580 days a year (which are numbered similiar to ours), 16 five week months (four for each season) and a 5 day holy week between each season (or maybe the middle of each season, can't remember). 7 days to the normal week. Days consist of 30 hours, where an hour is 60 minutes and a minute has 60 seconds.

No messing around with leap year for me.

My biggest problem is trying to determine eclipses, lunar and solar. I have three moons, each one associated with one three Prime deities. Otherwise all lunar cycles remain stable from onth to month, year to year. Holy weeks are based around a solstice or equinox.

Referencing the calendar doesn't seem to come up much in play, so I don't remember the names of the month's or days of the week (I'm at work right now, so my materials aren't handy). I do remember that the days of the holy week's are referenced as Day 1 up through Day 5 of whatever holy week followed by the year (Day 3 is always a High Holy Day and the exact day of the solstice/equinox). For me, the only time when time really counts during play is for tactical situations, otherwise it's just an occasional minor issue.

Using our calendar didn't make sense to me, not when I have a very active imagination and it's for playing make believe in the first place.
 
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After employing the Greyhawk calendar in two and a half campaigns now, my players are just now starting to get a glimmer of recognition when they hear someone mention the name of a day. They might be able to name one if asked.

Names of months give them a moment's pause, but not enough to actually bother looking it up unless absolutely necessary. (Luckily most are seasonal sounding, so I think they get the gist of it and move on.)

Holidays are mostly off their radar, with the few exceptions being ones they've roleplayed through in the past. Even then there is little recognition of when holidays recur.

I say this not to belittle the players, but to underscore how remote timekeeping may be on most group's list of priorities.
 

We do seconds, rounds/minutes, turns, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, and eons. It's an easy way to measure spellcasting time, if nothing else.

Weeks and months were told to us at one time, but they're strictly regional. I have no idea as a player why they are what they are, but I presume they mean something. Holidays are more important and Godsday is all I really pay attention to as a Cleric for the party.
 

I'm firmly in the "I don't want to have translate everything back to English all the time" camp. Monday is Monday. If my players happen to be aware that it's been named for the moon then they can make those associations if they wish.

I have a rough calendar, broken up by seasons with 3 months to a season. The months are "named" Early Summer, Mid Summer, etc. Major holidays are listed. These are named for the God's Day or event they commemerate.

What I have started doing is keeping a record of when & what the PCs and main NPCs did (and what the NPCs are planning on doing.) We only play once a month and a record helps people remember what's gone on.

cheers
 

Most campaigns I find it easiest to just use a real world calendar, clock, etc. However, I also sometimes use a system somewhat different but similar enough to be intuitively easy to use right out of the box.
 

First thing first: any calendar in any world is going to be based on something obvious - usually astronomic, like ours is. So, designing your astronomy logically comes first, before designing your calendar. :)

In my first big game (Telenet) I used conventional earth months etc., except they all had 30 days. Easy to grok for all involved, but boring as hell, particularly since most of us had come out of a game that used a Tolkenian Elvish calendar (6 months each of 60 days).

Riveria had two moons. Most people based their calendars off the faster one, that went through its phases 13 times a year; hence 13 months of 28 days each, and that's what was used as the standard with the months names not related in the least to real-world. The Elves, however, based their calendar off the slower moon, which ran at exactly half the rate of the faster - so the Elvish "year" was 2 solar years long, made up of 13 months of 56 days each. (a friend and past/current DM with a masters in astronomy tells me I blundered onto something that is in fact quite realistic here...two moons tend to settle into orbits mathematically related to each other, and 2-to-1 is very possible) Different cultures used different days to represent New Year; this didn't work out very well.

Decast will try something different again. Once more we have 2 moons, only this time they're on a 4-1 orbit ratio - Fieros has a 20-day cycle; Stabos takes 80. So, the standard calendar will use a double cycle of Fieros for its months - 40 days - and there'll be 9 of 'em. I'll use Elvish names modified from JRRT, with a few new ones tacked on; thus Hriva, Tuila, Laire, Yavia, Quelle, Coira, Auril, Eolna, Flaige. Other cultures have different names for the months, but the Elvish will be standard. The day after winter solstice (Hriva 1) will be New Year for everyone.

Holidays - the pagan Wheel of the Year (solstices, equinoxes, cross-quarters) makes the most sense here, again because it is astronomically based and thus similar to all surface-based cultures. I've changed some of the names for fluff reasons - the one great Gnomish contribution to my worlds, for example, is the holiday of Skandigan (formerly Lammas); a day during which any self-respecting Gnome and an awful lot of non-Gnomes get roaring drunk and accomplish little else of use. Naturally, local areas can have holidays whenever it makes sense for the story - these are just the major ones here. :)

Each player gets a player's kit on joining the game, containing among other things a 1-page write-up on calendars and holidays.

Lanefan
 

I use 12 months, named Roman still "First Month" "Second Month" etc, each of 30 days. Weeks are 7 days and used ad hoc only; I assume 4 weeks to a lunar cycle but rarely track it.
 

ironregime said:
After employing the Greyhawk calendar in two and a half campaigns now, my players are just now starting to get a glimmer of recognition when they hear someone mention the name of a day. They might be able to name one if asked.

Names of months give them a moment's pause, but not enough to actually bother looking it up unless absolutely necessary. (Luckily most are seasonal sounding, so I think they get the gist of it and move on.)

Holidays are mostly off their radar, with the few exceptions being ones they've roleplayed through in the past. Even then there is little recognition of when holidays recur.

I say this not to belittle the players, but to underscore how remote timekeeping may be on most group's list of priorities.

Which is why I think putting a lot of effort into eventing a fantasy calendar is not worth it. It's fun to think about stuff like a "better" calendar that marries lunar months to the year somehow, or metric days with 10 hours, etc., but it's not really relevant to the actual game.

If it absolutely HAS to not be in English, the real system from French, Spanish, or German might sound exotic enough (yet be comprehensible, and quasi-useful to know in the Real World.)

The lazy DM who figures the Roman/English calendar and day names are fine . . .
 
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