Tracking Time in Your World

howandwhy99 said:
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.
. . .
Holidays are more important and Godsday is all I really pay attention to as a Cleric for the party.

Are eons a set period? For me, after centuries comes "ages", which are not a set period. "Age" sounds really cool to me.

For years, I use the Common Year from Greyhawk, but I also note the year on the Elvish calendar, which is to say the Tolkien calendar.

Thus, at our last game (two weeks ago), it was May 4, 588 CY, which translates to something like 2587 TA (Third Age) in Elvish -- I forget the Elvish year, but it makes the campaign between the Battle of Five Armies (the Hobbit) and the forming of the Fellowship of the Ring. Good times . . .

I usually don't care about the day of the week -- I normally don't track it, as it's not important in the game.

For holidays, I do throw in a few -- Yule (basically pagan Christmas/Winter Solstice), Summer Solstice, and the Spring and Fall Equinox. The season changes are mostly important to Druids and followers of the "Old Faith" (Obad-Hai). I've done the occassional Greyhawk festival in a certain city, like their equivalent of Octoberfest and Boxing Day, but even I don't pay much attention.

I should find out what day is the real world holy day of Saint Cuthbert . . .
 

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Each civilized race in my campaign has its own calender.

Humans use an astrologically-based calender, with 12 months named after the 12 legally recognized Gods of the Human Empire. The first day of each month is the God's holy day, and the activities at these festivals figure largely into the campaign. The week is seven days: Sunsday - Moonsday - Starsday - Skysday - Seasday - Flamesday - Landsday. The next Holiday coming up in the Campaign is the Scholar's Festival (important since one of the characters is a professor of medicine). The party can expect to see students running wild, pulling pranks and participating in the "Tournament of Knickers" : stealing undergarments to bring before the statue of Vettysha, Goddess of Wisdom.

Elves use a lunar calender, with each month bearing the name of a tree, and each day named after a flower. Months start on the new moon. Elves do not number days, but they express dates by expressions like "Orchids on Birch" (The sixth day of the third lunar month of the year). There are no weeks. Spring begins for Elves when the first flower blooms. Summer begins whenever the community decides it begins, usually by a vote. Autumn begins when the first changed leaf is observed. Winter begins with the first frost. There is otherwise no set list of holidays. Every day has some special event associated with it, and every so often the community will decide to have a special celebration.

Halflings use a lunisolar reckoning of time. They do not speak of “months”, but rather of “Moons”. Their year consists of 12 Moons, each of which begins on when the first crescent of the moon is sighted. The Moons have names like "Flower Moon", "Milk Moon", etc. Every 3 years an extra Moon is inserted at the end of the year. The New Year begins on the first New Moon of Spring. Halflings use the phases of the moon in the same way humans use weeks. The New, Quarter, and Full phases are each conventionally considered to have 7 days, and the Gibbous phase has either 7 or 8 depending on how long it takes to sight the first light of the moon. Halflings work for the first 6 days of a phase, and worship on the 7th day. On months were there is an 8th day of the Gibbous moon, they hold parties and dances on that day.

The Gnomish calender recognizes only four months, identical with the four seasons. Each month has 91 days. New Year's Day is not considered to belong to any season, but occurs between Summer and Autumn. Gnomes also do not have a human-like concept of weeks. Every day has a unique name, however, so each season could be considered to consist of a single long week. It is traditional to engage in activities that relate in some way to the title of the day. For instance, some Gnomes will not wear pants on Pantless Day. Punning is almost obligatory on Pun Day. The exact way to celebrate a particular day varies from community to community. All Gnomes however, celebrate the 75th to 85th days of Autumn as The Golden Age Festival. This commemorates the 10 days between the time when the Gnomes discovered that the last of the Giant's cities had fallen, and the arrival of the first invading Elves. The Gnomes consider this time to have been their Golden Age of glory. The Golden Age festival features candy coins, the giving of gifts to children, and the lighting of a ten-armed candelabrum.

As for the Dwarves, they don't employ months or weeks, but simply number the days of each year. Since I have no Dwarven PCs in the game, I never had to detail the Dwarven calender past that.
 
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And people laughed at me when I said that world building was akin to six page treatises on Elven Tea Ceremonies.

To each his own I suppose. I track seasons, and that's about it.
 

My own take comes down to the idea that DM's should by all means make up their own calendars, changing the number of months, weeks, and renaming everything - but then to be fully prepared to never EVER inflict it upon the players if they don't want it.

New, customized calendars and custom names are all fine and well for exercising ones creativity and emphasizing the fantastical not-the-real-world nature of the setting. They are also a MASSIVE DISTRACTION AND ANNOYANCE if the players aren't keen on gleefuly steeping themselves in what is for most intents and purposes pointless minutiae - and even worse if the DM chooses to INSIST that the players learn and use that minutiae.

A D&D setting is the very definition of fantasy and the fantastic. Nobody NEEDS to have a funky alien calendar to hammer that into players heads with all the charm and subtlety of dull fire ax. Consult your victims players before subjecting them to your creative calendars.
 

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