Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

[Mr_Yuck]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

Ive found that if you differ too drastically from real world systems, it becomes too cumbersome. Players will then not use it and it is dropped and forgotten.

 

Someone here said great for starting your own world, no so hot to integrate into an exisitng campaign. I would agree with that assessment.

 

I use a calendar that is similar to some plublished works by that *OTHER* fantasy gaming company.

 

I use a system of 12 months consisting of 3 weeks per month. Each week is 10 days long and each month and day has a unique name. So, this makes 360 days. Now for the remaining 5 days, I threw in 5 holidays throughout the year that do not fall under a month at all. (eg Midsummer falls between what we call June and July). And once every 4 years there is an additional day thrown in that again does not fall under a month to calculate for leap year. This gives us a 365 day year with a 'day' being 24 hours like Earth. Again, I feel this makes the players more comfortable as there is not a complicated conversion system just to figure out what today's date is!

 

On a side note... A friend of mine once saw in Germany (I think) a metric clock that told time in a scale similar to yours. I think that metrics are very very cool and would love to have seen this.

 

I just don't think most players are as 'nerdy' as I may be!

[Lucius]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

If you want to stick to "alternate earth" style (i.e. same facts of rotation and revolution etc.) -

 

One interesting thing about the Maya calender is that as I understand it, they did not need a leap year.

 

Instead of celebrating New Year at midnight every year as we do, they would do it at midnight, next year it would be halfway from midnight to noon, third year it would be noon, then halfway to midnight, and finally midnight again - adding a quarter day every year instead of adding a day every four years.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

House of the Palindromedary

[Markdoc]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

If you want to stick to "alternate earth" style (i.e. same facts of rotation and revolution etc.) -

 

One interesting thing about the Maya calender is that as I understand it, they did not need a leap year.

 

Instead of celebrating New Year at midnight every year as we do, they would do it at midnight, next year it would be halfway from midnight to noon, third year it would be noon, then halfway to midnight, and finally midnight again - adding a quarter day every year instead of adding a day every four years.

 

That's a nice idea. I use multiple calendars in my game (basically each culture has one) and some other approaches are:

 

1. The messed-up option. Various cultures have years which are sligthly longer or shorter than 365 days - one culture has a 360 day calendar (not deliberately, but in the absence of a more evolved technology that's their best guess). As a result, their calendar gets more and more out of step with the actual year/seasons. (Lest anyone think this is too funky, the same thing happened historically: that's why January 1 2000, in Ethiopia falls in this coming September).

 

2. The leap year option. Some cultures do it the way we do it - some cultures add all the leap years into a longer calendar correction: the Dymerians, for example, have a 5 day festival every 20 years to correct their calendar and count in 20-year cycles.

 

3. No calendar as we would recognise it: the Eochail calandar doesn't have specific weeks the way we do - they have a year of 4 seasons, and the seasons are marked by astrologically-calculated festivals: so you have "the 33rd night of winter" or "14 nights before the midwinter festival" (they count nights rather than days). Since the days don't have to fit a specific written calendar, the year fluctuates in length slightly, making leap years largely academic.

 

This sort of thing helps give a different feel without requiring the players to keep multiple calendars in their head.

 

cheers, Mark

[Rapier]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

For the most part, I try and avoid creating calendars and times.

 

It's cool backstory to have purple skies, 37 hour days, 18 months, 10 days in a week etc. But I've found that it tends to make it difficult on the players. We have a hard enough time converting to commonly used measurements to Heroic (1/4 mile is HOW many hexes again?), it think it can add a level of complexity that tends to stretch the players ability to remain in character.

 

I would imagine that after enough time, this would stop to be an issue.

[Curufea]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

I do think creating your own calendar is worth it if you can make a cool looking prop like the wall calendar in Rome.

[Shaddakim]

Re: Doing your own calendar: is it worth it?

 

I do think creating your own calendar is worth it if you can make a cool looking prop like the wall calendar in Rome.

 

Cool idea! I thought to have a map of the area on the wall during games, but missed putting up the calendar. Good call. I need to put that together soon while I have access to a plotter.