Holiday is over and I can't stop thinking this is a Monday. I'm so glad it's not. But it got me to thinking about gaming calendars, holidays for a campaign world. I always like the idea of a game calendar, create holidays for the various religions and state festivals. But I never follow through with them. It seems when I get into running a game it slides to the side without me knowing.
So my question, do you keep a gaming calender? Holidays? And all that goes into it. If you do how do you manage to keep it going during a game?
I almost always end up using the Middle-earth calender from the Appendixes of the LotR novels. I think it's called the Shire calender?
ReplyDeleteIt nice and easy to remember, plus different enough that it feels a bit alien to players.
I just use an old calender from 2009 and change the holidays to something similar and fantasified. I just kept the normal names, to keep it simple for all. Current date is september the 5th 1009, a sunday. Oh, and with a little research I can see that it's a day after the full moon... for the next year (2010) I plan to find a calendar where this is already indicated...
ReplyDeleteI run games in our own version of Greyhawk these days and use the Greyhawk calendar, which conveniently has phases of the moon and religious festivals on it.
ReplyDeleteKeeping track of time is hard, though. Many times I'm just focused on responding to the players and the activity is in the dungeon. At present, I'm trying to offload this book keeping to the players, by having them keep a 'record sheet', with each line being the exp, social status and other changes of the session, with the start and end dates.
I have been caught by this. I showed up to one session, expecting and prepared to run a dungeon that one player had expressed an interest in. But another player pointed out that it was a specific date, which was significant astronomically "the stars are aligned" and that a certain portal would be open on a festival. I had set the date far in advance and hadn't worked on that dungeon. But I wanted to hold myself to the calendar and what the players wanted and they all agreed to go for the portal. So I ran with it and ran the session by my notes. And it was cool.
In my play-by-blog I do keep a calendar, just using regular months and days. Only difference is each month has exactly 28 days. I use it to keep track of moon phases (lycanthropes, magic), weather, travel, rations, and resting/healing.
ReplyDeleteI never thought to put in holidays, but that's a heck of an idea. Equinox and solstice celebrations would be easy enough, just four holidays to deal with.