The Aluvian Calendar

 For the year 998:

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During the Harvest, everyone in town must help. If a character isn't sick, dead, or aiding the harvest, he will be hanged on October 7th.

During Haven, the weather is too bad to go on adventures in the dungeon or overland, but characters can take care of indoor business.

During Holiday, exertion is strictly prohibited. Daily fines are 10 GP plus 100 GP per character level. 

During Open season, there are no restrictions on character actions.

On Sunday, no business will be done. Characters who are already out of town can keep moving (although they really shouldn't.) Clerics who exert themselves on Sunday will find they have no spells for eight days and nights. 

I rule that Anticlerics can work normally on Sunday. Instead, they are similarly restricted from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday. You could do that too, or that might be too complicated for your group.

During War, the characters must be available to the war effort in some capacity. No adventuring or other business takes place. Refusing this duty is desertion, which is, again, a hanging offense. 

On Time

Gary famously said that you can’t have a meaningful campaign without strict timekeeping. He had his reasons and they were good reasons: an open table with up to 50 players playing in the same campaign world, dropping in and out as their schedule permitted. He has to keep strict time to keep the events of the campaign world straight for all of them! 

Even if your campaign has different pressures and challenges than his early campaigns did, you will benefit from strict timekeeping as well. 

In my campaign, we observe several time periods. 

The Round is one minute long. This is good for fights, chases, holding your breath, beating the clock. 

The Turn is ten minutes. This is good for exploration and problem-solving, torches and wandering monsters.

The Day is good for overland travel. It measures off healing, spell recovery, and brewing a potion among other things. 

The week is good for spells and spell research. In my game, there are quite a few weeks during which adventuring is quite impossible, due to festivals, harvests, wars, diseases, bad omens, terrible weather, and simply healing up. Characters can spend some of those weeks doing other things like courting maidens and writing scrolls, for instance.

The season is helpful in the same way weeks are. 

The year is very important because characters age and the state of the world at large will change. Favorite NPCs will die. PCs will retire and die. Babies who were born will come of age, and become potential PCs or helpful NPCs themselves. 

I keep a calendar for this reason, with regular events and chances for unusual ones. There are “blue” weeks which are good for adventuring; “yellow” weeks which are good for town events; and “red” weeks and days, where characters are all going to be indisposed. 

For in-game time, once into the dungeon and out again is usually one day, but sometimes longer if the several characters camp out somewhere. 

No one moves or works on Sundays, Christian or not. Exertion is forbidden across Aluvia. There are other days when activity is strictly prohibited for religious reasons as well. 

I’ve tried renaming the weekdays and months. It’s unnecessarily complicated. Saying January and Tuesday is much easier on the brain and doesn’t break verisimilitude. 

NEXT TIME: Character Age and Aging