Building Calendars and Tracking Time | Running the Game

Episode 34: Let's talk about tracking time!
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[@TheSimpleDev]

Gary Gygax was always awesome about responding to fans. I looked up his email address in the mid 90's when i was in highschool to ask him how to find more of his gord the rogue series. He explained where it went after TSR and even followed up with me when I asked him about a scene that did not take place in the first book that he mentioned in the second and he directed me to an issue of Dragon Magazine to find the short story that connected the two. Having one of my favorite authors take the time to respond to me as a teenager really meant a lot.

[@jaysoncowan5763]

The fact Gary responded to fans and Jeff Grub famously hates fans and then is trying to say everyone liked Williams over Gary. Well I call bullsh*t.

[@ifacro]

*DM (me):* "It's 7 pm and the sun stars to set-" *Player:* "Wait, the archipelago is near the north pole so shouldn't days be shorter at this time of year?" On one hand, I appreciate them for immersing themselves so much into my world, but on the other hand...

[@TransilvanianHunger1334]

But its a quite common knowledge though.

[@GazpachoTabletop]

You need to work out the tilt your world has it seems

[@ceiling_cat]

wan't its winter tho?

[@KilRBass]

I personally love that my players sometime immerse so much that we have a discussion about things like constellations and climate changes through the year... in the other hand I really hate it when the same players don’t remember the name of the NPC who they met about 20 times in 30 sessions...

[@solsystem1342]

Plot twist: you're hinting to your players that your world isn't actually a sphere it's just a disk that the sun orbits around! Actually though feel free to go crazy with your cosmology

[@some_hippies]

I created a calendar using Donjon, 13 months of 28 days, 7 day weeks, with a 28 and 56 day moon. I also pregenned 2 years of weather, and it was hilarious when one player jokingly asked what the weather was and I dead faced said "slightly drizzling, about 60 degrees, it's a bit chilly for Septen, the 7th month, it's the 3rd, year 394. It's 2pm and last night was a Half moon and a New moon." His reaction was priceless. My setting is relatively high magic and borderline fantasy steampunk, but the year is only 394 because that's when the mortals' enslavement by demons had finally ended. The year probably would have been around 5,500 otherwise, starting from when history was first recorded, something like ancient Greece or Rome.

[@monsieurbobblehead3854]

My reaction would have either been slack jaw or applause.

[@Serit0nin]

Ryan McKenna that's pretty awesome.

[@frocat5163]

For my group's ongoing Skull & Shackles campaign, I generated weather (temperature, precipitation, and wind speed/direction), sunrise, sunset, moonrise, moonset, and tides for over 400 days. I modified the Golarion calendar presented in the campaign setting so the year has 367 days. I used real times from a latitude on Earth close to that of the Shackles on Golarion, to establish times for celestial bodies' rising and setting, tides, etc. My players also shook their heads when I showed them what' I'd done...

[@elspethdykstra3431]

what did you use to get that much weather?

[@UncleRiotous]

The Donjon calendar generator is brilliant.

[@Briansgate]

yeah, one of the worst things in a campaign is realizing that you became a 20th level wizard in 3 months. So much for all those novels that don't all feature 16 year old Arch wizards.

[@fhuber7507]

This is one reason that original D&D and 2nd Edition required TRAINING to gain level. Spend character money and take time to practice the new skills before you could go on anther adventure and make use of them. One week of down time times the level you are training to acquire, if you could find someone 2 levels above the level you were going for, double the time to self-train. The gold = EXP made sense when you had to spend roughly 1/2 your EXP in gold to gain level. Fighters tore up armored dummies. Wizards expended material components Clerics made sacrifices to their deities Thieves had to bribe people to gain access to knowledge. (among other explanations of where the money went)

[@metagames.errata7777]

@@fhuber7507 I have a mechanic I haven't made much use of that says you have to spend a per level, up to 7 days. It's not very restrictive, but at least makes you pay something. I figured I'd use it as a story guide to know when the party is ready for the next adventure, more than as a penalty. Maybe once in a long campaign make them choose between leveling time and chasing bad guys early.

[@Geographus666]

@@fhuber7507 A DM we used to play with had a similar system. Basically if you were relatively actively using your skills (e.g. being on an adventure or training) you would gain a level every "current level x weeks". E.g. if you are Level 3 and you adventured and trained for a combined three weeks in-game time you would get to level 4 after roughly that time. So in theory, if you had no downtime where you did nothing at all (like meaningless traveling around for weeks) you would get to 20th level after roughly over 4 years of in-game time. Of course you would need longer because you rarely are actively adventuring or training constantly for 4 years straight but the system felt quite natural since it was not raining XP and Levels left and right and after a week of adventuring you were alread 5th level. He also never awarded numerical XP but kept track of the progress of any player behind the screen and simply told you when you got a level, which did not always happend for all players at once (but usually relatively close, like within 1-2 sessions), so you never knew when you would gain a level. It also made downtime interesting since it encouraged the players to seek out ways to keep getting better. You could train for yourself but you could also go on adventures to e.g. seek out a master that could train you for a week or so, which of course cost you some gold, and that could get you more experience than training alone, depending on how high the masters level was.

[@moredetonation3755]

@@fhuber7507 bards have to pay off their jilted lovers

[@cohesian1]

@@metagames.errata7777 my current campaign to make time actually pass I’ve had my players have to take a 7 days of off time and training time to level up. Levels 2-7 have in world taken 7 weeks.

[@jj_the_ent]

1:20 i love how this implies that that sound effect was not added and is actually how it sounds when he says it-

[@Krakdown88]

It seems fitting that a video about time appears suddenly at fuckin 3 in the morning

[@wildriot8512]

Didn't you hear... He doesn't really keep track of time.

[@Ishpeck]

"I don't do it. I don't think Matt Mercer does it." I love how Mercer's used as a yard stick for justifiable GM actions.

[@sciverzero8197]

more of a Mercemiter than a yard stick.

[@Draeckon]

@@morganfreeman-sheehy842 I think he mainly started doing it because of the Tal'dorei campaign guide. If it weren't for that book, I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't track the calendar.

[@anthonynorman7545]

A good chunk of his viewers came from Critical Role's audience

[@afaultytoaster]

I don't love it, I think it's bad, you can have fun in your own way :(

[@Silva-ek9hd]

afaultytoaster Well, yes. And no. Yes everyone can have fun in their own way. But people need to start realizing that everything Matt does is achievable though very much so unlikely, and so it’s okay to aspire to be that. But don’t expect to be that and especially not immediately.

[@viperblitz11]

There was a point in our campaign where our rogue got pregnant (wild story, one of the campaign's highlights), and the player suddenly had to start tracking how many ingame weeks she was into the pregnancy so the DM could point out when she first started feeling signs.

[@joshdaymusiced]

2 years and nobody has asked for clarification? Shame on this community! I need to know this. Please elaborate.

[@viperblitz11]

@@joshdaymusiced Basically, the setting my DM made has heaps of homebrew. So much homebrew that we consider it a different system from 5e altogether. One homebrew class uses rune magic, and has a class ability called "Force of Nature". When a player uses Force of Nature, the DM opens up a word generator, strings together three random words, and interprets them to create an effect that can be beneficial or detrimental, so long as it's not immediately harmful to the caster. For example, a runemage falling off the back of a dragon used Force of Nature on himself, then the DM's generated words were "grow, adapt, survive", and that character grew a permanent set of wings. This is not a balanced ability and we don't pretend it is. One of these times, our lizardman runemage used it on a female Spellscarred (think Tieflings, but made by magical fallout instead of demonic blood). Nothing happened that the characters could know, but the DM informed us all that she was magically impregnated with twins that were each half lizardman, half spellscarred. The funniest part was that while we all knew this OOC, none of the characters knew until like the day before the campaign officially ended.

[@MrOdrzut]

Some inspiration from other cultures - in Slavic languages months are named from nature and farming. For example in Polish, starting from January: - styczeń (connecting one) - luty (strong freeze one) - marzec (cold suffering one) - kwiecień (flowery one) - maj (from latin) - czerwiec (red bug one) - the red bug was a major export in medieval times - it was source of the best red pigment - lipiec (linden trees one) - sierpień (sickle one) - wrzesień (heather one) - październik (hurds one) - listopad (falling leaves one) - grudzień (frozen/clomped ground one)

[@Suavek69]

Marzec comes from Latin, it is the month of the Mars. The old-polish name for marzec was brzezień, from brzoza, making it a birchwood month

[@thereservist13]

Best example of arbitrary point in time is in the TV show Dinosaurs, the son asks why they are counting down.

[@Odothuigon]

+1 for the arcane reference.

[@krim7]

The last episode is so sad!

[@MAKRA567]

I'm now going to run a campaign in a world where the years count down because one of the major gods supposedly told the people to do it that way. No one alive knows what happens when we hit 0. Thank you for this inspiration.

[@notme98]

I think that was a Flintstones joke too. Or maybe Life Of Brian.

[@projectbaum]

I usually offer my players a ton of down-time, which helps with the "going from zero to hero in a few days adventuring" problem. They don't mind spending days, weeks, or even a month or two just kickin' it at their keep, making magic items, training, researching, or interacting with their favorite NPCs. It makes it easy to throw hooks for the next adventure when I know where they're all going to be and what they'll be doing.

[@c7d5a69]

Maybe I can toss some ideas about naming. I'm from Belarus, and can say, that unlike Gregorian calendar, months in our language are named mostly be nature things. For example names of winter months describe how cold winter becomes. They can be roughly translated as "Snow"uary, "Frost"uary, "Fierce"uary. July named by Tilia tree, due to blossom. August is harvest month. And about days outside months. Egyptian calendar had those. Because all 12 months was the same length (30 days), and year contains 365, they had 5 extra days for holidays.

[@haggisllama2630]

c7d5a6 I don’t want to make fun of your culture but is it ok that I find that real funny

[@MrVelociraptor3000]

media.giphy.com/media/ipmFvsbE26qJ2/giphy.gif

[@NirousPlayers]

Holy shit! I had the exact idea of making 12 months with 30 days each, and 5 single holidays. I'm 100% checking out the Egyptian calendar, thanks!

[@StepchildoftheSun]

Because I'm a giant nerd and a neurotic DM, I legit print out a calendar (ideally with moon phases) and write in game names of the days of the week and months. I write in each day significant events the PCs know about and in a different color, the events the PCs don't know about and it makes it so easy to tell them how much time has passed.

[@CrazyConnor2]

FUCK YEAH 3 AM MATT COLVILLE VIDEO!

[@CrazyConnor2]

WHOOOOOOOOOOO!

[@Syldari]

OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ OONTZ!

[@rudolfaligierski3043]

Living in Poland is great. 9:00 AM, saturday morning, watching Matt to breakfast...

[@willsuttie3683]

TheGameGuy It's Saturday :)

[@rudolfaligierski3043]

Yes. Yes it is. Sorry about that ;) If there is any excuse - we have a constitution day next week so my weekend is 3 days longer, so yeah one could get confused...

[@Kazhrei]

I need an alarm on my phone of him yelling "time...Time TIME!"

[@deathless12345678]

Did you ever do this? I would love my workout alarm to be this.

[@sk8rdman]

I made a "Calendar of Harptos" in a spreadsheet to track time because I wanted to have an easier way to keep track of what was going on behind the scenes. When my players hired a spy to do some recon on an enemy for them while they went on another adventure, I wanted to make sure that I knew how much time it would take that spy to travel to the relevant city, do that recon, and get back. I've also since come up with an idea that the "big event" of the campaign will eventually take place during the solar eclipse of the winter solstice (darkest day a la Last Airbender) and so once they figure that out, it will be a race against time to stop the BBEG from achieving their goals. Having a calendar is incredibly useful for helping keep track of all this.

[@RexTenomous]

It took me a long time, but I did buy both of Matt's books and read them. They are quite good. Not like genre defining or anything, but I certainly had a hard time putting them down, and recommend them to anyone who wishes Matt would run ads. I don't even read a whole lot.

[@crimsontaints]

I once ran a vampire campaign parallel to a Werewolf campaign, they didn't use the same calendar so it wasn't obvious it was happening at the same time. The players only figured out it was by recognizing astronomical occurrences. Worked out very well!

[@oz_jones]

I love this

[@OkamiG15]

I really like the naming system from the Dishonored games, where the months are named on significant events or common themes. For instance, the Month of Harvest, Month of Rain, etc. But now I'm 100% using floating days in my calendar! That sounds so cool!

[@hellofromlaura6095]

Wow that's a really cool idea thanks!

[@Theflightl3ssbirds]

That actually appears in the Dishonored calendar - the Fugue Feast is a day that falls outside of the calendar when the Abbey of the everyman reset the primary clocks of the Empire of the Isles

[@oz_jones]

Finnish does that, by the way.

[@RedAreshan]

im such a history nerd, and busted out laughing when he said the Babylonians would've been happy with an even number of days in a year

[@derbistheeternal2947]

Brother: have you seen the new Mathew Colville video? Me: yeah it's about time. Brother: the video was about time. Me: no, it's about time he made a new video.

[@Jessie_Helms]

I keep track of the days. About 10 sessions in (12-ish weeks into the campaign) I sat down and figured up all of the days. We were only about 16 days in at that point- months of IRL time was less than 3 weeks in-game. Now when I upload recaps they always start with what day it is, and I always indicate in a recap when the days change. Now we’re on session 14 and it’s day 24. Also, the recaps really helped me be able to say the timeline authoritatively. “They rested before going here, so it’s Utkar 16, not the 15 anymore” for example. It also helps figure out downtime. They spent 2 days kicking around town to brew some potions and getting a hat made, and that actually had a tangible effect on the campaign.

[@ashen_dawn]

So we started doing this in our campaign. It is really cool to have accurate seasons, persistent and definite deadlines, etc. But the best part is that we all decided on birthdays for our characters, and the DM has started having NPCs give us gifts for them! It's overall quite fun. Edit: if you do this I recommend making a spreadsheet on Google Docs or whatever, so each player can reference it and add notes together about what happened on each day - it helps add to the collective history.

[@zenith110]

I'm certain someone has mentioned it by now, but the Dragon Age series has all of these wonderful things and their attention to detail is fantastic. Calendars (Latinized [Imperium] and Common names for months [everybody else), Eras or the Ages (Hence, dragon age), Constellations (once were elven then rebranded under the Imperium etc). It makes me happy to have that great example to fall back upon when writing my calendar, of which I really must fill with special dates and so forth

[@Dynamous1]

Colville's alive! roll initiative!

[@zephyr9750]

natural one

[@MrVelociraptor3000]

9

[@UKfan879]

I know that statistically it had to happen to someone, but my birthday is August 17th... Henceforth it shall be known as lamp.

[@tarmotaipale5704]

13:08 here in Finland, there's a somewhat consistent standard in naming the months - we have a word that somehow describes the time of the year during that month and the word "kuu" (moon) in every month's name. For example, July, August, September and October are heinäkuu, elokuu, syyskuu and lokakuu ("hay moon", "life moon", "fall moon" and "dirt moon") in Finnish. But that just proves the naming of months tells something about the local culture and I think there are probably more monnth name systems, some more and some less consistent

[@oz_jones]

Harvest month, not life. Elonkorjuu, kato

[@slydog75]

The Common Era thing cracks me up.. it still starts on the same day!

[@craigd6261]

Hooray! I've been having "links in the doobly-doo" withdrawal these last few weeks!

[@summonfish]

Craig Boorman Me too, buddy. Me too.

[@FeeblePenguin]

Vlogbrothers, vsauce, and more use the word dooblydoo regularly; it's originally from wheezy waiter. (sorry no d&d pun here)

[@dminard1]

"Links in the dooblydoo" would actually make a good tshirt

[@storyspren]

I just recently saw in an episode of Critical Role: "It's the equivalent of a Thursday." So at least until then he hadn't done it, but did say he might look into making one so it could've changed since.

[@Neomikus]

This makes me want to make an adventure where the players take on a task for their hometown, and if the Players take forever the Townsfolk will just have assumed that they died and they return to find their funeral rights being performed.

[@charlesstebbins7207]

I tried running a puzzle once. It led to a 2 hour debate on "character knowledge" vs "player knowledge" and weather or not puzzles could be considered as medagaming. I haven't run a puzzle sense.

[@Jonatron101]

Coming back to this video four years later when my campaigns actually have a Calender... I feel the weight of it much greater. Makes it feel so much realer. And S&F and K&W seem to actively encourage taking extended rests, waiting for fortifications to conclude building and such... SO DAMN GOOD!

[@CrazyConnor2]

HE'S BACK GUYS! THERE WAS MUCH REJOICING!

[@cbeaird52]

TheGameGuy Yaaaayyyy.......

[@1Maklak]

I like the calendar with 13 months, 28 days each and 1, sometimes 2 days of special holidays. It makes so much more sense than 12 months of different lengths.

[@tanketom]

The Forgotten Realms calendar is the French Revolution Metric Calendar with some small differences (five Festive days added to end of year, not sparsed in between) and new names for days and months.

[@potterfanz6780]

The French revolutions idea of giving every day a unique name is horrible, no one can be expected to remember 365 different names, and remember exactly what order they happen in.

[@Armstej]

I just finally got around to creating a calendar based on your recommendation - I've yet to play or run a game where time was even really considered outside of travel (and it didn't really matter, even in something like SKT, sadly). But I'm giving it a go. My players ended their last campaign reaching 18th level in Tomb of Annihilation -> Tomb of Horrors and I decided to build a campaign world from scratch, so I had their characters become gods and help run the new campaign. They all picked domains to care for, created their own portfolios, symbols and tenants. Then I incorporated them into my game. So, I'm using each god as a name of a month. I have 12 domains (picking up Order from the UA, though I guess it's now official in Ravenica) so I decided to go with earth standard 12 months, only I opted to have 30 day months, and then added 5 "feast days" named the Days of Yawea (the overgod of the crystal sphere, akin to AO in Forgotten Realms). Each of my players got a feast day, appearing just before the start of their own month. I just sent them notice of the calendar - and while they've been pretty happy with just having their own gods represent (it's been fun, one player is a cleric to a different player's god, and I text the god player for advice on how he'd like his god to react), their comments on Slack have been quite entertaining knowing they're even more deeply ingrained in the world. Thank you so much for this idea!

[@alexisd5274]

came back to this video specifically because i'm gearing up for a long campaign and one of my players wants to play a very young character (like an 8 yr old girl) so tracking time will probably be super important seeing as she's gonna grow and become older as the campaign goes along

[@disnagburnazog9552]

How'd it go

[@ymmijx6061]

our calendar bothers me a lot. 365 breaks down into 13 28 day months each of which would have exactly 4 7 day weeks with only a single day left over (or two on leap years) which would make a good new years day that isn't part of a month.

[@grymhild]

yep! one year from winter solstice to Winter solstice for our solar calendar is 365.25 days our lunar calendar from new moon to new moon is 29.5 days

[@kevinsullivan3448]

The sun is a masculine symbol and the moon is a feminine symbol. That's what male dominated societies use a solar calendar and not a lunar calandar.

[@MrVelociraptor3000]

Can I use this?

[@krim7]

There was a strong push after WWII to create a new, standardized calendar but it fell apart because Christian religious leaders in the US objected to a calendar with intercalary days, as it would mean - over time - Easter would not fall on Sunday.

[@jeremiahaglover]

You are absolutely right. Just keep in mind that the Gregorian Calendar that we use was developed before we had an absolutely precise measure of how long it took us to complete one rotation. It also accounts for the 4 seasons pretty well, since 12 is divisible by 4. Also, we will never change, because our calendar works, even if it is inefficient.

[@copperclockmaker]

I run a calendar in my 5e game where I know what day it is and roughly what time of day it is. I figure out what the NPC's will do and how long it takes if the characters do nothing. This also regulates how long it takes for the apothecary to get new stuff, or how long they have to wait for the shipment to get there. It also seems to influence how often they take long rests.

[@DarkNagrarok]

I was going to go to bed, but then a Matt Colville video appeared.

[@DavidTucker85]

My current campaign is the first one that I've kept close track of time like this and after 6 months of doing, I really have enjoyed it. The seasons change, holidays happen. It gives a sense of the world 'happening'.

[@TheSwartz]

I think your travel times depend on the scale of the map. I have from the 5e PHB that you can travel 24 miles/day at a "normal" pace for an 8 hour day. And, looking at the only map I have with me at the time (Sword Coast from Lost Mine of Phandelver) it says that each hex = 5 miles. I don't have it with me, but I'm certain it's in the DMG in one of the first chapters that describes the different scales of maps.. I'm gonna have to re-look at that, so be aware to look at the scale on the map first! Thanks, great video as always!

[@XanothAvaeth]

Having a Mathew Colville video makes being awake at 7am on a Saturday morning so much better :)

[@ianmoone8640]

Ian Cannon or waking up at 3:30 am to go to work

[@MarcoDToon]

Ian Moone It's 12:45 pm here

[@Daszkal]

Ian Moone now that's a man.

[@Kaemonarch]

So I was just watching some of your videos for the first time today, and I decided to subscribe (and I usually don't subscribe to anything). As I kept watching I saw afterwards the video where you mention how amazed you were at 10K subs, and then the one with 50K Q&A, and I decided to come here (to your most recent video) to tell you why I subscribed: You are just too good. I have been watching many videos similar to yours, but I didn't subscribe to any of them. They felt half-cooked, unprofessional and more often than not filled with too many personal opinions and too little facts. Here, not only shows the fact that you maxed your charisma, but its obvious that you know what you are talking about. You got experience, and it shows. On top of that you are really with words and exposition, if I didn't know any better, I would think you have been practicing it as a hobby for at least 30 years, wink wink. Also really appreciated how you use crystal clear examples (like the Skill Challenges) and exact situations that happened to you and your groups; that is exactly what many of us are looking for: clear examples and direct answers, not the constant "is up to you and your group" and ambiguous answers that others channels offer. Didn't come to your channel from anywhere in particular, you just showed there in the suggested videos in KZbin after I watched enough similar content, and you really stand out in quality. Listening to you and your stories is a constant pleasure and, unlike with many others, I didn't feel the need to skip and stop listening to you because you were getting repetitive, boring or useless. Keep the good work. 10 out of 10, would watch again.

[@huntercarvey670]

HE LIVES! Great vid Matt, glad to see you back.

[@lelandwhitehead56]

With 7 minutes left in the day, Matt squeaks in

[@xanar8503]

My current campaign is on its 3rd session but it is set in a world I created a year ago for another group and because of the past group a war is going to break out soon. I didn't keep track of time very well for that group, but because of the coming war and this video I am creating a calender. once again ,Matt, you have inspired me.

[@DerringerHK]

Looking at another video of yours where you mentioned Microscope, and having your players figure out the history of the dead empire in your world; I think it would be great to build the calendar or the days of the week based off the names of some important historical figures or events your players come up with playing Microscope :) I think that would be a cool experience

[@petshop5941]

Ah yes! A Matthew Colville video and Primitive Technology in the same day!

[@FeeblePenguin]

Haha this guy knows what's up

[@quantumnaught]

wow I understand this!

[@zynthio]

Dude we should be friends

[@duxwontobey4887]

Ikr?

[@Daszkal]

FeeblePenguin I do not, what is primitive technology? Help me know what's up, I'm hungry over here.

[@mr.smithsgovermentclass4556]

Audio software. Somebody has been learning it...

[@mcolville]

Actually I gave up on the new mic and just went back to the old mic. This is the same audio setup and process I used for like the first 20 videos.

[@magnusanderson6681]

@@mcolville Time!

[@DungeonDad]

Stoked to see a new video, and it is so relevant to the campaign I am putting together. Time is a bitch when you're travelling through the desert.

[@calebedward1281]

Yay, new content! I've been Jonesing for some fast talking DM advice.

[@TerminalHunter]

I think I jumped about 5 feet in the air around 18 minutes into the video when I misheard the "random" year. My current campaign started in the year 3780...

[@oz_jones]

@@dziooooo Matt mercer is stalking you 👀

[@Jader7777]

Thank you for going back to your Bugbear hair style. Never change.

[@MrJacobHarrelson]

This will probably get buried in the deluge of comments but thank you so much Matt Colville for making all of these videos. I started watching them before I had ever DMed a game and now I am watching this about 3 months into my first campaign. Your videos have been invaluable to me, including this one. My players have been enjoying our campaign so much that one of them has started running his own game in a world that he has been creating for years and now I'm a player in that! You don't only tell the what/how but the WHY and I think that is sometimes more important. You're like the Bill Nye/Alton Brown of D&D. Thanks for everything you do.

[@andrewkeillor8302]

holy smokes finally! it's been too long matt. glad you're back.

[@brians.6261]

Love your videos Matt. They've helped me lead games for my wife and son. Keep up the good work.

[@unorthodoxproductions2080]

I love how you tell us what you do but you don’t take away the aspect of letting us know it’s alright to shift the rules but still give us recommendations.

[@TheBigHerman007]

I introduced a time travel mechanic to my game so I have watched this video a million times. Thank you so very very much :)

[@Loxard]

little known fact: the amount days in a year changes very slowly because of the tendency of planets to tidally lock, it takes a lot of time though, so it's not so relevant to teach.

[@Ayselx]

Approximately 3600 years

[@ash-tv3bu]

here's an interesting question i'll need to answer: how would an underdark calendar work? it doesn't make sense to separate it by seasons, movement around the sun, phases of the moon, or even days! depending on your lore it could be heavily based on the surface calendar, but i'm intrigued by what a completely separate system might be based on...

[@Airahar]

Hmmm if it was completely dark and no surface world interaction theyd have to measure by a recurring enough concept. For example...maybe the speed that which mishrooms grow or by way of physical changes. Like the season for when underdark beasts are in heat vs sheding or removing skin. The season for which the underground lake is surprisnbly frozen or boiling. The seasob in which spectral phenomena is stronger or weaker. The season when fiends appear more frequently vs noy Etc.

[@MySqueezingArm]

In the Dark Elf Trilogy it is explained that a giant crystal magically heats and cools as a timekeeper. This way when it is bright red it represents noon on the surface, and dark blue was midnight. The dark elves used this in Menzoberranzan to keep time.

[@Kavukamari]

28:19 outlines perfectly my annoyance with ads on media, can't stress enough how much I agree with mc here

[@janfransdevries8032]

I use the Harvest Moon calendar. 5 workdays and 1 "holiday" per week. 5 weeks per season, 4 seasons per year. Easy to track for players and DMs

[@GaaMacgfx]

I'm good, thanks for asking Matt!

[@LoveMusicJust]

Yay! We've missed you!

[@tikazombie37]

I keep watching this channel because it's basically the only RPG channel I see that acknowledges 4e exists most people list it like "AD&D, second, third, pathfinder and 5e"

[@williamotoole1540]

ProJared also talks about 4e quite a bit, but he doesn’t make many D&D videos

[@bluejoy127]

I just recently sat down, figured out when a campaign I had "inherited" had started (based on the freaking moon phase and established daylight length), how much in world time had passed based on documented travel times, downtimes, etc. & then determined what time of year it should be. Then I made a very simple one page calendar (Harptos calendar from Forgotten Realms) with every day on it so I can now properly track days. This is great also because there is an object the party has that they can only use once every 7 days. So I can circle those days in pink so I know when it resets! Super happy! Oooh I should ask the party when their birthdays are....

[@maximshchapov2624]

I clicked this soooo fast! We missed you Matt!

[@mr.makepeace3465]

I'm just imagining Matt thinking he's alone in his house while someone's on the other side of that door with no clue what's going on except Matt shouting, "Time! Time!"

[@armchairgravy8224]

Calendars are vital if you want to do hidden timers. Hidden timers are vital if you want your characters to feel like they're getting swept up in events. Donjon has an excellent tool for calendar creation.

[@MrTombombodil]

I actually stumbled across the benefits of this on accident when I was running a dark sun game that had a McGuffin that revolved around the phases of the moon. It really is cool for the party to be able to look back and say holy crap we've been journeying through this desert for literally two months. I also stumbled across the cool world building aspects just naturally as a result of having the faces of the moon matter because I had to come up with who keeps track of time and how and there were all kinds of fun repercussions from that that made the world feel more alive. And it's definitely true that if you make it clear to the players you're keeping track of time and that time matters in the world it will instantly latch on to it and start caring about it. It's like as humans are lives and cultures revolve around time and calendars so profoundly that we just can't help ourselves being interested in even fictional time passing.

[@Grimbanks]

COOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOLVIIIIIIILEEE!

[@Bear4rms]

Yay! A new video!

[@BargusMcGee]

This video could not have come at a more relevant time! I'm running a fairly expansive home-brewed campaign, and my players literally just asked me after last session "hey, we'd like to start keeping a journal of our epics, what date is it? What year? What's the calendar like so we can date each entry?". Which, of course, was met with my blank stare filled with realization that I had a generic historical timeline but no calendar. The points you made though did make me think deeper about it, and I realized that I may actually understand the history of my own story even better after giving some thought to the "why" of the names. Good to have you back, Matt!

[@andizlack8666]

Interestingly, Japan still culturally counts years by how long an emperor has been around. It's used in ceremonies and fancy documents mainly but also in some surprising everyday ways. One example is that it's pretty common to share your age via when you were born in this system. Something else neat is that they'll call people born in the current Heisei era "Heisei Babies" since they're so young (1989+).

[@DuckyBe]

Hey Matt! Thanks (in advance) for another awesome video!

[@yayfornuke7780]

welcome back. :-)

[@CaptainHoers]

I stumbled into strict calendar keeping by accident, by making my last campaign pseudo-realtime. It being a Westmarches variant, we were running a rule where one session = one mission, succeed or fail in those four hours, which allowed the time between sessions to always represent downtime - which meant a day passing in real life was a day passing in the game. The result was the most intense campaign I've ever been in, and possibly will ever be in.

[@martinj9901]

Just found our calendar is mostly about what tree is blossoming at the time, when animals are ready to .. "have kids" and when fruit is ripe. Which is pretty consistent with other things I know about our History :D Thanks Matt. Also found out that July and June used by be one month in our country! neat!

[@michaelblocher7196]

YAY!

[@taylor65712]

The dude abides 💯 .... welcome back Matthew.

[@darrellbrown964]

I listened to this video just after session 1 of my campaign that started in Aug 2020. I just used a normal calendar. I didn't change the names of the months or days. In Nov 2021, the players (who previously ignored the calendar), started to ask "When is this deadline?" Redirecting them to the calendar with all their highlights labeled on it really left an impression that continues throughout since.

[@ishmiel21]

I made my own calendar for my campaign. 8 day weeks, 10 week months, 8 month years. The days months, and the 2 moons all have names. Several things in the world are time dependent right now. You know who's interested in the work I put into the calendar? Me, the GM. But it is still totally worth it. Like Matt said, it makes the world feel more real.

[@thegustbag]

I just cannot see myself getting tired of Colville's beautiful hair and awesome D&D insights

[@grashol15]

Out of all your video's, this one made me not only want to play D&D but also made want to be the DM the most.

[@Level99Chickens]

i just watched a guy talk about calenders for half an hour and it was the best thing i've seen in months.

[@bravesplace]

Always great to get a new video from you Matt!

[@Hollow-x-Heart]

FINALLY. I missed you dad.

[@Tfrne]

HE HAS RISEN

[@thedementedhouse381]

You're one of the first people I've ever heard talk about Arduin. It was my first campaign. My dad ran it for me when I first started playing. I still have the books. Talk about blast from the past.

[@tharrock337]

Hey Matt, just wanted to say thank you! I dont play D&D, but I am a game master in a german pen and paper RPG called DSA (das schwarze Auge/the black eye) and watching your videos is a great help to me. I think your advice is great and works for all kinds of rpgs. A lot of the topics you adress are things I have never even thought about but I just took your word for it in a lot of cases and it has payed off almost every time I did. Most noticably your LOTR video about Sandbox vs Railroad. When I started out creating my first adventure, I would sit down and write dialogue (actually both sides of it just hoping my group would respond somewhat like I anticipated) for hours and try to script out even the smallest of sidequests. Then our first session started and I realized that the group acted a lot smarter than I expected them to and pushed an npc that was working for the antagonists and they had done a job for into paying them an incredible ammount of money for it, because his life dependet on them keeping their mouth shut about recovering some valuable cargo that he lost. I thought the "heros" would pity the poor man and try to help him and I didn't bother giving him any leaverage to make them stick to the contract they had agreed on. as soon as they realized how much money the npc had and that his life depented on the cargo they had recovered they blackmailed him into making them rich beyond anything I accounted for. With so much money in their pockets they could pretty much skip their way past a large portion of the adventure I had prepared and buy their way past almost the entire first act of it. Even though they were very pleased with how the adventure was going so far, I considered it a huge failure on my part. That is where I started to look to your channel for help and oh man did I find it. I now handle npcs completely differently, rather than thinking about how I can use them in the plot I think about who they are and what they want. This way all I need are some notes about their personalities and maybe some good punchlines for the more clever npcs and the story writes itself and reacts way better to the way the players interact with it. If they chose to ignore an important character I am no longer frustrated that all the work I put into him goes to waste, I can simply accelerate his part of the story because he faces no resistance and can complete his work unhindered so he becomes an even bigger problem later. If they really like a character that I planned out as a really small role I can make him an important part of the story in no time and I think coming to this on my own would have taken me so much longer. I still have a lot to learn about running a game and keeping track of time is certainly one of the things I could do better but I'm really happy with where I am right now and that is in a large part thanks to your channel. Keep 'em coming and have a nice day!

[@WaryWizard]

Love your Videos Matt. Can't Wait till those stronghold rules and then those Warfare rules you were talking about come out. I've always liked the idea of Leading armies and Ruling Territory but the Rules that they've released so far didn't sit Right with me all the way

[@sephiran1190]

Nice Soren image. Fire Emblem + DnD could be an interesting campaign idea

[@seanduff8878]

When I first started out I liked to name the days after week after the literal order of the days. Onesday Twosday (guess which this one is) Threesday Foursday Fivesday Sixday Sevensday

[@evehellod9776]

So it’s kinda like the Russian weekdays, where I think Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday are how many days after Sunday, and Wednesday is that it’s the middle of the week (I can’t remember exactly, but it’s something like that)

[@DarthDracvla]

After watching Questing Beast's recent video about time elapsing 1:1 outside of play, I rewatched this. This video has never made more sense to me until now. I'm excited to get a calendar going and start a new campaign using strict time records. I've always felt less immersed when I handwaved time like that. I felt like the secondary world should be a living, breathing thing, and that's hard to do when time can be whatever I want it to be. Having a calendar in place, I think I'll finally feel like my world is truly alive.

[@ScaryWombat]

In the last campaign I was in, there was a moment where the party was arrested and questioned. The GM separated us and questioned us individually as the investigators would have. And they asked us "Well, where were YOU two weeks ago?" And we had to figure out, going back, keeping in mind everything we knew about travel distances and the nights we spent in settlements. It was a fantastic moment!

[@mattyule5312]

MY ITCH FOR COLVILLE CONTENT HAS BEEN SCRATCHED!!! "It might be a few more weeks until the next video" Q_Q

[@rogeranderson1145]

All these comments, and nobody has mentioned the effect that the calendar has on the math of your civilization?we use 360 degrees in a circle because of the Babylonians and their calendar. My campaign uses Gradians because the year was 400 days when geometry was invented. Now it is 405. All the calendars have changed, but the math has stayed the same...

[@gundenordstrom8123]

Well, we (the babylonians) use 360 because it divides cleanly with more different numbers than other numbers of a similar size, which makes it useful for angle calculations where you often use fractions of a whole circle

[@jdmcdonnell71]

Great video Matt. One of the best I've seen all week.

[@thinkgeek5734]

Fresh from the clubs to a Matt Colville video! It must me my lucky day!