How to deepen your worldbuilding in 30 minutes

[@GinnyDi]

Want a full, 8-page PDF about the Green & Ice calendar, complete with rolling tables for weather, side quest hooks, and more? What a coincidence, I just made that! You can get it for $6 on Patreon: www.patreon.com/ginnydi/shop/green-ice-calendar-831210?source=storefront

[@scottyrose9106]

First of all, I Love your video, and genuinely how... I guess, genuine... You are in them. 😊 Your videos always leave me filled with some kind of positive emotion, and with a lot of things that go through in my day-to-day life, a little bit of genuinely happy good emotion, it's a good thing from time to time. Thank you so much for that. And I will admit I am writing this before I even watch the video, because I'm going to do as soon as I hit... send, I guess? Lol! Anyways, I just wanted to say I hope you had a very "Pointy" Christmas! Lmfao!!!😅 But honestly, thank you so much for everything you do. You bring joy what's my world. Add even with my severe social anxiety, play wherever to feed you in real life, and pretty sure I would feel comfortable giving you a hug. 😊😊😊 Again, love you videos, and thanks for everything! I hope you and yours are well! Have a good day! 😁😁😁

[@chrismain7472]

My calendar has 3 seasons which correspond to the Maiden, Mother, and Crone. It matches up to the life cycle of the plants. The Maiden's season, commonly called "Growth", is practically March through June. The Mother's season, commonly called "Harvest", is July through October. The Crone's season is called "Decay" and is November through February. The first month of each season is named for an associated goddess. Growth begins with Gaiana. Harvest begins with Demetrana. Decay begins with Morana (think "Morrigan"). In the lore, each season parthenogenically gives birth to the next so that each season is her own great-grandmother. I'm also a farmer, and recognizing that calendars were invented largely to track agricultural cycles, I made mine with my own agricultural cycles in mind. I love that we came to a similar calendar idea!

[@GinnyDi]

Okay, you win. This is incredible. 😂

[@chrismain7472]

@GinnyDi Awww, yay! Thank you! I really enjoy your videos. I always do my best to watch all of the way to the end to help you fulfill your warlock pact. 🙂

[@Soph1na]

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only person who thinks that the timetable of the farming year is the single most important thing when making a calendar. I started making mine about two weeks ago, and I started by spending a whole day compiling everything I could find about the medieval farming year into my timescale.

[@felixbpunkt3007]

This mind-blowingly awesome!

[@chrismain7472]

@@felixbpunkt3007 Awww, thank you! I'm glad that people like it.

[@adamwhite2641]

Protip. Download an almanac for the weather of a previous year and include that weather on each day of your calendar. You now have living weather to insert into your world.

[@TheAurgelmir]

I'm pretty sure one of my groups GMs just go by whatever weather is outside at the day of playing (those games move at regular time between sessions, so the seasons correspond to our seasons well enough)

[@3nertia]

Oh, this, THIS is BRILLIANT!

[@GinnyDi]

Love this!! Rolling a dice always feels too random (and I often forget or forgo it) but planning out every single day is definitely overkill in my book.

[@besteger]

I took it a step further for my pirate- themed game & used a section of the Alabama coast for geography & weather. Worked great … Couldn’t beat the scheduling monster, but still.

[@russellluzetski7380]

I've taken to using the structure of a real-world calendar, but renaming everything. For example, our current campaign uses the calendar for 2015. This allows me to use historical weather and sunset/sunrise information for a place that's geographically similar (in our case, New Orleans). Everyone knows when storm season starts and ends, etc.

[@aoibhinquinn7310]

My DM has a calendar for her world, and it was really fun and a bit of a character-building moment to all choose our characters' birthdays

[@GinnyDi]

Is your character's next birthday any time soon? 👀🥳

[@aoibhinquinn7310]

@@GinnyDi Actually yeah it is! They'll be 18 in like a week in in-game time. He's kinda the chaos teenager of the party, a mad scientist whiz kid artificer with a custom subclass themed around experimentation and their contraptions occasionally blowing up in their face😂

[@Zarsla]

@@aoibhinquinn7310 saaaaame. When my character turned 13, we had a sleepover, dinner buffet and another pc did card readings. We did truth or dare as the party game. A few years later we had a bon fire and we played never had I ever.

[@MH-dg6tw]

We randomly rolled for our birthdays and somehow all got the month - one got the exact day - of the prophesied doomsday in our world. The story wrote itself 😂

[@Zarsla]

@@MH-dg6tw that's sooo funny the dice really wanted to make sure you all were the chosen ones.

[@MsAzhriaz]

Makes a lot of sense. Holidays are important events in the villages and cities they happen in. Really enjoyed the concepts offered.

[@JohnWeland]

Pretzel-Digitation..... I love this

[@Ravenovia]

As a regular patron of my local library, I will now be adopting the phrase “double the books, double the fun” into my everyday vernacular

[@NivBilman]

You've converted me from "oh this is an advanced tool that will never come up in a game" over to "I'm totally building a calendar for my next campaign!" in under 5 minutes. Touché...

[@Masotism]

I've been working for well over a year on a homebrew setting. I have devolved into levels of nerdacy that I had never thought possible. I'm down to the point of creating my own dead language just to be able to troll them in said long dead language. They've found some notes and letters so far, one of them literally is just a "yo momma" joke that the guards were passing around. So when they get to the point of translating the letters, and get to that one. The groan from the party is going to be the fuel for my soul for the next 10 years.

[@LikeTheBirb]

Name checks out

[@Lycaon1765]

Based

[@talscorner3696]

Look into the Agia Sophia runic carvings and tell me if we ever came up with anything original xD

[@NoOne-uq1mb]

There are online calendars that you can modify to have any number of days in a year and break the year up into any number of months, weeks and days. Multiple moons are easily tracked. Holidays can be set up in advance, and even things like eclipses or comets. Some can even be used as a journal with notes for what happened in the game on any given day. You can print one out so the players can track along as they continue their adventures. I find it to be a vital tool.

[@GinnyDi]

Oh wow, that's awesome! Sounds like a helpful tool for players to track their own calendar (not that it will stop them asking, I'm sure 😂)

[@Lumi_Lama]

Do you have a concrete one you'd recommend?

[@NoOne-uq1mb]

@Lumi_Lama Check out donjon; RPG Tools. It is what I use.

[@gabebaum6527]

I'd also love to hear these recommendations

[@NoOne-uq1mb]

I use donjon; RPG Tools.

[@fightingfalcon777]

Jeez, just started the video and the Burnout Season thing hits WAY TOO REAL 😂

[@GinnyDi]

MOOD (stay strong, friend ❤️)

[@fightingfalcon777]

@@GinnyDithank you, friend ❤ I’m doing my best 👍🏻 May you stay strong, too

[@MarcusBeirne]

As soon as she said it I felt a wave of exhaustion crash down on me! 😮‍💨

[@ssemo]

😂 literally just gave my 2 weeks notice today. Too real!

[@pyukingmuku]

stay strong gang, especially anyone in school (or worse, my fellow teachers)

[@Ka0sNinja117]

"The inferno is uncontained!" killed me 😂 💀 Also, definitely stealing the "Spell scroll of everything's actually, actually!" for a one shot!

[@daniellins4114]

Never forget folks, Tolkien may have loved creating fantasy names, expressions and even full languages, but his names for weekdays and months were the same as Earth's

[@bfspinnerable]

This isn’t quite right. The conceit is that The Lord of the Rings is in fact the “Red Book” we see handed off from Bilbo to Frodo, and then to Sam. When Tolkien “translated” the Red Book for publication he converted it to the modern calendar at the same time. And that’s before you get into how the issue of the length of a year changing between the Time of the Trees and the 3rd Age.

[@daniellins4114]

@bfspinnerable I know the conceit of the "translator" role, but I was talking more in terms of how he, the author, chose to present the same names that are familiar to us, instead of "translating" them into new names, if that makes sense

[@pheralanpathfinder4897]

​@@daniellins4114it's a great point for DMs. I've experimented with ten day weeks and three or six week months. But it generally creates confusion for players. Having a custom calendar sitting on the table helps, but it's another thing to read during the game

[@MatthiasPilz]

Yeah. Because even if the word for the cold season literally translates to „ice dusk“, the meaningful translation is „winter“.

[@jasminv8653]

For real. People need some grounding in the basic language that is used - if you trip up the reader/player with the basics of passing of time, they will not be able to focus on the story youre telling.

[@lokis_hammer]

Love it! And in the northernmost regions of this world where it is cold all-year, they follow more the seasonal cycle of “Evernight”, “waining Longnight”, “waxing Longday”, “Everday”, “waining Longday” and “waxing Longnight”. The seasons are 2 months each, and are separated into months simply by adding “early” or “late”. And the nature spirit is more centred around darkness/light than coldness/warmth, but ultimately just a different iteration of the same belief.

[@ragnkja]

@@lokis_hammer This feels very familiar to me as someone from above the Arctic Circle 😁

[@ragnkja]

By the way, the first day of Waxing Longnight in my village is this week! I just hope the weather allows me to get a glimpse of the sun before we’re three weeks into it this year.

[@elib6465]

So a fun holiday to add to your setting is a native Peruvian fighting holiday. On these holidays they get together and settle grudges by heating the crap out of each other. It's all supervised to make sure it doesn't get too bad but imagine a holiday where you see sweet old grandma's punching each other over something that pissed them off during the year! This settles grudges so you can go into the new year with clean slates! Your party can settle their differences in a fun way. I ran this for my group and they absolutely loved it. You can make a whole festival out of this! Add this to your campaign!!!

[@EmeraldsFire]

What happens when someone still won't let something go?

[@annafantasia]

OMG that's incredible!

[@annafantasia]

@@EmeraldsFire Maybe try again next year?

[@Kilbia]

​@@EmeraldsFireI would probably have deeply ingrained folklore about the bad things that happen if you engage in the Catharsis and don't actually let go of the feelings in question.

[@talscorner3696]

Ah, yes, bringing "boxing" back in "boxing holiday"

[@fedorablewill]

Such a simple concept! Doesn't even need to be a whole calendar, since a campaign may only take place over the span of a month in game, so could just be as simple as the GM planning that when they get to this town, they will be in the midst of celebrating a special holiday

[@austink.5827]

Your concept is so simple, yet as you were describing the Spirit, my gears were turning as to how people would act or refer to the spirit during the different times of the year. Needless to say, I love it!

[@EmeraldsFire]

Mr HeatMiser, Mr Snow... Sorry, that's too much

[@LemonMoon]

My advice for naming months and days is to use them in a sentence. “I’ll see you again on the 4th day of tallywack” See how it feels to say aloud. People in the world are going to be saying the names pretty often so they should be pretty easy to say and remember

[@annafantasia]

TALLYWHACK! Love.

[@Kilbia]

I also heard similar advice about naming children 😄

[@jaggedtoothgrin]

Ginny, I just wanna say, I can count the number of youtubers who I listen to the sponsorship ad spots with regularity on one hand and still have enough fingers for a rude gesture, but things like "Scroll Of Everything's Fine Actually" is a great example of why you're on that list. Whatever they're paying you, it should be more.

[@willemverheij3412]

Good point, I already have four sister deities, one of each season who also have a bit more in their portfolio so I'll probably number the days of the season and maybe not have months. Like 91 days a season, and that last day being the transitional festivity to the new season. They are all their own person, the stuff outside of the season gives them something to do through the entire year but their season is the time to really get in their good graces. Like the goddess of summer is also a sun deity, generally associated with light and warmth. She has a bit of a temper. The goddess of fall is also a deity of death, a red haired woman in a black robe carrying a scythe, she brings souls to the afterlife and is one of their judges. She's more introvert and probably nicer than people think, despite being a very feared goddess. The goddess of winter is also of cold and endurance, mainly enduring cold. She has a more cold personality to match, not evil but like a harsh winter, she can be very unforgiving. She holds grudges. And finally the goddess of Spring is also the goddess of love and romance. She likes attention and compliments, very extrovert. Has a bit of an ego, she's kind of extra. All of them are some shade of neutral morally, generally they get along but whenever one season seems to be coming in early or seems to last longer, that's a clear sign of strife between them. Struggling for control over more than their share. They are siblings after all.

[@daneroberts1996]

One thing that I really love about saying “the portal only opens on the equinoxes” is, if the next equinox is two months away, BAM that’s two months of downtime during which they can prepare or train skills or craft equipment

[@GinnyDi]

Yes!! Honestly, whenever a DM is like "and coincidentally that solstice is tomorrow!" it feels kind of immersion breaking.

[@PaulCoyJR]

I told my players that the next equinox was in 2 days, so the kidnapped villagers were probably safe until then, and I thought they would want to prepare. Nope. They charged in, throwing off my schedule. Thank Crom I can write fast.

[@robhall9346]

In our Discord where we organise our D&D campaign, I've made a "Campaign Timeline" channel which I update every session with the date and a one sentence summary of the events. The players have found it such a useful tool for keeping track of the passage of time, I can't believe I never thought of it in previous campaigns. Just to be a little bit obsessive, every time I generate a new NPC I randomly roll up their birthday and add them to the calendar, so it makes a fun little thing every session to see if any NPCs are going to be out celebrating today. One of the PCs is currently courting an NPC on their skyship, and has no idea her birthday is tomorrow! 😆

[@llamatronian101]

Something to think about for calendars: location. A temperate continental climate will have something like these months. Tropical or subtropical is going to be more like dry season and wet season.

[@sebastianevangelista4921]

I've been working on writing guides since January and one of the chapters is on Cultures and Civilizations, so this video will be more than helpful for fleshing that out and I would be totally down for more videos on fantasy cultures and customs if you ever wanted to make them. PS happy Winter's Crest, Ginny!

[@GinnyDi]

I'm glad this was helpful! That sounds super cool 🤩 And happy Winter's Crest to you too! ❄️

[@sebastianevangelista4921]

@@GinnyDi 😄

[@altairajgar920]

The last month of my fantasy calendar is named Derhelio (the last Sun) because of a popular belief that the Sun is born at the start of the year and spring, then reach its "adulthood" during summer then slowly deperish during autumn and winter until it finally dies in the night of the 31st of Derhelio... And I'm pretty proud of it, not gonna lie.

[@chrismain7472]

@altairajgar920 This reminds me of Sol Invictus, the unconquered son. He was a personal deity of many Roman emperors, and his feast was the winter solstice. It's like celebrating that the sun, though weakened in late December, remains unconquered

[@emilymartin5418]

A calendar is so useful! I use a normal calendar to note session numbers, world events, days of travel, party choices that change things, background villain shenanigans, and when my academic wizard gets his stipend. And when he attuned to the cursed ring of zombification. And when it'll take full effect...

[@kfisher723]

My favorite little moments in videos like this one are when Ginny throws Ginny shade 😂😂6:13 "She's right... unfortunately."

[@jancatperson8329]

I love your calendar and the whole saga behind it! My world doesn’t have a calendar (yet). There are references to weeks and months, which are 7 days and roughly 30 days, same as ours, but days are never mentioned, and the only time I included a date, it was “on this 73rd day in the 12th year of the reign of King So-and-so.” We do have seasonal festivals - the Harvest Festival was held about a month ago in game time and the Winter Solstice Festival is a few in-game weeks away. There will be King’s Birthday holidays and holidays that celebrate major national events, but we haven’t gotten to any of them yet.

[@ThatRobHuman]

Artifexian has a really good set of videos talking about fantasy calendar math for folks who would like more ideas about how one can subdivide a solar year or a lunar month. In one of my settings (a vaguely magitech / arcani-punk setting) I had no months and instead split my calendar into 4 Seasons lifted from Orbital Mechanics: Pre-aphelion, Post-aphelion, Pre-perihelion, Post-perihelion. So a date might be "35th day Post-Perihelion, 841" and the four major holidays were Zenith, Nadir, Ascension, and Descension. it's very "What it says on the tin" but in a setting where Da Vinci, Tycho Brahe, and Galileo would've been relatively familiar, it felt right.

[@ThatRobHuman]

(before the pedants drop in, I know "Zenith" and "Nadir" refer to a different pair of points in a typical solar reference frame than Apoapsis and Periapsis: I know - I don't care - because shut up that's why :P)

[@DruMcNight]

I absolutely love the arch-fey patron idea and spells shifting with the seasons. That could add some very interesting depth to a character.

[@mariovwcardoso5970]

Pointy sent his regards... Thanks for the monster, it's sick! PS: "happy burnout season" killed me instantly. I will watch the whole video once I come back from the ICU

[@annafantasia]

Can I just say how brilliant to release this video both right before a bunch of major holidays AND with an actual calendar to sell?? Big brain

[@InfiniteDrako]

This is actually something close to what I've been working on for my own campaign! Finally all those long hours of creating lore and discerning between Suncrest and Icewrath has been vindicated.

[@alexanderwizardjar9540]

After playing Curse of Strahd and encountering the sun festival, I've tried to mention a festival/celebration/holiday to my players every time they visit a new settlement. It might an upcoming thing that people are getting ready for, it might be already underway, and sometimes the party "missed it by a couple of days". Makes them want to explore new settlements!

[@jetsword2467]

The Frostling Puppeteer is defiantly the coolest of the holiday collab monsters :)

[@anthonydaquet7934]

I haven’t used a calendar in game but i like the idea of the harvest moon/stardew valley calendars where each month is 30 days of one season

[@GinnyDi]

That's such a fun concept, especially if you don't want to run a game long enough to span seasons on our own calendar, but still want the opportunity to play with seasonal weather and events!

[@michaeldavidcharlton]

Ginni thank you for this video! It made fantasy calendar design so much less daunting and actually fun! Here's what I came up with: When I'm not D&Ding I have a meteorology background, so I was drawn to the predominant weather features of each season. So the four seasons from spring to winter are rainspell, sunspell, windspell, and snowspell. Then for individual months, I tried out a few naming schemes but I liked your dawn/dust idea best. So the months are named Raindawn, Rainpeak, Raindusk, Sundawn, Sunpeak, Sundusk, Windawn, etc. And as a bonus, my pantheon coincidentally has 12 dieties, so each month is dedicated to one particular deity.

[@Neamerjell]

2:33 LOVE IT!!! I love the whole calendar idea you came up with to go with that description too! It's awesome!

[@donconn]

Thank you for the monster! (And the Pointy Hat one too!! So glad you used the spirit for this video though tbh)

[@MormonFoodie]

What a great idea! I love calendars. One of our most fun sessions came about when I noticed it was one of the character's birthdays. It just softened the whole session, and connected the characters (and players) in a fun, casual, and supportive way.

[@OliviaArazi]

Ok so I absolutly did this for a game I'm playing in, instead of DMing. (DM is cool with it obviously). I made an enitre 'year wheel' complete with festivals, etc for my religious fanatic cleric/druid so she would never miss a "moon feast" (her version of a sabbath) or festival and it was both easy and fun AND we're actually using it in game which is awesome

[@GinnyDi]

I love that!! And as the druid of the party it makes TOTAL sense that you would be the one to convey this information to the party regularly

[@AudhdCatsDnd]

Greetings from the pointy one. Thank you for the *second best* mini holiday spirit creature. It was very Ginny Di-core :)

[@cwaldrip]

You also have to consider the length of the year and if the planet is tilted on its axis (why we have seasons in the first place). Maybe the orbit is faster or slower than Earth, so the year is longer or shorter. Or maybe the planet's tilt is steeper or nearly non-existent. Or maybe there's some other impact on the year and seasons (it's a flat planet, or donut shaped!). This can quickly spiral out of control if you don't set some limits on your creative. Maybe the planet is in a very elliptical orbit, so it's winter or summer for 75 percent of the year. The transition from warm to cold, and vice versa, would be dramatic and dangerously stormy,

[@GinnyDi]

Or it's a giant floating donut with no sky 😅 but we don't need to start talking about Planescape calendars

[@danieldonnert3747]

If you want to break from the 4-season standard, look into tropical and subarctic season patterns. In cold climes, you can have "nope", "ooh, chilly", and "6-weeks of flowers, bugs, and birds". In tropical wet, you can have "hell", "summer", and "rainy". Sometimes places have other things that drive the seasons more than daylight and temp, and in your fantasy world you get to choose what that is and how fantastical it is.

[@Gobbledebook]

In the high-society-meets-campy-gothic-horror game I'm currently running, all of my players live a place called Nightmare Reach, which is home to pretty much every magical and mythical creature that's scary and spooky, and on the other side of the mountains, there's a place called Daydream Valley, which is home to all your classic rainbows-and-sunshine-and-good-vibes magical creatures. These two countries are collectively referred to as the Slumberrealms, and they are DEEPLY tied into the changing of the seasons as magic waxes and wanes. Everything about their societies is structured around the transferring of magic between Nightmare and Daydream as the seasons shift in their favor, so coming up with a calendar and holidays for this world ended up being a necessity. And wouldn't you know, it made the world ten times more engaging!

[@tacitakoe5004]

I've been right on the threshold of creating a proper calendar for one of my fantasy worlds, because I started to realize in my planning for the story that I needed to reverse engineer exactly how long my three pairs of characters have each been traveling since they started, and I'm too much of a worldbuilder to just be okay with slapping the Gregorian Calender onto my fantasy setting. Their timelines were always intended to be a little timey-wimey in relation to each other, but I'm nearing the phase in planning where they will encounter each other, so it will be good to know how long each of their adventures have actually been up until now.

[@aoibhinquinn7310]

Have they done Jim the Fish yet?

[@yvesrouliez4766]

I loved the idea of a calendar to spice up campaign settings, and the 4 sub seasons make it really easy for a DM to keep track of the passing of time, I'm definitely gonna borrow this for my campaign!

[@y2a1979]

Snowy mornings and T-shirt afternoons? I never knew Colorado and Nova Scotia were the same place, that's amazing! 😃

[@PurpleSmokeWarlock]

I'm sorry, I need a "The inferno is uncontained!" shirt, right now! That's just vibes for the year to come, honestly. Like a reverse "This is fine"

[@rylanmerritt1068]

As a person who lived in Colorado for 7 of his teenage years. That weather statement could not be truer about the weather!

[@robertevans3173]

I love the Ad reads. Never change. Yours are the only ones I never scroll through. You're welcome. 😂

[@intri8116]

oh my gosh more videos like this please! this was insanely helpful. love the breakdown and it's giving me ideas. ive been wanting to do a calendar, but was struggling to figure out how to make it so *others* would want to use it too, and decided i wasn't going to do one. this video changed my mind- there is a better approach. thanks ginny! (happy holidays!)

[@pauljason9685]

Great video! I use the Gregorian calendar on purpose to make it seem to my players like I didn’t think of the seasons or flow of time but it’s really to cover up a plot twist where the city they’re in operates on a totally different flow of time

[@Skiamakhos]

This is what I love about RuneQuest - the calendar has regular holidays that different tribes have to celebrate things that happened with different gods. The Pantheon is universal but which gods and what names the locals have for them is cultural, and observance of the feast days and holidays will definitely have an effect on things like the harvest. Gods in that game are WMDs that can and often are invoked in battle. If the cause matters enough to the deities, and your PCs have observed the strictures and feasts of their religion, they will get directly involved & wipe out armies.

[@alejandrovelazquez7559]

Hey Ginny, Pointy holidays to you

[@tobiasinness1236]

Thank you for the monsters❤

[@stevenkester1130]

I've been pointedly asked to come and thank you for your monstrous contribution! Your little puppet master is adorable and i think it might scar my children if I use it in our campaign. I can't wait! Thank you!

[@stevenkester1130]

Also, you mentioned sneaking a check in for people to realize the victims are possessed. What if the outward sign of possession is lacerations at the wrists and ankles where the unseen puppet strings attach.

[@GinnyDi]

That's such a good idea!! I love that!

[@tsifirakiehl4250]

I’ve been handwaving the calendar for my current campaign, but I think you’ve convinced me-I’m getting more in-depth with the next one! At least with my current campaign, I did introduce a fun little winter holiday celebrated by a demonic cult-the Slayers’ Festival, where all the evil children receive murder weapons from the Patron of Slayers. Our party’s warlock was sent by his demonic patron to be the Patron of Slayers for his local evil temples. I even wrote a thank-you letter for him from one of the kids, complete with an illustration. Heck, I even checked with someone who has experience working with kids to make sure it looked like something a six-year-old who’d just committed her first murder would make!

[@SomeFantasyNerd]

Thank you for the monster & calendar inspo :) (from Pointy Hat's and Your vids respectively)

[@Vangoghstree]

Pretzel joke good. This is the quality content we keep coming back for.

[@ДанаДана-м2ъ]

Oh, worldbuilding videos are always welcomed!

[@mrsparkle1370]

This was such a coincidence of a video for me to watch, I had literally just set up the Calendarium plugin for Obsidian and started working on a basic calendar for my world but wasn't really sure on what to do with it, I saw this video pop up and was like 'hmm this could be interesting'. Perfect combination right here, I now have an awesome calendar programme and some great inspiration on what to do with it. The plugin has a setting for weather and seasons as well which is great because not only can I now accurately track the history, events and holidays of my world but whatever day it is I have inspiration on how to describe the weather and it's method for tracking these events and the like feel very similar to the calendar I already use for tracking real world stuff so it's very intuitive. Thanks to this video I now have inspiration and goals in mind to pair with the calendar that I likely wouldn't have interacted with before.

[@soldierbreed]

Used to live in Aurora, SHE IS NOT LYING ABOUT THE SNOW

[@russellluzetski7380]

Great thoughts, as usual! 😃 Another holiday aspect to consider is celebrations of anniversaries: When a town was settled, when a country was founded, when a war ended, a ruler's birthday, when a great historical event happened, etc. These can make for wonderful adventure seeds, from social opportunities and assassination attempts to contests reenacting important events.

[@giggityguy]

That reminds me, I did come up with a cycle of seasons that happens to correspond to the four classical elements: earth, fire, air, water. This was initially part of a concept for an Eladrin druid character who used different spells depending on which aspect they were embodying that day, but could just as easily apply to the actual calendar. Spring is the season of earth. The ground wakes up, plants grow, new life is born. Associated spells are earth magic, plant control spells, and healing spells. Summer is the season of fire. The sun is high, heating the world and stoking passions. Storms rage. Associated spells are fire magic, light spells, storm spells, and combat magic. Autumn is the season of air. Cool winds begin to blow, the leaves begin to fall and decay. Associated spells are wind magic, thunder spells, decay spells. Winter is the season of water. Ice covers the world, and death takes its portion, even as we flow towards rebirth. Associated spells are water magic, ice magic, death/necromancy spells.

[@HiroZeroVirus]

I don't actually laugh out loud often, but "THE INFERNO IS UNCONTAINED" made me burst out at work.

[@Ravenovia]

Idk if commenting twice boosts the algorithm at all, but here’s my current seasonal setup: I used to be a Pagan who celebrated the Sabbats, and even though I have since changed my religion, I still have a deep-seated appreciation for how the Sabbats connect practitioners to the changing of the seasons. Thus, I based my world’s calendar off the Wheel of the Year. There are sixteen months, each divided into eight seasons, which are further colloquially said to be between the “Light Half” and “Dark Half” of the year. The changing of each season is celebrated with a holiday. Season One: Thaw (early-to-mid Spring) Season Two: Blossom (mid-to-late Spring) Season Three: Wild (early-to-mid Summer) Season Four: Blaze (mid-to-late Summer) Season Five: Harvest (early-to-mid Autumn) Season Six: Hallow (mid-to-late Autumn) Season Seven: Frost (early-to-mid Winter) Season Eight: Grasping (mid-to-late Winter) Overall, each season has two months, each month has 23 days, and each year is 368 days long (no leap year though). While civic holidays vary from country to country and religion to religion, global holidays fall at the beginning of each season.

[@TnTyson81]

Thank you for the Frostling Puppeteer

[@TheFinerDnDetails]

The best part about your worldbuilding videos is how you connect with shared, genuine, passion. You are clearly a level 20 Nerd with many epic boons to come up with that so easily with 1 level of exhaustion. 😉 Hope to reach your level some day!

[@jaredcarter1165]

Thank you for the calendar, calendar ideas, and for the holiday spirit block! Keep it pointy!

[@intoontown]

Two videos in a row that get the creative gears turning even beyond D&D? Christmas came early twice with those! This one really has my mind going, and I love that - for D&D too. I mean, immersive flavor, quest/arc potential, AND it's a good way to make the passage of time in D&D feel less nebulous? Love that!

[@liliankankaren]

THANK YOU FOR THE AMAZING MONSTER

[@renonouvello4011]

Merry pointy hat & happy new Ginny.

[@twi3031]

I'm so glad you made this particular video. I have actually been thinking alot about my world's calendars and holidays, for most of this year in fact. But I've also really struggled with how to visualize it and present it. How to even get started. So seeing how you went about it has been extremely helpful. I feel inspired, motivated, and even encouraged to work again on mine.

[@GinnyDi]

That's awesome! Your world's gonna be amazing, I can feel it! 🙌

[@robertlocas7220]

Pointy tells me to say, thanks for the monster. Happy Holidays.

[@darthsinister9942]

Thanks for the monster! Pointy hat out🎉

[@GGenona27]

Pointily yours, Pointy sends his regards! 😁😁😁

[@LucasLopesComposer]

Thank you for the monster!

[@ObisonofObi]

God the amount of creativity that i see from people like you never cease to amaze me. I love that this is just like stories that made it to modern day that are just fun and give excuses to do certain traditions and if you want to make one for yourself you can kind of just go backwards from some irl stuff

[@tregggabbard6917]

Thanks for the monster Ginny

[@baileyprouvaire8971]

I wish I could like this twice. I've always been intimidated by worldbuilding of this depth because it feels like so much to come up with. This made it way more approachable! Thank you so much! Also, if for some reason you don't want to make a google calendar because you don't want to mix it up with your IRL stuff, you can make a simple spreadsheet. Especially if you follow a 28 day lunar cycle. The bonus is that you can link the days in the spreadsheet to bookmarks in your google docs. Too much for some people? Possibly, but I didn't earn the moniker of Overly Prepared among my friends for nothing! I made a spreadsheet calendar for Curse of Strahd based on someone else's calendar. I gave my players in their not!Barovia world the same days as our own. I told them it was mid August on a Sunday and insufferably hot, but when they get to Barovia it's the last month of what is essentially autumn. A stark contrast in weather, and when they get to NPCs to talk they'll be able to learn about the different days, making it feel more alien.

[@daniellemurnett2534]

I haven't delved into making a full calendar but I have tinkered with the week! In my setting, a week is 14 days long and each day is named after one of the setting's primary deities. Two weeks is a month, of course, and half a week is also a commonly used measure of time, though what it's called I haven't decided on yet. In some more dubious circles however, the 7 day week _is_ actually standard, known as sin-weeks. I'll give you three guesses why

[@colbyrackler3915]

Even the Eladrin Elves take different forms and abilities with different seasons, this is surprisingly cozy DnD stuff right in time for Christmas! You always make compelling, well thought-out stuff for DnD.

[@SpiritWolf1966]

I enjoy all of Ginny Di videos 🎉🎉😂😂

[@0huckleberry]

Thanks for the monster. I hope you do more collabs in 2025. That was fun to watch

[@kristak914]

My calendar has 6 months, and my players are so excited about it! I made a calendar on publisher and printed it out for each of my players for easy remembering.❤

[@devilkidhugger1199]

You always make great videos. But this was phenomenal. 😊

[@GinnyDi]

Thank you so much!

[@bayushiteishiru6291]

Thank you for the (holiday) monster!

[@IceKnightZX]

Thanks for the world building inspo Ginny! Just listening gave me so many ideas to put into one calendar that seamlessly blends into the narration.

[@dubbingsync]

What I love about the “spooky lady” in this, is that it could be a singular spooky lady or different creature at different points in the year for whatever encounters could be involved.

[@cubancavalier3051]

ive added a couple festivals and holidays in towns for like celebrating their founding. and my players love it so so much

[@jacquigamache32]

I run a coming of age campaign where the party started off as childhood friends so the passage of time is really important! I have some holidays down but my favorite is Shades’ Day; whenever there is a double new moon and only the third dead moon in the world is left showing in the sky, this holiday occurs. It is a fun day of dressing up in costumes and street parties, but also incredibly dangerous; it is said that the boundaries between worlds are especially thin on a Shades’ Day, and the holiday was created to keep people inside the town walls and disguised from the Fey, Fiends, and other interplanary threats that could seek to use their real names to lure them into their worlds. Basically Year-Round-Halloween meets the Oblivion Crisis. (TM) Great video, gave me a lot to think about!

[@theoldgoat3000]

Love these ideas! When we started a spelljammer campaign, our usual calendar system seemed inadequate. Then I decided that one of the great modron victories of this particular verse is when they got the entire verse on the same month/day calendar to maximize order. The years are still determined by each planet, culture, what have you so it wasn't a complete win on their part, but the days and months are the same everywhere and that's still a big win. It was an easy way to keep it simple for me and my players, and added a little something to the modron lore.

[@SirMasi]

Great advice! Concise and applicable. The meta-commentary is that things we take for granted have millennia of history baked into them, and that starting from there can tell us a bunch about our fantasy world 🙂

[@ragnkja]

The most important regular calendar event to include might be market day, whether it’s a weekly event for a larger market town or a seasonal event in a smaller town or a village. Even in a village that doesn’t have its own market would care about when nearby towns have market days.

[@GinnyDi]

Yes!! And has the great side effect of encouraging more shopping sessions 😂😂

[@ragnkja]

@ Better do your shopping now, or you’ll have to wait until the next quarterly market to get those less common items!

[@fierybuttonbomb7370]

Fun fact: a lot of languages’ word for days of the week directly come from words for market - for example Turkish pazar (Saturday) and Hungarian vasárnap (Sunday). So this is absolutely a valid inspiration to go for!

[@shaethefoxASMR]

Absolutely love this vid, definitely using this calendar as a base/inspiration when making my world!❤

[@void-creature]

I adore the calendar system of the Dishonored game series. 13 months, each with 28 days, names such as "The Month of Seeds/Timber/Clans/Songs/Darkness" and at the end of the year, "The Fuege Feast". An indeterminate time 'between the years' where social taboos are upended.

[@The_gentleman_gamer]

Thank you for this. You've given me food for thought and now I wanna develop seasons and time in my own homebrew

[@AlexBryan-Taff]

I like to do a season-based calendar with 4 seasons and 12 months, but each month is just called early, mid, or late-whatever season it is. Similar enough to ours for dates to be easy, but no fantasy names to remember.

[@FrostsHellion]

This actually sounds like a really fun addition to world building. Im glad the pointy hat recommended this particular video