This quick & easy worldbuilding move brings your setting to life

[@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. 😂

[@felixbpunkt3007]

This mind-blowingly awesome!

[@willmendoza8498]

Dang. Good stuff

[@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)

[@JohnWeland]

Pretzel-Digitation..... I love this

[@MrAzhrarn]

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

[@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

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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.

[@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!

[@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 😄

[@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

[@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.

[@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! 😆

[@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.

[@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.

[@Ka0sNinja117]

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

[@CallumFinlayson]

The Greyhawk calendar is very much a product of its 1970s origin! Personally, when creating a fantasy calendar, I usually tend to (as suggested) stick to 7 day weeks, with 8 "months" based not on the moons (as I also tend to lean towards worlds having >1 moon) but on 4 solstices/equinoxes + something similar to the typical 4 celtic/cross quarter days (Imbolc / Beltaine / Lammas / Samhain) with a few intercalary days -- I find this tends to make for a nice balance of familiar & fantasy

[@kfisher723]

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

[@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

[@rebekab1579]

Less than a minute in and I'm cracking up at Ginny shoving Babs the Barbarian off the table like a cat!

[@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!

[@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

[@soldierbreed]

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

[@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?

[@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)

[@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.

[@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!

[@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.

[@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!

[@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!!!

[@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.

[@ДанаДана-м2ъ]

Oh, worldbuilding videos are always welcomed!

[@pwcabach]

We play in a Tal'Dorei setting, so the calendar is there. Our chronicler created an online reference calendar and transcribed the highlight events of her notes onto the days upon which they occurred in the campaign. This is an invaluable asset, being able to visually assess the WHENs and correlate events to each other keeps the story on track and helps me plan my TPKs. Adventures. I mean adventures. I will happily forever DM with that kind of support.

[@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!

[@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!

[@anonymousname5860]

Looking forward to this. One of my players helps with timekeeping in my Theros campaign. World building is the part of DnD that the dm does for their fulfillment, but don’t forget your players can sometimes help with bits and pieces. Also I homebrew it that because of how belief affects reality in Theros I have an in game excuse for any time inconsistencies. You just gotta have fun with it.

[@GinnyDi]

Yes!! I especially LOVE it when players give me festivals from their hometowns or important religious for their gods 🥰🥰

[@sebastianevangelista4921]

@@GinnyDi *Religious iconography from their gods* ? Not trying to be rude here, I just want some clarification if that's alright.

[@HamiltonIsLife]

@@sebastianevangelista4921probably. Use your imagination

[@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!

[@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! 🙌

[@ShinGallon]

I've been doing worldbuilding for the world my comic series (that started out being set in the D&D world because the characters were ones I rolled for games, but I decided it should be a universe I created for copyright reasons), and have been doing some basic fantasy-tropey things with it, but I think I came up with something unique for orcs in the setting: Instead of the same length year everyone else uses (302 days), they have a year based on how many days a legendary hero from their folklore held off a siege in a culture-defining battle (216 days, if you're curious). And I also used the equinoxes as the seasonal markers (as well as New Years and the 4 major holidays).

[@ElizabethPhillips-z8f]

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!

[@DaileyDoseOfJoseph]

My game is set in Hyrule, and I yoinked a fanmade calendar from Reddit. Its got 8 months, 4 are 90 days, 4 are 20 days, alternating. I made an astrology chart to go with it, so my PCs can answer, "Whatls your sign?" lol The months are named after relevant characters, or the season. Sumera, Winters, for example, or Dinral, the final 20 days of summer. It doesn't come up a lot but it's fun when it does.

[@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

[@nrmrvrk]

So much burnout happening this month. Best of luck with yours. Thank you for making so many super helpful / funny videos this year!

[@shaethefox]

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

[@garrettsweet9826]

I am notoriously bad at this. Imma take this to heart! We had a potentially world ending incident at the end of the last game called the Scouring. I wonder what the cultures of the continent will do with the memory of that day!

[@garrettsweet9826]

I've jumped the gun with my comment. Oops! Brain go brrrrrrrr

[@GinnyDi]

That is extra cool!! And your PCs can help shape what that memorial/festival looks like 🥰

[@jphiled6554]

I live in the Pacific Northwest: we have two weather patterns - October to May: just grey, and June to September: choking death from forest fire smoke.

[@yourseatatthetable]

One of the city campaigns I ran on DnD Beyond had the major holiday for the country about to happen in a few weeks. Every day the city grew more crowded; more festive; more lively. There were masquerades and ward-wide parties; contests and competitions, each growing more elaborate with each passing day. The PC's each had different goals for their lives in the city, and via those backstory choices they made, were drawn together to deal with a threat as they uncovered a dark cults intention of enacting a horrific massacre tied to some very dark magic.

[@MajorHickE]

I've always just used published calendar's (currently Eberron), but I always make a point to include some kind of holiday or festival, either to help a player understand their PC's culture or because I've dragged them kicking and screaming through a dungeon full of ideas I thought would be fun as a DM. The last holiday corresponded to a spring solstice and the halfling's people celebrating the hatching of dinosaur eggs. That seemed like a very important detail to include in the game.

[@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...

[@SpiritWolf1966]

I enjoy all of Ginny Di videos 🎉🎉😂😂

[@jrpipik]

Tolkien had detailed in-world calendars in the Appendices of LOTR, but as big a Tolkien nerd as I am, I was grateful he used the real world calendar in the novel itself. Real world calendar, real word clocks. Easy for me, easy for the players.

[@HiroZeroVirus]

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

[@mjphyil]

'do they say that' - cracked me up, wonderful job as usual.

[@LiraeloftheClayr]

Excellent tool to use for world building. If i may make one suggestion; i would use the equinoxes and solstices as mid-seasons like the Celtic calendar. It makes sense to me to have summer and winter flank both sides of the solstice.

[@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

[@hemlockrpg]

I recently started a campaign, and we have an Eladrin in the party. This video couldn't have come at a perfect time, because I love the idea of having the Eladrin naturally change with the seasons (their description, not mine) instead of it being like "Oh yeah, it's Summer now btw". Thanks for the new hyperfixation!

[@GinnyDi]

Yes!! Who needs a calendar when you have an Eladrin in the party 😂

[@davidjennings2179]

I've been in that game where the GM has come up with different names for every month, day, hour, compass direction etc. Makes sense a world different than our own would name those things differently...but heck is it hard to actually follow, especially when any mystery is involved. "I last saw [murder victim] on Felisndar, they were found dead on Gusbudy but their diary has a meeting in for pu, tar tar Ss on Sippar" (Paraphrasing as I can't remember the actual words, but very close to an actual mystery I had in a game). There were some fun ideas. Like that the times were given in shadow directions (similar to a sun dial). Fun, but if you have to remember Pu, Tar, Bin and Fes every time, figuring out what this means becomes a mystery all of its own.

[@TheEnigmaticToad]

It was great meeting you at the wizard’s chest signing the other day!

[@GinnyDi]

Oh hey!! It was so nice to meet you too! 🥰

[@Klyxtor97]

Ngl, my in-game calendar is one of my proudest creations. I have over a hundred pages of lore and I love all of it... but the calendar... its my favorite.

[@SrTNick1]

I love tracking the calendar in my Pathfinder campaign. They already have a bunch of holidays, and it's always fun to just bring it up and do a little roleplay about it in casual NPC conversations.

[@togaturtle]

I have never taken an idea for a campaign directly from a video before, but this layout of seasons is really intuitive and easy to remember while also feeling a little fantasy. Definitely nabbing it for my own (though sadly without spooky spirit lady since that doesn't work in my setting)

[@armana1404]

This is excellent advice! I really wish I did this more in my campaigns. This has inspired me to start doing just that!

[@NembyPeabody]

Had a chance to meet Ginny at Pax. She talked to so many of us and she was so cool and kind the entire time!

[@GinnyDi]

Thank you for coming to say hi!! 🥰🥰

[@Rubymagicalgirl88]

I've been using a calendar for two years, myself. Implementing it properly is the hard part for me.. I played with three moons and thats fun

[@absolutelycardboard]

i was making my calendar right before this video dropped, this will be a great help!

[@jafrazer]

I'm so sorry Ginny, but when you mention the Ice Dawn Lady, I can only hear: The Ice Dawn Lady sing this song, Doo-dah! doo-dah! 😂

[@GinnyDi]

Weirdly enough, that's the spell to open a portal during Ice Dawn!! 😂

[@thief_Entertainment]

I play adventure paths and in the Paizo world, there are holidays. Notably in Piazo's first adventure path you start out in Sandpoint at the Swallowtail festival, a yearly fest in Sandpoint and it is referenced in other parts of Varisia, the area that the city of Sandpoint resides. I thought it was a nice touch.

[@davidparkes7741]

"It also feels immersion breaking to me if a fantasy world has a February." Me & anyone else with a February birthday: 😢😢. Lol.

[@GinnyDi]

Valentine's Day is scrapped too. Sorry everyone 😂

[@ecmpinho]

I'd suggest a look in the actual medieval calendars with pagan (samheim, beltane, etc.) an christian celebrations (easter, christmas, saints days) of the time. The calendars of agrarian regions where pagan and seasonal traditions were strongest are the best. Convert the most important days into compatible ones with the mythos and the seasons of your world, and do it in a way some of those relevant days are exclusive from certain regions and cultures (races) depending on the gods they worship and their history. I'd give an example: give an elven community from a certain forrest a celebration to welcome the first day of the spring, and the solstice of the winter as the day a goliath community from a cold region test their yonglings in the tests for adulthood.

[@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.

[@natenobrakes6292]

I have just started writing my first campaign and your tips and advice are really useful. Thanks heaps.

[@GinnyDi]

So glad it's helping! You’re gonna do great! 🤩

[@Xingmey]

1:08 - serious sam said double your gun, double your fun so double the books, double the fun isn't out the widow!

[@Gamesfromthemedusatavern]

I recently made one like this but this has helped me upgrade it

[@OniNoSweeney]

I buy a new pocket calendar every campaign I run. It's wonderful just to have the phases of the moon handy. Also, something I enjoy is putting weather events in certain time frames ahead of times, so the party just runs into terrible things at random times.

[@jedisalamander2457]

Since you gave permission, im definitely stealing your calendar system!

[@GinnyDi]

Please do!

[@jedisalamander2457]

@@GinnyDi it's really good, and I love the dawn/dusk naming!

[@WheezinGeezerTV]

Hmmmm, when was the last time I even looked at a calendar, maybe 10, maybe 20 years..... but I just bought one, the deluxe, because I love your channel, and I haven't played D&D since 2nd addition was still coming out. but I just love listening to your explanations and passion for a game that has never totally left me. Good fighter, bad dice roller.

[@GinnyDi]

This is lovely of you to say - thank you 🥰

[@Zarsla]

To this day I love the dark month, it's a month of darkness. Where the start is basically Christmas+day of the dead. It's from my dm's world, it uses a 13 month, 30 day calendar where everything is basically excatly the same date. I actually love calendars like that, did I mention we celebrate characters birthdays, my pc had truth/dare along with another pc doing card readings + a buffet for dinner. Oh and it was sleepover, she turned 13 and was with a bunch of 13-14 year olds, she's technically the youngest.

[@tjf42193]

I have used real world holidays or cultural days of importance as the jumping off points in my campaigns, also a chance to explore Irish Gaelic amd explain to players what the words mean.

[@almighty_zordon7886]

I enjoy listening to Ginny while at work ❤

[@fenrisulfhamr]

I so want to do this for my own world! I DID hard-core track timelines when I ran the Abomination Vaults megadungeon in Pathfinder. I tracked days for travel times, days resting or crafting, as well as rejuvenation of... some things, and lunar phases for... reasons... mwahaha.... I want to create a 13 month calendar with 28 days each, or weirder things for non-Earth worlds.

[@VivaLaDnDLogs]

Your D&D campaign can allow you to finally make the calendar the way it was intended to be. With the months matching with numbers. October for 8, November for 9, December for 10....the way it should have been if not for the Caesars....

[@Doomsword0]

I watch Dan Jones and Dragons and in that series the campaign starts in the end of summer and a couple sessions in the dm says that it's starting to get brisk, and that there's signs of a party. Then soon a Halloween-esque festival is starting where the characters all dress up (which tied into the plot well with two of them hiding from people). Then as they traveled like ten sessions later while they're on the airship they pass through a snow cloud and we learn winter is starting. All of this is mostly just flavor and aside from the Halloween festival not much makes events in game but it all helps sell the passage of time (which is helpful for a game that they're playing monthly for years but only a couple months in game) Also for my world I took the idea that the world of Dishonored did with their months, being month of (blank) so I did: Month of Darkness Month of Fire Month of Wind Month of Seeds Month of Waves Month of Timber Month of Snow Month of Songs This feels off enough for me but still in line with the real world. darkness, snow and songs are winter with long nights, snow, and people singing around the fireplace. Month of waves is mid summer. Month of seeds being the beginning of farming season and the month of timber is the end of it. Stuff like that, something to help give a timeframe that's somewhat intuitive but also feels unique still

[@jreed3842]

I have been tossing around the idea of a calendar for my world. I was thinking a 360 day year. 30 days each month. Just make it easy to divide the months and seasons and stuff! Dunno what I wanna do with the seasons yet. But was considering once I have something more solid, to reach out and ask my players what holidays their character would have celebrated in their culture!

[@achimsinn6189]

I have a volk that likves nomadically. Instead of actual seasons I established a cycle of seasons where they would need to move on to different places like moving towards south to avoid the cold season and back to the north to avoid the hot season in the south. Instead of actual holidays they have events where they pass certain waypoints like a ruined temple, a trading city or the natural habitat of animals they would be hunting. That alone creats a lot of urgency as moving on too late would pretty much mess up their plans for several months as they wouldn't be reaching the hunting forrest in time for filling up their stock of venison or they miss the right time for the anual ritual of protection they are supposed to celebrate which they believe would lead to a year of bad luck for everybody in the tribe etc. Thinking of it our entire campaign wouldn't have even started without this as the event that got everything going was that the heroes were left behind, when the tribe moved on in order to not fall behind schedule and then after finding out they weren't able to catch up, decided to go their own way.

[@laughingpanda4395]

I use the calander of harptos. I keep it simple and only highlight the fun holidays like trolltide on the first of kythorn. Its kinda like halloween but all the kids dress up as trolls and get sweets amd treats from the locals. If the locals dont play along, their houses get egged or something similar.

[@CronoCloudAuron]

Calendars contributing to the setting is one reason I like hyping the old known world/Mystara setting of the D&D Gazetteers. The related poor wizards/Joshuan's almanacs literally had a large calendar of events. Mystara has a 336 day year of 28 day lunar based months. The full moon always happens on the 15th. The years are dated by the crowning of the first emperor of Thyatis. Except in alphatia where they count years since they made landfall on Mystara.

[@Wolvespbc]

On one hand, I want to make a calendar. On the other hand, if I make a calendar my players might start asking questions like "When did that happen?" And "Wait, so these things happened in the same year? I thought it was a different king that did each of those things."

[@RickardLejonhjarta]

Happy Life Day or.. Sanguinala? Winter Veil!

[@emarli]

I love that the spirit is like a fantasy representation of the menstrual cycle 😂

[@GinnyDi]

😂😂😂

[@TheRealTopHatOnYT]

‘That’s not just an answer - that’s vibes!’ is going at the end of my next essay

[@violet_skrs]

reminds of aspects of the anime, Ancient Magus' Bride (very good show with a third season greenlit iirc) a "side" character that pops up, forget the name, transitions to a different form for each new season. queen of the fae. think it's based on Norse/Pagan mythology. lots of interesting mythology bits sprinkled throughout the anime. edit: Titania is the name gonna have to borrow this set-up if/when I write up a campaign. hadn't thought to make a dedicated calender for the setting aside from the standard version. a nice way to express a fractured realm where the calender had to be revamped from the "old days" 10 day weeks, 6 month years

[@mildlycornfield]

Pretzel Digitization is my favourite cantrip

[@irithylldragon]

if you want to have more or less months in a year than the typical 12, my best recommendation is to make it a division or multiplication of 12 using a round number (6 months, 12 months, 18 months, etc) or at the very least be constructed solely using multiplications of 3 lmao remember, almost everyone you know will be used to tracking months using Base-12 (meaning you go back to 1 after 12), so the easiest way to make things more fantastical for your players without suddenly making the players go "wait, i wrote my halfling to be only 23, but on earth they would be *42!!"* is to base it off a framework they already understand. if you can easily explain to your players how long a year is in your world in just a sentence or two, you're probably doing it right lol

[@qigib]

I respect a youtuber that packs a sword at all times XD

[@drivers99]

“Double the books, double the fun” Glances at 12 feet of RPG books. Look at all the fun I’m having! 😊

[@DiMono]

I'm building out a world for an epic fantasy book series. The scope of the story is so vast that the world's climate changes during its telling, and new seasons and holidays emerge. It's a lot of fun, which will be followed by a tremendous amount of work.

[@risw.3821]

Oh this sounds fun to try on my Barovia but Zombies world- Alright I worldbuilt for awhile and have like "months" now. I wrote briefly in my notes about the weather for each season, and then kind of associated a feeling with each and created a phase for a goddess in this world. Spring - Rainy and Foggy - Depressed “Her tears are to warn and prevent us from the fate she faced. To be fed from her tears is our greatest lament.” Summer - Humid and Foggy - Solace “She has begun to find solace with her loss. We still comfort her, we give back what her tears brought us and she embraces us.” Fall - Cold and Windy - Rejoicing “She can now rejoice, her child is back for a brief time, and as she rejoices we too celebrate in hopes she blesses in the times to come.” Winter - Freezing and Dense - Rage “Her child has been taken from her, there is nothing we can do but feel her anger and offer her our condolences.”

[@taylorgrigsby2014]

I think Ginny just proved Time Cube in this video🤯