Importance of Calendar

How’s the calendar work for your game world?  Do you keep it pretty accurately?  No?  Is that because you just can’t be bothered?  Yeah, that’s going to bite you in the ass.

There are a bunch of reasons for keeping a calendar, and I might be too harsh about keeping it accurately.  But what’s the point?  If you don’t keep a calendar, then you cannot say when things are or will be happening.  Let’s start with the easy and move to the important.

Keeping a calendar, you as the GM can keep track of how long it takes to get from place to place and back again.  This matters for a bunch of reasons.  The player characters should probably have some manner of responsibilities in their home town.  Maybe they aren’t paying rent, but they will need to pay for storage, or stable fees, or something to maintain their lives back home.  A calendar helps you keep the records fairly.

Most of my PCs at some point start to breed their own horses (or dogs, or dragon steeds, or pegasi, etc.).  The calendar helps determine how long the animal will be pregnant and how long it will take for it to grow up.  If the mare is the PC’s main steed, then while she’s getting ready to give birth or nursing, she’s out of the action.  But this isn’t the only “training” you need a calendar for.  If you are following your rules, you likely have to track the number of days your PCs are training in order to use their experience.

My World of Fletnern frequently has things going on that the players / player characters are not involved in.  There could be a war going on somewhere else or perhaps there is an upcoming wedding.  Knowing how long the party has been traveling or just out adventuring is needed in order to keep the two story lines in sync.

Do you know what happens when you don’t do this?  An army can cross a continent and back in the same amount of time it takes a raven to fly from one major fortress to the capital city, and that’s absurd.  How absurd?  Well, even casual watchers of that huge sword and sorcery show have noticed how stupid it is that armies are moving faster than ships are moving faster than ravens.  No, I actually started writing this blog post long before this season of the show started, but pointing out obvious plot holes is not something you want happening in your own game.

But in Fletnern it’s not just those really important things.  There are harvest festivals in fall, the Feast of Brakin in winter, rainy seasons in spring, and rodeos in summer.  So you need to know what season it is at least.  One role-playing tip:  I remember Thieves World (before it got out of control).  There was a big thing when the ships carrying the blood oranges came to town and the blood orange season only lasted a couple of weeks.  It was a really cool touch that I am remembering here nearly 40 years later.

One more gold farming reason - If it is late summer or early fall, then the wheat, corn or hay is going to be high - high enough to hide in.  If it is spring, then the fields are recently plowed and will show footprints very easily and there will be no cover.  Winter - Is it snowing?  Same tracking issues.  Winter also means needed to bundle up.  If a prisoner escapes in winter, his first requirement is going to be shelter and heat.  In summer, he might be more interested in escaping the area and then worrying about food and water.

One other side to calendars is that they can be the motive of the mission.  There are those places where you need to be in a certain spot at a certain time in order to see something important - maybe a keyhole or simply lining up the sun at a temple for the summer or winter solstice.  Or (and these are more my favorites) you need to go and get something and return with it before something happens.  I do believe that when the party knows there is a time limit on what they’re doing, it changes the way they play.  A party that stops frequently and let’s their spell casters rest is going to be far more aggressive if they know that spending an extra five hours resting could mean that they arrive too late to save the princess.

The last but really not least point is this:  Because I have been using my world of Fletnern for decades now, I often want to (sometimes need to) go back and try to figure out what I set up the last time.  OK, maybe I don’t have to, but I can use what I already created without reinventing the wheel.  Trying to keep track of how things are going or went or even figure out how long this party has been adventuring together - this stuff matters!

Calendars are easier when you’re just starting off!  It isn’t until you’re running multiple campaigns in the same world at the same time that things start to get tricky.  So while it is easy - keep the calendar.  You’ll be glad you did.