Relative Dates
 

This came up previously in a discussion of another request, but I am adding it as its own topic because it has been a while.

Often when working with published materials, there are incidents or events in the background that happened "a week ago" or "the previous month". That's fine, but a) RealmWorks requires specific dates and b) the published material often leaves the exact referenced up to the GM.

As an example, if the Campaign Start Date is September 22, XXXX, the "a week ago" is September 15, XXXX, and "the previous month" may be an ambiguous date in August XXXX.

However, the next time the GM plans to run this campaign, the start date is September 10, YYYY. That makes the "a week ago" date September 3, YYYY, and the "the previous month" is some ambiguous date in August, YYYY

The problem is that, in preparing the material in RealmWorks, the GM had to select and embed the dates in XXXX as the "a week ago" and "the previous month", even though that is the wrong year for the second campaign.

So while it is probably a lot of work, there is some benefit to having dates that are definable as "[Campaign Start]-7 days" and "[Campaign Start Month]-[1 Month]".

Of course, this would also require the creation of a data type of "Key Date" to be selected as the Reference date for the relative calculation. Other than "Campaign Start", they would likely need to be [Key Date n], where n is some reasonable number 1-?

This is reasonable but I can't see it being implemented before calendars

Well, it couldn't be, I expect.

Rob has stated before that the current date/time tools *are* part of the Custom Calendars material. They use the same underlying systems, so the current Gregorian calendars work the way Custom Calendars would.

However, the earlier planning for this kind of thing begins, the more likely it is to be successfully added. Waiting until AFTER the next phase of Custom Calendars to even make the suggestion can mean YEARS of waiting for it.

I am absolutely for relative dating! +1 baby

+1

I think it would be useful if we can have an H-time (like in the military).

A date (or time) can be "H+1 hour" or "H-30 days" ("1 month" is not exact enough).

Somewhere in the settings the date and time "H" could be set.

In GM-view the relative dates could be marked by having a different colour or something.

Of course you should be able to choose if a given date is absolute or relative.

Plot dates would probably be all relative while historical dates would be all absolute.

If the party spends longer than anticipated by the GM to get from point A to B, the GM would just have to adjust the H-time to when they arrive in the little hamlet in the middle of the Death Hills and all dates in the plot line are adjusted accordingly. This way the plot knows that the vicar left his home one stormy night on this date which is exactly 10 days before the party happened to reach the hamlet.

Actually we would need multiple H-times (H1, H2, ...?). One for each plot in our campaign.


Well, I am rambling so I will stop for now...

Oh - and the amount of Hx-dates should be unlimited.

(yep, definitely rambling...)

+1

Imho, that would be a very great enhancement feature for the big C!

So those are pretty much what I meant by Reference Dates. You could also call them "Anchor Dates". They're the date that other things based from. :)

Added relative date/time snippets to my list. Not sure how else this could be added to RW.

+1 from me too. I can certainly see the use of this if it is possible. I know that 4e D&D, for example, has lots of dates set as -1000 years, -60 years, etc from the current time. I'm sure there are other backgrounds doing the same.