[Greebo]

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

Hey a chance to talk about calendars again!

:-)

Jippie!

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

I downloaded, installed, and tried Aeon, but just didn't find it helpful. I can see it being useful for outlining for a novel or history book, etc. But I can do that in RW, as long as I use the Gregorian system.

Sounds interesting, even though Aeon is - at least for my current budget - a bit pricey.

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

I also maintain a spreadsheet where I log in broad strokes what the party has been up to. The spreadsheet has five calendar systems that I calculated based of the Gregorian. So, if I want to paste conversion into a topic, I just have to copy the relevant cells and paste them in.

(...)

My main issue is that if I want to calculate dates in the far past or far future for the other calendars, my spreadsheet won't help. I just manually entered in the calendar dates for year and repeated down the column for several years. I have not had the time to figure out the calendrical calculations to convert any date, future or paste, from Gregorian to one of my other calendars.

I have been using spreadsheets for quite a while now. And they are cumbersome at best. Beside the problem with distant events you describe, I have another layer of complexity due to different year lengths and calendar systems used within my gameworld.

So, if I set up e.g. an underground necropolis (or any other site vaguely resembling a "classic dungeon"), which I do strictly as a place (for later revisits and the like), most of these sites tend to have been used over - at least - several decades. But many of those were used, one way or the other, by different cultures as well. And sorting discontinous dates within different calendars (solar, lunisolar, lunar based on the large moon, lunar based on the small moon, cylce-based...) is a real pain...

Originally Posted by MNBlockHead

And, I really doesn't matter. None of the players really care. I'm fine using the Gregorian system. But I still look forward to having support for multiple calendars because it would provide an easy way to give more flavor to a campaign. Also, if I had the ability to easily convert within RW, I might build adventures and puzzles where calendars are more important. Not that I want to frustrate my players with calendrical calculation—I would hope the player view would also support switching calendars. Even if I have to do it for them as a DM, just the fact that they have to think about it, adds some flavor to the game.

That is exactly the reason, why I do things like that. One of the ideas I am currently pondering is to integrate an evil spirit with a Maya-inspired background (with a cycle based Maya-like calendar) into our science fantasy campaign (with a solar calendar).