How far down the list is the calendar feature?

[AEIOU]

Keep the faith. Slowly but surely all will be made happy.

[Dark Lord Galen]

Originally Posted by AEIOU

Keep the faith. Slowly but surely all will be made happy.

I hear ya,, but its like all those years in the pew, patience was never a virtue I had in abundance.

Now perseverance.. that's a different matter!

[Madmaxneo]

Why is every so often my typed posts simply disappear before I am able to post them?

Many times my players have asked me what year it is. The first time this happened I had to look it up in my game session notes (which are rare and usually hard to find). At times they have asked me what season it is. I usually go with whatever season is current.
Just the other day I was asked about seasonal holidays (they are on the calendar) and I gave a generic answer. But I will probably forget by the time it becomes current.
I have been told I am a good GM, but my players don't notice the flaws I see all the time.
Like my horrible lack of keeping world game time.
I can barely wait for the day they finally add the calendar system. There is so much I need to add and tweak once it is in place.

In the meantime, does anyone know of an alternative way of keeping track of the calendar in the world? Is there a web page that has that capability or some way that the players can see the timeline as it happens? Hopefully something I can link to Realm Works the players can click on to access....

FYI, I have a FB page for my game. Are there any kind of timeline add ons for Facebook?

Bruce

[rob]

Originally Posted by Madmaxneo

Many times my players have asked me what year it is. The first time this happened I had to look it up in my game session notes (which are rare and usually hard to find). At times they have asked me what season it is. I usually go with whatever season is current.
Just the other day I was asked about seasonal holidays (they are on the calendar) and I gave a generic answer. But I will probably forget by the time it becomes current.
I have been told I am a good GM, but my players don't notice the flaws I see all the time.
Like my horrible lack of keeping world game time.
I can barely wait for the day they finally add the calendar system. There is so much I need to add and tweak once it is in place.

Honestly, I think you answered the big question surrounding calendars yourself here. In most games (certainly not all), the players want to know the year/season/month for flavor. They really are NOT exacting about that stuff. And they won't even notice if you mess something up, especially in regards to dates. Why? Because they aren't paying close enough attention. The flavor is for the game session at hand, not usually an issue of continuity or precision for timing of events. Yes, there ARE exceptions - I'm just talking about the frequent case.

So, while the GM agonizes over all sorts of little details, the players don't even notice! This is why calendars are often vastly more important to GMs than the players of those same GMs.

My recommendation is to not sweat the details that the players don't care about. I used to be like you, worrying over all sorts of little minutiae. Then a friend - and excellent GM - told me to re-think how I do things. After making the switch, it's made running games a LOT more fun and a LOT less stressful. I also think I've become a much better GM in the process. And I first GM'd a game 38 years ago, so it was many years before this wisdom was imparted to me and I finally saw the light.

Hopefully, this little bit of wisdom is helpful to someone else. I'm just passing it on from someone wiser than I.

[Madmaxneo]

Don't get me wrong, I don't sweat the small stuff. I have never actually kept track of things like in game time.
But over the years and the many campaigns I have run the campaign cohesion can suffer drastically.
Right now it isn't a serious problem but over time as things happen it can be. You're right that it is primarily for me, the GM. But it also eventually falls into the players hands in one form or another though they may never know it while suffering the effects of it.
I like to run long running campaigns. I want to get into a campaign that will run for years to come. A calendar feature will definitely improve the feel and structure of the campaign. It will also help when running adventures that happen in the past.

[Vargr]

I haven't yet found a tool out there that works for me (and my probably bizarre requirements).

My solution for the time being is a spreadsheet, that maps out the entire year in months and days, including the state of the two moons. I simply type the year in question and I get the dates, days and moon phases (I have a leap year).
The moon phases are important for a number of reasons, among others, people see them as omens.

Admittedly, it requires some spreadsheet knowledge, but not that much.

I have a map and I have decided what types of climates the various areas of the map have (temperate/inland, temperate/coast, tropical, etc).

With these two things I can make the seasons and the dates quite consistent. The maps (a large one and a detailed one) are divided into 60 km and 5 km hexes resp. so the players can easily see how far they can travel by road in a day.
And yes, kilometers - none of that imperial confusion here. :-)

The various holy days, celebrations etc. that happens regularly, I simply put into RW, under The Church (so far they are all religious) in Groups. I have made a sub-group called Sacred Days.

Since we haven't run a full year circle yet, I am simply adding things here as we go forward.

Apart from that, I looked at

• Aeon Timeline
• yEd Graph editor

The Aeon Timeline might be useful for timekeeping.

[MNBlockHead]

I've spent a lot of time looking for something and so far I'm still using a spreadsheet and waiting for the calendar feature to be developed for RW. I use my spreadsheet to give me the date on 4 different calendars and to track time in the campaign. I include Gregorian so that I can enter sessions in RW and then just paste the dates for the other calendars.

What this isn't good for is past dates. Short of hiring someone to create a custom script that would convert past dates into my custom calendars, I've given up on entering past events into Realm Works. I put these on a spread sheet using the most prominent custom calendar but do not bother converting to other calendar formats at this time.

[Madmaxneo]

I have used a spreadsheet before and but didn't keep up with it as much as I needed to. Thanks for all the great ideas so far.

[Madmaxneo]

On the Aeon Timeline development page I found this quote from a book called “Writing: A User Manual” by David Hewson:
“Yet writers still agonize over time. They nag people who make writing software to include some kind of timeline feature so they can map out the chronology of their story to the last second. They – you may wish to look away here – plan their tales in sad columns in Excel spreadsheets as if they were lines on a P&L statement (and may the Lord have mercy on their souls).”

So appropriate to this whole calendar thing!

[Vargr]

@Madmaxneo:

So true...