Variable calendars... and time tracking in general.

[Thrantor]

I'm running a Golarion campaign using the Kingmaker Adventure path.

I've found that it's damn hard to schedule things to a calendar since the calendars don't really match up with the Golarion calendar.

I want to be able to have a custom calendar and have things recorded on the calendar itself. I want to be able to see a timeline of the things I've got scheduled to come up from the "current day" and an easy way to modify that.

Basically, outlook for custom calendars. "Ok, I know the next week will be a waxing then waning snow storm... That means each day gets an all day task called "snow"... then the individual things of the next three days. Oh, wait... there is a holiday coming up. I need to start foreshadowing that. UUU! and the note about the baddie planning to assassinate a PC will hit during the middle of the storm. Awesome!"

How much calendar, custom calendar(months of weird lengths and names and years of odd day numbers) and time tracking is in the program?

 

[rob]

You can customize your calendars however you want. We'll be providing some of the calendars from major game systems at release, including the Absalom Reckoning (Golarion) calendar. We've already got it implemented.

The calendar mechanism is incredibly flexible. You have different periods (e.g. ages) with entirely different calendar progressions. You can have arbitrary leap months and years. The list goes on. I'm sure we'll find odd cases where the calendar structure falls short, but we'll see about tweaking it to accommodate those cases when they appear.

You can designate dates based on the custom calendars all you want. We don't have "task" functionality right now, but it can be added if there's demand for it. With the current implementation, you could define some events for the upcoming game session, such as the snow storm. Since the storm spans multiple days, you would define a "date range" event for it. For the holiday, it would be a single date. Those would appear on the timeline for you to monitor there.

Of course, none of those dates would be revealed to the players until you chose to do so. The dates would appear on the timeline for your eyes only until you revealed the events to the players.

So it wouldn't work exactly like Outlook, but it would absolutely be doable. And it would be pretty simple to manage.

Hope this helps!

 

[Thrantor]

Tasks that span only a couple hours in a day would be awesome as well. I'm thinking mostly for something like an assassination plot. Or other political intrigue. 9am wake up. 10 am kill the prime minister in his sleep. 11 am pin it on the Judge. etc...

But thank you for the info on the calendars. I continue to be excited by realm works.

Is there an easy way to say "advance the day and then take notes about what the players did on that day?"

 

[rob]

You could use a "date range" event for something that only takes hours if you want. All it does is track a start and end date/time for a given event, so those two values could be times on the same day if you want.

We've mapped out how you could easily accomplish the "advance date and take notes for day" approach. However, it's not slated for inclusion in the initial launch. But we've definitely designed how it will work, so it will be added.

 

[Thrantor]

Excellent. I look forward to getting involved. So thinking about getting in the beta... but not sure I can pull it off without my fiance trying to kill me for the 500$.

 

[kristof65]

Tthrantor - I like how you phrased it as "outlook for custom calendars." I have often wished for exactly that same thing.

Which leads me to my own question about RW's calendar capabilities - scheduling of recurring events.

Can RW make it easier for the GM to schedule recurring events, even when he doesn't know what the schedule is, exactly?

For example, say I have an event such as a comet appearing. Let's say that I make an offhand comment that the comet has only been seen three times since the Age of the Exodus. Assuming that I know when the Exodus was, and the current date, can RW help me figure out the other three dates it was seen, and the next times it will appear?

And then, can it remind me of them? For example, say I am playing a campaign in the same world set a couple of hundred years later - will RW help me remember the comet should be coming around again?

 

[rob]

@kristof: There is currently nothing in place for recurring events. This has been a big request from our Beta team and we're striving to get that into place, but I'm not certain it will make it into the initial release. When it does get added, you'll be able to setup an interval for the repetition. However, we certainly hadn't considered trying to handle something with a repeat cycle of 100 years! So, in the first incarnation of the mechanism, it's unlikely you'd be able to define a recurring event as every 100 years.

That being said, you could easily create a content element for the comet and define multiple appearance dates for it, including a couple in the future for when it returns again. Those dates would appear in the timeline, so you'd definitely see them.

Another option would be to define a calendar associated with the cycle time of the comet. Then you could use the recurring dates mechanism tied to the comet's calendar, where the first day of every "year" in that calendar is when the comet appears.

So there will be ways to readily handle this, even if we don't have something perfect in place for a special-case scenario like you've outlined.

Hope this helps!

 

[kristof65]

Rob - thanks for the answer.

I'm surprised that you see recurring events with over a hundred year span as being a "special case scenario". Celestial events really aren't that special case, nor are recurring ones. Aren't you already building calendars that can track moons and phases? Why would longer celestial events be much different?

Yes, for the duration of one campaign, it might be. But I think a lot of people will want to take the power provided to them by RW, and use it to allow them to write true histories for their campaign worlds.
Especially in campaigns with long lived races like elves and dragons. In fact, I would contend that in game the two most popular game systems - D&D and Pathfinder - that the mere existence of long lived races like Elves and Dragons is one of the GM's banes.

How many times has a GM quipped about something happening over a century ago, and the PCs immediately decide to go see the local old elf to find out more details? I know it happened to me enough times in my early days of GMing that I rewrote my campaign setting so that elves only live 200 years or so.

Furthermore, this is one of the ways that RW can add even more value to a GM. The best games and game worlds are ones where the GM makes the world a living, breathing entity that exists along side the PCs. Many GMs ignore things like seasons, moon phases and comet appearances because they are harder to track and maintain internal consistency. If RW provides easy to use tools to add them to a campaign, that

So any sort of recurring events system in RW should be able to handle any recurring events, even if they only happen every 10,000 years or more.

And this discussion prompted another use case to consider with calendars. That of handling the scheduling of long journeys. Within most campaigns/worlds there are certain journeys that are going to be common - say setting sail in a ship from Waterdeep to Baldur's Gate in the Forgotten Realms, or an X-Boat traveling from Regina/Regina to Capitol/Capitol in Traveller.

I am hoping there will be a way to somehow "template" these journeys with standard travel times, methods and stops and quickly apply them to a calendar and PC/NPC, etc.

This would allow the GM to quickly say that NPC X is going to take this journey, and have it applied to the calendar. That way he would know at a glance where NPC X will be when the players decide they most find him. Or how long that message they just sent will take.

 

[rob]

When you think of this as "Outlook for custom calendars", the focus is on dates that recur weekly, monthly, annually, whatever for a calendar. When you sit down at your computer to setup a schedule of recurring events in your personal real-world calendar, do you put in things like the passing of Halley's Comet or a centennial celebration as *recurring* events? That makes things like 100-year cycles a "special case" relative to the common case where recurrent events will be used.

I didn't say that we won't ever provide the capability. I simply said that our *initial* focus would be on the common case usage and that there were other ways to solve the non-common (special) cases, which would serve in the interim.

With Realm Works, I'm certain that we'll be deluged with requests for features that will take us years to implement. And everyone is going to have their personal favorite feature that they want implemented first. We'll need to prioritize everything and figure out what features will be most valuable to the most users.

I wholly agree that templating journeys in the way you've outlined them would be quite useful for a lot of GMs. However, it's something we haven't addressed yet, since we've been focusing on lots of other features that we believe are even more important to include first. It's definitely something on the todo list, and user feedback will drive how we prioritize what gets done in what order after the initial launch.

With a product like Realm Works, the goal is to release it when it provides a vast improvement over what people are currently using. Then we can continue to evolve the product and add new features to further enhance the games of our users. Realm Works definitely is a huge advance over what GMs have now, so we've slated our initial release for July, and we'll continue to evolve it from there.

Hope this makes sense!

 

[Thrantor]

I wholly agree that templating journeys in the way you've outlined them would be quite useful for a lot of GMs.

I'd even go so far as to say that something like this is very similar to what I was talking about with the ability to advance the "current time" while also taking notes about what happens... but more of... "Take notes and have them pop up in the future."

Worst case, I think you could write up a page that details those common trip times and just set a note blah days in the future that the NPC X is arriving at waterdeep and hell is coming with him.

 

[AEIOU]

It's prudent to start with calendars for us humans and halflings. Our lives are short and we need everything NOW. The elves and dorfs can wait a few hundred years for this functionality and not miss a heartbeat....

Fantasy histories take place over periods of thousands of years.

 

[ruhar]

I've been working on entering Time Period information of what the PCs have done since the start of when they met so I can better track time. I was told that the calendar system would have the ability to repeat events like certain holidays, festivals and the phase of the moon. I'll soon need to track the phase of the moon when the PCs have to deal with werewolves. Is this feature still going to occur? If so, will it occur by the release date?

 

[lifer4700]

Will there be any provision for importing 'events' into said calendar system?

I ask this because I 'cheated' for my Runelords campaign where weather and phases of the moon are concerned.

I decided that the geography of the Sandpoint are is reasonably consistent with that of a certain major real-world city.

Since the Golarian calendar (AR) is nothing more than the common real-world calendar with funny month names and + 2,700 years. I simply looked up the phases of the moon for 2007, and I have been using that for my world (4707ar).

I also found a web site that shows the historical weather down to the hour in the aforementioned city, and that gives me my storms, cloud cover, temperature, relative humidity... everything.


Obviously, there would be no need to use the site for moon phases anymore because once entered, it's a simple cycle, and the to-the-hour minor weather details I would likely have to give up, but the daily summary and the major weather events would be something that I might want to keep, and import.

 

[Nikmal]

Lifer... actually the major weather reports from real world events is an awesome idea. I always wrestled with how to tie it in to the real world weather and thought much like you in the hour to hour and such type of weather tracking but thought it non-feasable so to speak because days fly by so fast in a campaign.. but real world weather with major events only.. now that is a great idea!!

 

[lifer4700]

It has worked well so far.

Each morning, and sometimes around midday, I'll give a quick snippet about the weather, is it cloudy, rainy, sunny, I know when sunrise is, when sunset is, etc. Other than that, I don't purposely mention it much unless a storm comes around.

HOWEVER, when a player asks what the weather is currently like, I have a very detailed, consistent answer ready without any delay.


Someone performs a divination? I can say what the weather is going to be like.

Ask that old elf what happened during the autumn festival 150 years ago? He can remember the exact temperature.

 

[Dracarius]

Sweet! I never thought of this idea. I've been on the player side of the table for years and am just starting in as a DM. This has not crossed my mind.

What website are you using for the historical information?

 

[lifer4700]

It would depend on which real world city you chose to represent your in-game city.

I happened to find a small web site with 'historical weather data' hosted by a newspaper local to that area.

Google was my friend.

 

[Aleslosh]

This is a great idea! Definitely usable as is. I've done something similar for current and future weather.

I use an IPhone app (WeatherBug) to give me current and projected weather. I just choose a location that is similar to the location in my world and I have a current description of the weather plus a general description of what the weather looks like for the rest of the day and for the next 10 days.

 

[lifer4700]

This is a great idea! Definitely usable as is. I've done something similar for current and future weather.

I use an IPhone app (WeatherBug) to give me current and projected weather. I just choose a location that is similar to the location in my world and I have a current description of the weather plus a general description of what the weather looks like for the rest of the day and for the next 10 days.

Of course, the only problem with using weather forecasts is their accuracy - or complete lack of it in any case.

 

[Aleslosh]

Of course, the only problem with using weather forecasts is their accuracy - or complete lack of it in any case.

Lol, very true... very true! Still, there's nothing to prevent us more devious GMs from spontaneously writing in a freak storm just to shake things up a bit. Not that I've done this bit of chicanery.*cough, cough*

But you could randomize the weather events and then add them to the calendar as needed. In my campaign, I've done this "blind" so that it adds a little bit of a twist to an otherwise straightforward stroll through the countryside between towns... "a huge bank of dark clouds is approaching from the south. As it gets nearer your position, you notice that the storm contains fist size hail stones!" ...or even a typical dungeon crawl can be made more interesting with the aftershocks of an earthquake that happened 10 miles away.