• Please note: In an effort to ensure that all of our users feel welcome on our forums, we’ve updated our forum rules. You can review the updated rules here: http://forums.wolflair.com/showthread.php?t=5528.

    If a fellow Community member is not following the forum rules, please report the post by clicking the Report button (the red yield sign on the left) located on every post. This will notify the moderators directly. If you have any questions about these new rules, please contact support@wolflair.com.

    - The Lone Wolf Development Team

Relative Dates

S

Silveras

Well-known member
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-?
 
kbs666 said:
This is reasonable but I can't see it being implemented before calendars
Click to expand...

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.
 
+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...
 
Vargr said:
Oh - and the amount of Hx-dates should be unlimited.

(yep, definitely rambling...)
Click to expand...

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. :)
 
+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.
 
I just like the background they used in the Nentir Vale because a couple of my players know more about the Forgotten Realms than I do. It works fine with 5e which I love on so many levels. (One being that we just recently sold our 2000th Player's Handbook from my store. Another is that recent numbers show that 39% of players of 5e are women.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top