I too have come to this conclusion. Making these things matter not just because it's fun as a GM, but it's strangely inviting-- like writing time in the fake calendar is like walking through the door to this imaginary world for my brain. Maybe it's cuz our life is circumscribed by a calendar that things feel less like the gaming world is ephemeral? But even if it's just for us GMs, there's nothing shameful with having a bit of solo fun like this.
I think we've all had the experience where we went from orc raid survivors to realm heroes in less than 2 weeks in game and joked about it. Why not explore the other way?
In my Arden Vul game, I literally got the opportunity to explain away a great reaction roll by some gatekeeping adventurers to the PCs going "Well since it's a festival week you're free to pass, but come the first of Besemios expect to pay our rate of 5 crowns." And idk to me it really mattered and it felt right.
In fact, one of my favorite campaigns I played in had multiple calendars in it. One for the empire evenly split up for tax purposes tracking since the founding, the dwarves had a lunar (think like the hebrew calendar). Some other humans tracked history orally and did stuff like "in the 34th winter of King Artax IV's reign. In the Age of Good Vibes...". The Elves had, iirc, a near calvin-ball calendar since they're all refugees from The Gardens of Ynn and basically didn't make sense except to them.
It was great fun. It mattered because we had to then cross-reference and synthesize various sources for clues to where a big dungeon was!
Last I'll say is that Mouse Guard really was the first game to turn me onto the power of seasons in games. You don't need to track perfect time, but I think the power of being in the same area and recontextualising things based on seasons, alone, is tremendous gaming dopamine.
Anyways thanks for sharing this post. It's nice to hear that your brain is picking at the same niche of gaming like I am these days. (Pendragon and Battletech adjacent stuff).
Every time I've used timekeeping in a game, laying things out on a timeline of pretend month names, its felt silly. But every single time I've actually brought it to the table -- "We won't be back in town until the New Moon of Vardas for the festival of Leaffall" -- ,my players glom onto it immediately and start asking questions about when that is, and comparing it to the rest of the timeline, and find it very immersive. Timekeeping stuff works for my tables!!
Bespoke calendars that just change the name of the days and the length of a year are such a drag, and I say that as a fervent worldbuilding GM myself. Just changing words isn't the same thing as building a world that is and feels different to our own.
What I like about this specific calendar is that it is, as you said, focused on the ways in which it affects the people of the world. It's not just a calendar, it's a description of what happens during a year in this world. Superstitions about specific days and activities, days of rest, I love this stuff.
But it can still be a lot to include big differences to our own world like this. It requires quite a bit of buy-in from the players to spend the effort to learn this stuff to begin with. By keeping changes internally coherent, such as by grouping days of the week into groups of three, it lightens some of the load of learning something, so that is also a great insight. A calendar that involves a tri-moon cycle of 23 1/2 days and a week of either 9 or 3 days based on the tides caused by said moons can be interesting, but it's also a huge bother and for players that just want to go on adventures, not worth interacting with.
That said, if you can balance how much effort it requires to learn something like a bespoke calendar with to what extent it affects gameplay (and this balance will differ for any given player), it can be really awesome. Some of my friends and I still think back fondly to the Gloranthan calendar and how it could be used to predict the military tactics of the Lunar battalions. Good times.
I too have come to this conclusion. Making these things matter not just because it's fun as a GM, but it's strangely inviting-- like writing time in the fake calendar is like walking through the door to this imaginary world for my brain. Maybe it's cuz our life is circumscribed by a calendar that things feel less like the gaming world is ephemeral? But even if it's just for us GMs, there's nothing shameful with having a bit of solo fun like this.
I think we've all had the experience where we went from orc raid survivors to realm heroes in less than 2 weeks in game and joked about it. Why not explore the other way?
In my Arden Vul game, I literally got the opportunity to explain away a great reaction roll by some gatekeeping adventurers to the PCs going "Well since it's a festival week you're free to pass, but come the first of Besemios expect to pay our rate of 5 crowns." And idk to me it really mattered and it felt right.
In fact, one of my favorite campaigns I played in had multiple calendars in it. One for the empire evenly split up for tax purposes tracking since the founding, the dwarves had a lunar (think like the hebrew calendar). Some other humans tracked history orally and did stuff like "in the 34th winter of King Artax IV's reign. In the Age of Good Vibes...". The Elves had, iirc, a near calvin-ball calendar since they're all refugees from The Gardens of Ynn and basically didn't make sense except to them.
It was great fun. It mattered because we had to then cross-reference and synthesize various sources for clues to where a big dungeon was!
Last I'll say is that Mouse Guard really was the first game to turn me onto the power of seasons in games. You don't need to track perfect time, but I think the power of being in the same area and recontextualising things based on seasons, alone, is tremendous gaming dopamine.
Anyways thanks for sharing this post. It's nice to hear that your brain is picking at the same niche of gaming like I am these days. (Pendragon and Battletech adjacent stuff).
Every time I've used timekeeping in a game, laying things out on a timeline of pretend month names, its felt silly. But every single time I've actually brought it to the table -- "We won't be back in town until the New Moon of Vardas for the festival of Leaffall" -- ,my players glom onto it immediately and start asking questions about when that is, and comparing it to the rest of the timeline, and find it very immersive. Timekeeping stuff works for my tables!!
Bespoke calendars that just change the name of the days and the length of a year are such a drag, and I say that as a fervent worldbuilding GM myself. Just changing words isn't the same thing as building a world that is and feels different to our own.
What I like about this specific calendar is that it is, as you said, focused on the ways in which it affects the people of the world. It's not just a calendar, it's a description of what happens during a year in this world. Superstitions about specific days and activities, days of rest, I love this stuff.
But it can still be a lot to include big differences to our own world like this. It requires quite a bit of buy-in from the players to spend the effort to learn this stuff to begin with. By keeping changes internally coherent, such as by grouping days of the week into groups of three, it lightens some of the load of learning something, so that is also a great insight. A calendar that involves a tri-moon cycle of 23 1/2 days and a week of either 9 or 3 days based on the tides caused by said moons can be interesting, but it's also a huge bother and for players that just want to go on adventures, not worth interacting with.
That said, if you can balance how much effort it requires to learn something like a bespoke calendar with to what extent it affects gameplay (and this balance will differ for any given player), it can be really awesome. Some of my friends and I still think back fondly to the Gloranthan calendar and how it could be used to predict the military tactics of the Lunar battalions. Good times.
Worthwhile self-indulgence, enjoyed it!
This calendar is amazing and reminds me so much of my realm of Ar’rin that I write about here! Love it!
But that MAC Attack video is pure excitement!