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).
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).