TIME

A Few Considerations About Why It
Is Important To Keep Track Of It

I am a strong proponent for keeping accurate track of time within a game. I know it is possible, and even occasionally advantageous to let time slide into the background as unimportant, but overall, I've always found it relatively easy to keep track of the days as they progress through the game years, and it's often very helpful to do so, besides.

On the gross scale of time, let us consider years, one of the most natural and larger units of time. The years are important so one's character may get a sense of history within the game. Even if your campaign's entire run last less than a single game year, the characters may like to know how old that castle is or how long ago King Osserick held power, or even how long the HMS Serpentine has been laying 300 feet below the surface of the water. All of this could make a difference. Without keeping track of the years, these things have little meaning and no reference point. Without such, the age of one's character does not really matter, unnatural aging seems trivial, and I frequently feel the players get lost when speaking of any event on a time scale measured in years, or more. Thus, knowing what year it is turns out to be a rather important part of the campaign, for reasons both obvious and subtle.

I recommend to any GM that they set up their game with a working calendar, at least to keep track of the years. Pick a starting date, somewhere in the past of your world or realm, something important enough for them to either start measuring time, or restart it from a new point. Right away, this gives your characters something to think about, and if you begin dotting your historical landscape with epic events of yesteryear, a whole sense of history and depth opens up to those players who are interested and take the time to explore it. To those other players who just need a reference point in time for their own ends, this is still handy. And for the rest who really have no such concerns, it isn't really a burden to them to have a working calendar on a world since they tend to simply ignore it.

Of course, most planets - other than Earth - would probably have something other than 365.25 days in its year, but the coincidence of having that be true on your fantasy world is not so awful that it MUST be avoided if you'd rather not deal with the differences. Otherwise, you should pick a realistic number, something you can remember and work with.

I personally used 400 days for Orlantia. This was reasonable, close to 365, had the advantage of being divided up into 4 nice 100-day seasons, and if I tended to ignore the 400/365 ratio (a factor of 1.1), my populace could live about 10% longer (naturally). Not that a longer revolution of the planet about the sun makes them live any longer, you understand, but it just made it easier when I lengthened their natural longevity. So if a human lives 100 Earth years on Earth (36,525 days), I just say my humans tend to live about 100 Orlantian years on Orlantia (40,000 days), so I need not worry about conversion factors if I don't want to bother with it. But when I do, I simply multiply or divide by 1.1 - depending on which way I'm converting - to get the desired results.

For example, the age of consent on Orlantia is 16 years old. 16 x 1.1 = 17.5 or so. Therefore, in Earth years, the age of consent is really 17.5 Earth years. Other than a few consideration like that, it hardly ever comes up or gets in the face of the game or the players, so it is easy, useful, and even quite fun at times.

Your world's year may be longer or shorter; it just depends on what you want. If it begins to be much longer or much shorter, you may run into bigger problems by ignoring it, but even those problems can be ignored if no one looks too hard at your time keeping system. But to just avoid those problems, I will always recommend choosing a year between 300 and 500 days long. Or, of course, something close to 182.5 or 730 days so you may easily convert (2 or 1/2 times normal), or some other integral multiple of "Earth time" to make your conversions simple.

The next most natural unit of time - perhaps even the most natural, as it is discovered first - is the day. How long is it? Like different planets probably having a different number of days in a year, most planets' rotations are probably not 24 hours long. However, unlike before where years are sometimes easily ignored, days are not, and the time within a single day must either be 24 hours or so close to 24 hours that it makes no practical difference. If you do not do this, then you will be forced to make time conversions on a regular basis, which is fine and realistic, but not always a lot of fun for the players. I highly recommend you just adopt the coincidental 24-hour period since too many things in AD&D or other game systems are already measured on the Earth daytime scale.

For example, they may tell you how far your horse or your sailing vessel can travel in a "day," and that assumes 24 hours in a day. So if you use 24 hours as your day, you need not convert, but if you use something else, be prepared to convert time units left and right. To avoid frequent conversions of that nature, I have Orlantia's rotational period around 24 hours, thus avoiding the problem altogether.

NOTE: If you ever wondered why '24' hours in a day, and not some other, arbitrarily chosen number, or why there are '360' degrees in a circle instead of some other number or some other unit, the reason stems from how handily 24 and 360 break down into many useful fractional parts using integers. For example, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 15, 18, 20, 24, 30, 36, 40, 45, 60, 90, 120, 180, and 360 are ALL factors of 360, while 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, and 24 are ALL factors of 24. Few numbers break down into as many handy factors, and these numbers have a lot of factors in common. So while one might use another arbitrary number, chances are such a number would be less useful when considering fractions of the whole. 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, 1/8, 1/9, 1/10, 1/12, 1/15, 1/18, 1/20, 1/24, 1/30, 1/36, 1/40, 1/45, 1/60, 1/90, 1/120, and 1/180 are all handy, though the ones under 1/12 are even more so. For similar reasons, one 'dozen' is a handy unit in which to sell items. So regardless of how long a planet's day is in actual time, breaking it up into 24 units is a handy thing to do. Further divisions in 60 minutes and 60 seconds uses these same numbers and handy factors. But I digress.

The next unit of time we should look at is the month. Certain scientific considerations come into play here which suggest a planet may have difficulty even evolving intelligent life if it has no moon to help regulate it, but I'd rather not get into that here. Suffice it to say many things in fantasy are tied to the moon, and many real considerations are also moon dependent (tides for example). Again, this is only a problem if you choose to exclude the possibility of a moon, but if you use one moon (or more), then you can have moon phases, full moons and lycanthropy, tides, lunar astronomical and astrological components to your game, and a few other things closely tied to or associated with Earth's moon may be true for your world as well. Religious holidays or holy days, sacrifices, services, prayers, magic, and too many other things to mention could all easily be tied to the moon, and its period of revolution around your planet will become your month. It need not be 30 days or so, but something you like. If its period is, coincidentally, an integral factor of your year's length, that will help, having an exact number of months in a year. Otherwise, it will be incredibly complex and predicting the moon's phase will become a labor of mathematics (as it is on Earth), and if holy days are tied to it (like Easter is on Earth), then it may become far more work than anyone actually wishes to undertake for a game. Thus, I recommend an integral number of months fit exactly into your year, but that's up to you.

Further division into smaller units than a day are useful, but also a bit of a problem if you do not like mathematical conversions. Orlantia has its own units of time, for example, but I never speak about them during a game, continuing to use hours, minutes, and seconds to help jive with the turns, rounds, and segments of standard play and our every day experiences.

If you're interested, here are the few I made up for Orlantia: Every year contains 400 days or 4 seasons. Every season contains 100 days or 5 Scepters. Every Scepter contains 20 days or 2 Pholars. Every Pholar contains 10 days. (Scepter is the name of the outer moon, whose period is 20 days, and Pholar is the name of the inner moon, whose period is 10 days. Alternate spellings for the moons include Septer, Septar, and Folar.

Every day, which is still 24 standard hours, contains 10 watches. That's 5 daytime and 5 nighttime watches. Every watch contains 10 zons, each zon being 14.4 minutes long. Every zon contains 10 breaths, each breath being 1.44 minutes long. This name, historically speaking, comes from the average length of time the first emperor of the empire could hold his breath without first hyperventilating. Now every breath contains 10 bits, each bit being 8.64 seconds long. Finally, every bit contains 10 beats, each beat being 0.864 seconds long. Again, the name of the beat resulted from the fact that the first emperor's average heartbeat was almost identically equal to 1/100th of a breath. This, by the way, works out to give that emperor a resting heart rate of about 70-beats/ minute, or 100 beats/breath. Lest you get the wrong idea here, the actual times were determined by the decimal divisions of the day, and only their names were determined by their close approximations to the emperor's breaths and beats.

NOTE: I realize this doesn't use the handy integer of 24 that I recommend, but instead uses the decimal system - also pretty decent, though in truth, probably not as handy in a pre-calculator day and age. Numerous fractions are so handy precisely because they are easy to figure in your head. Nevertheless, though Orlantia uses this system, the players and the GM still stick to 24 hours, 60 minutes per hours, and 60 seconds per minute, to make things easy, and we do not bother with conversions or this level of detail during play. But I digress.

Those Orlantian references aside, what does all this time "garbage" do for you and your game? Well, it makes your game a bit more realistic and adds a bit of color, and for those players who like that, this is good, and for those players who do not care, it is easily ignored. However, without it, for those players who like that sort of thing, its absence is not easily ignored and you will be plagued with questions about time, inconsistencies within your time line when they arise - and they will - and a host of other problems. You may, of course, luck out and have not a single player who gives a damn your world is slip shod in that regard, and that's nice, too, as far as it goes, though I wouldn't count on ALL your players being happy with that sort of lack in detail, nor do I feel the better players are frequently lacking in such concerns. So if you want a better game, it is my belief you have to keep track of time, at least on some level.

As GM, one should keep notes about the adventures, when they start, how much time is used to do things, go places, etc., and when they finish. This makes it easy to lay down the law of time constraints upon your players and their characters. Without this, they will frequently try to do far more than their characters could ever hope to realistically accomplish in the allotted time. So having them oversee the construction of their keep, go to a distant town and collect information, head off into the mountains to visit their mentor, take time out to research a new spell, and just training in general, all cannot be done at the snap of their fingers. This stuff takes time, and if you ignore time, they will feel free to ignore it as well.

By keeping the calendar at the forefront of the game, the characters must and will abide by it, the players will not try to abuse it as readily, frequently regulating themselves as they tend to know how long things take to accomplish as well as the GM, and your game will be the better for it. And when a character has to take time out to do some lengthy chore, the other characters will have to fill the time with something. Of course, they may choose to fill it with things that need not be roleplayed, and this has the advantage of keeping a group together, even if the priest has to spend a month on a holy retreat, the mage has to research a spell, the rogue has to visit the thieves' guild, a warrior needs to train with a weapon's master or have their new platemail fitted to them, or whatever. Scrolls need to be written, items need to be manufactured, one may even have time to have a child, though its care would have to be passed off to some NPC type at home (like a husband shopkeeper). Even recovery from childbirth may take time - though a Cure Light Wounds spell would probably do the trick instantly, when you think about it. Properly balanced, most classes (in AD&D) or most characters (in other games) will all need a time out, and their fellows must wait for them or leave them behind. If they have things ready to do to fill that time, so much the better. Anything that helps keep the group together is probably a good thing.

Unfortunately, you will run into the occasional player who doesn't care or try to work with you to keep the game running smoothly. They may insist on filling their character's time with items that demand the GM's attention. For the sake of harmonious play, I can only say that you will either have to set up a separate play date with them to take care of these things, or failing that - if you or they do not have the time - then you may have to let that player go. Otherwise, you run the risk of losing the other players since they will not take kindly to sitting around and waiting while you two go off to run what seems almost like a separate game. The group's concerns must come first. Just try to explain to this player that ALL characters will need a time out every now and again, theirs included, and ALL characters should develop an interest or two in something that will not demand the GM's attention so they may easily fill this down time.

I like to include tertiary skills on my world. These are just secondary skills, only they start out at lower percentages and slowly increase in time due to experience when they are used during scenarios. Thus, if a character has nothing better to do, they can always fill their waiting time with the acquisition of a new skill, or by increasing their existing tertiary skills through learning. However, most character will either have to train, do research, travel, or some other thing that can easily fill the time while they wait for their fellow PCs. If what they fill the time with does not require roleplaying - as is often the case - then things will move forward easily and without a hitch. If they need to be roleplayed, hopefully this will only take a small amount of time, or can be done via email or at some other time other than the selected "game time." That is, if all players, for example, meet to play the game once a week, then these side adventures can be taken care of at some other time during the week - perhaps via email or in person over lunch - and need not take away from "group" time.

There is little that is less enjoyable than having to sit around during group play time waiting while the GM and one other player consumes the majority of group time with an individual pursuit. Do that too often, and the waiting players will quickly abandon your game, and rightly so. So either roleplay it at another time - even retroactively, if need be - or try your best to encourage pursuits that do not involve actual roleplaying time of any great length, but still add something to their character's development. You can only spend so much time with the mindless pursuits of wine, women, and song, but if it fills your bill, that's ok with me too.

Time is a great way to limit your PCs from doing more than is possible, or to slow them down, or even to dissuade them from trying certain unfavorable or unrealistic things in the first place, but it is not perfect if the characters do not consider the time involved in their pursuits. Sure, it is easy for a player to say their character will walk to the next town and walk back - if they do not have to roleplay it - even if the trip may only achieve trivial goals. For example, it would be as easy to go get a copper piece they dropped earlier as it would be to go obtain something decidedly more useful and badly needed. Yet, to the player who is not considering his character, it is the same. I know that in real life I'm reluctant to go out to the kitchen to get something trivial. I will usually wait until further needs that demand action arise. But if I could snap my fingers and have that trivial thing, I'd do it. You must guard against this sort of behavior from your players, trying to impart to them the length of time involved, the hardships required of their characters, or whatever else it takes to make them feel their character's concerns for such things. And though this is important for a lot of other factors in the game as well, time is one of the bigger ones. In and of itself, many people are unwilling to spend the time it takes to do something trivial, so characters should also consider this before they flippantly announce their character will make a Herculean effort for a trivial reward.

Now, with a few gentle reminders of the importance of time taken care of, let me proceed with the measure of time on a fantasy world.

The Measure Of Time

Mechanical clocks are probably not too big in non-technologically based societies, and by that I mean they are almost certainly not available. With this in mind, we will find the use of hour glasses - sand clocks - water clocks, and sundials to be in abundance. The truth is, most people have no great need to do better than this in an agrarian-society, and the medieval flavor of AD&D or some other low-tech game makes this true for most walks of life. Other than a good idea of what day it is for planting and harvesting purposes, further divisions are not a high priority for most. Yet, it can be for some. Aside from religious concerns which can be very important - look at Stonehenge and what they did to make that sucker, and that only measured things to the nearest day, I think, though mostly made for religious reasons rather than time keeping ones - I can find little reason to know what time it is during the day for most instances, save one.

The greatest need for keeping better time came with the problems of navigation on the high seas. Finding one's latitude was relatively simple, but finding the longitude proved extremely difficult, and without knowing this, you will become lost at sea. This is one of the biggest factors in determining the relative danger in such adventures. As you can well imagine, not knowing where you are could be a problem, and running aground or up on a reef - even if you knew of its presence - would be likely if you didn't know where you were, yourself. Thus, it became extremely important to crack this problem. In fact, you may get the idea the extreme danger of sea travel was due to poor design, but mostly it was due to not knowing where you were, and all the problems that came with that.

Time, as it turns out, can be used, but only if you can get it accurately to within the nearest minute. Less than that and you will still have problems, but as good as that or better, and you may finally avoid those reefs or that coastline. Now I won't really go into the technical details of how time does this as it is both real and you can find better treatments of that subject elsewhere in books about real navigation, but I will talk about the time keeping devices developed for this purpose. Naturally, on a planet like Orlantia that is developing along magical lines rather than technological ones, the solution resides there, with magic.

Of course, though I'd love to go into the finer details of how magic works, this, too, is beyond the scope of this paper, and as it is a fantasy consideration and therefore totally fictional, it need not be done at all. Even AD&D doesn't explain how magic actually works. If it did, we could cast spells ourselves - that actually worked with demonstrable results. Suffice it to say that some low-level magical device has been developed, but a little detail never hurts.

There is, of course, a natural resonance frequency between various planes of existence - the heart and soul of magic is planar manipulation - and any natural frequency can be used to keep track of time in one way or another. The only limiting factor will be the expense involved, as you may well know from reading some of my other papers, since magic is not cheap or commonly available to the masses. So, what does it cost?

Many nifty devices, to make them economically practical, have to rely on low level magic to avoid the expense of Enchant An Item and Permanency spells. If you get too powerful, the items need to be prepared (Enchant An Item) to accept that sort of magic, and Permanency needs to be cast in order to hold that sort of magic - and those two spells alone easily run about 10,000 GP for the pair on the average in my older 2e system - probably less in 3e, but I won't get into that here.

The highest considerations there, of course, are the possible loss of constitution for the mage when casting such a spell. Thus, most useful things revolve around the notion of continual spells, such as Continual Light, Continual Darkness, and by extension, Continual Heat. (I do maintain it is easier to dump energy into a system than take it out, so Continual Heat is not reversible). Spells such as this do not require the higher level spells to accept and hold the magic, and a clever use of several of these spells - whether they be standard spells or low level spells researched for the purpose - do rather nifty, albeit little things, relatively speaking, but may be put together and manage to accomplish a neat trick or two. One of these, suffice it to say, will be a low-level time keeping device. Thus, the Continual Counting Spell - it could happen - the Continual Display Spell, or the low-level Continual Conversion Spells all may be incorporated into such a device. But even these might cost a lot of money, even if they are merely cantrips. On my 2e world, the rock bottom price of the mage's second level Continual Light spell is 10 GP - or $1,000 - and that's usually from buying in volume and providing security and steady employment for a mage good enough to cast such things, but usually not up to the challenge of adventuring. At best, then, this would make a magical timepiece cost 30 to 50 GP - $5,000 for 3 to 5 such spells - or perhaps more. It just depends on what you wish for your game. Now, the application of these time keeping spells is not wide spread, nor as common as the use of the Continual Light spell, and without a quantity purchase sort of consideration, I'd say the cost is closer to the normal 200 GP per spell within the device, and this runs to the range of 600 to 1000 GP - $100,000 - for a great time piece. As magic goes, this is not terribly expensive - a +1 magic sword normally runs about 6,000 GP or $600,000. So, adventurers may wish to have something like this.

However, this 1,000 GP price tag refers to larger models - and the government may pay for some of these to keep track of time in the larger cities or on board the larger, more important vessels - like the elemental driven war galleons, which already use several other varieties of magic. To pay for the advance in miniaturization necessary to have something akin to a pocket watch, the adventurer would probably need to come up with 5,000 GP - half a million bucks! - the price of a Raise Dead Spell!!!. As you can see, most people can't afford that - though governments and kingdoms can - and adventurers may, if they ever feel the need to keep track of time to that degree. Of course, if they expect to run a ship of their own - like a galleon - the 50,000 GP price for the ship would have to become 51,000 GP if they wished to safely navigate on the high seas, or even 55,000 GP is they wanted to easily carry the time piece around with them when they left the ship.

Unfortunately, such devices, by virtue of not having a more permanent spell cast upon them, are rather susceptible to Dispel Magic, but you'd expect that, and potions, which cost more, are similarly susceptible to this problem. You just gotta avoid taking your watch into such a field, or you'll have to spring for another 10 to 100 GP / spell that was dispelled.

It will be up to your DM just how accurately such a time keeping device will keep track of time. To the nearest minute may be good enough for navigation, but cartographers could use even better watches - accurate to within a second a month is how well they work on my world. Even better accuracy may be achieved using more expensive magic, but no one has found a reason to pay the 50,000 GP ($5,000,000!) price tag to make an item accurate to within one second every one million years, though theoretically, they know how to do it. Less accurate than a minute a month, ship captains will just have to adjust accordingly and give themselves extra leeway. I mean, it makes a big difference if you know where you are to within a few feet or to within a mile or two.

There are other methods to keep track of time, naturally. Higher level spells that may require certain spells to accept and hold the magic, and may, in and of themselves, be researched to do these things. The mage guild is even considering teleporting satellites into orbit, so with enough of them, they may have something akin to a global positioning system. A much cheaper magic item will be able to pick up the magical signals from these satellites and you can get your position as well as your time, but the expense of this project so far continues to dissuade even the Alodarian Empire. It is possible, however, and will probably be done before the current century's end - i.e. by 800 A.E. And of course, there are even cheaper methods.

One handy method is the time candle, so called because they are precision candles that burn at a fixed rate - also, oil lamps may similarly be employed. A character could set one up, light it, and tell how long it has been burning by the graduations placed on the side. Though not particularly mobile once lit, they are inexpensive, accurate to within 10 minutes a day, and commonly available. I probably have the cost of a normal candle somewhere on my page, so my estimate would be a time candle would cost 3 times as much as that.

The most accurate method ever found that still remains well within the price range of the masses was developed by the Alchemist Alexander of Dunas several centuries ago. He discovered a chemical mixture, a solution of which could be use to impregnate cotton cloth. These strips of cloth, or rags, are normally contained within glass vials filled with this liquid. When taken out and exposed to the air, they begin to darken. A second strip is graduated with a number of sections, each darker than the last, from pure white to pure black with varying shades of gray in between. The impregnated cloth will go from white to black in 24 hours. By comparing the strips to each other - usually both are wrapped around your wrist - you can see, to the nearest mark - typically in 5 minute increments - how long it has been since you exposed the impregnated rag to the air. Alexander developed this to time some of the more important and delicate alchemical preparations - of course his mixtures and gradations were even finer, though more costly - but this knowledge soon passed to the masses, where they use it for a variety of reasons today - sometimes quite trivial reasons, as these things only cost one SP or $1, though the vial frequently cost more, but that can be reused.

As you may have guessed, of course, today, these devices are commonly known as "Alexander's Rag Time Bands," and although useful at times, they will never be accurate enough to navigate the high seas.

So, throughout the land most people still keep track of time with fixed sundials during the day, and hourglasses at night - if at all. Villages or cities may even have a bell tower which they sound on the hour and half hour, but the tower keepers are probably looking at an hourglass as they do this, or the stars in the sky and their prepared astronomical tables. And major cities, like Alodar, are so expansive, they have several dozen towers, but only one of those uses a magical time keeping device, and even then, an actual man (or woman) strikes the chimes or rings the bell when the magic item indicates it is time to do so.

If you think about it, the Teleporting wizard or the Plane Shifting priest may have a problem often over looked in many campaigns. What problems? Time zones.

Normally, local time is found by noon being defined as when the sun reaches its highest point in the sky. All major cites, then, have a different noon - unless on the same longitude. [BTW, Alodar carries the time standard for the entire world, being now defined as Zero longitude where the lighthouse, Nimbus' Reach, in the harbor stands - though their magic clock is elsewhere within the city]. Again, since travel is relatively slow, this doesn't matter a single wit to the vast majority of people. However, if you can travel great distances in short times - as spell casters may - they should run into a few time problems. For example, teleporting from Alodar, in the west, to Nahecha, in the east, will take you further into the night, and your spell caster may find all the shops are already closed, so he'll have to wait until morning. Oh well.

Finally, as I make several references to money in this article, here is my decimally based monetary system in a nutshell. These prices are for my 2e, or 2nd edition game, and 3e prices may be significantly different.

0.01 MP = 0.1 PP = 1 GP = 10 EP = 100 SP = 1000 CP = $100 U.S.

The MP is perhaps not known to most since it is a mithral piece. One GP (Gold piece), as you can see, is worth about $100 (one hundred U.S. dollars).

© January of 2000
by
James L.R. Beach
Waterville, MN 56096