Re: Re: A new calender

From: Doc 
>My advice:  Do yourself and your players a favor and keep it simple.  Fewer
>headaches that way.
>
Good advice, coupled with the implicit statement that unless your
adventurers are only travelling in one culture with no outside contact
there's no such thing as 'the' calendar.

In the real world every culture has at least one calendar and it's usually
full of achronistic  detail.

You can take advantage of the fact that a world should have multiple
calenders to create a couple of bizarre and twisted ancient or foreign
calenders for interest and a fairly standard local calender for time
recording and player reference. For example, my campaign area has one city
using a calender which counts years from the ascendence of the ruling
emperor, except that the current ruling emperor was killed forty years ago
by the ruling council of high priests because he wouldn't enforce the many
(and changing) holy days.  So in order to make sense of a older dated
document you have to know the order of rulership.  Most adventuring,
however, is out of a city which uses the elven calender which counts back
thirty thousand years and is a damn sight more useful for keeping track of
campaign history.

Chris.



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Re: Re: A new calender

From: "Doc"
Gods, now THAT'S a can of worms.  So much for the latest dormant stage.

 The calendar is going to depend upon Lots-O-Things.  Is it solar (like the
Gregorian calendar currently in use) or lunar (like the Islamic or Chinese)?
Or is it some crossbreed (the Mayan calendar, which I won't even BEGIN to go
into)?  Or something else entirely?
end quote:

It's seasonal. There are 4 seasons to the year (Spring, Summer, Fall and
Winter). However, it is not a solar year. The planet in question is a moon
of a Jupiter-style planet with rings (okay, about 10x bigger than Jupiter,
but still *grin*). I'm not sure how long the orbital period is around the
brown dwarf (basically it is about the visual size of our own moon, as I
believe the gravitational influences would then be about the same as Luna).
The brown dwarf star, in turn, orbits a green star, far enough out that it's
in the coldish part for allowing water (more ice than water). It's the brown
dwarf's own additional heat output and the gravitational influences that
keep the water liquid. :)

As you can see, it's a bit harder to just have a traditional solar calendar
or such. ;) But I figure an planetary wobble (of the axis) of about 1 year
would allow for proper "seasons". :) And if the brown dwarf was in a mostly
circular orbit, then there'd not be much variation of year-to-year weather.

But it's mostly just window dressing. There are still 4 seasons, and the
year is based on that. I'm sure there are astrological calendars as well,
but as I'm not sure on the exact orbital length of the brown dwarf, that
doesn't matter for now.

Rob

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