HYPERBOREA » Campaign Calendar

Handy Haversack · 3/25/2016 12:07 pm

Do you track time fairly closely in your Hyperborea? When we first started, we were tracking it. I had a calendar, and BigPerm kept one for the players. It worked out really well, and the first festival that came up, Apollonalia, ended up fitting into the game perfectly. After the first TPK, though, when I scrambled to get the next batch of characters into something, I sort of let it lapse.

I just went back and decided to just start it up again, picking a time pretty much at random, (month 5, year 3, I think). That leaves two months till Bealtainn, which could be pretty fun, depending on where the party is.

But that's one of the main draws for me--the festivals and also the changing amounts of light, which can have real effects on adventuring.

Do you use it? If so, what times have you started campaigns at, and to what effect?

Blackadder23 · 3/25/2016 12:29 pm

I used it, sort of, but then they time traveled to Old Earth and it became irrelevant.
If and when I start a new campaign, I intend to follow it more closely. Working in the festivals, hours of daylight and dark, more lycanthrope attacks during the full moons, etc. would add a lot to the game... if I can remember to do it (and it doesn't annoy me too much).

Mortificateur · 3/28/2016 8:30 pm

I keep it approximate but I never used the festivals yet. I need to use them more I think. It would add a great deal of ambiance an a sense of impending doom coming around the Hyperborean winter.

For now the only thing they see in the sky is a big comet flying over them... but it's still a little speck in the sky hahaha. I still have to run the Forgotten Fane module and they will need to go fetch more Green Diamonds if they want to go with the Skyship (That will be fun hahaha). After that Xathoqqua's comet is coming to town!

I was trying to have my campaign Grande Finale during the winter... when it's cold and dark... atop (and probably under) Mount Vhuurmithadon

gizmomathboy · 3/29/2016 10:04 am

I've been meaning to track time closely but didn't have a calendar printer or downloaded in a place for me to reference. I need to remedy that.

If I'm gonna run in Hyperborea I think I need to have the day/nigth hot/cold cycle correct. It's such a huge factor.

Handy Haversack · 3/29/2016 3:16 pm

gizmomathboy wrote:
If I'm gonna run in Hyperborea I think I need to have the day/nigth hot/cold cycle correct. It's such a huge factor.

Agreed. I think it adds a lot. And it affects the landscape the characters interact with: depth, temp., and speed of rivers; ease of forage or hunting; price of food in towns, wandering-monster types.

gizmomathboy · 3/29/2016 3:37 pm

Handy Haversack wrote:
gizmomathboy wrote:
If I'm gonna run in Hyperborea I think I need to have the day/nigth hot/cold cycle correct. It's such a huge factor.
Agreed. I think it adds a lot. And it affects the landscape the characters interact with: depth, temp., and speed of rivers; ease of forage or hunting; price of food in towns, wandering-monster types.

So...my current windmill tonight is to take the yearly calendar and make a 13 year calendar...because I apparently have no fucks to give about other s*** I should be doing. ;-)

I'm going to blame Handy for this of course.

Chainsaw · 3/29/2016 8:19 pm

Handy Haversack wrote:
Do you track time fairly closely in your Hyperborea?

...

Do you use it? If so, what times have you started campaigns at, and to what effect?

In general, I try to keep a fairly strict reckoning of the passage of time in my campaigns, though admittedly I don't always do it well.

I think players stay a little more engaged when they know it may matter how long they spend resting in a dungeon (maybe enemy reinforcements arrive), on an adventure (maybe certain other adventure opportunities expire) or in town training, learning spells or collecting information (maybe a larger dungeon repopulates with new factions, maybe the seasons change and travel becomes more challenging, maybe adventure opps expire, etc). I also think it makes them feel like part of a bigger, more interesting world, as the passage of time brings changes in temperature, light patterns, weather patterns and other things (e.g., festivals, holidays).

In my last game, I remember a time when the crew decided to push deeper into the dungeon at their current level rather than return to town to spend time training. Gaining a level was not worth the risk of having their progress undone. I'd also started the last campaign in year 583, Year of the Mammoth, with daylight only from 930AM to 230PM. Traveling back to town with so little light meant a longer, more dangerous journey than if they had light from 7AM-7PM. They decided it wasn't worth it.

So, I think keeping a calendar's important.

Ghul · 3/29/2016 8:40 pm

I keep strict track of it, personally. We just celebrated Plutonia. Now we are inching toward Nightfall, and the PCs have been stockpiling supplies.

Handy Haversack · 3/29/2016 9:14 pm

gizmomathboy wrote:
Handy Haversack wrote:
gizmomathboy wrote:
If I'm gonna run in Hyperborea I think I need to have the day/nigth hot/cold cycle correct. It's such a huge factor.
Agreed. I think it adds a lot. And it affects the landscape the characters interact with: depth, temp., and speed of rivers; ease of forage or hunting; price of food in towns, wandering-monster types.
So...my current windmill tonight is to take the yearly calendar and make a 13 year calendar...because I apparently have no fucks to give about other s*** I should be doing. ;-)

I'm going to blame Handy for this of course.

Give yourself 500 XP, Gizmo. It's on me.

Also http://www.hyperborea.tv/uploads/4/4/6/6/44662451/campaign_calendar.pdf

gizmomathboy · 3/30/2016 12:21 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
Give yourself 500 XP, Gizmo. It's on me.

Also http://www.hyperborea.tv/uploads/4/4/6/6/44662451/campaign_calendar.pdf

Yep, playing off of that to make the whole 4,732 day calendar with to the minute daylight.

Ghul · 3/30/2016 4:56 am

gizmomathboy wrote:
Handy Haversack wrote:
Give yourself 500 XP, Gizmo. It's on me.

Also http://www.hyperborea.tv/uploads/4/4/6/6/44662451/campaign_calendar.pdf
Yep, playing off of that to make the whole 4,732 day calendar with to the minute daylight.

Giz, you might want to hold your horses. There are a few minor errors that I've tackled with the help of Ben Ball. I can post the results on the resources page. It's to be included in the hardback.

mabon5127 · 3/30/2016 7:53 am

Ghul wrote:
I keep strict track of it, personally. We just celebrated Plutonia. Now we are inching toward Nightfall, and the PCs have been stockpiling supplies.

I had good intentions.....but that detail got dropped as the campaign progressed. I recently gave a 8 month hiatus in game to allow characters to pursue personal goals and set the calendar details again. They now have some details of daylight, holidays, and weather.

Morgan

gizmomathboy · 3/30/2016 8:43 am

Ghul wrote:
gizmomathboy wrote:
Handy Haversack wrote:
Give yourself 500 XP, Gizmo. It's on me.

Also http://www.hyperborea.tv/uploads/4/4/6/6/44662451/campaign_calendar.pdf
Yep, playing off of that to make the whole 4,732 day calendar with to the minute daylight.
Giz, you might want to hold your horses. There are a few minor errors that I've tackled with the help of Ben Ball. I can post the results on the resources page. It's to be included in the hardback.

Ghul, ok. I've got it to the point where I'm generating a list of days along with minutes of daylight for each day, relevant phases of the moons (only the 4 phases at the moment) and any festival that might be happening.

I should be able to add in any changes that are made.

The biggest pain is really going to be layout (how many months per page and such) because 269 months is a long time.

Handy Haversack · 3/30/2016 9:09 am

gizmomathboy wrote:
The biggest pain is really going to be layout (how many months per page and such) because 269 months is a long time.

It's like 13 years!

gizmomathboy · 3/30/2016 9:26 am

Handy Haversack wrote:
gizmomathboy wrote:
The biggest pain is really going to be layout (how many months per page and such) because 269 months is a long time.
It's like 13 years!

And who really wants a 269 page pdf?

Blackadder23 · 3/30/2016 10:31 am

The hours of daylight only change 5 minutes a week. That's around 42 seconds a day. It seems like crazy overkill to me to calculate a different length for every single day, as opposed to just using the same hours of daylight for the whole week. It's not like the PCs have watches...

gizmomathboy · 3/30/2016 12:27 pm

Blackadder23 wrote:
The hours of daylight only change 5 minutes a week. That's around 42 seconds a day. It seems like crazy overkill to me to calculate a different length for every single day, as opposed to just using the same hours of daylight for the whole week. It's not like the PCs have watches...

You did see where I said this was a windmill project right? ;-)

To be precise it's 0.714285714 minutes per day.

Yeah, this is a stupid obsession/time suck project.

Blackadder23 · 3/30/2016 1:11 pm

Have fun with it.

Blackadder23 · 3/30/2016 1:15 pm

mabon5127 wrote:
I had good intentions.....but that detail got dropped as the campaign progressed. I recently gave a 8 month hiatus in game to allow characters to pursue personal goals and set the calendar details again. They now have some details of daylight, holidays, and weather.

Morgan

Personally I think it's a good idea to jump forward in time periodically in any campaign, possibly for years, both to cover up fudging of time and also to increase the chance that PCs will eventually suffer the effects of aging.
Another thing I like to do is massacre all the NPCs periodically.

grodog · 4/19/2017 10:37 pm

gizmomathboy wrote:
Handy Haversack wrote:
gizmomathboy wrote:
The biggest pain is really going to be layout (how many months per page and such) because 269 months is a long time.
It's like 13 years!
And who really wants a 269 page pdf?

Any updates on an updated calendar? I'd like to see something akin to the Greyhawk calendar built by Clay Luther in the later '90s/early '00s: http://www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/clay_luthers_greyhawk_calendar-with-expanded-holidays.pdf (just the first two pages), but including the daylight---and moonslight, perhaps?---data mentioned by Mike and Joe.

Having a blown-up, monthly view would be useful as a campaign tracker too (Greyhawk example: http://www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/greyhawk_calendar.pdf).

Allan.

Last edited by grodog (4/20/2017 10:58 am)