Creating a calendar

[bedir than]

One of my players recently asked me what day it was. I told him how many adventure days the groups been on. He wanted more detail. I thought I'd developed a lot of stuff related to the homebrew setting, but I didn't have a calendar. In the past the players I'd been with have never referenced the custom calendars, so I didn't bother.

This time I did. But I used it as an exercise to continue breathing life into the world. The most common calendar has four seasons of 78 days with no leap day and no months for just a 312 day year. But I cheated. I did use one moon to establish a "week" and another moon to establish "months" so that anything rules related measured in weeks or months still exist.

Have you bothered with custom calendars? Do you like the Realms thing?

Is this type of thing too much effort?

 

[delericho]

I've done it a couple of times, but the truth is it never saw use in the game. Because of sheer exposure, we're so used to a 7-day week that anything else is unlikely to gain traction (with the Realms' tenday a notable exception). Likewise, we're very used to having 12 months, and a calendar with more or less than that is likely to prove difficult to use.

However, when inventing a calendar, my recommendation would be to start with a nice ordered pattern based on observable phenomena (so, we get a 7-day week because there are 4 phases of the Moon and it takes 28ish days for a full cycle; we get a 365-day year because that's how long it takes from midsummer to midsummer). Then divide that into equal blocks to derive the months, seasons, and anything else you need.

And then throw in a few curve balls - steal some days from the 2nd month to boost the 8th because some ancient Emperor wanted to ensure he had as much prestige as his predecessor; add a leap day here and there because the year isn't quite 365 days in length; or something similar. It's these oddities (and also any feast days you include) that are likely to be remembered - because there's at least a story there for them to latch on to.

 

[Minigiant]

My world uses a 5 day week, 10 month year.

Each month based on an elemental plane as that's when the plane has more influence.
In no order.

Wattermach
Izmach
Aermach
Ashmach
Firmach
Magmach
Earthmach
Oozmach
Mach vuNeg
Mach vuPos