Telling Time in Faerun

So, remember way back when I wrote a whole bunch of tips on overland travel? Well, it seems I made some assumptions about a lot of DMs that are apparently not true. Specifically:

1. Most DMs do not know what the weather in their campaign setting is like.
2. Most DMs do not know how time passes in their campaign setting.
3. Most DMs do not know what kind of weather they should have happening in their setting.

Hm. Oops. Most people run their games in a perpetual-daylight, early-summer, euro-medievalist middle-america sort of place and otherwise don't think about it. Many people, in fact, run years worth of events in a single in-game day as though night never happens and time never truly passes in the sense that we would understand it in reality.

I think this is, to a certain extent, a consequence of our modern lifestyles. More and more, people live their lives in patterns that are not based on nature's cycles, and as our technology improves, the less those cycles impact us. As a consequence, we don't notice them as much as people once did. There was once a time where the exact position of the stars at night and whether you could see the moon made drastic changes in what you could/should do on a daily basis.

So, to try and help things out, I'm freely sharing the materials I use to run my campaigns!

Now, keep in mind, this is all directed toward campaigning in the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms setting during the 5th edition timeline, which begins in 1487 DR.

To start, let's share my combined weather system and calendar!

The last page of the calendar explains how to get exact temperatures and weather conditions for each day of the year from the modifiers listed on each individual day. The calendar has room enough for you to make notes to remind yourself of important events that will happen on certain dates. That way, as you progress, you will be prompted on what events have already passed and what changes need to be made to the world due to the passage of time.

Next up, here's The Roll of Years. That is to say, the prophetic names of the years as predicted in acnient Faerunian history, beginning in -700 and ending in 1600. This was taken from the official calendar of harptos tool by WotC. This system of naming the years is referred to as Dalereckoning. Now, keep in mind that the Second Sundering is the event which transitioned the novels over to 5th edition narrative, and happened in 1487 DR, The Year of the Rune Lords Triumphant, so that is the start of 5th edition published adventures. I have created a chronology for the published adventures to try and get things sorted out. 1489-1491 are all officially dated, but outside of that range, WotC has switched to an agnostic attitude, allowing most adventures to happen when the DM wants them to. I have, however, used hints in the other books to place them roughly in relation to each other. I specifically placed LMoP one year before ToD so that it can be used as an introduction to the game, with it being close enough to ToD that you can move a former character over to it, and far enough away that players who want to make new characters are justified in doing so. ToA is placed based on the fact that its major apocalyptic event is not present in any of the surrounding books, and DH and DotMM are clearly later than teh adventures that preceded it. CoS and TftYP are abstract enough that their events could literally happen at any time you wish. Also of note, the history account given in the SCAG ends in 1489. As such, my chronology is as follows:

1488, The Year of Dwarvenkind Reborn (Shieldmeet): Lost Mine of Phandelver (Also the novels Spellstorm and Timeless)

1489, The Year of the Warrior Princess: Tyranny of Dragons (Hoard of the Dragon Queen and Rise of Tiamat)

1490, The Year of the Star Walker's Return: Out of the Abyss

1491, The Year of the Scarlet Witch: Princes of the Apocalypse and Storm King's Thunder (Also the novel Death Masks)

1492, The Year of Three Ships Sailing (Shieldmeet): Tomb of Annihilation

1493, The Year of the Purple Dragons: Dragon Heist and Dungeon of the Mad Mage

Also of interest to you might be information regarding the astrology of the setting. Here is a decent guide to it. In addition, it has a link to a device called the Orrery of Handreth. It is a homebrew masterpiece, giving detailed astrological information for pretty much any date of Dalereckoning. It misses a few key points however:

The Double Daggers are a pair of stars which somehow always mark true West.
The Arrows of the Gods are a constellation which somehow always marks true East.
Faeraula is a star which marks true South.

There is also a more detailed guide to the stars and constellations here.

OK, so now that we have weather and date handled, let's talk about the hours of the day!

In general, it is agreed that Toril experiences 24 hour days, but only scholars and religious fanatics bother with recording the hour accurately. Most people divide the day into several periods, as such:

Dawn

Morning

Noon

Afternoon

Dusk

Evening

Midnight

Twilight

If you were to give those time chunks even hours, each would be 3 hours long. It is also important to note that universally, people seem to start counting the hours of the day with dawn, not midnight, so a day generally begins at sunrise, not the passage of night's midpoint. That being said, most sources also specify that people in different places use different ways of describing time, and that there is no consistency between these systems of identification, and that it is confusing for travelers.

I encourage you to follow that advice.

That being said, we can use the above 3-hour divisions ourselves to describe and track the passage of time over the course of a day, OOC. For example, if you're doing travel by the hourly approach, you can describe how the light and weatehr changes every third hour that passes, as a prompt to periodically give aesthetic information to the players.

To aide in this, I have created a printable clock that one can move a "sun token" around to show the current phase of the day.

You can find the full-sized image here.

To track the passage of time, remember the following:

A combat turn is 6 seconds. 10 combat turns make a minute. 600 combat turns make an hour.

A non-combat turn is 1 minute. Players theoretically have 10 times the action economy resources and movement speed during non combat turns; and the party generally shares a single non-combat turn.

Overland travel is typically handled by the hour. A group of creatures moves a distance equal to their speed divided by 10. The speed of a group is equal to that of its slowest member. As such, parties typically move about 2.5-3.5 miles (hexes) per hour. This speed is increased by 30% if travelling a fast pace, and reduced by 30% if travelling a slow pace. Also keep in mind the impact of encumbrance limits on speed.

For the purposes of tracking downtime, any day in which players experience a long rest and do not adventure (spend character resources) counts as a downtime day. Expenses only apply if the party is in a settled place and opts to survive off of services rather than self-sustenance, (hunting, eating rations, camping in tents, etc.) The downtime activities available are based on the services available at the time a player chooses to spend their accumulated downtime days.

If you would like to know historic and religious holiday information associated with specific dates in the past, use this device here.

And that about wraps it up!

Some day I might make a guide on how to build all of this kind of stuff from scratch. Keep your ears open.