Time and Movement (DMG)

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The passage of time in an AD&D campaign can have relatively minor or extremely significant effects on the play of the game. The importance of time is decided almost entirely by the DM. Some DMs care very little about strict timekeeping; others track every moment of action, using a rigid calendar. Either method is acceptable and each has its advantages and disadvantages. The two can even be combined, as appropriate to the situation.
Regardless of how time is handled, some timekeeping is unavoidable: Combats must be fought in rounds; spells have specific durations which become important as characters explore caverns and ancient ruins; days are used to measure overland travel; characters must sleep sometime.
However, most passing time occurs within a single adventure: Spells rarely carry over from adventure to adventure (unless the session is stopped with the characters lost in winding caverns or the like); rounds of combat, while taking several game minutes, don't affect or spill over into subsequent adventures; days of travel often have no effect other than healing and the consumption of supplies.
If the DM wants, this is the only sort of timekeeping required. Time passed in previous adventures has little or no effect on the current session—each session or adventure is distinct and separate. For example, in one adventure, the characters spend a few hours in the dungeon, get injured, have some success, and return wounded. The night's game session ends with them returning to their home base. Next game session, the DM announces, "A week or so has passed since you last went out. Everybody is healed and rested. People with spells can pick new ones." The DM has chosen not to worry about the passage of time in this instance. An entire campaign can be played this way.
Here's another example: In one adventure, a group of characters travels for three weeks and has several encounters, ending camped outside some ruins. The next session starts after the characters have camped for five days, so they can heal their wounds. Several hours pass as they explore the ruins, but no one is particularly hurt when they return to camp, and the game session ends.
The next session starts the morning after their previous adventure, everyone having gotten a good rest. The characters set out again. They spend a week on the road and arrive at a village. Here, the mage insists everyone wait while he researches a vital spell. Again, the game session ends. The next session begins two months later, after the mage has learned his spell and continues from there. Throughout all this, the DM is more or less winging it, estimating the time required and time spent.
There is nothing wrong with this method, nor is it particularly unrealistic. Medieval travelers often stopped at friendly or safe heavens for long periods while on their way to a final destination. There was little pressure to hurry.
Using this simple time-tracking approach frees the DM from many of the concerns of timekeeping and prevents some obstacles to the adventure from occurring. ("We can't go on an adventure! We're all hacked up and have to heal.") Most of all, it is easy.
==Detailed Timekeeping==
As noted, however, there are disadvantages to such simple time-tracking. Problems become more pronounced as the characters advance in level, your campaign world becomes larger, and more players take part in your game.
At low levels, characters tend to go on short adventures. A few hours in the dungeon followed by a speedy return is about all they can survive. Therefore, it is easy to have a week's interval within adventures, since the time passed does not impact on the characters' activities. As characters reach higher levels, however, their ambitions grow and their adventures become longer. More precise time-tracking proves useful.
More precise methods can become unworkable, however, when player characters split into small groups, undertaking separate, simultaneous adventures. If one group sets out on a long journey while the rest of the party stays in the city, their game sessions are going to be at very different time scales.
In their first session, the city dwellers may go on a short dungeon expedition. Several hours of game time (the amount of imaginary time spent on the adventure) pass. The DM then has a session with the travelers, and they spend three weeks of game time in the wilderness during their game. There is now a game time difference between the two groups of three weeks minus one day!
If the travelers return to the city at the end of their adventure, the group in town must suddenly be moved forward in time to catch up with them if both groups wish to adventure together. Fortunately, this is not a great problem. The DM can simply say, "Three weeks have passed and you are all reunited again."
The city adventurers can spend those three weeks doing background work—training, researching spells, making a minor magic item, building a house, etc. This is a good use of free time. However, if one of the city characters decides to join the travellers (perhaps using a teleport spell to catch up with them suddenly), the three-week difference becomes a problem. Was that character actually with the traveling group for three weeks without doing anything? Must he wait for three weeks before he can join them? What if the other characters in town want to adventure more during that time? At this point, keeping track of time (or having the players do it) becomes pretty important.
==Preparing a Calendar==
One advantage of careful timekeeping is the detail and flavor it adds to the DM's campaign. If a calendar is kept, the DM has a way of recording the passing seasons, holidays, months, cycles of the moon, or other details that give a world life.
Clerics have holy days to observe, werewolves become more prevalent near full moons, snows come, and birds fly south. All of these are events that happen during the course of a year and make a world seem more real. Without some type of calendar, the DM has nothing to base his campaign on. Take, for example, the following exchange between players:
Jon (Johan the Cleric's player): "Say, you know I'm a member of this temple. Do I have to do anything, or what? Do I give a sermon every week or are there some days of fasting or anything?"
DM: "Well, uh, yeah, you've got holy days you're supposed to spend in prayer."
Jon: "Oh, when?"
DM (in desperation): "Well, uh, thanksgiving's coming."
Jon: "Oh, but you said it's the middle of summer. Doesn't Thanksgiving come at harvest time?"
Louise (chiming in): "You know, it's been summer ever since my character started playing."
DM: "Well it's magic!"
Not exactly a lot of color planning there. Now, if the DM had worked out a calendar, he could have answered those questions with a lot more confidence.
Preparing a calendar does take time. The easiest method is to buy a small pocket calendar for the current year. Start the campaign on the same date as the first adventure. Thus, if the first game is played on April 3, the campaign starts on that day. The real calendar and game calendar will get out of sync quickly, but at least there will be a record of seasons, moons, and important dates.
This is a good starting point, but a modern calendar is not the same as that used in medieval times and certainly not the same as one used for a fantasy world. You'll want to customize your calendar with details from your game world. So, what types of details should be included?
The Basics have to be determined. Aside from recording the length of years, months, and weeks (which can be anything the DM decides), the calendar should also name them. You can use real names or you can be quite fanciful (the Winter of the Broken Moon or the Moon of Popping Trees, and go on). Have fun.
Physical Cycles can be worked out. When do the seasons fall? When are the phases of the moon? When do the equinoxes and solstices occur? Strange and magical events often happen at these times.
Religious Observances should be added. All major player character religions should be assigned holy days, so that player character priests will have something to observe. There are normally a lot of these, and they will vary from region to region.
Medieval calendars observed over 100 different holy days for saints or special events. Create your own such calendar, being sure to add special observances particular to each kingdom, empire, or region. These might include the king's birthday, the date of a titanic victory over the infidel, the opening of a market fair in a nearby city, or the annual harvest festival.
Fantastic Events are clearly an important part of a fantasy world's calendar. These can be anything imaginable葉he annual visitation of a ghostly castle, the bi-monthly tribute demanded by the evil wizard, the night-march of mysterious nomads, or the seasonal migration of the wyverns.
Special Events should be included, as well. The local princess may have an impending wedding. The army may prepare for the annual campaign against the orc hordes. The death of an important official may require a set period of mourning. All of these can be used to fill up a calendar.
Clearly, setting up a detailed calendar takes planning and time. Events must be created and assigned to specific dates. Furthermore, the DM must have some idea of what happens during each event, preferably something that makes it different from all others.
What happens when the evil wizard comes to collect his tribute? (All the townsfolk shutter their houses and hide from his vile horde.) When the king posts the bans for his daughter's nuptials? (A largess of 1 cp is granted all the poor of the city.) During the Festival of Antherra? (Shrines are paraded through the streets and there is much merriment.) The answers created by the DM supply the ultimate detail needed to make a campaign come alive.
==Time as a Game-Balancer==
Finally, remember that time can be used quite effectively to balance a campaign. With it, a DM can prevent an adventuring party from achieving too wide a spread of character levels. If one character is advancing faster than the others, that person's progress can be slowed a little by carefully enforcing the rules for researching, training, and healing. If several people are outpacing the rest of the group, they can be required to go on longer adventures, ones that take more game time (but not playing time) to complete.
At the same time, characters who are lagging in level can have time restrictions relaxed a little. The day-to-day drudgeries go a little quicker for these characters, and their adventures require shorter amounts of game time. This will allow them to undertake several adventures to the other group's one or two, giving the lower level characters a chance to catch up.
Although on the surface such things look unfair, most players will realize the DM is doing this for the best of all players involved.