Time in the Ashen Marches

Overview

The Ashen Marches uses one shared in-game calendar for the whole server. This helps keep the world consistent, makes travel matter, and gives downtime a clear place in the campaign.

Our design requirements for this campaign’s time-tracking system:

• Player-driven: This tracks with the general philosophy of this campaign’s design.
• Minimization of the GM’s bookkeeping responsibilities.
• Detailed and quick flowing in-game time: We want this system to both allow for granular (daily) decisions and for time to pass quickly enough (relative to real-world time) for us to tell interesting stories incorporating astronomy, (moon-phases, planetary-alignment, etc), seasons, and other time-related elements.

We want to create a layer of strategic adventure planning that is engaging for both the player to play with and for the GMs to tell stories with.

Example Scenario: 

Rumor: An unearthed map alludes to a mountain-side dwarven door leading to a forgotten city. This door is magically hidden and will only be revealed on the darkest of nights.

Party A decides to pursue this rumor and concludes that the “darkest of nights” could mean the night of a new moon. They then need to come up with a plan that, 1) allows for all of the members to be in Last Lantern at the date the party departs, and 2) gives sufficient time to travel to the mountain before the night of the new moon. They book a session with an available game master and share their planned departure date.

This scenario exemplifies what we find provocative about a player-driven time tracking system. Now, not only does Party A need to successfully navigate to the mountain and survive the Marches, they also need to arrive before the new moon or risk losing their opportunity to find the door. 

We will concede however, that this approach is rather novel, it creates a non-linear system of time, and instead of a campaign-wide “current date” each player now tracks their character’s own current date. This could result in an in-game adventure timeline that has a different ordering to the real-world adventure timeline. 

Campaign Start

The server has one official calendar that can be edited by players.

The Campaign Starts in year 1 ar (Ashen Reckoning) 3 months after the Ashenwall fell. The first adventure departs from Last Lantern 1. March 0001 or 01.03.01.

When an adventure ends, the players, as part of their session reports, add the dates the party departed from and returned to the Last Lanterns to the official calendar. More information can be found in A Player-Driven Campaign.

Example:

The party leaves Last Lantern, travels 2 days to the ruins, spends 1 day exploring, and travels 2 days back.

The expedition took 5 days total so the party marks their return date as 5 days after their departure date in their session report while adding both dates to the official calendar.

Character Availability

A character is considered away from Last Lantern until their adventure return date.

A character cannot join another adventure that departs Last Lantern before they have returned.

Example:

If your character leaves on the 12th and returns on the 17th, they cannot join another adventure that departs on the 14th.

Once they are back in Last Lantern, they are available for future adventures.

As part of your Session Report you noted your departure and return dates. These should be included in the official calendar if they haven’t been already. Further information can be found in A Player-Driven Campaign.

How to Write Dates in the Ashen Marches

As this campaign includes players from all over the world, we have already experienced some friction regarding date formats for both in-game and real-world dates. This campaign will use the most commonly used DMY (day month year) format for both cases. This only applies to dates solely written as digits with a separating character (e.g. 01.03.01, 1/3/1). Dates written in an unambiguous way are unaffected by this policy (e.g. First of March 0001, March 1st. 01). 

Downtime

A player accrues down time when they are in the Last Lantern (and not debilitated) for at least 1 day.

A character may take one downtime action when they have accrued 7 total down time days in Last Lantern.

You can find more information on Downtime in the Downtime Rules of the House Rules section in the wiki.

Simple Rule Summary

Each player is responsible for tracking days they were in the Ashen Marches in the official calendar and/or in another place (like their character sheet).

Each day spent in the Last Lantern counts toward downtime accumulation.