How to track time in your D&D campaign 

I now want two doors in my next dungeon, one marked with a sun and one with a moon, one open when it's daylight on the surface and one when it's night time.

"Ticking away, the moments that make up a dull day."

I’m a 5e GM. I only started this last summer, and I can only express how honored I feel to have access to the wisdom of GMs who have so much experience and perspectives formed in older versions of the game. Thank you for sharing this valuable info!

WHAT A INTRO!🙆‍♂️

One of the things i always like about your content is it reminds me of sitting around the table post-session just hanging out discussing everything that just happened. You take to this conversational format really well.

Here to escape from the OGL hysteria.

There are great Time Track forms and aids to mark passage of time, just search online. I have always run time as follows: Underground - 1 Turn (10 minutes) divided into 10 Rounds (1 minute) for combat divided into 10 segments (6 seconds) for initiative and spell casting. Outdoor Hex Crawling - 1 Turn 4 Hours (6 Turns per day), Combat scale the same. At the end of any combat, round up to the next full turn.

Ran a new thief in a Mystara open table last wed and found 4k ep of ancient and unknown type. Choice was scrap value of the electric or 14 days of downtime seeking an antiquities dealer. Guess who rolled a new char for tomorrow's session? I ref for a group of 10 and thr number of characters we roll is hilariously amazing.

In Better Than Every Man, a creeping regional event is the approach of the swedish army. King Gustavus II Adolphus has just landed in Germany, beaten the first imperial german army and now approaches the area the PCs explore. The Adolphus moves on a timetable on day x the army will be on top of a certain dungeon. They practically shut down the dungeon, 15.000 men show up and give the weirdness a very practical solution. A detachment of hundreds of troops stay behind to mop up everything and take the place apart. A mid-level magic user or a few cultist goons or a weird monster is no match for those numbers. The Adolphus is homing in on bigger things than some dungeon loot, the army moves on a path towards certain cities and sieges them. The PCs can be caught inside the city when this happens or outside and unable to get in. If the city of Karlstadt is still controlled by the witches, they get slaughtered. Eventually, the adventure ends as the army has taken control of the map and turned it into a province in Adolphus' empire.

I've used an Excel spreadsheet to make a calendar for my world. I keep track of holidays, major story events and I want to add weather in the next update.

I moved to 2nd Edition AD&D a little bit ago, which is what I played through High School. If I am a Cleric, I usually take the Healing Non-Combat Proficiency, which gives me the ability to restore 1d3 Hit Points on a Successful Wisdom Check. The downside is, it costs 2 Non-Proficiency Ranks. If a player combines Full Bed Rest to recover 3 Hit Points with the treatment of the Healing Proficiency, a PC can gain back 6 hit points Per Day without Magical Healing. (Cure Wounds of various sorts or Potions)

Nice concept of slow healing! There are some effects which require a long rest or even lesser res so the character can recover health again.

I use little one-inch plastic counters you can write on with a wet erase marker and a simple laminated tracker, moving counters to represent changes in the group's supplies of water, food, light, arrows, bolts, and magic duration. The same counters work great as abstract minis. If, say, the elf and the dwarf refuse to share arrows, or if the group splits up, I simply make a counter for each subgroup-- but mostly it works out letting the group share total light-turns or total water-days. The tracker is public to the players, and they do use it to make decisions as you describe.

Tracking resources (like TIME) makes choices meaningful. Well said.

For the B/X campaign I was running I had made a calendar in advance with weather and various events that certain factions and npc's would be doing on those days such as an orc raid happening in a hamlet, a crusade starting, and even festivals. As for keeping track of time in dungeons and player travel I used a similar chart as yours except I just wrote it on some regular lined paper but I think I will be switching over to your sheet since it us much more neat. I also had time continue to pass as irl days passed with the exception of the party being in the dungeon at the end of a session. I also agree about the slow healing, it adds an interesting dynamic when the adventurers have to not only consider the journey to and from locations but also the downtime from healing their injuries/levelling up/etc.

Open sand box campaign setting with multiple PCs controlled by the players. a.) plot a road trip adventure with one set of PC and how many days of travel time it will take to get to given site. Once done switch over to a different set of PCs to run a closer adventure nearer to home base village. That usually blows players' minds when that is done to them the first time. We were big on that with 3e due to the low level required to create magic items, and it took a week to enchant any given item. First time I did that at my first gaming shop, a few players said I can't run a game like that, but the shop owner pointed out it was an open sand box setting with multiple players within a given time frame. So more or less Every One was within the same time frame of actions and story plot. And the players show up 3 to 5 days a week to maintain campaign , so we could let some actions sit on the back burner till needed. Needless to say some players just hated each other and tried to murder the other player's PCs whenever they get the chance to. It was funny to see when they got their timing and locations off by a few days. Then we had the Birth Right campaign setting, also known as Game of Thrones. Seen good friends playing as rivals trying their best to scout the land for each other armies to ambush but then you had those time frame tables and just miss each other by a few hours. Then factor in training time to ready militia units. Or minotaurs being rangers and master wilderness trap makers defending their lair and trying to bribe them into your military service. " My minotuar PC is not your monster Xp snack, he will do hit & fad/run tactics and always run for his life. " The minotuars prefer hit and runs and provoke adventures into chancing them into their booby trapped forest. As a rule for PC in the shop's file folder, any player PC used in another's game Can Not Be Killed. Will gain Half Xp award just for being used in game. All PCs gain 1/5th to 1/4th xp gain even when not used in game play. Or how ever fits the setting plot points story growth. So in a given regard, there are always growing challenges for the players' PCs can go up against.

TROUPE PLAY! Mind... Actually... Blown! I love the idea of having a company of adventurers! So simple, why didn't it even occur to me!? I would love to hear your thoughts on troupe play in a future video. 👍

Playing OSE, I use the time tracker sheet from Necrotic Gnome, which is a lot like yours. I've been working on a deck of cards that would work as a timer. Cards would be blank (maybe some fun flavor text), encounters, dimming light, hunger, exhaustion, etc. Shuffle the deck for a fun random mode, or sort it ahead of time for more deterministic timing. When a timed event begins like casting a spell or lighting a lantern, count through the draw pile and slip the "spell ends" or "lantern goes out" card.

Decisioning like this, having to take SO MANY factors into account is, to me, one of the main reasons Old School D&D (I began on 1st Ed) is so much better than 5e. Having said that, honestly, I dont use the "one day in real = one day in game" )I do use the calendar method though) but everything else you said is how we do it. Thank you for your, as always, great content!

Coming from 5e and used to playing very narrative games. Always awkwardly reminding players about how long their invisibility spell will last gets quite tiresome. I'm gonna start running a couple of DCC games soon and i think this will be very helpful!

I've been developing a TTRPG for almost 10 years around the things you're talking about ("Time in World" and "One to One" especially), though it is higher crunch than any core OSR as we're from a Pathfinder 1e background. No HP, XP, Levels, or Classes - learning and healing happens over time and party members aren't necessarily expected to be all combat oriented (a healer/navigator is particularly useful). Players should have multiple characters in line due to a level of lethality and recovery time, and the diegetic nature of the game allows interesting progression options like studying while a wounded leg recovers or uncovering the remains of an archmage's spell tome under their crumbled tower and attempting to learn spells from that. Making time this significant also had a lot of knock on effects, our races have variable lifespans which means in a group with an inconsistent player composition (ex. some people are there one session and not for ten) it can be a good idea for regular players to play Elves or other long lived races and infrequent players to bring shorter lived races like Folk (Humans, Halflings etc). This way as time passes between sessions (could be days, weeks, months, even years) the inconsistent dynamic is supported by a dichotomy of heavy long term investment and up front experimentation. The frequent player gets to incrementally direct their character over time and the infrequent player gets caught up progression-wise in larger chunks suited to archetypal choices, with the occasional climactic bow-out of the elder character and introduction of a fresh character to continue experimenting. (I'll note there are ways to extend lifespan or ascend past mortality, such as a deity bringing you into their fold) All that is to say your videos are a great resource and provide bits to chew on as well as some affirmation towards the direction of my development. Thanks!

I think my favorite part of the time tracking is that bc I have such a wealth of low level material it means that during the magical research time or stronghold building time players can create or level up their other characters, like you said. They can explore and take care of those petty things the other PCs are too busy to worry about

A term I’ve adopted is “time jail.” Acquiring certain resources requires a payment of time. That payment locks that character out of the action. This among other reasons is why you run the backup characters and keep the world calendar.

I have to agree about healing, especially from the old school pov. Everyone has always talked about game balance, but I think this is essential to most elements of the game from early on. Time was a big part of why everything was designed the way it was. For example, a high level wizard was extremely powerful, but it was the hardest path to follow, and it took a long time, so there were very few high level wizards. Experience points overall were hard to come by, healing was slow, even with magic, and of course, travel and exploration were quite dangerous, even potentially deadly, and very time-consuming. And what it all means is that the party has to have a lot of adventures, a lot of near-death experiences, and probably more than a few actual deaths (permanent or not), plus slay a lot of monsters and gain a lot of loot, to advance themselves. It's a game for the long-term, not the instant gratification, crowd. (And if you know anything about war gaming, this is just how those guys rolled.)

In my Low Fantasy Gaming campaign, we do a hybrid of 1 to 1 time/ press pause. There are 2 active parties of PCs for 3 regular players. Sometimes, the session just isn't enough time to accomplish what needs to get done, and roleplay or exploration takes a lot of session time and so we'll pause while the group is in media res. If we end the session in a town, then I enforce 1 to 1 time, and the party will get a week of downtime with one real day equals 1 day passing in the campaign. Sometimes a session will use a lot of Game Time, especially if there's long travel involved and one of the parties may find themselves 2 or 3 weeks in the future. When this happens, we switch to the 2nd party who will play session time until their in-game time catches up to the 1st party. I like to use the "mandatory" downtime between sessions because it gives characters 1) a chance to heal, 2) a chance to check rumors, 3) a chance to study books or items that they have recovered, 4) time for Level/Skill training, and so on. As of last night's session, both parties are in downtime, so next week they will be able to choose which party they want to play.

Came looking for an explanation of why one might prefer the old school method of tracking dungeon turn time to the use of an overloaded encounter die (I was surprised I couldn’t find any blog posts on this!). I appreciate your argument for tracking torch/spell time as a method to support more meaningful choices, and I really appreciate the time tracker document and your showing how you use it in your other video!

There is a reason some Elvish Wizards are called "Day Counters" and it does in fact relate to that minor winking moon called "Elf Ship." And yeah, the number always decrements.

Tracking time finally makes sense. This was a great episode! Excellent work!

Insta-like for the Hobbit reference. Tracking time also makes the world feel real. I really dislike having to force the doom clock on players. I wish there was a better mechanic for rewarding players for pushing their characters to their limit. The doom clock is very cliché, and my players dislike it. I agree with your stance on healing. Long rests in 5e promote the 5 minute work day, where as before, resting overnight got you much less, making it more dangerous. My players look at me strange when I tell them only 4 hours has past since their last long rest and they can't take another one for 12 more hours. I want to do away with that 'easy button'. I track time simply by guestimating and I don't use turns. Every few rooms is an hour, and add in an hour per short rest. Overland is roughly 1 hex per day, but has many factors - too many to list here. I take notes to track time and at the beginning of the session tell them the time and date.

1:1 time, level training costs, gp = XP, dungeon exploration turns, encumbrance, and viable mass combat rules Everyone is having a LOT more fun after implementing these things.

My in game calendar is based on the French Revolutionary calendar, but I translated the names of the months into German. The in world explanation is that the calendar was made by the Dwarves thousands of years ago, and the Dwarves speak German. I think running games without timekeeping is like having the players not keep track of gold and just be able to buy whatever they want. It takes away a layer of meaningful decision making, and makes the world less real.

I use the playing pieces from the game known as Reversi, or Othello. They are plastic disks with a black side and a white side. I line up six in a row to represent one torch, then flip one over every turn. After six have flipped, an hour has passed, and the torch is spent. I like vaguely diegetic game mechanics, and seeing the light burn out and fade away is pleasing to my sensibilities. Also, for some reason, the merchant never has space for a lantern on his mule when he comes to Helix, and none of the spellbooks around have the light spell...

Okay Daniel, you have to be the hardest working man in OD&D RU-vid but I need to ask - as a DM I sometimes avoid wandering monsters because I have trouble integrating them into the flow of the action. Especially on VTT where we play. I either set them up in advance or avoid them outright. One thing I do to compensate is make a monster and put it in the dungeon. When the PCs make noise it moves closer. But I know this isn't how the rules intend. Think you could do a video on how to run wandering monsters a little more smoothly? At think point I think I've watched all of your videos lol so if you've already done one I may have missed it.

I played and have ran OSE games recently, and the time tracking mattered a lot. The fact they had to rest and torches would go out, really added to the feeling of exploring a dangerous space.

We do slow healing too. One HP per day in the field. If you can rest in a safe place, you heal extra HP equal to your CON bonus. In the spirit of Conan, eating proper food (such as wine and a joint of beef) heals one extra HP. Consuming double rations counts too.

My first game shop back in the late 1990's where AD&D was the only game in town. a.) Open world sand box setting of a few dozen players, .. every three months equal a year and a IRL year equal four years in campaign setting sand box. It was also player vs player cause of the workload on the few talented or skill DMs. And to top it off players drew cards for site locations and they ran defense on creature strong holds. Random card drawn and your back up PC could be anything from goblin to ogre. b.) Story arc base, Flowing Years and levels. Instead of playing and leveling strait through we skip years and just handed out level to match the story progress difficulty. Why would a pit fiend Baator spend years under cover as a road traveling wagon train merchant and raise a war orphan into a lawful good paladin ? To create the strongest souls for the Blood War. Plot twist the pit fiend died and the paladin went on a quest for a fire genie to gain multiple Wish to bring the pit fiend back from the dead. Loyalty of honor one's father. c.) Did a mini campaign arc of war orphans being raised by a green hag, it was comic slap stick. I meet people that came from real f-ck up drunken abusive family that learn to laugh at life's pain. Family loyalty and causal abuse are just normal things to some people. On one hand it sucks to come from a family of binge drinkers and you can't stomach drinking without puking within 30minutes. 2.) Then WotC 3e D&D/ Star Wars came out. We took the Star Wars Soldier class skills & feats write up, treated each save bonus and BAB as a feat and used the D&D DMG optional rules for time training in skills & feats and compare that to real life training time for modern soldiers. In short players PCs will gain 1d3 class levels each year as on the job training. Remember in Star Wars lore Palpatine never trained Darth Vader and as listed in the books, without a teacher all skill training time is double. Other than Force Jedi training, Luke Skywalker gain 9 class levels in a four year war from New Hope to RotJ. Where in Darkhorse comics, prequal novels covering the Clone Wars, a 13yo Jedi crafted their first lightsaber had to have all the need force feats placing them at/ as a 4th-level PC Jedi class. And without rapid war time experience it took them 15years to become a Jedi knight at the age of 26 to 28yo. b.) For our D&D games, winter down time was spent multiclass training. Even it was stated or suggested that DMG N/PC classes such as aristocrat or expert be treated as non playing classes. Aristocrat was diplomacy court training with a +2 Will save bonus, and Expert granted a +2 Will save and a bonus of 6skill points to edge up the rogues' Bluff or other thief skills. Even a power gamer would take a couple of levels in N/PC Warrior for extra BAB and Fort saves. c.) Of note even when a DM has players start their PCs off as multi class 4th-level characters maxing skill ranks to a + 12 rank bonus. So you have a 4th-level multi class PC with 0 zero in AtK, but has 4d6 average in Hp, and a couple of skills that equal to a single class 9th-level rogue PC in Bluff or any other social skill, or in Stealth. So how do you gage the CR xp in a given encounter ? Needles to say, I have seen PC with a +15 modifier in a skill check and still roll under an 8 on d20 and frail, along with numerous 1's being rolled. d.) Basic a PC concept on skills & saving throws. Skill base games that don't have classes per say but arch type concepts to build PC with. Such as a rogue with high hand and eye dexterity for lock picking but trips over their own feet and wall into walls. Then one of my favorites, high charisma but sutters when speaking so he always pretends to be drunk( Bluff). Helps that he grew up with a rupture ear drum and has poor balance. Other concepts for 3e multiclasses PC was the .. i.) Deletant aristocrat/wizard/bard/expert that has a +2ref/+8will save. After a few adventures base on site location of setting becomes an 8th-level PC at 2lvl each with + 12 will save, he is being hunted by mind flayers and others cause they want to understand how his mind resist psionics. ii.) Charismatic ragger, fighter/barbarian/ranger something something with an unbelievable high Fort save. Succubus and vampires want them as a blood doll to drink from. " I am being stalked by all these beautiful women." 3.) Time keeping, .. a.) once in dungeon just regard it as a Cop show doing a police raid in fast-paced movement, unless stated otherwise. As in Star Wars it is stated to keep action high and have it theatric movie like action. Then turn the fast-paced action of rapid military gun fire into a slow dungeon crawl cause the combat unit got lost in the building's under structure basement/warehouse. Building have their own time flow measure in minutes or hours. b.) Camping in a dungeon is nuts, DMs leave out murder patrols. So you don't sleep in dungeons. c.) Forget about Xp awards, all level growth tied into skill & feat development is link to training time. If you read this far, good for you, now get yourself a cookie.

THIS TIME VID IS RIGHT ON TIME!! I've been trying to come up with time passage vs. PCs if we were to use different character groups in the same campaign. For exploring I use the time tracker From the OSE website. However, upon inspection, Daniel's tracker is pretty sweet too.

Great video this is a subject I have been meaning to get sorted out great reference!

Great video! Keeping track of time has been something I've been putting a lot of thought into and I've been experimenting with linking time to XP rewards. That way taking a long rest or not becomes a more meaningful decision.

I agree with your comment about healing. 5e healing is broken. Also, I don't like the mechanic that items recharge daily. If you have don't have a video on that, I'd love to hear your opinion. If you do have a video on it, I'm sure I'll find it.

TIME IS THE ANSWER! - Gollum

I run real time for 95% of situations, but I'll allow the party to acquire odd-jobs in-town to accrue currency, learn rumors, etc. Low level PCs will take up tasks of serfs (gong farmer for Dwarves and Fighters, for example) but as they level up and gain prestige within the world, they can make money via their fort. The xp gain, although small, is a nice bonus for humoring the realism. It's also a catch-up mechanic so players who miss a week or two aren't so far behind. I'll time skip in between Acts usually. After an Act's conclusion, I like to take 2 weeks off to give everyone a break and lets me focus on DM duties. I also allow players to do short solo or duo adventures during this time (it's not normal for the party to be together all of the time, they have their own lives.) This method has created great emergent gameplay and hooks for the next Act. For example, I've had a Wizard get in way over his head learning a new spell by unsealing a powerful eldritch horror, and called everyone to rescue him. They weren't able to dispatch it, and that turned into a major hook for the entire party.

The objective tracking of time and the fairness in using it is something that I didn't respect enough for much of my "career" DMing, but is really something that I have come around to as the years have passed. The point that was made about the massing army and how fast the PCs react to it is something that bothered me in the 5E by-the-book Rime of the Frostmaiden campaign where the party could react slow, fast, whatever to the (not really but sorta spoiler) dragon threat but regardless, they would, per the book, always arrive just a little late. That really bothered me, the lack of respect for whether they did or did not prioritize that and I think that sort of lazy storytelling is something that can be guarded against by just having some processes to track time. I will say, on a final note, that is is definitely easier to have time verisimilitude with the classic slow healing mechanics, and it is less likely to be a situation where you have to appeal to the players that "heroes don't take short rests after every encounter." The classic healing rules ground the game, slow healing means just trying to sit around regaining resources doesn't work, in most places the wandering monsters will interfere with rest or healing, or spell memorization / granting from the deities such that the party just naturally understands that you need to get back to a "safe space" to do those things reliably. The fast healing systems from the newer systems are intuitive to a player base that has mostly experienced RPGs as video games with inn healing and the like, but they do not, IMO, make for a better around the table, storytelling experience.

Great video Daniel. Your initial discussion reminded me so much of the old days (and struggles!) in dungeon exploration with keeping track of supplies turn by turn. As the years went by we became less strict on these conditions unless the party had a group "accountant" who enjoyed keeping track of supplies. Much like encumbrance: it was always great in theory but tended to get ignored somewhat in the heat of the battle or a session. I also really liked your talk about the larger scale of campaign time and issues with modern D&D. I run a game where things start in motion wherever the players travel, so NPC's and monsters begin to act upon their motivations once the players have either contacted them directly or impacted some ally or simply word has spread of the players activities. So it's important to track time to keep in my mind what everyone is doing. But the players can keep things moving on a daily basis with the healing mechanics of 5E. So how do you give everyone (your NPC's and monsters) a realistic amount of time to enact their plans? You have to think about those activities that would require the time we used to spend on healing. Training, research, etc. Hit points are a game mechanic, and just because you can use spells in the field the "heal up" doesn't mean your body and mind doesn't require down time to recover. It's all suggested in the DMG and PHB but not formalized. Researching magic items, or trying to discover information about some parchment the player's discover in a lost tomb takes time. It isn't just a history ability check. Waiting on the King or some powerful character for answers or help may take several days: they have other things to do than talk to the players. Having said that, in my current campaign the players have become operatives of a local crime lord, discovered the entrance to a lost temple of an ancient race, and were trapped in a tomb dedicated to an evil god thought long banished. And they freed a stone giant held in stasis for a thousand years. Three characters dead, three more at 3rd level. Game time? 8 days. Gotta love those short/long rest mechanics.

your videos are very helpful, thank you.

This sounds like a production manager job instead of a fun game xD I do similar stuff on my day job already haha

Excellent video again, Daniel! Thank you

Love the work

@banditskeep How do you handle exhaustion on a hex wilderness method? 5e asks for con saves after 8 hours of travel but I've found it awkward to encourage the party to rest for the day at 8pm and wake up at 2am after an 8hr rest 🤥

Good stuff!

Ill be trying out the time tracker haven't used any before lol

The entire crew has electric torches and cheap compact lightsticks, so I can't track time by their use. I'm not going to give them horror game flashlights that use up one battery per five minutes. How far they can move and how much searching and operation they can get done until the next random encounter always matters. Random encounters are a really nice, easy way to make a place into a constant threat. There is always a chance that something will walk around the corner and find a section of paramilitary bums doing something shady. It is the big limit to how long the PCs want to spend down there. Time in the world by day impacts a lot of things. Not just projects the PCs undertake, but how factions in the city position themselves and how the dungeon refills. Each downtime action a PC takes (dealing in the black market, using ritual spells, healing frombed rest, looking up a rumour, laying low) takes one day. They get a couple city random events per week and one roll to restock the dungeon every couple days. They come back, and a pair of muggers have set up an ambush. Sometimes, encounters they haven't met move out on their own because the PCs removed an obstacle for them. Secondary characters is something I wish more modern games used. When we've used henchmen, they are practically secondary characters that can stand in for an A-team player character.

5e DM here. I don't really get how 10 minutes dungeon turns work. Most of the time, my PCs move from room to room in seconds, and often finish the dungeon in less than an hour of in-game time (provided they do not try to take any rests)... combat rounds are 6 seconds, and rarely do my players attempt anything that takes more than 1 minute of time. How do your players spend their time in a dungeon?

Easy count beers in turns. Lose count just count how many bottles and cans have been consumed. 10 minutes each one.

Here's a Comment, a Sacrifice to the the Algorithm Gods.

I generally fast forward a few weeks or even a month after my players level up.

Ain't that riddle about Time a quote from the Hobbit (book)?

Praise to our lord and savior AL GORE RHYTHM

ngl turning a dungeon into a math problem doesn't sound overly fun also the gygaxian character rotation is a very specific kind of fun. If players are there for the dungeon and not for the story/character, then maybe, but 5e for instance went far from that

Have you seen Shadowdark RPG? Torches in that system burn 1 hour of real time, PC's have no dark vision.

I think this needs more demonstration.

First to feed the algorithm.

Daniel thank you as always. Can I ask, do you use the rule that PCs should rest one turn in six? It’s in B/X I think but not Mentzer Basic