Game time is of utmost importance. Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game. The stricture of time is what makes recovery of hit points meaningful. Likewise, the time spent adventuring in wilderness areas removes concerned characters from their bases of operations – be they rented chambers or battlemented strongholds. Certainly the most important time strictures pertains to the manufacturing of magic items, for during the period of such activity no adventuring can be done. Time is also considered in gaining levels and learning new languages and more. All of these demands upon game time force choices upon player characters and likewise number their days of game life… YOU CAN NOT HAVE A MEANINGFUL CAMPAIGN IF STRICT TIME RECORDS ARE NOT KEPT.
– Gary Gygax – 1st Edition DMG – page 37
(the Caps Lock is Gary’s, for emphasis)
I feel that the game goes too fast. Characters in some games I’ve been a part of go from being beginning adventurers to 12th-Level demigods in the span of about 4 months of game-time.
I don’t like that. Epic character growth should take years if not decades.
In our game, we’ll be making extensive use of Downtime Activities as a storytelling tool. I find it to be better storytelling that no one in a given town (especially smaller ones) will trust people they haven’t met until those people have been around for a while, or come with some sort of reputation.
We’ll also be keeping an accurate calendar. It will be the human calendar as this notion is what we’re all most familiar with in the meta-game.
The Erldworn Calendar