“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.”
It is equally well-known that most people utterly fail to adhere to this advice. It is incredibly rare that DMs implement tools like calendars in their game and maintain it carefully. Many DMs advocate and understand the value of doing things to make the consumption of time meaningful and to keep the world alive with ongoing events and other things that reinforce verisimilitude. But, like, it's hard. Bookkeeping sucks.
Hence, the search for something that achieves the function of time passing but without needing to meticulously track it. Most attempts I've seen at something like this involve rolling dice to determine passage of time, and I'll be following that lead. What follows is my first effort stab at this.
An Abstract Calendar
Okay, so you don't want to have to make a fantasy calendar and mark off day by day everything that happens. But you do want events and updates and cycles that occur about every week, every month, every season, and every year. You want to know that lots of downtime is happening between sessions, when the characters aren't adventuring. And when they show up to a session, you want to be able to tell them about the things that changed in the world since they last adventured. After all, it might be a bit weird if they adventure every single day of their life. "Last session ended on Wednesday, so let's pick up on Thursday" kills the potential for downtime content, not to mention it's bizarre. Demanding that every single day in your campaign be played out hour-by-hour like it's nonstop adventure will probably keep you from being able to experience some of the more potent and interesting types of gameplay in RPGs. But if your players do engage in downtime or long-term activities, they might not know how much time they want or need to use. So instead, before each session, you'll follow a general "Time Passes" procedure to update the world. It represents roughly one week passing in-universe, but we're playing it fast and loose with the number of days involved.
As for what occurs during a session's activity, you can roughly track the party's actions day-by-day. That's actually pretty easy to handle, so I'm not as interested in trying to abstract that. You probably already know that the events of one session of adventure rarely extend beyond a single week in-universe, so you won't ever have to follow the "Time Passes" procedure mid-session. But even if the events of their adventure go beyond 7 days, just play the session smoothly and let the PCs do what they'll do without disrupting the adventure with this kind of stuff. So they adventured for 9 days straight, big deal. The abstract calendar still counts that as one "week" because it was one session. In fact, that's the term I'll really be using most of the time. Only if, because of the circumstances of the adventure and they PCs' plans, they decide they need to take a hiatus longer than one week mid-session (I dunno, maybe they put in a mail order and they can't continue the adventure until it arrives), then you might apply the "Time Passes" procedure during the game.
And if you follow my advice of using PC ledgers to track the adventurer's activity during "downtime," then don't worry about the number of days they have to work with. It's always "about a week's worth of progress" that you have to account for each session.
The kinds of variables in the "Time Passes" procedure would be both events that have happened since last session, but also things that'll be in effect for the coming week. After all, even within the few days that pass during the session, it helps to have upcoming events that the PCs can involve themselves in, plan for, or prevent if need be. So holidays, executions, trade fairs, tournaments, and other events are scheduled to happen in 1d6 days from when the session begins. If it helps to imagine this way: these things will be rolled/determined at the beginning of each week, and are considered completed and canon by the end of the week unless the PCs interfere somehow. If they didn't end up interacting with the event, then you can begin next session's updates by telling them who won the tournament last week or whatever. There are lots of other time-based variables you can implement that can affect gameplay in interesting ways. You can roll weather for the session, astrological events that'll have mechanical effects during this session, phases of the moon this week, and so on. If you play a large-scale game, then any big forces that affect the campaign world should have progress trackers that you can roll to advance each session, like a war or a plague or something.
Of course, you could also do all that stuff in a campaign where you're just using a normal calendar, like a normal DM would. Instead, I'm now going to describe the abstract part. The two main ways I see "Time Passes" transitioning from one month to the next or one season to the next would be as follows:
1) You've made a list of every event in the year with a number. Let's say about 52, one for each week. And let's say that last session you rolled event 22: Midsummer Eve Festival. The party attended and it went great! So this week, roll 1d6 and add it to last week's number to determine the new event. So you roll a 3 and now you play out event 25: Lammas (Harvest Day). Next week, roll a d6 again on top of 25 to determine the next event. And so on. You slowly work your way through the whole year, but a lot of weeks will be skipped. The campaign is just showing the "highlights" of the PCs' year. This method is borrowed from Jim Henson's Labyrinth: the Adventure Game, except they used this procedure to abstract progress in exploring a maze. Inspiration comes from strange places. This method means that the amount of time the PCs take off between adventures is randomized (anywhere from 1 to 6 weeks) and you'll burn through the year relatively quickly, but they'll always know how deep into the year they are even if they don't have a precise date. Of course, the logic for "why are we suddenly all in the mood to adventure again X weeks after our last adventure?" is hard to explain here. The party will have an average of 15 adventures per in-game year with this setup... but why? And what if there was a specific event they wanted to have a session during? Hmmmm...
2) Instead, you just have a random table of events for each season. You still go through one season at a time, in order, but within a season, you experience a bunch of miscellaneous events. The order in which they play out will be randomized because medieval timekeeping was chaos. Every session you roll to see which event happens, crossing out that result from future sessions. After X events + X weeks spent in downtime, (let's say 6 and 6), advance the universe clock by one season and change the event table. This method is far stranger of course, but it means that time only passes once a minimum amount of events have been experienced by the party. They won't go from Summer to Autumn until they've experienced 6 Summer events. They'll definitely have a full year of adventuring, but the order of events in each season will be completely scrambled. Whoops, accidentally celebrated Christmas before New Year's. Maybe that's a bit weird, too.
As I look at these options, I consider a third version that would combine the two:
3) You have a random table of events for each season. Each one has 36 events, divided into 3 chunks of 12. Those chunks are months. I'd have mostly the same 12 events for each month except for one or two unique holidays. So let's say you have a chart of summer. 1-12 is June, 13-24 is July, and 25-36 is August. Each week, the DM rolls 1d12+N+M on this table, where N = (number of weeks spent in this month × 2) and M = monthly modifier. Each time you enter a new month, M increases by 12 (e.g. in June, M = 0. In July, M = 12. In August, M = 24). So your first adventure of the summer should be 1d12+0+0, but when you're on your third week of July, you'd instead roll 1d12+(3×2)+12.
So events within a month are randomized in order, but every time you roll high enough to result in a new month, you've passed a threshold that'll prevent you from further rolling anything from the previous month. This will result in random events each session, but slowly being pushed forward through the months and seasons. There should be an average of 4 sessions spent in each month and 12 sessions spent in each season, but it's loose. Let's go through an example to see how many rolls it takes to get through a season. Remember, once you roll 13+ you've now entered July, and when you've rolled 25+ you've entered August.
| Session | Roll with modifiers | Event |
|---|---|---|
| 1 (June) | 6 | 6 |
| 2 (June) | 9 +2 | 11 |
| 3 (June) | 5 +4 | 9 |
| 4 (first week of July) | 11 +6 | 17 |
| 5 (July) | 5 +2+12 | 19 |
| 6 (July) | 8 +4+12 | 24 |
| 7 (first week of August) | 12 +6+12 | 30 |
| 8 (August) | 9 +2+24 | 35 |
| 9 (August) | 4 +4+24 | 32 |
| 10 (August) | 5 +6+24 | 35 |
| 11 (first week of September) | 8 +8+24 | 40 |
Boom. Exactly 10 weeks spent in one season. Of course, I'm reconsidering my interpretation of my own equation, thinking that N should be reset to 0 each time M increases rather than immediately being 2 the next week. Not sure yet.
A couple notes: 1) you could totally scale all of this down if you want. Have 18 events per season instead and roll a d6 each week, and N doesn't get multiplied by 2. It will result in the same average number of sessions spent in each month and season, but you'll definitely repeat events much more frequently. Thus, I opted for units of 12 so that re-rolling events is rarer. 2) You can re-roll events! That's fine. Sometimes multiple executions happen in one month. Of course, you could make a rule for "what happens in you re-roll the same number." Perhaps each event has a defined 2nd iteration and 3rd iteration prepared, e.g. a roll of 4 means you have a merchant fair, but a second roll of 4 means there's a black market fair, and a third roll of 4 means there's an exotic foreign merchant fair. Every table entry that says "saint's day feast" should list 3 saints to go through that month, in case you keep re-rolling it.
As for holiday slots on the table, I'd have re-rolls result in more obscure holidays also associated with that month. So if a roll of 7 means that Christmas happens, then a repeat roll of 7 makes Hanukkah happen, then Festivus after that. But, like, fantasy equivalents of these things.
Putting it All Together
So here's how I think I'd set this up.
- Create a table of 36 events for each season, with about one or two holidays per month. Maybe even create 3 tables: a calendar of liturgical events, a calendar of agricultural events, and a calendar of astronomical events. Or, like, "high class royalty" events, peasant events, and maybe Underworld events. Or ones for different cultures, or maybe religions. Or have one for the forces of Law, Neutrality, and Chaos. Whatever kinds of calendars you want.
- Create weather tables for each season, rolled alongside the session's calendar event.
- Create astrological events like conjunctions and comets and whatnot, also rolled alongside the session's calendar event. Of course, if you are open to making a calendar of astronomical events, then go ahead and fold this into that. Like 75% of the results on the table could just be "roll for a random conjunction." But the other 25% has the solstices, equinoxes, eclipses, visible auroras, constellation alignments, etc.
- Create a table of moon phases, in roughly 4 chunks of 7 phases (I would probably adapt the one from Andrew Kolb's Neverland). Which chunk applies that session is determined by N, so the moon cycle is always pushing forward each session. If your setting has multiple moons, I guess you'll want one tracker for each moon.
- Create progress trackers for each major faction and force at play in the game, rolling for progress alongside the session's calendar event.
- If the players own or control any enterprises, then have a table of Threats and Opportunities. Threats harm their business if allowed to pass, Opportunities help their business if capitalized on. These are basically quest hooks, so owning a business or guild or club or whatever is more interesting than just number crunching. Roll for these alongside that session's calendar event. This can be combined with the faction tracker, so each faction has a table of Threats and Opportunities (e.g. an army faction might have raids, fortunes, ambushes, intelligence failures, high-value targets nearby, etc.), which can boost the tracker in either the positive or negative direction by an extra step or two next session.
Oh, and as for what year it is, here’s my cheat: the year number resets with each new king. So it is “the 16th year of Henry’s reign” and that’s that. Everyone has a cultural, living memory of the line of kings going back to the beginning. This allows the DM to only care about the current ruler and maybe the one or two previous, and can rearrange the timeline and their list of rulers as much as they want. This also splits the regions up strongly, since your main frame of reference for what year it is comes from your home country's leadership.
Okay but Seriously... Why Use This System?
So the obvious downside of abstract time is that it's less intuitive and precise than... actually keeping track of time. I feel like some of my players would find this silly and unnecessary, and would rather just have a calendar and mark off each day that passes in-universe. An accurate model of time allows you to plan accurately too, and you can make firm calculations. For example, a player might say they want to construct a small boat. If that project will take 200 man hours to complete and they can work up to 8 hours per day, then they can calculate their completion date to be 25 days away and mark the campaign calendar accordingly. If they're traveling across the ocean in a longship that goes 3 mph (but continues sailing for 24 hours per day) and they need to reach an island 360 miles away, they can do some calculations and know that it'll take them exactly 5 days to reach their destination. Then they can buy the exact number of rations they'll need for the trip.
That kind of activity during a session isn't anyone's idea of fun, but it is fair. As long as you don't bog people down with too much, most players don't mind this level of bookkeeping. It's an acceptable amount of work to maintain an appreciable amount of realism.
But here's some nice things about abstract time:
1. Spitballing. You can tie mechanics and procedures into this timescale and never have to do calculations. Instead of "you need to consume 1 ration every 3 days or you'll begin starving," you can now say "you'll need to consume 2 rations per session or you'll begin starving." How long does it take to craft that boat? Instead of 200 man hours, it's listed as "3 sessions of work." How long does it take to sail those 360 miles? 1 session spent traveling. The DM can even start ballparking things in terms of sessions, making on-the-fly rulings easier. If the player asks how long it'll take them to import an advanced Gnomish clockwork rifle and there's nothing written in the rules for that, the DM can more confidently say "two sessions from now" instead of "12 days from now." How long will it take to train this horse? "One season" is a more comfortable answer than "3 or 4 months." The lack of precision makes more sense for things that seem like slow, gradual processes. You can't count down to the exact date that the horse's training will be finished, but you know that it'll be ready by Spring. Track PC recovery from injuries using the same units. Learning languages, too.
2. Leveling up. One thing I really like this for is leveling up. I've always wished that leveling up would require time spent off from adventuring. That was done sometimes in the old school and it remains an optional rule in 5E D&D, but I prefer it to be encoded in the rules. In 5E D&D, if you use the DMG's guidelines for "encounter budget per day" (which is infamously inaccurate to how most people play, but let's run with it), then you can get from level 1 to level 20 in 33 days. That's right, you too can master the forces of eldritch arcane power in just over a month from when you learned your first cantrip! Even if you slow it down by 1/3rd, you still hit max level in less than 100 days. Wouldn't it seem weird if Luke went from never hearing of the Force before to being Yoda-levels of powerful... like three months later? So yeah, I like me some downtime padding.
But of course, requiring a specific number of days spent "leveling up" is weird and video game-y, since the entire idea of character level is a game construct and not actually a diegetic element. So instead you could say that a character has to spend a number of sessions in downtime equal to their new level to level up, which ties into the variable more relevant to a character's level: how often the player is getting to play as them. And maybe enrolling in a new class entirely requires about a month of preliminary training, meaning the "number of sessions it takes the party to advance one month on the event calendar." And what do you do if your primary character is occupied with downtime stuff for a session? Play another character in the meantime. It's fun to have multiple PCs in the campaign.
3. One-shots. If you aren't running a full-fledged campaign, instead just doing one-shots here or there, then making an entire yearly calendar is a waste. But this procedure can be rolled on a session-by-session basis. Haven't played D&D in 6 months? Alright, well for tonight's session you can incorporate "calendrical events" as gameplay elements without having to prep the timeline thoroughly. Roll 1d12 to determine the starting month of the adventure and just go from there. Even if you aren't in a campaign, these kinds of "time-based world elements" can add to any game.
4. Open table play and West Marches. I originally had this idea in the context of setting up a West Marches campaign. If you don't know what that is, I don't feel like being the one to explain it, but you should look it up. I've thought a lot about the logistics of running such a thing, and the weird problems that can arise with overlapping player activities throughout a week. Like, let's say you run a Discord server of 25 players who all regularly hop into a session about once a week each, scheduled on that beautiful ad-hoc basis that West Marches is known for. Well, if you're trying to maintain a campaign calendar, then when do you know to advance time? If, on Tuesday, 4 players all get together for a session and their adventure spans 5 days, then does that session burn off 5 days from the calendar? What if the other 21 players had stuff they wanted to do with their characters during those specific 5 days?
Thus, maybe you should instead just do one "time passes" procedure every Sunday and announce to the group "alright, every session played within the next 7 days will take place within the 'week' of these events: the harvest knight's tournament, the conjunction of Mars and Venus, the New Moon, etc." and just treat the passage of time within the week as fairly nebulous. Anyone who has an adventure this week is presumed to be having them vaguely in parallel to the other players, but maybe not precisely. None of the time factors will have "passed" until the end of Saturday.
And, in fact, if you're using abstract time to also represent the passage of nebulously-defined "downtime" in the background between sessions, then you can also accept player ledger submissions by the end of Saturday each week and give responses on Sunday. So Dave the Wizard plays a session on Wednesday with his wizard and does a fun dungeoncrawl. When he plays again next week, he doesn't necessarily pick up right where his own character left off, though. In his PC ledger, he wrote that he was going to be conducting research on his necromancy ritual he's working on, and the DM's response said that he made a major breakthrough and has identified a key component he'll need. When did that happen, exactly? Eh... during the "passage of time," whatever that means. The point is that you're cheating by doing downtime stuff without having to be meticulous about it. Nice, right?
Alright, so I've identified at least one obstacle I think could likely come up, so here are my thoughts:
What if the party wants to plan ahead for a specific event? Maybe they paid a seer to tell them when the next solar eclipse will occur, a good 6 months ahead of time. Maybe they want more than 1d6 days to prepare for Christmas rather than waiting until the session when Christmas is rolled as the event. Well, if there are specific events they're trying to anticipate then they can request you to determine how many sessions away that event will be. If you can narrow it to a season or even a month, that gives you a rough range of sessions. Like, let's say it's January 20th and they want to travel to the capital in time for the prince's coronation in May. You know that May is the last month of next season, so roll 1d8 for each month between now and then. February, March, April, and May means 4d8, and you roll 17. The coronation is about 17 sessions away! If, 17 sessions from now, the campaign is not yet May... then I suppose the DM can just bump it forward to May automatically. And if time passed really quickly and you hit June only 13 sessions from now, then stop and quickly have one last May session instead to satisfy that due date. Tell the players "my event roll resulted in us advancing to June this week, so instead we'll be doing one last week of May. This is the week of the coronation. If you needed more time to prepare, sorry. Time just ran away from you."
That said, it'd be easier to simply never schedule events for a specific month, instead always telling the players "the coronation is X sessions away" and sticking to that number no matter what season or month it is once you get there.
So with this system, the long-term passage of time does indeed have an impact on the campaign and player agency, but you don't have to account for every single last day that passes. A lot can just happen "off screen" without being wasted.
Here are some other contexts in which "abstract time" seems to make more sense for the setting:
- Pre-modern historical settings. Calendars have been around for a long time, but they've always been wonky and not necessarily connected to most people's lives. When does a season begin? In the life of a peasant, when the weather turns. When is May Day? At the first blossom. Some winters are literally longer than others. Even the medieval Catholic Church, which maintained a strict liturgical calendar for use throughout the year to guide sermons and holidays, still had a degree of randomness in the occurrence of "yearly events." That's why Easter happens on a different date each year. It's a common joke among Muslims that they have no idea when their holidays are, because calculating when they'll occur in the Muslim calendar is... well you know how they have a Lunar calendar? So X holiday occurs on the Yth moon of the new year, say? Well actually, holidays are triggered once the moon is visible. Even with modern technology, most Muslims still adhere to the "naked eye" rule of determining if they've hit the right moon phase yet. To sum up: timekeeping can be bonkers. So if your game is set in a world that's, like, not going through a Golden Age of Enlightenment then you could get away with never showing your players a calendar. Not even once. They know that time passes each session, but they don't have a clear idea of how much or where that puts them. They just notice when you announce that there's a snowfall this week and, thus, Winter has begun.
- Arthurian settings. The element of time has long been one of the more interesting aspects of the Arthurian mythos. In many of the most popular iterations of the tales, time is wonky somehow. For example, in both the film Excalibur and the RPG Pendragon, the approximately 70 years of events somehow also see society advance through about 1000 years of technological and social change. Uther Pendragon lived in the Dark Ages but Arthur died in what appears to be the 13th or 14th century. Merlin experiences time backwards, and because of that The Once and Future King ends up a strange postmodern flux of anachronistic elements. Sometimes the Arthurian Cycle is placed within real-life English history somewhere in our past, but in a sort of "time pocket dimension." Because of its existence as a mythology rather than a strict canon (think Greek myths rather than Marvel comics or a soap opera), that means the order of events occurring is variable. Sometimes there are loops! X leads to Y which leads to Z which leads to X. And who's to say about the canonicity of events? You can begin fucking with the timekeeping rules to introduce strange time travel-like effects, too. For example, you might have the year "regress" by randomly subtracting from N or M in the "random events" equation. If the party enters the Faerie Otherworld then you just go ahead and completely fucking randomize the timekeeping rolls. Heck, you could have timekeeping pass differently for individual characters or factions. A kingdom that seems stuck in time. A chronurgy wizard who is aging more and more rapidly as he levels up. Cast a curse on your enemy so that his house and domain experience an entire year's worth of activity in a day, without outright saying "you've created a magic bubble over their estate that causes time to pass at 365% speed." There's something a little more fairy-tale like about the idea that everyone living there aged a year's amount, suffered the sicknesses of a year's passing, lost a year's worth of crops, and weathered a year's worth of infrastructure damage all in one day than for them to literally be in a fast-forward bubble.
- Space Opera settings. Time may pass fairly consistently across the galaxy, but how it's defined is completely subjective to planets. Some sci-fi settings have a "galactic calendar," but I would argue that it's equally-if-not-more valid to instead assume that no such standardizations exist. Even the Star Wars universe doesn't seem to have an established in-universe calendar. Instead, years are defined by BBY and ABY (before the Battle of Yavin and After the Battle of Yavin), which occurs in A New Hope and, thus, must reflect a much later reckoning of events. I highly doubt that in Empire Strikes Back it had already become common for people to refer to the current year as 3 ABY, and obviously no one in Revenge of the Sith would have thought they lived in 19 BBY. So go ahead and run your space opera sandbox with plenty of passing time but no sun or moon to keep track of it all.
| # Rolled | Agricultural Events | Ecclesiastical Events | Astronomical Events |
|---|---|---|---|
| New Month | Early Spring | Lent | Pisces |
| 1 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 2 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 3 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 4 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 5 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 6 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 7 | Natural disaster | Feast of St. Edward | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 8 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 9 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 10 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 11 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Feast of the Annunciation | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| 12 | First plowing | Passion Sunday | Spring Equinox |
| M = +12 | Mid Spring | Easter | Aries |
| 13 | April Fools' | Holy Week + Easter | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 14 | Hocktide | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 15 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 16 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 17 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 18 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 19 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 20 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 21 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 22 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Solar Transit |
| 23 | Bandit raid | Feast of St. George | Comet or meteor shower |
| 24 | Major tax imposed | Ascension Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +24 | Late Spring | Pentecost | Taurus |
| 25 | May Day | Feast of St. Helena | Cross Quarter Day |
| 26 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 27 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 28 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 29 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 30 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 31 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 32 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 33 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 34 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 35 | Major tax imposed | Whitsun | Comet or meteor shower |
| 36 | Falconry Hunting Trip | Trinity Sunday | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +36 | Early Summer | June | Gemini |
| 37 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 38 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 39 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 40 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 41 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 42 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 43 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 44 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 45 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 46 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 47 | Hart Hunting Trip | Minor Saint Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| 48 | Midsummer Eve | Feast of St. John the Baptist | Summer Solstice |
| M = +48 | Mid Summer | July | Cancer |
| 49 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 50 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 51 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 52 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 53 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 54 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 55 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 56 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 57 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 58 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Solar Transit |
| 59 | Hart Hunting Trip | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 60 | Nothing but work | Minor Saint Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +60 | Late Summer | August | Leo |
| 61 | Lammas | Feast of St. Peter | Cross Quarter Day |
| 62 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 63 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 64 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 65 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 66 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 67 | Major funeral | Assumption of Mary | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 68 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 69 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 70 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 71 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 72 | Hart Hunting Trip | Minor Saint Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +72 | Early Harvest | September | Virgo |
| 73 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 74 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 75 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 76 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 77 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 78 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 79 | Natural disaster | Exaltation of the Cross | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 80 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 81 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 82 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 83 | Hart Hunting Trip | Minor Saint Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| 84 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Michaelmas | Autumn Equinox |
| M = +84 | Mid Harvest | October | Libra |
| 85 | Execution | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 86 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 87 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 88 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 89 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 90 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 91 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 92 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 93 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 94 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Solar Transit |
| 95 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Feast of St. Crispin | Comet or meteor shower |
| 96 | Halloween | Minor Saint Day | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +96 | Late Harvest | November | Scorpio |
| 97 | Execution | All Hallows' Day | Cross Quarter Day |
| 98 | Trade fair | Feast of St. Martin | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 99 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 100 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 101 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 102 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 103 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 104 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 105 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 106 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 107 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Feast of St. Catherine | Comet or meteor shower |
| 108 | Nothing but work | Christ the King Sunday | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +108 | Early Winter | Advent | Sagittarius |
| 109 | Execution | Feast of St. Nicholas | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 110 | Trade fair | Feast of St. Andrew | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 111 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 112 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 113 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 114 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 115 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 116 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 117 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 118 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 119 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Feast of the Innocents | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| 120 | Yule Tide | Christmas | Winter Solstice |
| M = +120 | Mid Winter | Epiphany | Capricorn |
| 121 | Execution | Feast of the Circumcision | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 122 | Trade fair | Three Kings' Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 123 | Tournament | Twelfth Night | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 124 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 125 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 126 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 127 | Natural disaster | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 128 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 129 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 130 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Solar Transit |
| 131 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Minor Saint Day | Comet or meteor shower |
| 132 | Nothing but work | Feast of the Ass | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
| M = +132 | Late Winter | February | Aquarius |
| 133 | Execution | Candlemas | Cross Quarter Day |
| 134 | Trade fair | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 135 | Tournament | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 136 | Major trial | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 137 | Major wedding/party | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 138 | Major funeral | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 139 | Natural disaster | Feast of St. Valentine | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 140 | Duel scheduled | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 141 | Bandit raid | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 142 | Major tax imposed | Minor Saint Day | Roll for conjunction(s) |
| 143 | Misc. Hunting Trip | Mardi Gras | Comet or meteor shower |
| 144 | Nothing but work | Ash Wednesday | 1-in-6 chance of eclipse |
...to be perfectly honest, I would totally rework this for a fantasy setting to add some spice in. Those ecclesiastical events are boring as hell. And that astronomical column needs sprucing up. Shit, I'll also need a list of d100 "things a saint can be a patron of" that you can roll on for each Minor Saint Day so you can generate those fools left and right. And you know, I think I'd also just want to make the whole thing a bit "cleaner," so there's always exactly one holiday/unique event each month but it's towards the end. But this is a good start.
-Dwiz
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