This was really helpful and a very kewl idea.
I just wonder how I can import my current calendar generator software and it’s moon phases and such into Google Calendar? I wonder if there’s an API I could call? If you’re not going that far into it, using Google to track in-game events sounds like a grand idea! Google Calendar As Awesome Campaign Calendar I had never thought of using Google Calendar to do an in-game calendar.
Will Burke said: Memo to self: Do this for my #Pathfinder game. This post was mentioned on Twitter by magependragon, Will Burke.
Do you have things that will happen regardless of PC actions? Place those in your calendar. Write up descriptions in the Event Details section to save time in-game. Plotting these into the calendar as annual repeating events makes tracking these a snap. Whether you give birthday bonuses or not, it’s fun tracking these special days for the characters. I’ll explain a little birthday boon system I cooked up in a future blog post. We book a lot of future meetings with NPCs and factions.
I make a new event entry on the in-game day each session starts and ends. In Google Calendar I just created a new calendar and called it Riddleport. I also switched my campaign year to 4710 AR and declared that it synched to our 2010 calendar for even easier tracking. That lets me use modern calendaring tools without any conversion headaches. Riddleport is set in Paizo’s world of Golarion, and the calendar in that world is so close to Earth’s Gregorian calendar that I opted to change a few bits of the Golarion calendar.
It started as an experiment, but it’s worked so well I’m making it a permanent addition to how I run the campaign. I’m using Google Calendar as the in-game calendar for my Riddleport Pathfinder campaign.