Just like in the real world, time does move in Nor’Ova. Keeping track of time is essential, not only for determining how long a status effect or skill lasts but also for determining how long you have been travelling in game-time, when the game day ends, and when your character needs to rest. It is also important story wise to know how long you have been away from a village when you return to it, and if it is night or day. Certain events in the campaign may also be dependent upon time. Keeping track of time also is a good way of ensuring that everyone has equal play time, especially should there be more than one independently acting character groups.

Time Progression

So exactly how does time progress in Nor’Ova? By now you would understand that an hour in real-time does not equal an hour in game-time. That would make it take forever to accomplish any real adventuring if you had to be dependent upon real-time. However game time does use common terms such as night and day, minutes, and hours.

The way and method that time progresses in Nor’Ova is completely dependent upon actions and environment. For example, ten hours pass after you complete one movement in a world map, while an hour passes when you move in a dungeon setting. Below is a listing of the various situations you will find yourself in and how time moves in those situations.

• World Map: After you make one world movement, one 10-hour cycle has passed. Should you rest for a cycle, ten hours have passed. Chatting with other members in your party and other activities that take place on the world map can pass time as well, but that is determined by the GM.

• Area Map: When in civilized areas, the GM can determine just how time passes. If the GM wishes to tie time passing to anything, he can tie it to area movement. Area movement rates if you remember are done in one hour intervals, meaning that each time you complete your area movement, one hour of game time has passed. Story interactions and other events are determined by the GM.

• Battles: Every round of battle counts for 10 seconds of game time. 1 round of battle also costs 2 adventure actions.

A day on Nor’Ova (a game day) is 30 hours long. Just like in real life a game hour is sixty minutes and a game minute is sixty seconds, however it is unlikely you will ever deal with game seconds. There are six hundred game days in one game year. The seasons are standard real life seasons; spring, summer, autumn, and winter.

A game day on Nor’Ova is broken up as follows…

• 0:00 Midnight, beginning of the new day.

• 25:00 till 5:00 is the Night Cycle. It is divided into three sub cycles called early night, midnight, and late night.

• 5:00 till 12:00 is the Morning Cycle. It is divided into three sub cycles called early morning, mid morning, and late morning.

• 12:00 is High Noon

• 12:00 25:00 is the Afternoon Cycle. It is divided into three sub cycles called noon, afternoon, and evening.

You can keep track of this however you like. However, you do need to make sure you are keeping track of time, even if it is only the days.

Calendar

Most cultures and nations use a calendar to keep track of time. With a calendar, they group together days into weeks, weeks into months, and months into years. Civilizations do this primarily to keep track of the seasons but many civilizations use it for other purposes as well, such as marking important dates, planning holidays and festivals, and even when dealing with war.

The Months & Seasons

The Chalcedonian calendar divides its year into fifteen 40-day months. Each month begins on the new moon and ends on the day before the next new moon. Due to the very regular orbit of Nor'Ova's large moon, each month is exactly the same.

Here are the months of the Chalcedonian calender, organized by seasons.

Due to having two suns, even if one of them is barely qualified as a sun and is simply known as the "Morning Star", Nor'Ova's winter is shorter than its other seasons on average. Obviously, the true lenght of each season will depend greatly on one's distance from the equator. Furthermore, this calendar is based on northern hemisphere seasons. The seasons would swapped for southern hemisphere gameplay.

Example Calendar

Here is an example of a calendar for a month in the Chalcedonian calendar. Again, each month is the same.