Hexcrawl Calendar
At the start, you’ll only have one calendar but two will be quickly required. One would be for the day-to-day adventures of your plucky players, the other is to have a broad list so you can reference when your players burned that house down. The ‘Monthly’ calendar is one whole page, marking the progress of the players as they go adventuring. The ‘yearly’ calendar is to write down when events have occured, so when players ask about an important event, you know where to look. Yep, again, organization is the most important part of running a West Marches game.
Presenting, the Calendar
So what are we looking at? Let’s start from Top Left.
Y. 703 is to indicate that the calendar is Year 703. My West Marches game takes place 700 years after an apocalypse. You can go with some other calendar year or none at all.
Mab is the name of the Winter Court Fey Queen. December is the equivalent month if someone asks. I figure that’s a pretty good month to name after her.
The numbers are the dates within the month. As I described in my West Marches Design Regrets, I made my months either 28 or 31 days. You don’t need to do this. Go with three weeks at ten days a week so each month is always 30 days.
The two moons are called ‘Old Man’ and ‘The Goat’. I made those up on the spot when asked, as one has craters on it that makes it look like an old man. The goat is because it rotates much faster, spinning around like a rambunctious goat and how the crescent within it could be a ram’s horns, if you squint.
My terrible grey circles are the moons and when they’re full. These are closer and faster than our real moon, as one stays in the sky for a week and the other for only three nights. The half circles are to represent a New Moon and when a moon is one Waning. The +2 is there so when I go to make my next page, I know that that moon is starting in two days onto the next month.
You’re Lucky You don’t Have to Read my Literal Monthly Notes
Looking at the bottom right, we’ve got a list of Hex Features already queued up. The City of Luyarnha, a Waterfall, some Hex Feature called Gnome’s Squint and lastly the Transdimensional Tower. Luyarnha is crossed out because the party discovers it during their adventure.
Back to the top, we’ve got Wind and Rain. I randomly generate weather for the month because then I can answer questions about weather when a Survival Check is passed. Weather is either Light or Heavy. If Wind is Heavy, I put the cloud emoji next to it to represent Ranged Attacks at Disadvantage if the players are outside. If Rain is Heavy, I put a Boot down to show that the party loses one Hex of movement due to Difficult Terrain. Yes, it should probably be ‘Snow’ instead of Rain but I try to eliminate as much thinking when I’ve got to copy this onto a graph paper.
When both are Heavy, there’s a Storm. That naturally means Difficult Terrain and Ranged Attacks being Disadvantaged. It is important because there are some events that only trigger during a storm, like a particular Fey Circle or the Wandering Manor of Zekame by Max MacDonald I got from the 2021 One Page Dungeon Contest.
The Lantern Festival is celebrated by a nomadic tribe. They have a week long celebration once a month to different things. They kick off the Festival when the night is brightest; in this case, that would be the Goat being a Full Moon and Old Man Waxing. There’s indicators to show when that festival starts and finishes.
Inflexible Schedules, Complete
Bombom Hammer (2d4) is an NPC named Bombom who visits the village of Hammer for 2d4 days. I list when she leaves, writing 3d12 on the 10th. I happened to roll low, so Bombom re-appears in Hammer on the 30th. At the bottom, I have a +4 to indicate for the next month Bombom will be leaving in four days. The Twilight Sisters are similar, with their arrival and departure for the village of Quench.
Why write the amount of time they spend and how often they leave? Simply, if you write it down you don’t need to remember it.
The party hears of New Rumours every 2d10 days. Actually, it’s 3d10 in Winter months but I was in too deep to make that change. The New Rumours are listed and again, at the bottom of the page we see that the New Rumour for next month will be on the 11th.
The line through the page and DT is for Downtime. For every day the players don’t play, the game calendar also advances one day. It really makes the clock sing. I do have a cap of 10 days, just because I don’t want the calendar advancing too much without the players being able to make their mark upon the world.
The next part is seeing the Checkmarks. That’s just for me during play so I know when a day has passed and the party has to Eat, Drink and Sleep.
Notes from Play
The party is Kek, Matthias and Anderson who has a Follower. These three aren’t actually those levels, they’ve pickd up some powerful abilities because I run my game like a Roguelike, so they’re effectively those levels, even if they aren’t. Adding up their levels, dividing by all of the personnel and the Average Party Level comes to 6. When it comes to Random Encounters or other scaling events, I’ll have the Challenge Rating ready for them. You can see examples of what a Faction might do with my example of Farrow.
On the 9th, the party bumped into Farrow and managed to avoid violence. I write down that they met, just in case it matters. The party gets into a fight with Manticores, I give XP for defeating them.
The PCs arrive in Hammer, too bad they missed Bombom. They set out the next day and discover a Hex Feature: the city of Luyarnha. There, the party defeats Nightgaunts and they have that listed. They manage to meet the Queen the next day. The session ends and I draw another line, putting DT for Downtime. It takes ten days for me to herd enough players together for another session to launch.
The NPC known as The Captain docks on the 15th. The PCs manage to avoid a cold front and don’t need to make saves against freezing. Unfortunately for them, when they start their next mission it is while the Yulecat is out hunting. It hunts for d6 days and I only rolled a 2, so I write that down.
