Date and Time

Time is fungible in the Realms of Terror. Great distances may be crossed in the matter of what feel like hours, and may yet take weeks or even months to return; this elasticity is normal to natives beyond the Misty Border, though proves often difficult for an Outlander to become comfortable with.

Dates in The Domains of Dread

For numerical dates, The Domains of Dread is pegged 1:1 with real time or IRT in the timezone the server is hosted, which is Eastern Standard Time. This means that whichever date it is in the real world is the same fictional date with the year changed per the server timeline. This includes the name of days and months, as the Core does not use calendar systems separate from our own.

Seasons also correlate to the timezone the server is hosted. If it is August in the real world, it is August and therefore summer in the Core as well, and conversely winter in January.

Time in The Domains of Dread

For matters of progressing in-game time or IGT, one in-game day is equal to that of 6 real-world hours in The Domains of Dread - in other words, there are 15 real minutes to an in-game hour. These in-game days are not numerical dates and therefore may only be referenced with relative terms fictionally. This is done so that periods of import, such as nighttime, do not progress as slowly as they would if in-game time was 1:1 with real time, and as a balance consideration for length of spells or abilities which are pegged to 15 real minutes per 1 in-game hour. The time of day is reset to a random in-game hour at the daily server reset, so that players of consistent schedules do not always log in to certain hours of the in-game day, including nighttime.

There is verisimilitude required when characters recall the passage of time. It is generally acceptable to refer IRT with absolute dates - the 14th, the 30th, next Friday, and so on - and IGT with relative - the next dawn, this coming night, and so on, to remain clear when a character means IRT and when they mean IGT without the need for a player to explicitly indicate out-of-character.