Is there anything in canon/legends about how time was kept? I.e. do they say "it's quarter past 12", or do they say "it's 4 hours before sundown", or what?
Not a big deal, really - can easily make something up. Just wondered if it had already been established anywhere. (Need something because a deal needs to go down at a certain time).
I tend to state things in 24-hour time to make it feel a little more detached from the real world.
I'm a fan of the "Beat" system of time for Space Opera settings like this. Basically, it's a universal time (in this universe probably based on Coruscant), so there are no time zones based on where you are on the planet and no differentiation in "day" length based on the planet in question's rotational period. If it's 23.5476 Beats at the Emperor's Palace, it's 23.5476 Beats everywhere in the Galaxy.
A day in this system is divided into 100 Beats, each roughly 14 minutes and 24 seconds long using our time system. Each Beat is divided into 1,000 clicks, which are approximately 0.86 seconds long. Most people only give the first two numbers when reporting number of clicks. General divisions of time people use are decibeats (100 clicks or ~86.4 seconds, equivalent to our minutes), and then a "five-count" or a "ten-count" (also a decabeat), five or ten beats respectively (72 minutes or 1.2 hours and 144 minutes or 2.4 hours).
Clearly, this system is not native to Star Wars and may not jive 100% with what we've seen in canon, but it's a fun system that really makes your Galaxy unique 
.
EDIT: Oh, and major bonus points to the person who knows where I got this system from...
Edited by Absol197Wookieepedia has some answers for you. But, most (all?) of it will no longer be canon.
Look at the link below, but note that the information you want is under the Legends tab. There is hardly anything in the Canon tab yet since it hasn't been mentioned much post-Disney take over.
1 hour ago, Vorzakk said:I tend to state things in 24-hour time to make it feel a little more detached from the real world.
I would just do this. Complicating something like this for yourself and your players is simply not necessary.
24 hours a day, 365 days a year for me, all running off of CMT (Courscant Mean Time) - there's already enough to juggle without trying to keep track of a funky dating system.
While I personally like to keep things simple, I understand the desire for a more immersive approach as well. It's really just a matter of preference and what everyone (or at least the majority of people) at the table are happy with. There was a time when I enjoyed hitting my players with 'rotation lag' (landing somewhere that it's the middle of the day when all of the PC's bodies are telling them that it's time to go to bed), currency exchanges, and other things of that nature; but I just reached a point where I found it more of a headache and stopped doing it. Like I said; really just a matter of personal preference.
Edited by VorzakkI keep it intentionally vague. Every planet or other habitat will run on some different cycle, and the biological clock of every species will be a result of their native homeworld's cycle. Add in some only haphazardly enforced Imperial timekeeping standards that the natives have no interest complying with, and you get a total mess. I just go with stuff like "you meet at the prearranged time", "it's two hours later", "it's early in the morning", "the bomb will go off in thirty seconds".
"You drop out of hyperspace and move toward an orbital trajectory. A quick scan shows pleasant weather conditions at your destination and it appears to be mid-morning, local time, at your designated LZ."
That's usually as complicated as I get, unless the mission involves a time crunch. Even then, I usually frame things in standard Earth 12-hour time just to minimize confusion. In that regard, I'm in much the same boat as Vorzakk. I'd use a 24-hour clock, but I'm the only one in my group with any military experience; if I say "1815," you can see their eyes glaze over as they try to process it back to "normal" time. And as much as I like the idea of the Swatch Internet Time system, I think it would reduce immersion for my players, rather than increase it.
Edited by SFC SnuffyIn TCW and Rebels they talk about a planet's "rotation". During the youngling quest, one makes the assumption that being trapped for a single rotation is no big deal, until he's informed that on Ilum, one rotation is 19 standard days.
Basically you can always defer to the Coruscant 24 hour "standard time", but I usually like to mix things up on odd planets just to make things interesting. Tidal locks, planets tilted at extreme angles...all helps add variety.
I'd suggest doing what others have said, or mentioned. Tell the time in a way that will create the most immersion for the players, be that a planet having a unique time system, or the simplest way so the players don't drop out of immersion trying to figure out what the time is.
I keep an official Timeline for my Game in 'Coruscant Standard Time' as it makes it easier to convert BBY/ABY dates that way, but the local date/time will be set by whatever location they are on.
One characters age was quite different calculated in local time on the planet he grew up compared to CST.
On 01/04/2017 at 8:52 AM, VikingWolf said:I'd suggest doing what others have said, or mentioned. Tell the time in a way that will create the most immersion for the players, be that a planet having a unique time system, or the simplest way so the players don't drop out of immersion trying to figure out what the time is.
I track time just by the days to trigger key events. Main passage of time is hyperspace travel across the galaxy. I use the galactic standard calendar. I keep track in a very loose generalised fashion, but it does help with immersion.
I have found this rather awesome Galactic Standard Calendar resource which might be of use to those of us who like to know the dates!
The authors name is Lugus Porkins and it was posted here on 03 August 2015: http://starwarsrp.net/topic/63474-resourse-galactic-standard-calendar/
The authors sources and method are described on that page.
Edited by Ogrebear5 minutes ago, Ogrebear said:I have found this rather awesome Galactic Standard Calendar resource which might be of use to those of us who like to know the dates!
The authors name is Lugus Porkins and it was posted here on 03 August 2015: http://starwarsrp.net/topic/63474-resourse-galactic-standard-calendar/
The authors sources and method are described on that page.
I use that one (and have given each of my players a copy), myself. Utilizing it and, for example, the Essential Atlas, I've not only created some game flavor props (like dated and "signed" crew contracts between each character and the smuggling ship's captain), but have also kept something of a running timeline for each session (in the case of holidays, timing the adventure close to the real world holiday date by counting the number of days into the year the holiday is).
It doesn't really make a bit of difference to what's going on to have those exact dates, beyond adding some flavor details.
On 3/31/2017 at 8:11 AM, Absol197 said:EDIT: Oh, and major bonus points to the person who knows where I got this system from...
It was invented in 1788 by Claude Boniface Collignon, and implemented in France in 1793 as part of the French Revolution. Swatch tried to revive the idea as "Internet Time" in 1998 (calling 1000 intervals, not your 100, "beats"), but the idea failed to gain traction.
There are 86,400 seconds in a day. Divide the day into 10 decimal hours (or whatever you want to call them) of 2.4 old-style hours. Divide these decimal hours into 100 decimal minutes (each of 86.4 old-style seconds). Divide the decimal minutes into 100 decimal seconds (each being 0.864 old-style seconds). It's a system that makes sense and is easy to teach. But so is metric units, and we don't have that in the U.S., either. And a year of 13x 30-day months (plus 5 holidays) also makes more sense than the Gregorian calendar we use now. Or using the decimal year that Star Wars (Legends) has (as seen in the image Ogrebear posted).
Edited by ShadoWarriorOn 3/31/2017 at 5:11 AM, Absol197 said:EDIT: Oh, and major bonus points to the person who knows where I got this system from...
Why, I considered purchasing a beats watch at one time, but since nobody else cared....
Something I have been curious about is the naming convention for different eras. I know you have Before the Battle of Yavin (BBY) and After the Battle of Yavin (ABY) but what was the naming convention for the era during the Empire? What I mean is, at the height of the Empire, before the Battle of Yavin ever happened what did they call the year? What was 9BBY refered to in 9BBY? 
Per Legends, BBY/ABY didn't come into being until 25 ABY. Before then, dates were marked from the Great ReSynchronization in 35 BBY. Some Imperials set the GRS at 19 BBY instead of 35 BBY.
11 minutes ago, ShadoWarrior said:Per Legends, BBY/ABY didn't come into being until 25 ABY. Before then, dates were marked from the Great ReSynchronization in 35 BBY. Some Imperials set the GRS at 19 BBY instead of 35 BBY.
Why thank you! This means my game's current date is 20:4:34 according to the GRS system.
The fun thing about time in Star Wars is when you break out items and stuff from the Old Republic era with date notations from that period ( years around the Treaty of Corucent) and what your players trying to figure out how long ago that was!
I seem to recall in New Hope, some of the Death Star techs, listing the time until clearing the planet to shoot Yavin 4, in hours and minutes. Could be wrong, but I seem to think they did that.