Does anyone have any idea about how the citizens of the Imperium mark the passage of time? It seems that the system of dates used by the Administratum would be too cumbersome to see widespread use, much like everything else they do. I have a hard time seeing the average hiver or gaurdsman talking about 718999.M41, but it makes no more sense to imagine them using the calendar we're used to with day and month names from Norse/Roman myth.

Have any of you read sources that suggest alternatives, or invented some for your games?

Froddy said:

In my games, I still use (lunar) month on primitive worlds and make use of "weeks", although I do not have any other reason then "it was handy". When it comes to (historical) dates, the method of the Administratum is used.

"On the Thirteenth Day of Secundus, the bombardment began..."

So begins the Siege of the Emperor's Palace on Terra during the Horus Heresy.

Though there'd be plenty of local variation (reading up about nonstandard calendars is immensely interesting; look at how artificial a week is. Months correspond loosely to menstrual cycles, lunar phases, years obviously to the cycling of the seasons, days to, well, days...but weeks?), obviously, whilst the more generic subdivisions would be 'Terran Standard'? E.g. Primus, Secundus, Tertius etc for January, February...

I'd imagine the days are standardised a little more, but that's beside the point.

The thousand-divisions used by the Adeptus Administratum is actually kinda handy, to an extend. Three divisions is roughly a day, so adjusting 'work cycles' to one work, one rest, one sleep (or thereabouts) loops is reasonably plausible.

Xisor said:

Thanks, that's really helpful. The only question that leaves is what they would call the eleventh month of the Terran Standard, since my perfunctory examination of that topic suggests that there is no form of eleven along the form of primary, secondary, tertiary, quaternary, etc which one can use after replacing the 'ary' with 'us'. In any event, that's one month I may have to name at some point instead of twelve, so I salute you.

Also, I should have thought of the thousand divisions as shifts for myself, so thanks for making that connection for me.

Froddy said:

The 11th month would be Undecimus and the 12th would be Duodecimus. You can see a comprehensive chart here that goes all the way up to one million, should you ever need such unfathomably large orders in Latin.

Edit: Great avatar, by the way =P

Due to variable orbit and rotation times, most planets operate their own local calenders, but any high-ranking officials or members of travelling groups such as Naval personnel or guardsmen, would use Terran standard time, to help co-ordinate their massive, galaxy-spanning efforts.

So basically if you're players are visiting a small backwater planet, feel free to make up whatever calenders you want to, but any major planets, or on starships, expect Terran standard time to be observed (which if i recall correctly from a Gaunt's Ghosts book has been expanded to be a 25 hour day, i guess explained by the slowing down of Earth's rotation over the 38,000 or so years between now and then).

All official business, such as administratum records etc would of course be in Terran standard. But that aside there are endelss possibilities for structuring time. I like making up different systems for each planet my players visit. I'll try to share som of the complexity that you can be inspired by.

Astronomy is the biggest aspect that controls timekeeping on our planet today. That is probably because it wasn't that many generations since practically everyone were entire dependant on farming, and thus it was essential to keep track of how seasons changed. Our seasons are because the axis of the earth is tilted against the ecliptic (that is the circle the earth describes around Sun), so if you live at a place that is a bit north or south of the equator you will notice how different periods are warmer and colder. The days happen because the Earth rotates faster around it's own axis than around Sun. So by counting sunrises (or actually rotations around out own axis) it was possible to predict when it was about to get warmer, start raining for months on end, etc.

So much for why we think of time as we do. Now for some alternatives: First of all, a society that has not done farming for a long while doesn't really have to care about weather and its potential cycles. For example a forgeworld where vatgrown food, artificial light and completely indoor life has been the standard for at least 10 000 years. They could maybe have a calendar based on the cycles of production, where the basic unit of "workday" is the time that passes between every third pouring of the main forge. Or at least once it was defined that way, but that forge was taken down and rebuilt 8 000 years ago, so now all the clocks just keep that workday divided into four "workpasses" of equal length with three short "breakpasses" inserted and a longer "transportpass" between each "workday". The second (or some similar minimum measurement of time) should probably be common between every planet that has it's technology tradition from the dark age of tech, because it is quite necessary for basic science and thus used in the everyday production.

A second alternative is a planet that has rotations and orbits far distanced from what we on Earth are used to. A planet can have a single face towards its sun at all times. Much like Moon is always presenting the same side towards Earth. This will give no days and nights passing, and will have seasons only if the orbit is very eliptical, so that the distance between the planet and its sun changes over time.

Third alternative: A planet can have a rotation around its axis that is much slower than its orbit around its star, such as Mercury in our system that does a complete tour around the sun in roughly half a mercurial day (~88 earth days). This could give the rather backward effect of a complete spring-summer-fall-winter passing between sunrise and sunset. Such a planet would probably have a "farming season" while the sun is in the sky and then then a "dark season" to hide indoors and watch out for witches and predators.

It is quite possible for a planet to have its axis of rotation pointing towards its sun, Uranus does this and that causes days and seasons that pretty much defies my ability to put descriptions in text. This youtube video at about 1:00 gives some clues

And lastly, remember that humans abilities to culturalise is very strong, and "natural" casuse have very little say compared to societies ideals. Feel free to compare how society at large will spend this week counting down sunrises left until it's time to celebrate the winter solstice, conquered by bring-back-the-sun-ritual (or maybe a party to celebrate rather than enforce?), conquered by birthday of Jesus, conquered by Mammon-worship with the help of Santa Claus (formerly a greek saint by the name of Nikolaos turned into a Dutch folklore person). And somehow, it has produced a system that tries to make me feel like I need to drink a darkly coloured oversweetened carbonated drink in order make the sun return. Or maybe that is part of the magic ritual that gets me a happy family that loves eachother all through the solstice? And it's not even celebrated _on_ the shortest day anymore. Even with our rather young society (scandinavia where I live have been populated for only a few hundred generations) we have managed to twist the timekeeping traditions far away from the astronomy.

As a fun sidenote. The Enlightenment movement, in this case as an aftermath of the french revolution, made the metric system stick in most of the civilised world and thus greatly simplified trade and most importantly science. While they succeeded in making people use new measurements for length, weight etc, they failed in redefining time into Decimal Time. Chek out this article: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_time

Kasatka said:

There's a grassroots movement out there on the internet that's pushing for a 28 hour day makeover of the current calendar. I doubt it will ever get anywhere, but it's interesting to read up on just for the ideology. Basically it starts with the premise that in our age of electricity and technology, we don't really NEED to function on a diurnal clock. We can sleep when want, work when want, use lights and blinds to replace the sun if it happens to be in the "wrong" position at the time. They go on about how a 28 hour day (6-day week) would allow people to put in a standard 40 hour work week with less time spent commuting back and forth, and would key up a fabulous 56-hour long weekend for relaxation.

In a universe where mankind has spread to the stars, it kind of makes sense that they'd develop a time-keeping system that doesn't rely on the sun of any one planet to determine a "day" or a "week."

I realize that's not what might be suggested by the fluff in the 40k universe, this discussion just got me thinking is all.

For simplicity's sake, I use 30-day months broken down into 6-day weeks. That way, I can randomize days if need be, using d6 or d30 (non-standard dice for DH, I know, but most of us old-school gamers have these lying around; might as well use 'em). Of course, that results in a 360-day year rather than 365, but my party is unlikely to make the multi-year trip to Holy Terra to observe the solar orbit, so GM convenience trumps reality...