Saturday Worldbuilding is a weekly project wherein yours truly builds a world from scratch in a disorganized bid to express what I think makes a world useful and interesting. Check out last week’s entry here.
Last time, I said I’d talk about festivals. After a bit of a delay, I think I’ve strayed a bit from my intention here. I wanted a sort of minimalist approach. “Here are all the things we say you need for a believable world. Here are all the things you actually need.”
So, let’s broaden the net a bit. If we’re talking festivals and holidays, we’re talking calendars. I’m going to make this one quick. Custom calendars for your world can be fun and neat, but consider their utility for your audience.
For my primary Dungeons & Dragons setting, I just renamed some of the months and reordered them so that December really is the 10th month and July isn’t named after Julius Caesar. That was it. It’s fairly easy to follow, the seasons are mostly the same. New Year’s Day is in the spring instead of the middle of winter.
My advice would be to do less than that. Use the real calendar your audience is familiar with. Your players or readers only have so much attention to dedicate to your world. If they’re having to refer to an appendix just to know the time of year, there are other, much more interesting and relevant details that are being lost in that moment.
If you don’t want to do that, consider just referring to the seasons. Consider how important a precise date actually is. Matt Mercer has his own calendar for Exandria, but it rarely comes up during Critical Role. More often, they’re thinking of things in relation to events they’ve experienced or specific events scheduled in the future like TravelerCon.
Holidays and festivals can anchor your world’s time without the need for an elaborate calendar. I’m going to create two for our city and its kingdom. Generally, I aim for liminal events, like Dael Kingsmill discusses in the video below.
For this city, the migratory silk moths are a big deal, consequently, I think they’ve got a spring equinox festival celebrating the return of the moths. I imagine it’s mostly a carnival sort of thing with games, fortune-telling, and elaborate costumes. Their second festival might be a harvest festival tied to the moths leaving. I think it would be suitably culturally awkward if it also featured some event related to the downfall of a bad king. An effigy burning sounds interesting.
And that’s it. I think we actually have a really good feel for this city and its daily life. In the next article, I’m going to talk about naming things.
chasetriesagain.com 