📆 How to Make a Fantasy Calendar feat. @Artifexian

Calendars are more than a way to track time or holidays. For those of us who want to go deep into the worldbuilding of a project, a fantasy calendar can be an amazing tool. But not all calendars are the same.

We teamed up with @Artifexian to help us explain how to make custom calendars for your stories. We cover everything from how celestial bodies can impact the months, to how culture can determine the way they’re named. Of course, there’s only so much we could cover in this short video, so check out the additional resources below—and if you have any tips for would-be custom calendar-makers, drop those in the comments!

#writingcommunity #authortube #worldbuilding #writingadvice

//CHAPTERS//
0:00 Introduction
0:22 The 3 Types of Calendars
1:34 Creating a Calendar
3:35 How Culture Impacts Calendars
5:01 Examples of Fictional Calendars
6:22 Summary

//VIDEO CREDITS//
Featuring @Artifexian.

//ADDITIONAL RESOURCES//
Artifexian’s calendar videos:

//SOCIAL MEDIA//

//AFFILIATE LINKS//
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[Artifexian]

Thanks for having me, Campfire! It was a blast. :)

[KeelanPowell]

Multiple moons don't necessarily have to be complicated if you assume they've settled into harmonic orbits.

[josephrichardson]

The Romans actually always had 12 months in their calendar. The offset of September and other numbered months comes from the fact that March used to be the first month of the year to align with the beginning of the campaign season. The first month was changed to January give more time for consuls and other magistrates to prepare for said campaign season.

[TheMpoMan]

Ayy! Love the team-up! An Artifexian sponsor spot is how I found Campfire in the first place.

[hiyalanguages]

I loosely talked about the calendar in my story, it can get really complicated to talk about every single detail, but I wanted to say something because our idea of days, weeks, months, years... are constructs that we don't ever get to question or think about, so why not? 😏

[kristoferhellmann]

I can't wait for the campfire timeline-module allowing me to use my own calender-system!

[PeacefullSky]

Awesome video! I can’t wait for the new calendar feature in campfire to launch!

[Ggdivhjkjl]

Given how both the Ethiopian Calendar and the Julian Calendar are derived from the Coptic Calendar, it may be better to compare when each of those start their new years. In Eastern Europe, the Byzantine Churches still celebrate New Year's Day at the start of September. In Western Europe, it was March 25th in many places throughout the Middle Ages.

[Denneth_D.]

Me when I look at Hebrew month names as a Xenogears fan

Ah yes, Kislev.

[guiltysonder]

I'm cheating with my calendar, having a solar lunar calendar but the math works out perfectly because of info that the readers/players do not know. (it was terraformed and placed and specifically placed for this, to make things easier for the creators who have long since disappeared. anyone who notices this weirdness gets to have a clue for later, or blow it off)

[zombinekiller]

18, 23 day long months with 6 seasons would make each season 69 days long. If you ad a six day long “leap week” every year, the year is 420 days long. I am aware that 6x70 is 420, but doing it my way is nicer.

[gameraven]

I just made it simple and my world is just a plane of existence, not a planet, where the normal planetary bodies like the sun, moon, and stars appear the same no matter where you are, sort of following survival video game logic where everyone on the server experiences the same day/night cycle. Weather, climate, etc. are determined instead by the natural force that is used to produce magic naturally agitating and flowing in different ways.

There are 15 months, each one aligning with one of the other planes of existence and the greater deity that resides there. Each is perfectly 28 days, 7 days a week (Monday to Sunday), with major moon phases (half, full, half, new) falling on our equivalent of sunday on the 7th, 14th, 21st, 28th of the month. Though the days of the week have names, people in the world just usually refer to the days as “xth phase of month” since the 14th will always be a fantasy sunday, the 16th will always be a fantasy Tuesday, so on and so forth.

All months have a -lune suffix in their name with all days of the week having a -dis suffix to match Erelune and Pazdis, the moon goddess and sun god of my setting, two of the more prominent deities, being worshiped in some fashion worldwide across the entire plane.

Amazing what you can do when you divorce yourself of worldbuilding on a planet and instead go for a plane carefully hand crafted by the gods. If the hells can have all sorts of weird supernatural terrain and multiple layers for different “sins”, then it isn’t far fetched to think the plane of man can follow some rules that don’t follow normal Earth logic.

Has also freed up my mapmaking as well. Is a vortex/swirl/maelstrom shaped chain of islands logical? Not really. Is it cool and supported by the internal logic of the world? Absolutely.

[Medhanshideas]

What if my country is located on
both regions?

[asiansushiofficial]

I have question.... what if i wanna do two suns? And two suns and

[pivotguydc]

"The Ethiopian Solar Calendar puts the start of the year on September 11th"
Me, an American: yikes

[thegamecrasherthemastergam]

It's weird to hear Artifexian with a less energetic, calm voice

[Garfield_Minecraft]

calender with only 10 days in a year 😂

[holdingpattern]

Lunisolar calendars are the simplest, if you do them right. This is mainly because the moon returns to almost the exact same position and lunar phase every 19 years, so the exact solar dates of each lunar month in those 19 years can be calculated, and this isn't even really difficult.