TIME

HIS section deals with the concept of time as expressed in both game and non-game time and is a key element to both melee and missile combat, MAGIC and TRAVEL. One of the common concepts across the Lands of Dual is the lunar cycle, it is the most popular way of describing the passage of time and therefore describing the passage of seasons and years.

THE MOONS AND THE LUNAR CYCLE

UAL has 4 moons each with different orbits and different cycles. As many early civilizations developed they looked to the elements as the inspiration for their sources of deity and order in the chaos that was life on Dual. Each of Dual's moons has a particular regular cycle defined by it's orbit. These are as follows:

MOON 1: 28 Day cycle with a new moon on the 1st and a full moon 15 of every month, this gives Dual it's 28 day month and 7 day week. Commonly associated with the element of EARTH.

MOON 2: 112 Day cycle with. Commonly associated with the element of AIR.

MOON 3: 91 Day cycle. Commonly associated with the element of LIGHT.

MOON 4: 364 Day cycle with a new moon on the 1st day of the first month of every year and a full moon on the 15th day of the seventh month, this gives Dual it's 364 day year and 13 months. Commonly associated with the element of DARK. Most societies celebrate a winter festival on the night of it's new moon and a summer festival on the night of it's full moon.

DOWNLOAD THE DUAL PERPETUAL CALENDAR - V1.0 - (Calendar.xls zip (15K))

The perpetual calendar uses the non-standard font "MoonPhases". To download select the icon which matches your operating system. (NB: Mac users; file requires Stuffit Expander 5 or above)
	6K	5K

DAYLIGHT HOURS & MOONLIGHT

OR convenience the length of a standard Dual day is 24 Hours (12 Hours of Daylight and 12 Hours of Night), depending on the season in which a scenario is taking place DM's may wish to modify the length of daylight hours for additional realism. The guidelines that follow do not take into account the latitude at which the scenario is taking place, nor are they included in the perpetual calendar.

ECAUSE Dual has 4 moons, the subsequent affects of possible increased amounts of moonlight on PCs carrying out actions at night can be greatly affected. The universal modifier for skill and stat checks in "night" conditions is +4 Difficulty (Not to be confused with the "blindfighting" modifier of (+6 Difficulty)), this is further modified by -1 Difficulty for each moon which is between half and full moon phase. Moons which are in either 1st or last quarter phase after a new moon have no significant effect on the amount of moonlight.

GAME TIME

AME time describes any period of time taking place within a game session (i.e. as the players are actually playing their characters) this can be seconds, minutes, hours (or even days, weeks and months if the DM is using the notorious Fast Forward tool to skip the mundane bits). The most common reason for recording time is combat and spell casting. In both of these the terms ROUNDS and TURNS appear. 1 round is the equivalent of approximately 10 seconds of time and a TURN is the eqivalent of 10 ROUNDS or 60 seconds.

1 ROUND = 10 SECONDS, 1 TURN = 6 ROUNDS (1 MINUTE)

NON-GAME TIME

ON-GAME time describes any period of time outside the game session, this is often used by DM's in-between scenarios or sets of scenarios within the framework of a campaign. Players may be required to make skill or stat checks to resolve random events in non-game time and or carry out brief one-to-one sessions where the PC concerned may have encountered an NPC. This is a common way for spellcasting characters to learn or create new spells.