The Jacobin Calendar as inspiration for RPGs

I'm a big fan of the Jacobin Calendar/French Revolutionary Calendar ever since I discovered the Jacobin Calendar bot on Twitter. It's a decimal calendar with 12 months of 30 days each, split into 10-day weeks, plus an additional 5 festival days (6 in a leap year). Every day of the year has its own name, mostly associated with plants, animals, minerals, or tools, relevant to the time of year (this replaced the tradition of associating each day with a saint). I've given a version of the calendar at the end of this post.

I've started using this calendar as a basis for time in my games. I've made some small adjustments (the French year starts in mid-September; mine starts in mid-March, as the world re-awakens after winter). The day names are great for adding flavour, and for determining events or theming adventures at that time of year. There is no reason why you couldn't rename some of the days (or all of them, if you can be bothered) after something specific to your campaign. How about a calendar of monsters?

The ten days of the week are simply named according to their number - so first day (primidi), second day (duodi), third day (tridi), etc. Again, these could easily be renamed.

All of the festival days take place in late September - harvest time. Again there's no reason why you couldn't move these, perhaps spreading them throughout the year. And you'll no doubt want to rename "Celebration of Revolution" if playing in a feudal or monarchist setting!

Here's the calendar...

In my end is my beginning

I've written a role-playing game. It's not the one I had expected to write. There are no fairies. Unless you want there to be.

Short and sweet, it's my entry for the The One-Page RPG Jam 2021. You play a person who is about to die. It's funny, most RPGs contain death, often lots of it, but they only treat it as a technical issue and something for players to avoid (unless they're inflicting it on someone else). There's never much space to consider what death really means. In the last few years, I have made friends with an undertaker, have lost my father suddenly, and have seen one of my closest friends publish an astounding novel about death.

Oddly, I felt the need to add "content warning: death" to this game, and it struck me as really quite peculiar that no other game I'm aware of does this, despite the trauma that death can cause.

Anyway, enough of the lecture, here is IN MY END IS MY BEGINNING

roll d12

Wherever possible, I use D12s in my adventures, especially for random encounter or treasure tables. Why? I don't know, I just started doing it.

I think I feel an affinity with that slightly odd, loner die, hardly ever picked for the team because of its strange shape. obviously yer d12 is not as wacky as yer d4, but yer d4 is a bit of a showy bugger. It's out to get your attention. And it works, doesn't it!

So here's to you, d12. Keep on rollin'!

Adventurer's Snap

Lard

Iron Rations

Ever wonder what's in those packs of iron rations that adventures have to encumer themselves with for any journey longer than a few hours? Wonder no more, here are the ingredients - at least, the Peak District version.

There's not actually much "iron" in them. In fact, in the southern Peak District you will find more lead than iron. In some adventuring communities this severely affects the intelligence of adventurers. Academics and gurus are rare.in these areas.

Most of these minerals come from raisins - nothing like the type we know, but tiny, hard pellets which melt in your mouth, leaving far too much grit and seed. They taste of bitter earth and charcoal.

Next come cubes of salted pork fat, brined in a special mix unique to each family or artisan. This always contains salt and some kind of vinegar, and often fruit and mountain herbs too. In Hope the people typically add linden flowers and borage to the mix, whereas in Hathersage they add rose-bay willow herb and marigold. In Castleton, cowberry and blueberry flowers are the norm.

The mix is finished off with hazelnuts with papery skin: crisp and succulent in the autum, dry and chalky by the time the next summer comes around.

Breakfast Buffet

But iron rations are not the only sustenance for adventurers on the move. Most inns have a breakfast buffet, and items from this can be stuffed into pockets and bags. While some proprietors are generous and delighted that their guests are so appreciative of their cooking, others consider "dawn-snaffling" a liberty and will even spy on breakfasters to ensure that nothing is taken.

A very popular breakfast buffet takeaway is the bacon sandwich. Adventurers can usually secrete around 6 rounds of "pocket bacon" within their clothing. Thank you to Silva Sweetberry, the halfling thief, who taught me this trick, and who gleefully offered a sarnie to every NPC we met during our 7-day in residence at The Blushing Tankard in Hupperdook, a residency which our party won as a prize in a drinking contest.

Lard

When all else fails, there is always lard.