A simple d6 time tracker
31-07-2023
Not every game requires a robust method for tracking time, but I find it particularly useful in my solo sessions of MΓΆrk Borg to use a handful of different color D6s as a quick and dirty way to watch the clock.
I have added a lot of house rules to my solo games to flavour Solitary Defilement to my liking, some of which involve time sensitive effects, so an easy way to keep track of the time gets a lot of mileage at my table.
Why bother tracking time?
A few things you could use time tracking for in your games:
- Torches or Lanterns: they burn for 6 + Presence hours in the base MΓΆrk Borg rules.
- Periodic weather changes: I like to roll every few hours, but do whatever feels right for you!
- Periodic random encounters or events: same as above - maybe roll more frequently in perilous locales?
- Food spoilage, or other degradation of consumable items: personally I prefer to roll any time I make camp to see if anything has "gone off", but you could set timers per item and track their decomposition in hours and minutes if you reallly wanted to.
- Oxygen levels: particularly useful for deep sea or outer space adventures!
How does it work?
Here's what I use:
- 2 darker colored D6 dice
- 2 lighter colored D6 dice
- 1 D6 dice of any other random color
- 1 or more D6 dice that is particularly shiny (I have a glow in the dark one that I like to use)
Take the first 4 dice (2 x dark, 2 x light) and arrange them as follows, with the number 1 face facing up:
Dark, Light, Light, Dark
These are your Hours.
Faces 1-6 on the first Dark dice are hours 1-6 AM.
Faces 1-6 on the first Light dice are hours 7AM to Noon. The light dice here signifies the sun rising at 7am.
Faces 1-6 on the second Light dice are hours 1-6 PM.
Faces 1-6 on the second Dark dice are hours 7PM to Midnight. Returning to the dark dice here signifies the sun setting at 7pm.
I like to line these all up in the top left corner of my desk and as the day progresses in game shift the first (leftmost) dice forward, rotate through the faces 1-6 as time passes, then shift the next dice forward and repeat. At the end of the day, all the dice are returned to face 1 and shifted backwards ready to start the next day.
If you have need for it, the 5th dice of a random colour can be used in a similar fashion to track 10 minute increments, with faces 1-6 representing 10 minutes through to 1 hour. This can be useful for things like dungeon delving where some simple actions like searching a room, or picking a lock may take around 10 minutes.
A resource I found particularly useful for this shorter increment time tracking is Murky Time by Murkdice, which uses coloring in wedges of circles to quickly track time in "Turns" and "Watches" with just a pencil and paper.
Last but not least, the shiny dice!
These are (like everything here) entirely optional, but I like to use my glow in the dark dice to track Light Sources!
I use the dice that produces light to track the remaining duration of my light producing equipment! get it? because... light????
As the hours progress I just tick down the dice from 6 to 1 to keep track of how long my torch or lantern has left before it needs replacing/refuelling. If your light source lasts longer that 6 hours, add another D6 and start it at whatever face required to add the additional hours.
You got a torch that burns for 9 hours? Grab 2 x D6s, pop one down on a 6, the other on a 3 - then count down the 3 dice till you get past 1, and you're left with just the one d6 remaining to count the final 6 hours of light. Got a 24 hour torch? use 4 x D6! You get the idea.
Now this will only really be relevant to you if you track those sorts of things in your games but, you could also use this to track anything else that you feel would be better tracked by a physical representation on your table than just a hastily scribbled note on a scrap of paper - but use whatever works best for you!
Now go crawl some dungeons!
Mt. S.