How does DM handle time in they'er game?

In combat: each round is 6 seconds total. So, one minute is 10 rounds.

In a dungeon: time is far more fluid. If something in the dungeon is time-based (maybe the dungeon is set to collapse after 36 hours or something, or you're tracking when party buffs run out), then make use of the travel pace rules and measure in minutes should the need arise

Overland: As above, but even more fluid as you can handwave away entire nights/days/weeks at a time. Depending on the distance traveled, use the above travel pace chart and measure in either hours or days.

You don't need to be precise when measuring distances, eyeballing it from the map is generally good enough.

Overland =

Combat: round based time.

Exploring(dungeons, cities): minutes, hours.

Traveling: hours, days.

General info on rules above, but not sure if that completely answers your question.

As a dm, I track time in a few ways. 

Combat -- i use a everything from a full worksheet to check marks on a notebook page.  If it is a complicated battle, I have a tracking sheet that includes a section with boxes that I check off as each round starts.  I also track spell name and what round it was cast.   For more simple battles, I just use hash marks in the margin of a notebook page I track HP on.  

Day -- I don;t track too closely, but i estimate hours based on travel speed.  For example,  party traveling to town ~6 miles away.  daily rate = 24 miles, so 24/6 = 4 and 8 hours / 4 = 2 hours.  

Campaign -- I have a journal that  tracks by days what happened.  It can range from Day  42 = temple of lore,  Day 43-52 = downtime, etc.  It is a standard part of the notes I keep on what happened so I can refer back to it as needed.  

hope this helps!

Quote from Windrunner >>

 

Combat -- i use a everything from a full worksheet to check marks on a notebook page.  If it is a complicated battle, I have a tracking sheet that includes a section with boxes that I check off as each round starts.  I also track spell name and what round it was cast.   For more simple battles, I just use hash marks in the margin of a notebook page I track HP on.  

Ooh, thanks for the calendar.

Although I doubt I'll use it to accurately track the passage of time, it's a very good reminder for a long-going campaign to keep track of seasons (and thus shift overland travel and camping conditions accordingly).

I doubt you mean combat; since that's spelled out in the book. If you mean dungeon-exploring, the players get through it pretty quickly, so I tend to say that it's only a few minutes in each room if they're really flying. When players start taking 20, that's when they'll eat up hours of time. Resting is hours. Small dungeons players will clear out in an hour and then go back and search through it later. Larger dungeons might have the players resting a few times, so a few days are what's past.

Once you get into the open world, you can start tracking things day-by-day. It's usually not a good idea to skip days and say "it takes you 3 days to get there, but you get there", because that's 3 whole days in a matter of moments. Try to have at least 1 thing happen per day; even if it's just having the players make a few skill checks because they're doing "down time" stuff. If you need to go on longer time spans than that (say it takes three months to cross the great ocean), then consider either an alternate mode of transportation that doesn't take that long, or create a few month-to-month challenges, with weekly skill checks, and allow the players to attempt something that would take them that longer period of time.

Over even longer time-spans, such as waiting years, just don't do it. If there's something that needs to happen during years, that's the introduction to a new campaign, or the prologue to an ending campaign.

Watch a soap opera for a year and there you go. 

Essentially you have three choices. 

1) give the players significant downtime between adventrues. This really only works if they don't have several plot hooks already present. 

2) keep track of every day the travel and mark that off the calender. If they end up level 20 in five months they do. 

3) Handle the game like a soap opera. Keep track of days as they travel and during certain real world events have the in game versions during those times but don't worry if only a month has actually passed based on their travel. 

You can also allow some hybrid of the three. 

Im not sure you have to stop everyday especially for a trip that is going to take a week or two or longer. Since the PCs are traveling they will have full abilities and hit points. So I think it's fair to just roll for which days have surprise encounters. Maybe plan on any side quests that may emerge and then just glance over the week doing any downtime rolls at the end. And search for food rolls at the beginning. 

but when it says to wait for 1d4 hours, what does that basically mean. i know to roll a 1d4 but, how much time, lets say 3 hours. how much time is that?

3 hours is 3 hours.

Out of Game, that could either happen instantaneously, or stretch over multiple sessions, depending on what you are doing in-game at the time.

If you're in a dungeon, you may need to track time in 1-10 minute increments, but if you're just travelling overland, you'll probably keep track in hour or half-day increments.

I created a blank calendar template which I use in my game to record what the PCs are doing and where they are.
I also printed a rough map that is a composite of the places they will be visiting should they follow my plot hooks to the different adventures I have planned.
Instead of a specific key, I have labeled various roads and trails with the time it would take to travel them in good weather.  
Between these two, I feel pretty comfortable that I can keep track of things like the phases of the moon and when major holidays will occur.
I can also add, that I have become convinced that my PCs will not be keeping track.

My reading of your question is that you are asking how real world time relates to in-game time experienced by the characters. E.g. "we are playing for 2 hours in the real world, how many hours/days is that for the characters?"

If that's the case, you are not going to find an accurate answer. It's like watching a film: A 2 hour film could cover a few hours, a day, a week, a year, a decade...

If you spend the majority of a session in combat, you won't cover much in-game time. A combat round lasts 6 seconds in-game, but could take several minutes (or longer) to resolve in real time. Taking an approximation of 1 minute per player, 5 players, then the same for the DM to resolve opponents, and your entire session spent in combat, you would be looking at your 2 hour session covering 2 minutes of in-game time.

On the other hand, if your party is making a long journey and you just narrate past most of it, your 2 hour session could be several days, weeks or months.

In D&D, a day takes a minute, ten minutes takes ten minutes, and one minute takes an hour.

I am not sure if you’re asking about fantasy world time or real world time. The rules are pretty specific about fantasy world time - how long it takes to make an attack, cast a spell, rest, or for poison or a curse to wear off - so I’ll focus on real world time.

My campaign has been running about a year, and a month has gone by in the fantasy world. Other DMs do it differently, with more downtime between adventures, but I like to keep it more fast paced, with the characters getting swept up in one urgent mission after another.

A social role-playing session of 3 hours will usually carry them forward a day or two, broken down into four or five conversations of twenty minutes or so interspersed with exploration of the city.

A combat-heavy session might be nearly 3 hours of combat, which takes under a minute of fantasy world time.

A dungeon exploration session takes on the order of hours of fantasy world time.

Overland travel might see a few days go by in the session. I probably won’t have any of those days where *nothing* happens, but it might be something as simple as you find a mysterious old statue overgrown with weeds in the woods. It isn’t magical or anything, just a cool old statue you can tell your friends about.

I generally allow my players as much time as they want to make decisions. A combat round is six seconds, but if you need a minute to look up how your spell works, that’s fine. You’re not a full time professional adventurer, so I don’t expect you as a player to react as quickly as your character who has trained and practiced day in and day out for this.

But if I want to create a sense of urgency, I will put time limits on a decision. The rhinoceros is charging. What do you do? If they don’t answer in six seconds, they stood their ground, and I’ll let them know the consequences of not making a decision.

thanks guys.

 lol