World clock
The world clock keeps time in your game world, from dawn and dusk to the hours of a journey and the length of a rest, and runs on its own while you play.
Time in a story moves at its own pace: a week on the road can pass in a sentence, while a fight that lasts a minute in the story can take an hour to play. The world clock keeps track of the story's time for you, so everyone knows what hour it is in the game world, when night falls, and how long the party has been travelling. Use it when time matters, such as a ritual that completes at midnight or a race to reach the city before dawn.
Plan: the world clock follows the Game Master's (GM's) plan: when the GM is on Pro, everyone at the table can see it.
Start the clock
- Open Game Settings > Rules and turn on Track the time of day.
- Set The campaign starts at: the day, month, year, hour and minute your story begins.
- Choose the Cadence at the start of a session and what A battle round is worth.
- Click Save Settings.
Or click World clock on the tool rail and Start the clock.
The cadence is how fast world time runs compared with real time (see Run it, below). A battle round is one pass through the turn order in a fight, when every combatant acts once; in 5e it's six seconds of story time.
The clock on the board
The time and date sit at the top of the board, with an icon for the time of day. Click it to switch between the full and the short version.
Players see it when Show the clock to players is on. Turn that off to keep the time to yourself, while the party is lost underground, say. Players can hide it from their own screen with World clock on the tool rail.
Run it
Click World clock on the tool rail to open its panel:
- Run and Hold start and stop it. While it's held, time only moves when you jump it or set it.
- Cadence sets how fast it goes: Frozen, Cinematic, Real time, Exploring (one real minute is ten in the world, the default), Travel, Downtime, or your own. Pick Travel for a long journey, where an hour passes every real minute, and Real time for a tense scene that plays out minute by minute.
- Jump ahead moves it on: +10 min, +1 hr, +8 hrs for a long rest, Next dawn or Next dusk.
- Set date & time puts it anywhere you like.
The panel also shows how far one real minute moves the world, how much a three-hour session covers, and when dawn and dusk next arrive. Dawn and dusk come from the sunrise and sunset times in your game's calendar; see Calendar builder.
When it holds itself
You don't need to stop the clock for a break or a fight: it holds itself.
- While the game is paused, the clock holds, and carries on when you unpause.
- During a battle, each round moves it on by what A battle round is worth, and it runs normally again when the fight ends.
It also holds when the game is locked, when nobody is in the game, and when you, the GM, drop out.
Rests and the journal
When a character rests, the rest preview can move the clock on by the rest's length: tick Advance the campaign clock (GM only). New in-world journal entries are stamped with the clock's date and hour. See Hit points and rests and Campaign journal.