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Time in the Realms is NEVER measured in “hours” or “minutes.” Short-term waits can be measured in “breaths” but in cities, temples, and monasteries, the equivalent of hours are so many “bells” (yes, a bell is rung) or “candles” (which do visibly burn down) from or to a measurable event, such as dawn/daybreak, dusk/nightfall, or noon (in the Realms, noon is “highsun”). Example: The tumult began three bells before nightfall.
“Midnight” is permissible usage, and “deepnight” is its ‘more Realmsian’ synonym.
When timing is important, Realms writers should work a reference to how many bells are struck in a day (“It was the task of Brother Blackhands to strike half of the twelve bells between dusk and dawn, with Sister Elphrana tolling the bells between—and another pair of the Devout handled the twelve bells of the bright hours.”) into the narrative to make it clear that a “bell” IS “an hour.”

In Tashluta and the Tashalar, Tharsult, and in some ports nearby, a “bell” (an hour) is called a “darmeth,” with the plural (hours) being “darmar.” As in: “It’ll be at least three darmar before he gets back.” or: “But that could take DARMAR, hrast it!” This usage seems to be spreading south.

In like manner, days in the realms are never referred to as “Monday,” “Tuesday,” or any real-world ‘weekday’ name. Most folk in the Realms refer to a particular day as thus far from “the first of Mirtul” or “the last of Eleint” or one of the annual festival days, or if they must be precise, will say something like “the first day of the first tenday of Ches.” If they were writing this date or speaking of it formally, it would become “1st Ches.”

Where we would say “a moment or two,” most humans in the Realms say “a breath or two”—and what we would call a minute is “a goodly breath or three.”
Dwarves tend to call the same span of time (actually, anything up to about three minutes) “but a little while,” whereas a halfling would call the same span of time “a long song.” To a halfling, a minute is “a tune,” and 10 minutes is “three long songs.” Most halflings tend to speak of longer time periods, within a day, in terms of how much the sun has progressed.

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Originally posted by GungHo

http://www.candlekeep.com/fr_faq.htm#_Toc16090521

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Originally posted by Kuje

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Originally posted by GungHo

http://www.candlekeep.com/fr_faq.htm#_Toc16090521

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Ah ha, so as I said axis tilt does factor in. :)

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Originally posted by Markustay

Just looked at Kentinel's last comment.

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Originally posted by BlackAce

One thing you need to take into account is Selune and the Tears, they will have a massive impact on tidal forces which will have a major influence on the Coriolis effect and make for wildly different weather patterns. So I don't think transcribing earth weather patterns on to Toril would work.

We all know temperatures can be wildly different even at similar latitudes in the real world thanks to tidal forces, but without Torilian weather data, we have no clue what impact the very different tidal forces would have on Toril.

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Originally posted by Markustay

You know whats funny? I have a map of the world just above and behind my monitor, and I am sitting here and staring at the two maps for a comparison.

Waterdeeps got about the same weather as NYC, and Neverwinter the same as Boston. Cormyr has the same climate as Virginia. So far so good...

Ten Tens is warmer then Paris? REALLY? I think RAS needs to edit some novels. LOL

And BTW, I actually use the precise map from both the 3e FRCG and the FRIA, and didn't account for the slightly larger size of Toril. If anything, the planet should be smaller then Earth. Had I added all the extra 'empty ocean' in-between Osee and Katashaka like I should have, it would condensed the north and south parts of the map even further toward the middle (making 'The North much warmer, and Chult much cooler) I did this, which the same as earth, and the Equator fell out precisely where it should according to the FAQ & L-list. Note that the lattitudes should go to 90° - had I shown the full world map (with all that empty space) you would get a real idea of how much less-spread out Toril's continents are - FR has no Greenland equivalent. Nearly all the land falls out within the 'habitable' zone.

That island above Anchorome' falls out where Alaska is - most of FR-proper is downright hospitable. Chult, most of Zkahara, Kara-Tur, and Osse, nearly all of Maztica, and half of Katashaka fall out in 'the tropics'. That sounds about right.

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December 31, 2004: Hello, all. Hereafter, Ed's reply to Jerryd:
Jerry, I've perused your full globe-of-Toril construal from the Realms-list, and here's my take on it.
Like our real Earth, Toril is an oblate spheroid rotating in the same direction as Earth does, around a tilted axis (as Earth has). Its distance from its sun is unknown, being roughly equivalent to that of real-world Earth (but affording some "wiggle room" to adjust climate and to a small extent gravity). It's clear that the Heartlands of Faerun are SLIGHTLY warmer (higher temperature, longer growing season) than real-world Earth regions of the same latitude, but get a trifle colder in winter than real-world locales of the same latitude. In effect, discounting altitude- and wind-current-related factors, this is roughly equivalent to winter temperatures on Toril being about 5 degrees of latitude cooler than on Earth. In other words, Waterdeep at a little north of the 45th parallel on Toril averages the same winter-cold as does a Manitoba, Canada timberlands locale a little north of the real-world Earth's 50th parallel (though like any large city burning wood and peat and dung for warmth and cooking and industry, crowding people and livestock together, casting minor warming magics, and taking up slightly-warmer-than-winter air from Skullport and the Underdark depths, actual Waterdhavian street temperatures, when one escapes wind chill, can well be higher).

The D&D rules postulate an environment as least as rich in heavy metals as our real world, so Toril must be as dense as our real world. It's clear from any close examination of my original maps, the Fonstad FR Atlas, and the ProFantasy Interactive Atlas, that Toril is larger than Earth. TSR designers over the years have estimated anything from ten to fifteen percent larger, and I corrected some of them (discovering along the way that map projections seemed to be a subject neglected in the early grades of some American schools) to show that they were correct in seeing about a five percent 'window' in size, but that the bottom figure couldn't be less than 12 percent. We settled on official agreement at twelve percent at a design meeting at the TSR offices after I pointed out that a larger Toril, given similar densities, has increased surface gravity and therefore the "Barsoom factor" (Hey, I'm a strongman! Watch me bend iron bars with my little fingers!) comes into play. That was something we largely wanted to avoid, as it affects not just musculature and body strength, but trajectories and therefore weaponry and spell effects and yadda yadda. :} So 12 it is.
You came up with 14, which considering the slightly wonky maps in the Interactive Atlas, isn't bad.
There is a way of putting a tiny 'wiggle room' in the density/metals problem, too, which is to have celestial-body calamities (asteroid/planetoid impacts) and plate tectonics shift more heavy metals near the surface in Faerun than are to be found elsewhere on Toril (hence some of the in-print, metal-avoiding daily construction materials and weaponry of Kara-Tur). This in turn can cause axial wobble and will tend to be 'smoothed and evened out' over the long run, but a thousand years of Realms game time is still but a passing geological moment.
And yes, you can see from my comments here that I stand with the stated-in-print Waterdhavian latitude, so I'd follow the second suggestion in your article (to correct all the locations, rather than to ignore the difference in calculations that left Waterdeep 12 minutes south of the 45th parallel rather than about the same distance north of it).
Placing Toril a trifle closer to its sun than Earth is to the real Sun gives us our warmer climes, and postulating a greater axial tilt than real Earth gives us our swings to and from severe winter at extremes of latitude. Some climate jiggering must take place to avoid howling, all-scouring and fairly constant winds in places, but we already know that such jiggering is taking place, in-game, because of the great southern reach of the Inner Sea North glaciers (a secret that was in the Realms from the first, and made official in the internal-TSR-publication-only "Realms Bible" I wrote years ago, but only officially revealed to the wider gaming public in the 3e Epic Level Handbook: Iyraclea in Appendix 1), and because of my carefully-planted lore about the Phaerimm magically monkeying with the climate (hence the spread of Anauroch).
The slightly smaller size (12 versus 14) leads to a slightly smaller axial tilt than you arrived at, but by and large, your calculations are just fine, and you came to the same conclusions as the TSR designers did when they accepted my presentation all those years ago. Which makes the most valuable part of your article (the "What time is it in Waterdeep when it's such-and-such a time in Suzail?" and the hours of daylight bits) perfectly valid and very useful to all. Thanks, Jerry!

and a little 'back story' Realmslore snuck in about the two competing methods of seaborne location (the elder meridian was through the highest peak on Tharsult, and the newer competing one through Mintarn).

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December 31, 2004: Jerryd, I tossed your most recent post in the direction of Ed's inbox, and just received this quick response:

Fair enough. So (bearing in mind that I can't speak officially for Wizards), we're agreed on Toril having a 12 percent larger diameter than Earth (therefore 8,880 miles or 14,280 km). I vote for the same gravity as Earth, so Toril must be about 90% as dense as Earth. I can live with that (as you say, we can assume divine tinkering with the availability of metals).
Adjust the latitude of all base calculations by 1.009, and I agree with your personal choice of 8.1 daylight Midwinter hours for Silverymoon and the axial tilt that results (28°53').
And I may just take you up on that offer of running calculations! I must admit that in running the Realms, I've just used the "mental map" comparison of the continental United States silhouette Jeff Grubb put into the Old Gray Box versus the Sword Coast Heartlands, and applied the (politically distorted) time zone differential, because I "know without thinking" how many hours "behind" TSR in Lake Geneva, Wisconsin, and WotC in Renton, Washington, were from me in Ontario, Canada, and most of the portal jumps or teleports in the 'home' Realms have either been relatively short (from point to point within the Dales or within Cormyr, for instance), or between Cormyr or the Dales and Waterdeep or its immediate environs (often atop Maiden's Tomb Tor).
So saith Ed.

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