This is part three of a series on calendars! See this master post for more calendar content: https://www.tumblr.com/randomtable/713543620842700800/random-calendar-series-masterpost?source=share
A different approach to building a calendar with randomization: starting with the smaller units and building up.
1d12 Week Structures
1. A 6 day week, with no set “weekend” - different days off are taken by different people.
2. A 5 day week, with a single weekend day of rest.
3. A 10 day week, with two concurrent weekend days of rest
4. A 4 day week, with no set “weekend” - different days off are taken by different people. Â
5. A 6 day week, with days of rest on the third and sixth days.
6. An 8 day week, with two concurrent weekend days of rest
7. A 7 day week, with two concurrent weekend days of rest
8. A 9 day week, with days of rest on the third, sixth, and ninth days.
9. A 10 day week, with three concurrent weekend days of rest.
10. An 8 day week, with three concurrent weekend days of rest.
11. A 6 day week, with two concurrent weekend days of rest.
12. A 7 day week, with two concurrent weekend days of rest and a day of rest on the third day.
1d4 Naming Conventions for Days of the Week:
1. Days of the week are referred to by numerical names (ie “firstday” or an equivalent in one of your worlds languages). One day has an exception; what’s special about it?
2. Days of the week are named for gods or other religious figures. What kinds of prayers or rituals are devoted to them on their days?
3. Days of the week are named by duties, chores, or cultural practices that are expected to be done on that day. Are these widely followed, or viewed as something “no one does anymore”?
4. Days of the week are named for planets and/or other celestial bodies (or, for lunar calendars, they might be related to phases of the moon instead). What religious, cultural, scientific or magical associations do these planets have?
For the Rest of the Calendar (1d4)
1. A lunar calendar. Each month is divided into four weeks, based on the full moon, new moon, and waxing and waning half moons. There are 5d4 months in the year.
2. A solar calendar. There are 9d10 weeks in a year, and 5d4 months.*
3. A lunar calendar, based on multiple moons. The moon with the shortest lunar cycle is used for the weeks, while a moon with a longer lunar cycle is used for the months. There are 9d10 weeks in a year, and 5d4 months in a year.*
4. A lunisolar calendar. Each month is divided into four weeks, based on the full moon, new moon, and waxing and waning half moons. There are 5d4 months in the year, but every 2d4+1 years there is an extra month in the year, which helps keep the months aligned to the seasons.
*The number of months may not divide evenly into the year with these results. To resolve this, multiply the number of weeks by the number of days in one week. This is how many days are in the year. Divide the number of days in the year by the number of months in the year, to get the number of days in the month. If this number is whole, great! If not, take just the decimal of the result and multiply it by the number of months in the year to find the number of extra days. You can distribute these days to either make some months longer than others, or insert extra days between months that are observed as holidays.
This post is already pretty long, so if you want to build your calendar further, check out my posts on randomly generated solar and lunar calendars.
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This is part one of a series on calendars I am planning! See this master post for more calendar content as I post it: https://www.tumblr.com/randomtable/713543620842700800/random-calendar-series-masterpost?source=share
Year length:
(how many days does it take for the planet to revolve around the sun?)
The year is 7d100 days long.
Now, divide this year length by 4 to find the length of your planet’s seasons.
*If the result is a fraction or decimal: 1/4 or .25 means one season will be one day longer than the others. 1/2 or .5 means two seasons will be one day longer than the others. 3/4 or .75 means three seasons will be one day longer than the fourth. The length of seasons is also the number of days between the solstices and equinoxes.
1d8 Days to Start The Year On:
1. The day after the Winter Solstice, when nights are just beginning to grow longer. The New Year is celebrated as a time of hope, of starting an upward journey after hitting a low point. New Years celebrations might include light-based decorations, songs about light and hope, and making plans for self improvement.
2. A day between the Winter Solstice and the Spring Equinox, which is the anniversary of the dawn of the ruling dynasty who implemented this calendar. (Feel free to select the exact day randomly). The New Year is celebrated as a patriotic event. New Years celebrations might include flying emblems or flags, nationalist and propaganda songs, and speeches or addresses from leaders and politicians.
3. The day of the Spring Equinox, when cold is giving way to warmth, and it is time for planting and for baby animals to be born. The New Year is celebrated as a time of rebirth and new beginnings, and it may be personified as an infant or baby animal. New Years celebrations might include imagery of flowers, eggs, and babies, time spent planting crops or gardens, and songs about joy and rebirth.
4. A day between the Spring Equinox and Summer Solstice, which is the birthday of a deity or other important religious figure. (Feel free to select the exact day randomly) The new year is celebrated as a religious feast day. New Years celebrations might include prayers and songs to the holy figure, feasts in their name, and religious services.
5. The day after the Summer Solstice, when the days are long and hot. The New Year is celebrated as a time of rest, taking a break from hard work and hot sun. New Years celebrations might include observing a day without work, gifts like hats and parasols that protect from the sun, and activities like swimming to cool off or sharing chilled food and drinks.
6. A day between the Summer Solstice and Autumn Equinox, which is the anniversary of the death of a deity or other important religious figure.The New Year is observed as a somber day of religious reflection, where the year that passed may also be treated as a living thing which has died. New Years customs might include fasting or making other sacrifices, lengthy prayers, and wearing veils or other mourning clothes.
7. The day of the Autumn Equinox, when the harvest is in full swing. The New Year is celebrated as a time of bounty and of preparation for the long nights of winter ahead. New Years celebrations might include feasting, songs wishing farewell to the times of plenty and to the sun, and expressing gratitude to the earth, to a deity of fertility, or to farmers for a bountiful harvest.
8. A day between the Autumn Equinox and the Winter Solstice, which is thought to be the anniversary of the creation of the world itself. (Feel free to select the exact day randomly). The New Year is observed as a serious but joyful religious holiday. New Years traditions might include offerings to the god or gods of creation, prayer and song about their power and might, and excursions into the wilderness to behold their creation in its natural state.
Months:
The year is divided into 5d4 months, which may or may not be roughly based on the lunar cycle*.  Divide the year length by the number of months to get the length of the months. It’s likely this number won’t be even. If it isn’t, multiply the fraction/decimal by the number of months to get the number of extra days.
1d4 Things to do with Extra Days
1. Make months unequal: distribute the days among certain months, so that some are a day longer than others.
2. Add these days as extra holidays between months: These days aren’t considered part of a particular month, rather falling between the months and being days of rest or celebration. Try to distribute them equally, if you can.
3. Add these days as a multi-day holiday at the end of the year: this extra time becomes an extended period to prepare for the new year, following the tradition rolled on the previous table.
4. Add these days as a multi-day holiday in the middle of the year: this extra time is a mid-year break, situated between two months near the midway point of the year. You can consult the previous table for what this festival might be for, based on what time of year it occurs, or make up something else.
Weeks:
Your calendar’s weeks are informed by how its months are divided. Here are some options for weeks, noting which types of months they work for.
Perfect Weeks: (Does not work for unequal months.) If there is a number between 5-10 that your month length can be evenly divided by, then this can be the length of your week. For calendars with extra days between months, those extra days are also considered to be between weeks.
Unequal Weeks: (Works for any type of months.) Your months are divided into a number of weeks. In order to make that number whole, some of your weeks are a day longer than others.
One Short Week: (Does not work for calendars with extra days added as a multi-day holiday.) Weeks are 1d4+4 days long. If this number does not divide evenly by how long your year is, the remaining days are treated as a multi-day holiday at the end of the year. (Note that this holiday is still considered part of the last month of the year.)
Earth-like Weeks: (Works for any type of months.) Weeks are 1d4+4 days long and do not change or reset at the end of the year or month. What day of the week the year or the month begins on varies from year to year and month to month. If you have holidays that are between months, the weeks should also skip these holidays.
*Bonus: Lunar Cycles in Solar Calendars (Under the Cut)
If your year does not divide perfectly into the number of months you rolled, then your lunar cycle will not stay aligned with your months. For simplicity’s sake, we’ll assume that your base month is the actual length of a lunar cycle. You can plot these lunar cycles out on your calendar just like we do on Earth, and you’ll see that they quickly become misaligned with the months.
(Warning, math ahead!)
The “extra days” you calculated before are called the Epact, the difference in length between the solar and lunar years. You can subtract the Epact from the year length to determine the lunar year length, and use those numbers to determine extra information about the alignments of the solar and lunar calendars:
* A purely lunar calendar (with no leap months added to re-align with the solar year) will cycle through the seasons, so over several years what seasons happen in which months will shift. To determine the length of this cycle, divide the solar year length by the Epact. This tells you how many years it takes before the seasons re-align in the lunar calendar. (On Earth, it takes 33 years.) If the result is a whole number, then the lunar and solar calendars will have the same New Years Day if they both began on the same day initially.  (If it isn’t a whole number, how often they line up is a little bit more complicated: it’s equal to the least common multiple of the two different year lengths, divided by the length of the solar year.)
* You can also determine how many years it takes before the cycles of the moon line up to the same days of the year again. This is equal to the least common multiple of the solar year length and the lunar cycle length (which is the base month length), divided by the solar year length.
This is part two of a series on calendars! See this master post for more calendar content: https://www.tumblr.com/randomtable/713543620842700800/random-calendar-series-masterpost?source=share
2. A lunisolar calendar, based on the cycle of a single moon but reconciled with the cycle of the seasons. The months are 8d6 days long. The year is usually 5d4 months long, but every 2d4 years there is a leap month added to keep the lunar calendar relatively aligned with the seasons of the solar year.
3. An uneven zodiac calendar. There are 5d4 chosen constellations and the year is divided unevenly into that many parts based on when each one is nearest the sun in the sky. Roll 8d6 for each month to determine its length.
4. A lunar calendar, based on the cycle of a single moon. The lunar cycle lasts 8d6 and a fraction days (for example, 29 1/2 days), so the months alternate between rounding up and rounding down (for example, some months are 29 days and some are 30). The year is 5d4 months long. (See Bonus: Solar Years in Lunar Calendars below to create the seasons which don’t quite match up with this zodiac calendar)
5. A lunar calendar, based on the cycle of a single moon. The lunar cycle lasts 8d6 days, and the year is 5d4 months long. (See Bonus: Solar Years in Lunar Calendars below to create the seasons which don’t quite match up with this zodiac calendar)
6. A zodiac calendar. There are 5d4 chosen constellations, and the year is divided evenly into that many parts based on when each one is nearest the sun in the sky. These zodiac months last 8d6 days.
7. A lunar calendar, with two moons in a resonant orbit. For every two cycles of one moon, the other makes three, and so months are based on the time between their alignments. These months last 10d6 days; you can divide this number by 2 and 3 to get the cycles of each individual moon. A year is 4d4 months long. (See Bonus: Solar Years in Lunar Calendars below to create the seasons which don’t quite match up with this lunar calendar.)
8. A perfectly aligned lunisolar calendar. The months are 8d6 days long, and the year is 5d4 months long. This exactly lines up with the number of days in a solar year.
Start of the Lunar Month:
for lunar and lunisolar calendars, the months begin on (1d4):
1. The day of the first appearance of the crescent moon.
2. The day of the new moon.
3. The day of the full moon.
4. The day after the full moon.
Bonus: Solar Years in Lunar Calendars
For results 4, 5 and 7, the number of months in your year is the closest approximation to how long it takes your planet to orbit its sun (which is to say, how long it takes for a full cycle of four seasons to occur.) Your solar year is actually 4d4 days longer or shorter than your lunar year. [note: if you manage to roll a number higher than the length of your months here, use the difference between the two instead]. The number of days in your solar year divided by four tells you how long each season is.
Because the solar year doesn’t line up exactly with the years of your lunar calendar, the months will cycle through all the seasons over the course of several years. You can figure out how long this lunar-solar cycle is: Divide the number of days in your longer year by the difference between the longer and shorter year. (On Earth, the solar year is 365 days and the lunar year is 354 days. 365-354=11, and 365/11=33.18, so it takes 33 years for the months to re-align with the seasons.) This cycle may have some significance to your society!
