I have a mechanic that advances the calender of a game.  In many games, I became annoyed that (using a fantasy setting) we went from common farmers to slaying dragons and arch-devils two weeks later. So I came up with this mechanic.  There are several categories of actions that you can do during the same phase (except for sleep), but you can never do two during the same phase without advancing to the next phase.  There is a chart the GM has and he makes a check every time an action happens. Each phase represent 4 hours.

the chart looks something like this.
c  f  s  d  r  t
[ ][ ][v][ ][ ][ ] twilight (8pm-12am)
[ ][ ][v][ ][ ][ ] night (12am to 4 am)
[ ][v][ ][v][ ][ ] dawn (4am - 8 am)
[ ][v][ ][ ][ ][ ] morning (8am-12pm)
[ ][v][ ][ ][ ][ ] afternoon (12pm-4pm)
[v][v][ ][ ][ ][ ] evening (4pm-8pm)

c= camp
f = fight or battle
s = sleep
d = social encounter
r/t = I dunno, I haven't exactly figured out all action categories, I've yet to commit this to paper.

So, in the chart, in the first phase they sleep. They then sleep again. After waking up, they have a social encounter and then a battle.  Then there are three more battles and then they camp.  Coupled with a blank line to the right side of the paper, myself, as the GM can make a campaign log and also keep track of game days and stuff.  I like to talk with you guys about mechanics, but my problem is actually the problem I have with names. So, I ask, what's a good name for these "Phases"? Also, how well do my name choices correlate to the time they represent? 

I keep coming back to "Day Periods" or something latin, like maybe Diurnal Phases.

I like the mechanic itself, I could imagine using something like that for lots of things. Castlevania II, for instance.

Use names that reflect your setting. You could have hours of wolf, dog, rooster and whatnot in certain settings, while others would use different solutions. Your phase names are otherwise sensible, but the first part of night is not twilight (twilight is the time before the sun rises, or the time after it sets). You could call it dusk - that feels instinctually off to myself, but that's because dusk comes much earlier here most of the time. What latitude does your game take place in?

I like the name Diurnal Phase, again depending on the setting. If you want to sound all old-school, something like "adventuring turn" would probably be good.

If you want to advance time, I would have thought you just need to add a downtime mechanic to allow characters to train in. Pendragon or OrcWorld's winter phase concept for example, or ArsM's seasonal activity based system.

since I got another reply, I figured I'd answer things.

- I like the change from "twilight" to "dusk"
- I wanted to avoid using times that relate to my world because, I wanted people to know what time it was instinctually, instead of learning a new "metric." Also, I wanted to use this in a variety of games.
- Dusk occurs around 4.30pm (daylight savings time) to 10pm, depending on the time of year for me.  It's kind of hard to peg it down to a specific time, but I guess I was going for the more universal summer dusk time.
- Nath, for my game, advancing days is rather important.  "Making things" is a big part of my game, as one of the nations has "steampunk" technology.  Items take a number of days to make. (On the road, that is. Of course you can spend all day in a workshop to make it much faster.) I wanted to make sure players who made Artificers would have the time to make things, without feeling screwed by ad hoc GMing. 
-At the same time, I think I might add a long term calendar advancement tool, as well. That's a useful suggestion, thank you. (I would structure this as a tool for "finding out what happens" during a longer period of time.)

The term "Phase" works fine imo. This is actually a really good idea! :) I feel compelled to adapt it for use in nWoD - the main issue with GMing Vampire and the like, is that PCs get way too much stuff done in one night; if they can do everything in one night, how are they going to keep busy in a 100-year downtime?
At a first glance, it seems like the system where the players only get one type of each action every Phase, would feel a little counterintuitive in actual play. Have you tried using a system where the characters get X actions, and can choose freely if they want to fight, talk or whatever?

Also, if you want to make the system more extensive, you might want to check out Houses of the Blooded. I just got it a couple of days ago, so I haven't been able to give it a proper read-through, but from what I can tell, it's got a pretty solid time-mechanic. Time is measured in seasons (spring, autumn, etc), and each character gets a number of actions he can perform during each season. Granted, HotB has a kind of traditional strategy board game focus, but it could still be a system worth checking out. I don't really know of any other games where time is a factor - if anyone'd point me in the right direction, I'd be grateful :)

I like two word terms, in case I start talking about "Phase spiders" or have a spell called "Phase Jump"  people won't get it confused with my other terms.

The mechanic really was made for my game itself, and could be tailored to other games with some alteration. I could see changing "phases" to "scenes" and giving your players like, 4 scenes each night.

My game emphasis "captured moments" as a game concept.  Basically, in a game, you ignore all the actions that you'd REALLY be doing.  Eating, grabbing a snack, taking a breather, bathroom, waiting, day dreaming, thinking, considering, viewing, examining, stretching.  Don't get me started on how games like D&D put things in 6 second rounds. Combat has a lot of ducking, weaving, circling your opponent, hiding for a few moments, etc.  How many battles IRL, took less than a minute?  I can't think of any. How many battles last longer than a minute in D&D?  I don't believe I've experienced any, not even dragon battles. 

So part of the reason I say you can only do 1 action of each type in each phase, is because you are *really* doing a whole bunch of different things, but they aren't "captured moments" because they're boring. But it's very reasonable for players to first talk to a creature, then fight it, so my game system allows you to do both in the same phase.

If you're *really* doing things in rapid succession, there are rules for that as well. 
For example, "Going to a Ball at the castle from 6pm to 12 am"  (Here's a great example of where the lost time goes,  from 4pm to 6pm, the players are getting ready for the ball, but rarely will players actually consider that and you'll get an artificial hyperactive day.)  Here, there might be a dozen social encounters, even though only 2 phases happen.
Or if your in a war-scale battle, you might fight one group of creatures, move across the battlefield, and fight another, all within a 1 hour span.

One important thing about my game is certain actions are always presumed to happen together
battle: a combat, looting a creature, recovering from physical exhaustion (a mechanic in my game), recovering a fraction of your mana (another mechanic), healing of wounds, drinking and eating.
camping: setting up bedrolls, perhaps a tent, gathering firewood and starting a fire, cooking, eating supper, drinking, resting.  Also, each day characters have 2 hours to do things, this presumably often happens at camping.
sleep: changing of guards and sleeping of course
social encounter: talking can take a long time, truthfully.  Also, in certain situations, "lost moments" might be you mingling with guests, freshening up, getting some punch, dancing, etc.

Also, some things happen in the "grey space" of phases where they overlap.  Like traveling, scouting, all of those things I mentioned earlier, etc.

I hope this came out coherently, does it make sense to you?

One thing, I'm ssuming here that shopping falls under social, and would include bartering or trading.

Other than that the system is impressively simple and effective. EN Publishing's Elements of Magic uses a point-based system, and I think restoring a percentage of points each phse that magic is not used is a great idea. Is that something you're planning on doing with your mechanics? Also, for time based objectives a party might have, forcing them to choose between a combat encounter or doing things faster is genius, and I think your mechanic will do that well. =)

EN Publishing's Elements of Magic uses a point-based system, and I think restoring a percentage of points each phse that magic is not used is a great idea. Is that something you're planning on doing with your mechanics?

David wrote:

EN Publishing's Elements of Magic uses a point-based system, and I think restoring a percentage of points each phse that magic is not used is a great idea. Is that something you're planning on doing with your mechanics?

First, what specifically makes it "not a great idea?" 

Secondly, here's how it works within my game.  Each player has a "mana pool" and a magic stat.  The size of the mana pool is at least 5x the size of the magic stat, which goes up from there if they put more points in making it larger.  Each phase, the mana pool regains an amount equal to the magic stat. For example, if my magic stat is 3, and my pool is 15/30, than it would go up to 18/30 at the turn of the phase.  That also means a player with an especially large pool may take days to fully recover, while one with a small pool, would take less than a day.

Ohh, ok. :)

There's two reasons I'm avoiding percentages for my game.
1) I'm trying to limit the math to addition, subtraction, and simple division (1/2 and 1/10).
2) It actually is a percent (20%) of your mana pool.  It's just that it is possible to increase this pool so that you have a extra "buffer" before you run out, that requires extended rest to replenish.
I haven't had a chance to test out this method, It'll be interesting to see how it works out in the play tests.  I have some *very* demanding play testers lined up, so I'm sure to be under a lot of scrutiny.