StartPlaying brings tabletop players together from across the world, which means we need to account for players and GMs across time zones. But, how do you make sure your game are in the right time zone? And how does Daylight Savings Time factor into all of this? Let's read on! 👀
Browsing the Site
StartPlayer uses your browser data to determine your time zone when you use the site. Any time you search for a game, the default time zone you see on StartPlaying is your browser's time zone.
Emails
Our reminder emails about upcoming sessions use the Time Zone selected in your Player Profile. To select your Time Zone:
Go to your Account Settings page
Select your Time Zone on your Player Profile from the drop down
Click "Save" at the bottom of the page
If you don't have a "Time Zone" selected in your "Player Profile," your emails will default to UTC, Coordinated Universal Time.
Scheduling Sessions
When you schedule a session, StartPlaying uses the Time Zone selected in your Player Profile alongside your game's Schedule. To select your Time Zone:
Go to your Account Settings page
Select your Time Zone on your Player Profile from the drop down
Click "Save" at the bottom of the page
How does Daylight Savings Time affect my time zone?
The time zones that are built into the StartPlaying website are Daylight Savings Time (DST) aware. You don’t need to do any math to make up for DST when searching for or scheduling games. Just search and schedule games at the time you want them to be, and DST will be taken into account!
What if my Players/GM have Daylight Savings Time at a different time than I do?
The short answer: Your game time may shift by 1 hour, depending on whether you are in DST. StartPlaying will default to the GM's scheduled time, which means players may see their game time shift by 1 hour if they are not also in DST.
Different parts of the world observe Daylight Savings Time on different dates. If you have players or a GM that are in a part of the world that observes DST on a different date than you do, this may cause some some confusion for your campaign.
For example, let's imagine a GM in California is running a weekly Curse of Strahd game for 4 players in the UK. This Curse of Strahd game always happens at 12:00PM Pacific, so StartPlaying will default to what is 12:00PM for the GM because they are the one making the schedule.
When DST ends for the players in the UK on October 29th, the clocks fall back an hour in the UK. The game will still show for the GM at 12PM, but the 4 players in the UK will now see that their game is at 7:00 PM instead of 8:00 PM!
In our example, our players' time has gone back by an hour, which means the game seems like it's at the same time for the GM, but for the players in the UK the game is now an hour earlier!
A good best practice to observe around Daylight Savings Time is checking in with your group about when their area observes it! For a list of when different countries experience Daylight Savings, you can look at this Wikipedia article.