| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Karthak |
Posted - 02 Nov 2022 : 23:18:21
I'm starting to try to line up the various campaign settings for a unified timeline of events and before even starting to consider dealing with the problem of continuity issues between books and editions, I've run into a pretty big roadblock of the years of most settings besides Toril/Oerth being different in length so even with a reasonably concrete link between Ravenloft and Toril from the Castle Spulzeer adventure to use as an anchor point for plotting out the timeline of both settings, using Ravenloft years as a rough guide for when other settings occur is a problem as the amount of days difference could be 30 or 40 more or less days than a year in ravenloft.
Has there ever been public discussion from any of the people working on Ravenloft, Spelljammer or Planescape during the 2e era of the timelines of various other settings not lining up as a 1:1 conversion rate for years or any in-house attempts to map most, if not all existing settings/major events to a rough multiverse timeline? |
| 12 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Zeromaru X |
Posted - 04 Nov 2022 : 23:03:56
AFAIK, the year 1479 DR of the Realms lines up with the year 998 YK of Eberron, the year 100 after the fall of Nerath in the Nentir Vale's world, and the year 1 after the death of Kalak in the 4e version of Dark Sun (notice that the 5e adventure Princes of the Apocalypse stills uses the 4e timeline for its suggestions on how to adapt said adventure to Dark Sun). All of these worlds are connected by the multiversal-scale Abyssal Plague event.
However, the "Sword of the Gods" novel (part of said event) saids that the world of the Nentir Vale is located in a different continuum in relation to the Realms' world, so perhaps the years don't necessarily correlate 1:1 in this case. |
| Karthak |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 23:55:00
The 1:1 year ratio only really applies to Oerth and Toril as their years are only one day shorter/longer than each other so 1:1 only presents problems roughly every 365 years in getting the years to line up, Krynn's either fine if I go with the 2e version which just uses our months iirc instead of the 3e version which has 336 days in a year, dark sun's not too bad as they're mostly disconnected from other settings minus some planescape and ravenloft npcs.
For building the base of the timeline, I'd be starting with pre 1400DR dates and adjusting everything that came afterwards as necessary. With settings like Greyhawk that stopped getting support, they'll likely just stop showing up on the timeline with exceptions like Mordenkainen deciding to play vampire hunter for some reason and needing a break on Toril afterwards. I'll likely stop at 2e as being the last bit of canon documentation. |
| Dalor Darden |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 22:32:29
Because I wanted to mesh several campaign settings into one world, I came up with this:
https://edwardshomednd.blogspot.com/2020/10/you-just-gotta-have-it-all.html |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 19:06:28
No problem, and I totally get it. You, like me, have a basic lack of lore on the place as well. I started in basic and expert D&D, but once I went to AD&D I just never looked at the later products (just before dragonlance came out... maybe a year or two prior... which would have put me in about late 7th grade... so I only had 3 or 4 years of basic/expert and that was without a gaming group other than my cousins). Only in the last 10 years or so have I looked at the Immortal rules/storyline and started to realize they had something interesting if in its most basic roots. I "heard" in the last few years that there was a 3.5 setting/rules expansion that brought Mystara into the newer rulesets, but I've never seen it, nor do I know its title. For all I know it's Fanon or was some free download from WotC you can never find now.
To think all of this infatuation that has lasted my whole life is the result of my brother going to a garage sale and buying a 1st edition version of the basic set (the real first one... not the blue box) for a quarter.... it didn't have dice, it had chits of paper .... and sadly I gave it away when I was in high school. |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 17:39:54
quote:
Originally posted by sleyvas
Mystara and Red Steel have an alternative magical space travel system, but lack any direct connection to Spelljammer. There are no concrete chronological intersection points between Spelljammer and Mystara nor between Mystara and any other TSR setting, so any connection made here would be purely speculative.
I know Red Steel and The Savage Coast - I've played in a campaign which inserted these sub-settings into the Realms (onto an invented remote Malar-infested island off the Sword Coast in this instance). These setting products actually contain suggestions about how/where they might be used in other worlds (like the Realms). The default placement of the setting is a peninsula, roughly the size of Cormyr or Sembia, maybe, and [because many reasons] it's somewhat insular, isolated, provincial, xenophobic in various ways. I don't imagine it really requires much travel in the form of skyships and planar gates, it's just not big enough, it doesn't need many connections with the world beyond (because few inhabitants want to leave and few visitors want to enter), and it probably doesn't host a huge population of high-level spellcasters.
I've read the 2E-era products (multiple re-printed, re-branded, re-packaged, re-released revisions of them) extensively, I was entertained by ideas and rules within them, I enjoyed playing in that campaign. Though I admit the lore is fairly slim.
If the setting was changed or expanded after 2E then I probably don't know anything about it that's relevant to your questions.
And I know GAZ10: The Orcs of Thar. I have little clue where or what Thar in Mystara might be, but I have great familiarity with Thar in the Realms. Orcs are orcs (or at least they used to be) so they're easy to put on any map.
Aside from that, I don't really know much about Mystara. Since I never played any of the "Basic" D&Ds.
I suspect that since it is "Basic" D&D it is greatly simplified in many ways. I know it's not utterly childish and primitive - I found some of the D&D Immortals stuff quite interesting - but TSR/WotC has traditionally moved complex ideas and sophistications to the "Advanced" D&D products. Details and options which slow down gameplay tend to be discarded from fast and generic "Basic" rules.
So I don't expect Mystara has comprehensive standalone rules for planar travelling and such. Or maybe it does have these things (and much more) ... I just don't know.
I do vaguely recall encountering the description of a magical item while idly flipping through one of the Basic D&D Cyclopedia books. This item could allow the user (along with the party, maybe) to magically travel to other worlds. Not particularly remarkable. Except the reason I vaguely remember this item is that the worlds it could reach were listed on a random chart - they included Mystara (of course) along with other D&D setttings (Greyhawk, Blackmoor, Conan, etc) which I suspect would normally be inaccessible, they also included other TSR RPG titles (Boot Hill, Gamma World, and Star Frontiers) which I suspect would normally be impossible. And the chart allowed the DM to insert any other game setting or world he chose, even if it wasn't published by TSR. Quite an amazing device since it could theoretically transport players to any place imaginable.
I understand that Gygax's (and Arneson's) nascent gaming era was more fast and loose about ad-hoc crossovers and such stuff, friends and family bringing familiar old characters to whatever exciting new game was on the table, some informal conversions and off you go. It struck me (it still strikes me) as very odd that such a handwavy-homebrewy contrivance would make it into official print, that it would remain as an obscure, overlooked, forgotten legacy through subsequent years and decades of revisions and reprints.
If you want an "official" method or vehicle for travelling between worlds and settings and universes (and genres) then perhaps it would be worthwhile to locate and identify this vaguely-remembered magical item. Apologies for all the ambiguities - the tome which described it was a product in a game store which I was able to peruse once or twice but which I never decided to purchase. |
| Wooly Rupert |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 15:51:19
One major issue with a cross-setting timeline, now, is that the Realms has jumped ahead over a hundred years, and Krynn has also moved at least a generation ahead. In both cases, there are some major blank spots on the recent timeline.
Further complicating the issue is that Greyhawk hasn't been touched for years, we have a new novel for Dragonlance but the setting is otherwise lacking recent updates (and the upcoming release goes back to the War of the Lance), and recent material for the Realms hasn't been focused on updating the setting.
I would counsel, if you're trying to line up everything, starting with Brian's Chronology, and then stopping while still in the 2E era -- that's the last place everything lines up and it would avoid a lot of the later continuity issues. |
| sleyvas |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 15:11:42
Ayrik,
Thanks for the link to that spelljammer timeline. I'd never seen it, and since I'm very much a latecomer to the lore of spelljammer (like 20 years or so late), I may look into that. However, I'm curious if you know about this statement that they make, because I'm also a latecomer to Mystara lore (and have been intrigued with a lot of the similarities of Mystara to the realms). That being said, the question isn't aimed just at you... I'd be interested to hear theories from anyone with a good handle on Mystaran lore.
Mystara and Red Steel have an alternative magical space travel system, but lack any direct connection to Spelljammer. There are no concrete chronological intersection points between Spelljammer and Mystara nor between Mystara and any other TSR setting, so any connection made here would be purely speculative.
So, out of curiosity... what did they do for space travel in Mystara? I know there was some storyline of a crashed ship, robots, and a nuclear reactor... but I thought that the ship that crashed somehow crossed planar boundaries and after crossing its systems quit working resulting in the crash? I've actually wondered if the nuclear material that comprises the "radiance" for Glantri might not be fun to directly tie to the lore of the Athora artifact beneath Thay.... along with other things like "Mystryl" being "created" by a "Selune ripping a portion of herself out and hurling it through Shar" being something where a radioactive comet from Mystara's universe (or the plane of radiance) tore through the moon of Selune, creating the tears, and ripping through another "non-reflective moon" (Shar) that was (is?) in orbit and crashing somewhere like the star mountains of the high forest or where Lake Halruaa is now or even "the Athora". Alternatively, it may have come not from Mystara, but through the portals to the plane of radiance (i.e. the stars of the realms, which Selune is tied to).... so a material coming from a portal to the plane of radiance MIGHT be able to be interpreted as "In a desperate move, Selūne tore a piece of magical essence from herself and hurled it at her sister. When it hit, Shar also lost a portion of her essence and was cast into the void for centuries. From the blending of dark and light energies, Mystryl was born as a being of pure magic inextricably tied to the Weave.".
If such were the case, then making "the radiance" of Glantri in Mystara (which what I read are the engines of the FSS Beagle ship, changed into the nucleus of the spheres... and MODIFIED... stress on that... by the Immortals of Mystara). So, maybe its "the radiance" because the "radioactive material" was replaced by the Immortals with material from the plane of radiance. Maybe then the "the Athora" that's beneath Thaymount was material stolen from Mystara... or the plane of radiance (maybe kind of odd for a black metal... and maybe its a portion of Shar that went into "the void" and the Sarrukh recovered it from there).
Hmm, and as I think of Selune actually "pulling an asteroid/comet" through the portals to radiance (i.e. the stars)... I actually start to think.. Why one? |
| The Masked Mage |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 14:57:29
I'd say the most direct way to bridge the three main settings (Greyhawk, FR, and DL) would be through Ed's Wizard's Three. These repeatedly place Elminster in Shadowdale while Dalamar is Master of Sorcere and Mordenkainen is in Greyhawk with the Circle. This means 2nd edition "present day" lines up directly.
From there Ravenloft connects to all three with Lord Soth, Chardath Spulzeer, and Vecna. Of these, only Chardath is present day 2nd Ed.
As mentioned before, Planescape connects to all, and Spelljammer to most directly. Dark Sun never was connected to any, but can be if you want I guess.
I also do not think Mystara was ever directly connected to any others. The only connection there that comes to mind would be through some of the "Immortals" that directly correspond to some Gods in AD&D. Obviously this means the timelines could line up any way you want.
To complicate matters, almost all of them have some variation of Time Travel as well as some version of dimensional travel. Combined, they basically make trying to match the timelines useless. :) |
| Ayrik |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 13:45:20
Dark Sun is intentionally disconnected from the other settings. Although there are vague and difficult ways to bridge them (from either side) through Spelljammer legends and Planescape devices. Vague and unusual (and conditional) enough that DMs can allow or deny crossings to whatever times or places in these worlds they like (and can even make repeated or predictable crossings impossible) without breaking "canon".
The Realms, Krynn, Greyhawk, and Earth are basically 1:1 calendar correlations for simplicity. Plus or minus some trivial unit differences because of other simplifications. In essence, one year in any of these worlds is one year in the rest of these worlds and time flows the same across them all with insignificant calendar discrepancies (unless you're spanning many centuries, millennia, or ages which would multiply these tiny differences into large offsets - or you're attempting to calculate the timings of certain events on multiple worlds with unnecessarily exacting precision).
Spelljammer and Planescape settings also offer calendar systems which are coincidentally and conveniently similar (nearly identical) to their groundling-/clueless-based setting counterparts. The diegetic explanations aren't entirely plausible (in my opinion) but the design does make things much simpler for DMs/players/authors/readers to follow.
Brian James's Temporal Chronology of the Primes (above) and Auld Dragon's Spelljammer Timeline (below) are the best multi-setting calendar compilations still online (that I know of). There used to be several others (from fans, from designers, from authors, from WotC) but they've disappeared. If the available resources are not adequate resources for your needs then your only other option is to compile, correlate, and catalogue the calendar events yourself.
http://www.spelljammer.org/essays/history/pw_timeline.html
Note that every known method of crossing between worlds either takes some time or moves through some time. So coordinating events between different worlds can be a complicated (and perhaps a meaningless) effort.
It is fortunate that WotC tended to publish events and histories across all of their settings somewhat uniformly, it makes things easier.
But it is unfortunate that WotC also published plenty of continuity errors (and edition retcons) over the years which would make projects like these into a convoluted and branching mess full of uncertain question marks. |
| Karthak |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 12:14:52
Both are pretty good sources of information, unfortunately they both take the approach of 1 year being equal across all settings, which definitely has its advantages but I'm unsure if I'll go that route over using the different length years that I've found in various source material for the following settings even if it massively complicates working out a chronology - Dark Sun, Dragonlance, Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Council of Wyrms and Mystara. |
| Brian R. James |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 01:54:38
A Temporal Chronology of the Primes |
| Storyteller Hero |
Posted - 03 Nov 2022 : 01:02:52
There's a Spelljammer timeline made a while back which might still be up if you do a Google search. It lined up different settings' timelines.
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