Need help making D&D Campaign Timeline?

[171akup]

I am trying to make a D&D 3.5 Campaign and I need help making a Timeline and want to know how go about it. Like Era, Century and Calendar? I would like some help and The World will be similar to Earth but bigger but still 24 hours in one day but I do not know what a good place to go from They're? LOL. :smallbiggrin:

[Jallorn]

I... don't exactly know what you're asking. Are you looking for help creating the history of the setting? Or are you looking to play with a different calendar system?

Is all you have about the world that it's, "like earth, but bigger, but still with 24 hour days?" Because that's not really anything at all. Check out The Giant's The New World articles over in the gaming tab to the left here. They're not done, but what is there gives a good walkthrough of one process of making a world. I built my first world following along with those articles somewhat.

Also, a tip: if you're building this for a specific campaign, bigger than the earth is somewhat superfluous. It's far more helpful for both DM and Players to have a lot more depth on a much smaller scale. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever build the whole world, just that your players aren't likely to see most of it. If you're building the world somewhat more for practice and/or personal enjoyment, then that concern isn't quite so relevant.

TLDR: What exactly are you asking, and what do you know so far about the world?

[171akup]

I... don't exactly know what you're asking. Are you looking for help creating the history of the setting? Or are you looking to play with a different calendar system?

Is all you have about the world that it's, "like earth, but bigger, but still with 24 hour days?" Because that's not really anything at all. Check out The Giant's The New World articles over in the gaming tab to the left here. They're not done, but what is there gives a good walkthrough of one process of making a world. I built my first world following along with those articles somewhat.

Also, a tip: if you're building this for a specific campaign, bigger than the earth is somewhat superfluous. It's far more helpful for both DM and Players to have a lot more depth on a much smaller scale. That doesn't mean you shouldn't ever build the whole world, just that your players aren't likely to see most of it. If you're building the world somewhat more for practice and/or personal enjoyment, then that concern isn't quite so relevant.

TLDR: What exactly are you asking, and what do you know so far about the world?

I have a lot of the world figured out but one crucial part is when it happened. So a calendar system does the thing I need. Because the events are there but have no way of saying when they happened only the default place holders. Being a long time ago, years ago, in ancient time and etc. So that is what I need. :smallbiggrin:

[Jallorn]

Well, if the world is earth-like, what's wrong with using the standard calendar system? Maybe not the year, but the months and days work fine.

Why do you want a new one? Anything new that the players need to learn should tell them something about the world, so either you should tell us about your world so we can let that knowledge shape the calendar system appropriately, or you should at least discuss the themes you want to be present in the system.

[171akup]

Well, if the world is earth-like, what's wrong with using the standard calendar system? Maybe not the year, but the months and days work fine.

Why do you want a new one? Anything new that the players need to learn should tell them something about the world, so either you should tell us about your world so we can let that knowledge shape the calendar system appropriately, or you should at least discuss the themes you want to be present in the system.

Well I want to have different names of the month and something like a D&D version of the Chinese thing. Like year of the dragon and other D&D creatures and how many and which ones name of the Era's. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: Some of the things that are from the past actually worth mentioning that I have thought of are that the crossbow (Light, Heavy, Hand and Repeating) was created by Ogre's. Also gunpowder was discovered and created by an Ancient sub-race of that is nearly extinct. And I also need to find some single words that describe each Month. :smallbiggrin:

[Jallorn]

Well, the months in the real world are named after gods, or famous people. January, for instance, is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of entrances and exits, beginings and endings. Here's a comprehensive list. (http://www.pantheon.org/miscellaneous/origin_months.html)

[171akup]

Well, the months in the real world are named after gods, or famous people. January, for instance, is named for the Roman god Janus, the god of entrances and exits, beginings and endings. Here's a comprehensive list. (http://www.pantheon.org/miscellaneous/origin_months.html)

Thx, That really helped now I have 12 names for the months and the IRL name that they replace.

Deities and the Months based off of them:


1.Pelor/Aurifar-First Month is Solis. (January)

2.Evening Glory-Second Month is Amor. (February)

3.Hextor-Third Month is Bellum. (March)

4.Olidammara-Fourth Month is Fraus. (April)

5.Heironeous-Fifth Month is Militiae. (May)

6.Lady Maya-Sixth Month is Regina. (June)

7.Boccob-Seventh Month is Statera. (July)

8.Gruumsh-Eighth Month is Ipsum. (August)

9.Obad-Hai-Ninth Month is Natura. (September)

10.Nerull-Tenth Month is Obscuro. (October)

11.Pholtus-Eleventh Month is Lucem. (November)

12.Telchur-Twelfth Month is Hibernis. (December)

And now I need names for Era's. Also I need to figure out the number of the year for the present and any past events that need to be added. :smallbiggrin:

Edit: Also since I can't stand the different number of days in a real month, the month's in my campaign are going to have exactly 30 days in one month. So 12 months times 30 days for each is 12x30=360. Also I am thinking of starting Winter on the first day of Hibernis, the first day of Bellum is Spring, the first day of Regina is Summer and the first day of Natura is Fall.

[Everyl]

And now I need names for Era's. Also I need to figure out the number of the year for the present and any past events that need to be added. :smallbiggrin:

When it comes to eras, keep in mind that events significant enough to mark a new era are often very local. In real-world history, it was very common for even closely-related peoples to have very different calendars; every Greek city-state had their own way of reckoning the years, and the only way their historians could keep dates straight was by counting from events that affected all the city-states, like Olympic games. "In the year of the twentieth Olympiad" isn't just a poetic-sounding reference, it was the only way to be sure that readers from every Greek-speaking city would know when you were talking about.

If you want a general calendar that would be recognized by many diverse people, there would need to be some way that everyone would notice the events that mark the change-over between eras. If the Gods of the setting are universal (that is to say, you can't find humans who've never heard of Pelor just by going to a distant enough land), then the eras might be somehow divinely mandated. For example, I once played in a game where each god in the setting was dominant for a 1000-year stretch, so the eras were reckoned by which god was dominant at the time.

If you just need a calendar for a "big enough" part of a world, then things get a little easier. It's far more likely for events to affect a country, region, or continent all at once than to affect an entire planet. The Era of Dragons might coincide with a time period when several dragons colluded to overthrow the largest kingdoms in the land, setting themselves up as new rulers. The Age of Devils might be a time period after a series of volcanic eruptions (like Eyjaffjallajokull (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull) and Katla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katla_volcano)) cover the sky with ash clouds, leading to a time of hardship - whether or not devils were actually involved in the eruptions.

If you're looking for an ongoing cycle of years like the Chinese zodiac, you just need to decide what symbols are important enough to the people of the setting to get years named after them. For added fun, make it multiple interlocking cycles; the Chinese zodiac has the well-known 12-year cycle of animals, plus a less-known-in-the-West 5-year cycle of elements, resulting in a 60-year combined cycle before any element-animal pair repeats. 2012 was, for example, the year of the Water Dragon. Both Water and Dragon have their symbolic associations, and the two are combined when dealing with the astrology/superstitions of that year.

Since you already have a listing of 12 gods for whom the months are named, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assign them years, too. Major symbols tend to get reused a lot by many cultures, like the way we use the names of gods for months, days of the week, and planets. In China and its cultural sphere of influence, the five elements are used in the zodiac cycle, the names of the planets, and the days of the week, while the 12 animals were used in the zodiac and the time of day.

It all comes down to what would be important enough for people to name their units of time after it. If you can figure that out, the rest shouldn't be hard.

[171akup]

When it comes to eras, keep in mind that events significant enough to mark a new era are often very local. In real-world history, it was very common for even closely-related peoples to have very different calendars; every Greek city-state had their own way of reckoning the years, and the only way their historians could keep dates straight was by counting from events that affected all the city-states, like Olympic games. "In the year of the twentieth Olympiad" isn't just a poetic-sounding reference, it was the only way to be sure that readers from every Greek-speaking city would know when you were talking about.

If you want a general calendar that would be recognized by many diverse people, there would need to be some way that everyone would notice the events that mark the change-over between eras. If the Gods of the setting are universal (that is to say, you can't find humans who've never heard of Pelor just by going to a distant enough land), then the eras might be somehow divinely mandated. For example, I once played in a game where each god in the setting was dominant for a 1000-year stretch, so the eras were reckoned by which god was dominant at the time.

If you just need a calendar for a "big enough" part of a world, then things get a little easier. It's far more likely for events to affect a country, region, or continent all at once than to affect an entire planet. The Era of Dragons might coincide with a time period when several dragons colluded to overthrow the largest kingdoms in the land, setting themselves up as new rulers. The Age of Devils might be a time period after a series of volcanic eruptions (like Eyjaffjallajokull (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eyjafjallaj%C3%B6kull) and Katla (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Katla_volcano)) cover the sky with ash clouds, leading to a time of hardship - whether or not devils were actually involved in the eruptions.

If you're looking for an ongoing cycle of years like the Chinese zodiac, you just need to decide what symbols are important enough to the people of the setting to get years named after them. For added fun, make it multiple interlocking cycles; the Chinese zodiac has the well-known 12-year cycle of animals, plus a less-known-in-the-West 5-year cycle of elements, resulting in a 60-year combined cycle before any element-animal pair repeats. 2012 was, for example, the year of the Water Dragon. Both Water and Dragon have their symbolic associations, and the two are combined when dealing with the astrology/superstitions of that year.

Since you already have a listing of 12 gods for whom the months are named, it wouldn't be unreasonable to assign them years, too. Major symbols tend to get reused a lot by many cultures, like the way we use the names of gods for months, days of the week, and planets. In China and its cultural sphere of influence, the five elements are used in the zodiac cycle, the names of the planets, and the days of the week, while the 12 animals were used in the zodiac and the time of day.

It all comes down to what would be important enough for people to name their units of time after it. If you can figure that out, the rest shouldn't be hard.

Well for days of the week I am thinking of having none and just saying for example...The 23rd of Solis. Also I was thinking of naming the zodiac thing with wild animals instead of the actual zodiac for example...Year of the Owlbear. And for the world everyone is connected because of the whole magic thing except for one continent. Here is some addition to help...China's Isolation with a giant wall + Nazi's except pure human + Star Wars Technology + The force + a super continent like Pangaea. Also the are only going to be there for the first campaign and in the epilogue they will leave with no one knowing and take all there technology with them. And since they also can not be scryed upon half because they are so advanced and the other half is because they don't worship any of there deities the only ones who can see them is the deities. Also I need to find out the year for example...this year is 2014. So I wanna be able to say the date and have a year for a detail in the campaign for example...The 8th of Regina in the year 2014. And that is what the real date would be in my calendar. :smallbiggrin:

[VoxRationis]

Might I ask why the eighth month is called "the thing itself?" Your names are all Latin, but their cases vary considerably. Some are accusative (Lucem); some are nominative; some are genitive. Is this intentional?

[171akup]

Might I ask why the eighth month is called "the thing itself?" Your names are all Latin, but their cases vary considerably. Some are accusative (Lucem); some are nominative; some are genitive. Is this intentional?

Well when I made the names I thought of what made them special and put a deity there and then thought up a word that represents both the month's specialness and the deity like October's word was dark because of Halloween and then I put each word into Google translate. English to Latin and I put that word in it's place. So basically it is Google translate that made it weird like that. :smallbiggrin:

[Everyl]

I think you'll have better results if you theme your timeline to match other aspects of the setting, but I'm bored, so here's something I came up with.

The largest unit of time commonly in use is the Cycle, a 90-year period. The years in a Cycle are often referred to in numerical shorthand; for example, 7c27 is the 27th year of the 7th Cycle. They are also commonly referred to by a pair of smaller interlocking loops, one containing 9 gods (one of each alignment) and the other containing 10 wild animals. The loops proceed as follows:

The Gods:
1. Hextor (LE)
2. Olidammara (CG; CN in the references I found, but you don't have any CG deities in the months)
3. Nerull (NE)
4. Heironeus (LG)
5. Telchur (CN)
6. Pelor (NG)
7. Gruumsh (CE)
8. Pholtus (LN; you didn't have any less-ambiguously-LN deities in the months)
9. Boccob (TN)

The beasts:
1. Ankheg
2. Unicorn
3. Griffon
4. Chimera
5. Roc
6. Owlbear
7. Wyvern
8. Basilisk
9. Stirge
10. Gorgon

So, for example, year 1 of a cycle is the Year of Hextor's Ankheg, year 2 is the Year of Olidammara's Unicorn, year 10 is the Year of Hextor's Gorgon, and year 54 is the Year of Boccob's Chimera. Common people likely have a variety of superstitions associated with the various years, deriving from their associations with various gods and (potentially dangerous) animals.

Assume that 1c1 is the beginning of the calendar. If you want the "present day" of the setting to be the 2014th year, it would be 23c34, or the Year of Gruumsh's Chimera in the Twenty-Second Cycle. Because a cycle is close to a century in length, it would be pretty straightforward to consider that people would divide history up by cycle much the way that we divide history by centuries IRL. "Steam power became common in the twenty-first Cycle" would be roughly equivalent to "Steam power became common in the nineteenth century" IRL, for example.

You'll probably want to change the exact deities and beasts around a bit to fit your setting. Several of the Gods are shoehorned into not-quite-appropriate alignments (Olidammara and Pholtus in particular) because CG and LN aren't represented in the month names, and I don't know which other gods you're planning to include. The "animals" were chosen because they had fairly natural-sounding one-word names and look like animals, regardless of actual intelligence, and just about anything else that exists in your setting and/or its mythology could work.

[171akup]

I think you'll have better results if you theme your timeline to match other aspects of the setting, but I'm bored, so here's something I came up with.

The largest unit of time commonly in use is the Cycle, a 90-year period. The years in a Cycle are often referred to in numerical shorthand; for example, 7c27 is the 27th year of the 7th Cycle. They are also commonly referred to by a pair of smaller interlocking loops, one containing 9 gods (one of each alignment) and the other containing 10 wild animals. The loops proceed as follows:

The Gods:
1. Hextor (LE)
2. Olidammara (CG; CN in the references I found, but you don't have any CG deities in the months)
3. Nerull (NE)
4. Heironeus (LG)
5. Telchur (CN)
6. Pelor (NG)
7. Gruumsh (CE)
8. Pholtus (LN; you didn't have any less-ambiguously-LN deities in the months)
9. Boccob (TN)

The beasts:
1. Ankheg
2. Unicorn
3. Griffon
4. Chimera
5. Roc
6. Owlbear
7. Wyvern
8. Basilisk
9. Stirge
10. Gorgon

So, for example, year 1 of a cycle is the Year of Hextor's Ankheg, year 2 is the Year of Olidammara's Unicorn, year 10 is the Year 10 Hextor's Gorgon, and yera 54 is the Year of Boccob's Chimera. Common people likely have a variety of superstitions associated with the various years, deriving from their associations with various gods and (potentially dangerous) animals.

Assume that 1c1 is the beginning of the calendar. If you want the "present day" of the setting to be the 2014th year, it would be 23c34, or the Year of Gruumsh's Chimera in the Twenty-Second Cycle. Because a cycle is close to a century in length, it would be pretty straightforward to consider that people would divide history up by cycle much the way that we divide history by centuries IRL. "Steam power became common in the twenty-first Cycle" would be roughly equivalent to "Steam power became common in the nineteenth century" IRL, for example.

You'll probably want to change the exact deities and beasts around a bit to fit your setting. Several of the Gods are shoehorned into not-quite-appropriate alignments (Olidammara and Pholtus in particular) because CG and LN aren't represented in the month names, and I don't know which other gods you're planning to include. The "animals" were chosen because they had fairly natural-sounding one-word names and look like animals, regardless of actual intelligence, and just about anything else that exists in your setting and/or its mythology could work.

Well I will allow any deity from books and on my approval custom deities. Also the paragraph after you listed beasts you misspelled year "yera" lol just letting you know. :smallbiggrin:

[VoxRationis]

Also the paragraph after you listed beasts you misspelled year "yera" lol just letting you know.


I am trying to make a D&D 3.5 Campaign and I need help making a Timeline and want to know how go about it. Like Era, Century and Calendar? I would like some help and The World will be similar to Earth but bigger but still 24 hours in one day but I do not know what a good place to go from They're? LOL. :smallbiggrin:

Ahem. Pot and kettle, anyone?

[VoxRationis]

You should probably begin thinking of an appropriate "Year 1" to base the calendar system on. This is a necessity for all calendar systems. The Romans had a calendar starting ab urbe condita, or from the founding of Rome. The Christians and Muslims have calendars starting from dates important to their respective faiths. A hypothetical civilization with a very precise sense of when the universe began (whether or not they are correct) might use that as the logical starting point. A good "default" Year 1 if you have a large, centralized state in the setting's past or present would be the year in which the First Emperor or Legendary King or what have you first began his campaign of conquest. Others might include:
-The beginning or completion of a great monument
-The coronation of the present monarch (this was in use for a lot of people in a lot of cultures and time periods, but it makes keeping track of accurate dates past the last hundred years or so a pain)
-The date of some great divine revelation or momentous event
-The birthdate of an influential figure, be they political, religious, or even scientific