Talk:Dwilight/Timeline

Guidelines for Inclusion of Events

Items to include on the timeline

• Founding/destruction of realms
• Capturing/change of ownership of cities/strongholds
• Tournaments
• War declarations
• Founding/destruction of religions
• Changes of ruler

Things not to include on the timeline

• Capture/change of possession of minor regions (anything not a city or stronghold)
• Minor diplomacy changes
• Non-ruler elections/appointments

If we add too much minor stuff, then the timeline will rapidly fill with all kinds of useless minutia and make the history too ponderous. If a specific series of events, each too minor to include by itself, occurs and makes a significant aggregate event, then add a subpage with a single entry on the timeline, such as was done with the Timeline of East Continent for The Krimml Incident.

Conversion to Dwilight Years

Since Dwilight has seasons, we actually have a concrete reference for IC years on Dwilight. I have converted the timeline over to use years based on 1 year = a four-season cycle. Since Dwilight started in Summer, I have set the year rotation to be the start of summer. I have converted the years back to 2008, and put them in italics. Ideally, they are just for our reference anyway. --Indirik 23:41, 3 September 2008 (CEST)

Great idea. Year 1, Year 2, ect... looks and sounds kinda bland though. Maybe change it to something like "The First year of Colinization" or "The First Year A.C. (After Colinization)."--Athins 08:20, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

I thought about that. (Actually, Arakiss started the idea, we hashed it out, and I did the conversion.) I prefer to not use abbreviations like AC/BC, or stuff like that. Too much like BC/AD (or the new-fangled, politically correct BCE/CE garbage). Naming the years is a good idea, if we can think of enough good names for them. The "Year of Arrival", "Year of Colonization", etc. are good places to start. Perhaps when we start a Second Age, like perhaps if one of the original realms fail, or the netherworld invades, etc., then the Age itself can be named, too. --Indirik 15:02, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

The initial idea was that we use AC, BC (AC for After Civilization) but then the list could go on and on, as every major historical change could be seen by individuals as a need to change the era - which simply needs too many different references. I also thought that it would benefit RP if major realms have their own different calendars, but after consulting with Indirik I changed my mind as probably every realm would wanna have their own calendar then. To name the years is good, but naming ages or eras sounds even better to me. This first age could be called something like the Age of Survival, Age of Infancy, Age of Colonization... But it is clear that it'll be a hard job on agreeing which event marks the beginning or the end of an era, but it has to be something really really big. --Arakiss 20:10, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

I guess that makes sense. I like you idea for the first two as the first year was primarily the original realms and the second year is when the colonies started to spring up. Maybe for the third, something to do with the battling of monsters and undead. As for eras, I like how the EC timeline is done, not really naming the era, but stating the events that begun it and ended it. Figuring out when eras change is fairly hard to do, as some people will have different opinions. It's really something that has to be done way after the fact as well. It will take months to know that an era has actually changed in most cases. --Athins 21:56, 4 September 2008 (CEST)

Well, good luck getting others to adopt it. People have been trying for as long as I've been in the game to get one non-RL dating system or another into widespread use, and all have failed (except for the mostly-RL convention of subtracting 1000 years from the current date, as below). --Anaris 14:18, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I know. It may never get adopted in any way at all. However, the game itself does give us an actual framework we can use now, so why not? It's not like we're making up some completely artificial reference. We have seasons! The simple convention of four season per year, making the not-unrealistic assumption that we're on a nearly-parallel Earth, is perfectly reasonable. So why not track time as a function of those season? --Indirik 15:36, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

At first I was going to object because we know characters age a year about every 3 to 4 months(can't remember which). But before I ended up looking foolish, I decided to check season lengths(3 weeks). With 12 seasons equaling 3 months, I conclude that it is safe to use this as a year in Dwilight, possibly all of BM. --Vita Family 16:28, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

I believe Tom has stated (something like) that a year in BattleMaster is equal to a year on Earth, it's just that seasons run faster in BattleMaster than they do here. I'll have to go digging to find the quote, though. --Anaris 18:07, 5 September 2008 (CEST)

Dates

What's with this 1008 non-sense? The game works with societies that are 1200-1500, really, so the relation really has little relevance, and was never supported by the game, it was just proposed by some players, and besides, it could also be interesting for different realms to have a different calendar, an eventuality, perhaps (like the chinese don't use our western grogorian calendar). I'd say we leave it to 2008, to avoid any possible confusing, not to mention alot of those things are OOC. -Chénier 15:37, 28 March 2008 (CET)

First, we do not need to use our planet earth / western cristian calendar at all, so there is no reason to use 1200-1500 either. However, quite a few people have started using '1008' here, corresponding to '2008' in the real world. It gives you an easy reference frame to how long certain wars for example did last...and it does just look quite a bit more medieval than '2008'. So I guess its a matter of preference...basically anything is better than 2008...grin TanSerrai 18:00, 28 March 2008 (CET)

Chénier, please, dont offend people by saying "this nonsense". As TanSerrai said, there is no reason to use the gregorian calendar or the 1200-1500 range. Some people, me included, began to use it in 2007, to reflect a more "medieval" feellig of that notation. You want to use other notation type in your proyects, good for you, it would be fun to see another calendar in the game, but this is as valid has what you can think. --Baldur Mekorig

Speaking as the person who has done the majority of the work on this project, I see nothing wrong with using 1008. I used 2008 because I was copying the format of the EC timeline, which was not originally started by me. Also to whoever added color, nice touch.--Athins 02:09, 29 March 2008 (CET).

Chenier, The Middle ages were from 900 AD to 1350 AD. After 1350 it was called the Renaissance. So the 1200-1500 timeline wont work. There is nothing confusing, I'm sure everyone can add or subtract 1000 here. Ceorl 14:00, 29 March 2008 (CET)

Officially, 1008 is somewhat in the middle of the Middle Ages, because officially the Middle Ages started in 476 with the fall of Rome and the Western Roman Empire, and lasted until 1453 with the fall of Constantinople and the Byzantine Empire (Eastern Roman Empire). The feudalism that Tom is trying to reach with the oath systems and such things went from the 9th to the 14th century, like Ceorl says here above. So there's nothing wrong with 1008, back then people were waking up early to stand in a line for their Lord's early greeting and food for that day, as was the case in the period of feudalism. Medium 15:54, 29 March 2008 (CET)

"From the 9th to the 14th centuries—the heyday of feudalism—" - Wikipedia. I think this is BM time period. Ceorl 18:11, 29 March 2008 (CET)

I believe I may have been the first person to use the 100X year system. I tried to work out a calendar based on BM seasons and all, failed completely, and so resorted to the simple 100X notation. It allows us to escape the mundanity of 200X (that is to say, the obtrusive presence of obviously modern dates) dating conventions, without doing any complex math. Its a simple system, though I usually reference each RL year as a "cycle," lasting anywhere from 2-4 actual game years. Its just that backdating the cycles would be an extremely difficult task, and it'd warp time to start using 4 yr/1 yr conventions now. I started using the 100X dating conventions in... 2006 I believe? I can't remember seeing it before I used it, but my memory might be failing me. Vellos 06:55, 30 March 2008 (CEST)