Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

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imgoinginane83
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Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by imgoinginane83 » Wed Sep 19, 2018 7:37 am

Okay so I know things are different on arelith than that of actual Toril. SO my question is, where in Toril's timeline are we?
Also, how many years have passed since 2016 when I last played. I'm trying to get zeth's story straight and I can't math currently after what I just did at work. :(
I'm sure its somewhere on the forums but, I don't know. Any help?
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Diilicious » Wed Sep 19, 2018 1:07 pm

If you are counting from jan 2016 then i think 27-28 years
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by The_Queen~s_Rebuke » Wed Sep 19, 2018 1:58 pm

Unless the DMs or Admins decide to change it, life off Arelith will never actually progress beyond just before the Spellplague, iirc.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by good man of god » Wed Sep 19, 2018 2:29 pm

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Party in the forest at midnight
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Party in the forest at midnight » Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:47 pm

The way I understand it is that FR's official story doesn't progress since it will massively interfere with this particular campaign story. And that's what a player world is, its own campaign story. It just lasts for a lot longer than a P&P campaign might.

I find talk about "time stopping outside of Arelith" to be confusing.

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Iceberg » Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:18 pm

Think of it like this.

In the year 1372, everything epic and fun stopped happening on the rest of Toril. It stopped happening because all of it - every single bit - came to Arelith.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Baron Saturday » Wed Sep 19, 2018 4:37 pm

Party in the forest at midnight wrote:
Wed Sep 19, 2018 3:47 pm
The way I understand it is that FR's official story doesn't progress since it will massively interfere with this particular campaign story. And that's what a player world is, its own campaign story. It just lasts for a lot longer than a P&P campaign might.

I find talk about "time stopping outside of Arelith" to be confusing.
Probably easier to think of it as a divergent timeline, yeah. Arelith shares the FR timeline up to 1372, and then everything after that is overwritten by Arelith's history.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Face » Wed Sep 19, 2018 5:54 pm

I am a lot more confused after reading this thread than I was before.

Are we in 1372 + 143 of arelith years, with nothing happening on toril or are we in 1372 with time standing still?

To add a selfish concrete example: Garagos appeared to slay a marilith in 1368. Did that happen 150ish years ago, or 4 years ago?

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Hunter548 » Wed Sep 19, 2018 6:20 pm

It's best not to think too hard about that kind of stuff; Arelith semi-frequently plays host to characters whose backstory ties into events on the mainland (Mazticans, or Amnian veterans of the wars there, Damarrans who remember the war with the Witch King of Vaasa, etc). Generally these events are implied to be semi-recent, but not immediately prior; After all, Bane has been worshipped the entire time Arelith has been around, as far as I know, but was only resurrected in the first month of DR 1372.

There's ultimately no hard and fast ruling on it, so generally I'd just follow the first rule of improv with players who reference FR canon events as directly affecting their character's backstory.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by imgoinginane83 » Thu Sep 20, 2018 3:04 am

Okay so zeth has been gone 30 years. got it! At least that's my take away.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Aelryn Bloodmoon » Thu Sep 20, 2018 4:18 am

Face wrote:
Wed Sep 19, 2018 5:54 pm
I am a lot more confused after reading this thread than I was before.

Are we in 1372 + 143 of arelith years, with nothing happening on toril or are we in 1372 with time standing still?

To add a selfish concrete example: Garagos appeared to slay a marilith in 1368. Did that happen 150ish years ago, or 4 years ago?
In your example, I'd say 150ish years ago... for the people on Arelith only.

I am not a DM and this is by no means official, but I have chosen to look at it thus; Arelith is special. The setting and fifteen years of server history certainly have enough incidents and suggestions to hint at this being true (whether it is or not). l utilize a complementary approach that allows the divergent timelines to co-exist.

There is a time "bubble" around Arelith. None of my characters know what causes it, but three of them have regular cause to leave the island via ship or spell - and as time has passed by their perspective (decades of it, no less), each time they leave and find the world in the same state they left it- and when they come back to Arelith, they noticed much more time than they spent on the mainland has passed.

One of my characters theorizes there's some sort of godly interest taking place in the region of roughly equal importance or perhaps greater than the time of troubles, and that the reason time outside Arelith seems frozen to those inside of it is that the final repercussions to Toril can't take place until things are resolved on Arelith. Whether this is a cooperative influence on the world by multiple gods or the trick of one or a few, or even some other power (damn Amn and their cowled wizards), it is readily observable IG due to the amount of history on the island that time works differently there.

The fact that the Astrolabe exists within Arelith and its often overlooked significance lends some OOC credibility to this theory, but no more so than the next without a DM chiming in - something I think any of them would rightly be wary of doing with any kind of concrete answer, as a variable undisclosed one serves future narratives better.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Ork » Thu Sep 20, 2018 12:46 pm

I actively hate the "time bubble" and "arelith is special" beliefs. Is it so challenging to play the game without justifying every little discrepancy?

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by The GrumpyCat » Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:26 pm

Arelith is set, for all intents and purposes, in 1372 DR.

When making your character, use that lore accordingly.

If you want to refer to a Date I'd generally recommend Arelith Reconning, but iif you want to use DR then really it's up to you.

Making up small 'passing details' of the outside worlds occurences is probably fine. (e.g. 'Why yes, since I left my village my mother has remarried and had two more children!'

Making up, or using major detials of events outside of Arelith is... well let's just say it's less than wise, and it's unsupported. (e.g. Ok so now Tyr is dead all Tyrans must lose their deity.)

But as others have said - there's really very little reason to worry about it too much.

Your character is played on Arelith, not the mainland. So what happens on the mainland really doesn't matter that much, in the grand scheme of things. When in doubt, presume that, in braud brush strokes, nothing mind blowingly amazing has changed since 1372 DR.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by whoisthisis » Thu Sep 20, 2018 8:43 pm

DM GrumpyCat wrote:
Thu Sep 20, 2018 2:26 pm
So what happens on the mainland really doesn't matter that much, in the grand scheme of things. When in doubt, presume that, in braud brush strokes, nothing mind blowingly amazing has changed since 1372 DR.
This is the number one thing I like about Arelith. Its set exactly at my favorite time.

I like the fact that nothing big has happened in the last 140 whatever years on the main land.

The only reason that the did the whole spell plague garbage and gods being aspects of others was to make everyone's existing sourcebooks useless. Sell more books.

It really irks me when someone shows up in game and they are using 4E or 5E lore, I just want to reach out and smack em.

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Rwby » Wed Oct 10, 2018 9:07 pm

I really like the idea that all the fun has just been sucked out the mainland and into Arelith. Fauren is just this dull boring wasteland populated by NPCs that stand around repeating the same lines of dialogue all day, because all the PCs are in Arelith...

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Ebonstar » Wed Oct 10, 2018 10:59 pm

wait we cant smack them ?
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Irongron » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:50 pm

I think there's an important point to make here, which I don't think has been addressed above.

The speed at which our 'years' pass are governed by the speed of NWN. We can't change the length of an hour when calculating spells, the day/night cycle etc, but at the same time neither can we race around the server in Fast-Forward mode.

People play the game at perfectly normal speed, and we just have to kind of flabbily accept that sitting down for a long lunch will be a couple of days of NWN calender time.

Measuring the AR Reckoning is really about being able to frame our own server history. If someone wants to RP a pregnancy accurately for instance they'll come to term less than 2 weeks later, which will likely be about 8 hours of actual play. There is no getting around just how silly this is, so in our RP we just have to avoid focusing on it too heavily.

I would argue that AR time does not move at the same speed as the FR date, at all.

If its 1372 FR and 143 AR, then the current FR date, is about 1385, not 1515

Really though, we each have juggle this our own way - with the speed of NWN there's no sense to it.

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by flower » Wed Oct 10, 2018 11:59 pm

Cannot Beamdog change now the way time is counted? Least for hours and days?

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Irongron » Thu Oct 11, 2018 12:10 am

Even if one could slow down the day/night cycle it, a lot of spells would have to be changed, 1 hour per level, or 1 min per level would now last an extraordinarly long time otherwise, and totally ruin game-play balance.

Its also not just about time, but distance, the latter here is also shown according to NWN speed. We'd be waiting RL hours for our journey by player ship to reach its destination. We'd have to say IC that Minmir is a 15 minute walk from Cordor, and that the Dark Spires montain range can be fully explored in an hour. NwN areas and resources are scaled according to NWN time. Areas would need to be about 20 times bigger for it not to throw up a different 'silliness' factor.

Whether online or around table players have to employ their imagination to fill in the gaps. I personally don't think it wise to obsess over this.

EDIT: Followers of the Morninglord would have to set their alarm clocks for 5am so as to praise the dawn. Drow would have be up in the middle of the RL night to go raiding on the surface. I really could go on and on!

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Irongron » Thu Oct 11, 2018 12:39 am

Actually this thread has triggered one of my rambles, so apologies in advance...

Neverwinter Nights sought to emulate the PnP RPG experience in a game, and as our promotional fliers state it can be 'the next best thing', because in so manys it simply never can.

One of these is time (I could type at length about all the others). In a D&D game players will adjust the speed of time as they need to, sometimes living in the moment, sometimes passing days/weeks/months in a matter of minutes. A week spent hiding out in a wooden shack in an RPG can be 45 mins of engaging and enjoyable RP, doing that on Arelith would be strain the sanity of anyone.

In a single player RPG computer game one can do the same, with cutscenes, or time-jumps, but it cannot be done in any game that attempts to offer a persistent environment.

One of the few other games I play is Elite Dangerous, a space-faring game which emulates the size of the entire galaxy. Even at FTL speeds the main game play area is a tiny fraction of the map, and travelling to a distant planet in a single solar system can take upwards of an hour.

In Elite some players have taken to colonising a different part of the galaxy. Even in the very best ship one can expect to take 30 hours to reach it, during which time NOTHING HAPPENS, save for the obligation to fire up your hyperspace drive for frequent jumps or collect fuel from one of the thousands of stars you might pass. There's nobody with you, no communication with other players in the world, zilch. Players will spend 1-2 hours of each RL day, for up to an RL month simply sitting at their machine. You can't do it AFK, or set up a macro because the distances you might need to fly to collect your fuel, align with the next correct star along your path are not uniform - once again this is a game that prides itself on being an accurate rendering of the galaxy.

This article is from a year ago, after a few years of thousands of players attempting to explore it.

https://www.pcgamer.com/elite-dangerous ... he-galaxy/

Every time I consider how long it takes our ships to reach their destination, or I'm watching Arelith's caravan cut-scene I think of this game. Elite has a big RP base, and they wouldn't have this realism any other way.

Back to D&D though, unlike a tabletop game Arelith has to be able to fill every minute. Sure people can sit back and RP, but if they don't we're not going to have players walk for 3 hours to fight a band of orcs over 45 seconds of action.

NWN time is just one way of accounting for this problem that comes with having a persistent game of this type, now with Elite we can see the alternative, and sure, I like it in small doses, but for Arelith? Yikes.

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Irongron » Thu Oct 11, 2018 12:46 am

Oh, and further to my last two posts, its worth noting the impressive and novel approach our fellow NWN EE PW server has taken to this issue, relaunching their server to tell different chapters of a story, often taking place years after the previous incarnation.

http://www.efupw.com/the-story-so-far.html

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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by triaddraykin » Thu Oct 11, 2018 4:38 am

My own approach, which isn't something my characters are aware of (one knows something is off), is like the old decision-based multiversal theory. To summarize the RL one, it's that every decision you make creates a new timeline branch, and in the course of a single person's lifetime there are millions of branches. Occam's razor scoffs at this, of course.

In the same line of thought, our characters have their own timeline in the Arelith universe. Their decisions don't create new ones, but their existence does. Each character is going through their own timeline, on which Arelith they are all present and 'active'... But off the archipelago they are on their own, unless something causes their timeline to intersect with another character's timeline. That something is the players deciding to collaborate with other players on their stories.

An example here: A character is a noble of a city, and their family squabbles with them, and they have their own effect on that city. Another character would have their effects, but these wouldn't overlap... Unless they do. This other person could be a long-lost cousin of the first character, and thus their stories interweave, where they would otherwise be separate.

Because of the tendency to have a lot of people from Waterdeep or Amn, or otherwise, it might be best to create your own small town or city if you intend for your character to be important in their own backstory.

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In all of this, though, no matter your approach, I think the best way to handle it is asking the questions we should always ask: Is it fun? Is it fair? Does it harm the fun of others? Does it help them tell their story? Does it inspire others to tell theirs? ... Little bit preachy, I know. Maybe not all those need to be answered, and there's more questions to ask. Anyways. Love you guys, see you in-game.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Mithreas » Thu Oct 11, 2018 5:18 am

I'm reminded of a conversation JJ, Artos and I had at a long-ago dev team meeting* around the time of the Baator launch. We were mulling the idea of making respawning more explicitly IC by having a devil prince in the death area who owns all the souls in Arelith. The idea was that everyone on the server is trapped in this devil's pocket plane, essentially toys, doomed to continue striving for as long as the devil didn't get bored of them.

We never went ahead with it, but the theme of "Arelith has its own continuity anchored to a single point in FR timeline" has always been the starting point for timeline discussions.

* Held at a Mexican restaurant with a couple of pitchers of margarita, like almost all such meetings.
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Re: Our timeline compared to the 'outside' world.

Post by Baron Saturday » Thu Oct 11, 2018 6:45 am

Mithreas wrote:
Thu Oct 11, 2018 5:18 am
The idea was that everyone on the server is trapped in this devil's pocket plane, essentially toys, doomed to continue striving for as long as the devil didn't get bored of them.
This explains a lot about a certain FL plotline which I fondly recall...
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