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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 9:37:41 GMT -5
I'm surprised I haven't r bad more about how broken the calendar is; it doesn't work. Celene has a cycle that completes four times a year. in a 360 day year that's every 90 days. Nothing really out of whack about that. Luna has 28 day cycles which the months are based on. But the months can't be based on a 28 day lunar cycle in a 360 day year. Throwing in the six day festivals every three months totally derails that.
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Post by grodog on Jan 27, 2019 9:57:15 GMT -5
There have been some mathematicans and astrophysicists who discussed the Greyhawk calendar over at the Canonfire! forums over the past few years, but they've focused on eclipses, and the phases of the moons relative to one another IIRC. I use Clay Luther's calendar files: 1. Clay Luther's Clay Luther's Greyhawk Calendar @ www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/greyhawk_calendar.pdf2. And an alternate version of the same calendar additional Greyhawk holidays added @ www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/clay_luthers_greyhawk_calendar-with-expanded-holidays.pdfFrom the math POV, it should work like this, right?: 360 days/year = 360 28 days/month x 12 months = 336 4 week-long festivals/year = 28 === = 364 days It looks like the 4 festivals each need to be one day shorter then, which makes them not a full-week long. Is that what you're talking about derailing the math? I haven't gone back to compare, but IIRC the calendar details between the Folio and Boxed Set change slightly, don't they? Does that account for the math error? Allan.
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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 9:59:44 GMT -5
That's another oddity, the festivals are only six days long.
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Post by grodog on Jan 27, 2019 10:08:04 GMT -5
The folio doesn't state the lengths of the festivals, but the boxed set does indicate that they're 7 days long, which is clearly wrong.
Allan.
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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 10:08:22 GMT -5
There have been some mathematicans and astrophysicists who discussed the Greyhawk calendar over at the Canonfire! forums over the past few years, but they've focused on eclipses, and the phases of the moons relative to one another IIRC. I use Clay Luther's calendar files: 1. Clay Luther's Clay Luther's Greyhawk Calendar @ www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/greyhawk_calendar.pdf2. And an alternate version of the same calendar additional Greyhawk holidays added @ www.greyhawkonline.com/canonfire/clay_luthers_greyhawk_calendar-with-expanded-holidays.pdfFrom the math POV, it should work like this, right?: 360 days/year = 360 28 days/month x 12 months = 336 4 week-long festivals/year = 28 === = 364 days It looks like the 4 festivals each need to be one day shorter then, which makes them not a full-week long. Is that what you're talking about derailing the math? I haven't gone back to compare, but IIRC the calendar details between the Folio and Boxed Set change slightly, don't they? Does that account for the math error? Allan. The big error is that the festivals throw off the moon/month cycle. Sticking a six day festival before Needfest means Luna will already be six days into its 28 day cycle on the first day of Fireseek. And after Growfest it will be 12 days into its cycle on the first day of Planting, etc. And because 28 doesn't go into 360 evenly, Luna will be in different phases on specific days every year.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 27, 2019 10:12:06 GMT -5
I thought the calendar worked as long as there are 364 days in the year, a dozen 28 day months and four 7 day festivals quarterly that aren't part of any month. That way, Luna is full every 28 days and Celene is full every 91 days -- thirteen cycles for Luna and four for Celene in a year. The only time both moons are full at the same time is Richfest 4th which is Midsummer's Eve.
You would think the middle day of the week would be called Moonday, since that is the day when moons are full, but this is actually Godsday. Moonday is the third day of the week, not the fourth and middle day. A moon is only full on a Godsday Eve.
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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 10:13:28 GMT -5
The folio doesn't state the lengths of the festivals, but the boxed set does indicate that they're 7 days long, which is clearly wrong. Allan. The Folio does specify that they are six days long (very last line on p. 4). Which is what I was going with, since it's consistent with the 360 day year, and not the box set 7 day long version.
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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 10:21:04 GMT -5
But even if you do go with a 7 day festival it still throws the lunar month cycle off.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 27, 2019 10:42:05 GMT -5
Yeah, it's counterintuitive for a month to be based on the phases of Luna yet not have Luna be full the same day every month. But it could be worse, you could have mad Overkings renaming months after themselves and making them longer than other months. "Pa, how come there are 30 days in the month of Ividary, but only 29 days in Raxember?"
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Post by Scott on Jan 27, 2019 10:55:35 GMT -5
You could go with seven day festivals, a 364 day year, and just accept that the months aren’t really based on a lunar cycle. At least that works on a yearly basis. Having working lunar months would require a major overhaul.
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Post by grodog on Jan 27, 2019 13:17:12 GMT -5
The folio doesn't state the lengths of the festivals, but the boxed set does indicate that they're 7 days long, which is clearly wrong. Allan. The Folio does specify that they are six days long (very last line on p. 4). Which is what I was going with, since it's consistent with the 360 day year, and not the box set 7 day long version. I didn't scroll down far enough on the page, apparently, when pulling it up You could go with seven day festivals, a 364 day year, and just accept that the months aren’t really based on a lunar cycle. At least that works on a yearly basis. Having working lunar months would require a major overhaul. By extending the year to 364 days, then in effect you end up with 13 lunar months vs. 12, so the moons will be in different phases each month due to the offset weeks of the festivals (which is your point, of course). I think that's how Clay's calendar is structured: both moons are full during Richfest, but never new together on the same date (though they are within the same week's span). Allan.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 27, 2019 13:53:09 GMT -5
The Folio states (p. 4): "The sun travels once around Oerth in 360 days, visiting the 12 Lairs of the Zodiac in an appointed round which never varies. The Great Moon (Luna) waxes and wanes in fixed cycles of 28 days each, upon which our months are based; while the Handmaiden (Celene, the small aquamarine satellite) follows a path which shows Her in full beauty but four times each year, thus showing us the time for our Festivals. When both Mistress and Handmaiden are full, things of great portent are likely to occur, depending upon the positions of the five wandering stars in the Lairs, naturally... Each month has twenty-eight days. Each Festival is 6 days long."
EGG must have been aware of problems with the calendar, because the Guide (p.4) states: "The sun travels once around Oerth in 364 days, visiting the 12 Lairs of the Zodiac in an appointed round which never varies" and (p. 5): "Each month has 28 days. Each festival is seven days long."
So, EGG made two changes to the calendar from the Folio to the boxed set: the number of days in the year from 360 to 364, and the length of each festival from six days to seven days. This fixes the problems, although still leaves awkward phrases like "fixed cycles of 28 days each, upon which our months are based" and "The Dozenmonth of the moon." If the months are based on the lunar cycle, why are they out of alignment? That makes no sense. Still, the boxed set version works better, and additionally has the phases of Luna and Celene given in the Glossography (p. 19), so that is easiest to go with. You just have to ignore the months are out of sync with Luna since there are 12 months but 13 lunar cycles. Or you could say it is due to an obscure, historical reason such as religious practices separating one of original thirteen months out into the four Festivals leaving only twelve months. Maybe they did this because the thirteenth month was considered unlucky, or the gods wanted special periods of veneration and celebration like Saturnalia. Our own real world calendar has plenty of oddities in its history, so the same could be true about the World of Greyhawk calendar.
There may be other ways to fix the Folio version of the calendar such as to have twelve 30 day months and the Festivals occurring on days within those months, but why bother with the effort? The Greyhawk calendar serves its purpose well of providing fantasy setting flavor regardless of which version you use, and it is unlikely players will notice or care if it isn't perfect.
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Post by grodog on Jan 27, 2019 14:44:07 GMT -5
Very nice summary, Gary!
Eliminating the festivals for some of the alternate calendars might be fun, too---perhaps the Olven or Flan calendars have 13 months, for example. That would require some further tweaking of course, but might be a fun way to differentiate calendars more across different cultures, adding some of that real-world variability like the change in dates from pre- to post-Gregorian calendar reckoning.
Allan.
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TimS
Prestidigitat
Posts: 10
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Post by TimS on Jan 28, 2019 1:39:10 GMT -5
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Post by geneweigel on Jan 28, 2019 11:33:53 GMT -5
I have Greyhawk dates for sessions that were said in-game but otherwise I usually ignored any dates if it didn't correlate with modern times. Thats just my view. If its in Spring then its in played out in virtua-Spring otherwise its too confusing for everyone to have a timeline thats seemingly exponentionally larger than when they actually played. In general, for my world, no dates are ever mentioned sort of as why is everyone in LORD OF THE RINGS speaking English anyway? So everything is a manageable generality of unquantifiable legendary guesswork. God, I hope someone doesn't write a history for my adventure module based on my ten tons of snippets of how this adventure got laid out... In 2020, someone DMing Gene's adventure module..."The monster ruled the area for an eon until villagers were visited by Elminster at this time 400 years prior..." Gene's fist break out of page of module and punches DM in nose."Geez, this text is acerbic!"
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Post by Scott on Jan 28, 2019 22:12:59 GMT -5
I've seen that calendar before. It's a good one for the Guide info. I use it now again when I'm trying to figure something out.
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Post by GRWelsh on Jan 29, 2019 9:42:48 GMT -5
I've wanted to do more with the calendar such as having festivals, holy days, moon phases, and weather play more of a role. The DMG gave me the impression EGG kept careful track of time and so player characters could get out of sync with each other, allowing for some to have down time, travelling time to catch up with the others, or even side adventures. I can see why you would do this if you had multiple player groups exploring the same dungeon or region at roughly the same time, but for most DMs this is probably more bother than it is worth. Usually it is just whatever the DM wants... "Time has passed, and it is now Midsummer's Eve" because he wants to run a scenario involving elves, or "It was a dark and stormy night" to encourage the characters to seek shelter. But the calendar could potentially have more to do with the ongoing campaign, such as with characters seeking a place to winter over during the coldest months when in northern latitudes, mountain passes being snowed shut, evil witches planning to a ritual sacrifice on an upcoming unholy day during the dark of the moon, or the party having to find a missing caravan of beer to ensure a jolly Brewfest.
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Post by grodog on Jan 29, 2019 11:12:01 GMT -5
I've wanted to do more with the calendar such as having festivals, holy days, moon phases, and weather play more of a role. The DMG gave me the impression EGG kept careful track of time and so player characters could get out of sync with each other, allowing for some to have down time, travelling time to catch up with the others, or even side adventures. I've used Clay Luther's calendars as a daily log for tracking time in the game---they're very useful in that regard, although you can't enter a lot of detail in the space available for each day. I can see why you would do this if you had multiple player groups exploring the same dungeon or region at roughly the same time, [snip ] But the calendar could potentially have more to do with the ongoing campaign, such as with characters seeking a place to winter over during the coldest months when in northern latitudes, mountain passes being snowed over, evil witches planning to a ritual sacrifice on an upcoming unholy day during the dark of the moon, or the party having to find a missing caravan of beer to ensure a jolly Brewfest. Exactly! Combining the calendar with usual weather data would make a nice Greyhawk almanac, of sorts. Oakes Spalding created a 7 year span, using UK weather as the basis (so it doesn't match Greyhawk weather); you can download it (it's not free) at www.lulu.com/shop/http://www.lulu.com/shop/oakes-spalding/the-almanac-of-fantasy-weather-vol-1-swords-sorcery/ebook/product-23550673.html and he has a few blog posts about the method for his madness (including referring to Dave Axler's Greyhawk weather article in Dragon #68) @ saveversusallwands.blogspot.com/search/label/the%20almanac%20of%20fantasy%20weatherThinking on it more, building out a Greyhawk calendar with daily almanac/weather data as a year-long weekly planner booklet might be interesting. My sister-in-law builds calendars for our family every year for Christmas (as both wall calendars and weekly planner daily entry booklets), so she could definitely help with the layout/printing.... Allan.
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Post by Scott on Jan 29, 2019 13:50:51 GMT -5
That was the impetus for this thread, wanting to do more with the calendar. I always knew it didn’t really work the way the text implied it worked, but I just hand waved it. The current campaign is doing pretty well, but the players really don’t know much about the setting. I was thinking about putting together some basics for them, and thought it would be a good time to revisit the calendar. Adding a 13th month and incorporating the festivals into the months is probably the easiest way to make a working lunar-based cycle. Maybe the Overking isn’t so mad after all?
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Post by Scott on Feb 1, 2019 7:52:57 GMT -5
I’ve been trying to include more Greyhawk in my game, like including the day and date in my pre-game prologue. I plan on adding more as we go, like describing the moons while the players are on overnight watch during overland journies. Jacking up the chance of encouraging lycanthrope during double full moons, and maybe some special monsters for double new moons, probably undead.
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