Coherentizing the Timelines of all the D&D Worlds for 5E

Notes: GH and FR both happened in the past, relative to Modern Earth:

"The Savant-Sage and Pluffet Smedger the Elder are part of the past. The World of Greyhawk Fantasy Setting is yours now, to do with as you wish. You can mold new states from old, or inflame ancient rivalries into open warfare, as you tailor the world to suit the needs of your players. The time has come for new legends to be created, new battles to be fought, new songs to be sang. It is your world - welcome to it!"

-Steve Winter & Allan Hammack

For 5E, I'd like to see a coherentization of the timelines of all the worlds. Here's what WotC would need to do to get it right:

First, gather all of the canonical cross-over dates from Spelljammer and Planescape which have already been identified by aficionados (and tertiarily, from Ravenloft, though the Mists seem to skew time unpredictably, moreso than space-travel and planewalking).

Next, discern and pick the most coherent, most fitting set of cross-over correspondences. Explain away the remainder of the cross-over correspondences which don't fit - consider them to be alternate timelines, or blips wherein there was unwitting timetravel involved.

Next, be sure to take into account that some of the worlds have years which are shorter (or longer?) than 365 days! Yes, sit down and do the math. Then calculate the dates, and combine the canonical events from all D&D worlds onto a single timeline, showing the date and time from all the known calendars from all D&D worlds.

Next, find out the "most advanced current date" for all of the key D&D worlds. For example, the canonical Ravenloft timeline has advanced to 758 BC, and Mystara was canonically left at 1016 AC in the last AD&D2E product. So find "the most advanced current date".

The "most advanced current year" of the various worlds (as of April 2018)

• • FR: DR 1491, Princes of the Apocalypse, though five Adventurers League seasons have occurred since then. Ed Greenwood responded to my question on fb: "My novel DEATH MASKS takes place in 1491 DR, the Year Of The Scarlet Witch. I don't recall any events beyond that year in either Erin's or Bob's last-so-far Realms novels...so that's where we officially stand. Beyond that, NDAs seal my lips, I'm afraid. ;}" But there's a Mirt story set in DR 1492. http://www.dmsguild.com/product/199519/ALL-THINGS-THROUGH-THE-BRIGHT-FLAMES--The-First-Tale-of-Mirt-In-the-Time-After-The-Sundering

  • GH: CY 598, last year of Living Greyhawk modules.

  • Dragonlance: 430 AC, where in Solamnia is now a combined empire under the rule of James Markham.

  • Mystara: 1016 AC, Karameikos: Kingdom of Adventure boxed set. (Not counting "future timelines" such as Master of the Desert Nomads in 1200 AC):

  • Ravenloft: 758 BC (the classic timeline) and 735 BC (the Curse of Strahd timeline, which is a different version of Ravenloft): http://fraternityofshadows.com/wiki/Timeline. Fraternity of Shadows says: "758 was the year of the "latest" (in time) officially published products (Gaz V & Dark Tales & Distubing Legends) in the last year that Arthaus/WW published Ravenloft. (2004) Many fans have extended the timeline on a year-for-year basis, so it's now unofficially 772 (in 2018). Curse of Strahd exists in a separate timeline than the other Ravenloft products. The book says it takes place in 735, but that's the same year the original "Black Box" setting took place. But the original I6 adventure was placed in 528 by many later products, and Ireena Kolyana appears in both, at apparently the same age. So it's not really possible to reconcile them. CoS took characters from different points in the timeline and put them together in 735 as if they'd always been there." (See also the possibility of the events occurring in a dream sequence in 528 BC: https://www.reddit.com/r/CurseofStrahd/comments/88xy87/when_in_the_timeline_should_curse_of_strahd/.) The Barovian Calendar is widely used. There's also a Forfarian Calendar: 750 BC = 2137 Forfarian Calendar. Patriarch's Calendar is the calendar used in Vorostokov

  • Eberron: Wiki says present year is 998 YK (Year of the Kingdom). Rising From The Last War (5e) is set (by default) in 998 YK, four years after the Day of Mourning and two years after the Treaty of Thronehold brought the Last War to an end.

  • Dark Sun: What year did 3E DS advance to when it went 300 years into the future? In 4E it went back to Free Year 1.

  • Birthright: website says "current date" 551 MR.

Next, do either one of two things:

A) Advance all the timelines (from "the most advanced current date") to match the current Forgotten Realms year. Which would mean that the worlds which were left behind in 2E (e,g, Mystara and Birthright) would be jumping forward over a hundred years. Give a brief synopsis of how the cosmological changes from 2E to 3E to 4E to 5E happened in each world (e.g. from the perspective of the other worlds, surely their own gods played a role alongside Mystra and Shar), and date exactly what year those happened, based on their timing in the Forgotten Realms.

OR

B) Don't jump the timelines forward, but instead just take "the most advanced current date" of all the worlds, and just say that those are all now the same year. Like: "That just happened last year." So time may have flowed at a different rate in different worlds in the past. But not now.

In the case of A, all the worlds experienced something like the Spellplague and the Second Sundering (though they called the events by other names). These catastrophes happened at the same time as the FR catastrophes happened. The wider emergence of Sorcerers (in 3E) and Warlocks, Dragonborn, and Tieflings (in 4E and 5E) would be roughly synchronized with their emergence in Toril. According to option A, a straightforward interpretation of canon is that each D&D world experienced something like the Time of Troubles (1E > 2E), Die Vecna Die!/Apocalypse Stone (2E > 3E), Spellplague (3E > 4E), and the Second Sundering (4E > 5E), but called the events by different names. All those worlds (Abeir-Toril, Oerth, Krynn, Mystara, Aebrynis (Birthright), Athas (Dark Sun)) were an integral part of the 2E Great Wheel cosmology. And Die Vecna Die! explicitly said that the the whole multiversal framework was changing. Presumably the other "edition-change-based cosmological transformative events" affected all of the worlds...we just didn't hear about it, since WotC was no longer publishing books about them.

Greyhawk had its own Time of Troubles, detailed in the Fate of Istus, which provided in-story reasons for changing from 1E to 2E.

Krynn had the Chaos War (1e Krynn to SAGA Krynn) and War of Souls (SAGA Krynn to 3e Krynn)

And Mystara was implicitly affected by the 3.5E changes to the Plane of Nightmare/Plane of Dreams/Far Realm described in Dragon #327 "Winning Races: Diaboli--Bringing Diaboli into 3.5E"

So, yeah, Sigil and Oerth (and all the other D&D worlds) were affected in a big way by the cosmological changes which occurred at the same time as Toril's Spellplague and Second Sundering, but they wouldn't call the events by those names.

In the case of B, for the other worlds (besides Toril) there'd be no "Spellplague" or "Second Sundering" marking the switch to new editions. (Though Dragonlance had its own events for some of these edition switches.) In option B, these worlds would just jump from 2E or 3E straight to 5E overnight, without batting an eye. Dragonborn and Tieflings were always there (just off-screen), but are just now emerging in a more visible way this year. According to Option B, the canonical timeline of all the "retired" worlds stopped when the last product was published. And now they just appear through a 5E lense, just one year later. But now its all lined up, and its all 5E. No catastrophes.

Both options could be justified according to canon.

Actually...DO BOTH. In the upcoming setting books, I'd like WotC to recognize that there are two two different official D&D Multiverses, with two different timelines: