Coherentizing the Timelines of all the D&D Worlds in 5E (and Ed Greenwood's current year)

[Dungeonosophy]

We don't have to assume that time passes at the same rate in each Crystal Sphere... but it does have advantages.

Yeah, it would make for a unified D&D Multiverse setting. You said it better than I.

My honest preference at this point is for us to see an 'Ultimates' (to borrow from Marvel Comics) approach to merge these worlds:

We already are seeing an "Ultimate Ravenloft". A Faternity of Shadows rep just told me that Curse of Strahd is set in a different timeline than the hither-to published 2E/3E timeline. Curse of Strahd is an a mash-up of iconic characters from various times, and placed in a time (735 BC) which conflicts with the established 2E/3E timeline (which extends to 758 BC). Basically Curse of Strahd is revealing a different "Ultimate" Ravenloft than we've seen in other products.

And this "Ultimate Ravenloft" was "officially" tied into the Realms via the two Adventurers League segway scenarios which brought the AL PCs from the Toril to Barovia and back. This presumably happened in the current year of Dale Reckoning 1491. Which is year 735 Barovian Calendar.

The "Classic Ravenloft" timeline must also still exist, we just haven't see it in 5E.

WotC will probably do something similar for the other D&D Worlds...e.g. a visit to "Ultimate Greyhawk" iconic site (e.g. Castle Greyhawk), "Ultimate Mystara" iconic site (Chateaux d'Ambreville, or the Town of Threshold), "Ultimate Dragonlance" iconic (your PCs play the lead roles in the War of the Lance instead of Tanis, Raistlin, etc). And they'll be set in whatever time is most iconic. Which will mean that these "Ultimate Worlds" will be distinct from the "Classic Timelines".

But my proposal (either Option A or Option B) is still relevant...since it still applies to the Classic Timelines' relationship with this unified Ultimate Timeline.

I like your envisioned list of products. Yeah, Planescape (and Spelljammer and Chronomancer) is where the correlation of the various timelines has gotta be addressed.

This would give us an expansive and coordinated campaign universe that could be the basis for 5E games for a long time to come, allowing players to span the different realms and for the powers that be to manage the game worlds for official gaming in a shared universe.

Well said. Yes!

 

[Dungeonosophy]

The only worlds that would possibly need to be linked to the Forgotten Realms timeline is Greyhawk, Planescape, and maybe Dragonlance.

Greyhawk has recently interacted with FR so much, that it'd be hard to explain the interactions without a time jump, but a Spellplague and Sundering for Greyhawk is unneeded as Evermeet and Mystera do not dwell in Greyhawk.

Given we will have playable Gith, who would more likely see themselves connected to Planescape setting, figuring out how FR cosmology fits with Planescape would be helpful, especially since the Sundering and Spellplague would have effected the Planescape setting at least in parts.

Dragonlance tends to be somewhat close to FR, it has an archwizard who visits Elminister as does Greyhawk obviously.

Nentir Vale is already lined up more or less with FRs timeline.

Spelljammer I have no idea.

Eberron, Birthright, Mystara, don't seem linked to FRs history so because they are isolated, no time jump is needed.

Darksun got a reboot in 4e, plus it's far from FR so I don't know.

Yeah, good details. There are more correlations here: https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/timeline

Do you know of any Nerath / Toril cross-overs? Or are you saying that Nerath and Toril are already synchronized via the cosmological changes? Which gets me wondering: what is the calendar of Nerath?!

 

[Bukran]

I also agree with option B.
There's no need to a time jump in the worlds without product updates since 2nd edition. In the case of world travelling, the PCs will just arrive at current timeline there.

 

[delericho]

IMO they should do what "Doctor Who" did when it came back: a quasi-reboot: you take the existing lore and use as much, or as little, of it as you feel makes for the best resulting setting.

So since Eberron was never formally lined up with the Realms, they can just use it pretty much as-is, and assume that all books published to date happened to line up with 'now'. Likewise Athas, Mystara, Birthright, and most of the others. Dragonlance already has canon that saw it taken off to some pocket dimension, so just rule that that was some sort of time-lock too, and call it done.

Which just leaves Planescape (which is a law unto itself), Ravenloft (which seems to have some sort of weird stasis going on anyway), Spelljammer, and Greyhawk. For Spelljammer, I'd probably advocate pretty much a full reboot (along the same lines as 4e Dark Sun), while Greyhawk probably wants to be handwaved back to the way Gary left it (that is, reverse the Wars).

What I certainly don't want to see is FR-specific events being retconned into all the existing settings. If WotC publish for Eberron, Spelljammer, or Dark Sun then I'll buy, but it's conditional - the moment a Spellplague hits any of those settings, count me out.

 

[i_was_like_you]

I found this post while looking to see how at least Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms timelines might line up, after having read through Rime of the Frost Maiden and its possible outcome of a timejump to -341 Dale Reckoning, the Year of Chilled Marrow (six months prior to the city of Ythryn's fall and another four years bed the demise of the Netherese Empire), undoing a thousand or so years of history in the process.

In its Secrets of the Obelisks sidebar on page 255, it mentions that the first group of obelisks was crafted by the Weavers (a six armed race that can cast multiple spells at once). Vecna stole one such obelisk, using it to erase the Weavers from existence. He also stole the knowledge of obelisk creation, which later Netherese wizards used to create similar obelisks.

While I don't necessarily need to line up the histories, it would be nice to establish WHEN Vecna erased an entire species.

 

[haakon1]

In my campaign, we decided the cross over between today’s year in our Greyhawk home world to FR is…

The current year from the first published version of FR (Forgotten Realms Campaign Set, 1987). That’s 1356 DR. One of my players is an FR expert and chose that version.

For other settings, I’d also use the current year from the published version we prefer. No reason to manually advance the timelines for settings that you’re not (much) using. I don’t have time to get a PhD in every setting - but my player pretty much has that for FR.