D&D General Fundamental Problem Of Old Settings

[The Hierophant]

I'm a GH fan. My understanding was Gygax was planning a Wars change to the timeline as there are various articles in Dragon to support it but it was ultimately done without him. I tend to prefer pre-Wars.

Although I had the FR greybox I never played in it until 5e! The northern setting is okay but I am not that clear on the timeline. I think part of the problem for me is that the timeline is advanced in novels I have no interest in reading.

 

[Aldarc]

I believe Paizo has done a pretty good job of advancing the Golarion timeline, it’s a good example of resolving things while at the same time making more complications to replace them, without taking away the adventuring environment or making major missteps. Even their biggest changes (bringing back Tar-Baphon, closing the Worldwound) hasn’t made such huge changes that you still can’t run a Crusading campaign or an Ustalav campaign - still plenty of demon-killing to do, and Tar-Baphon hasn’t overrun all of Ustalav or anything.

Paizo's approach that ties in story advancement to their various adventure paths makes Golarion feel like a living world that (mostly) affirms the accomplishments of characters, regardless of whether they ran the adventure path or not.

 

[Zardnaar]

Paizo's approach that ties in story advancement to their various adventure paths makes Golarion feel like a living world that (mostly) affirms the accomplishments of characters, regardless of whether they ran the adventure path or not.

Yeah when I read the brief updates in PF2 I thought it was neat.

 

[Weiley31]

My timeline for 5E starts in 3.0. No Sundering or Spellplague.

Everything else: when it happens, it'll happen. Such as Tyranny of Dragons, Storm King's Thunder, The Silence of Lolth, Descent to Avernus, and Courts of The Shadow Fey.

The ONLY world changing events that happened prior is The Dawn War, Die Vecna Die, the Bhaalspawn Saga, The Dead Three returning, and whatever else makes sense.

 

[Mallus]

This problem would disappear if the various fandoms would treat fiction as fiction instead of objective, well sourced, and peer-reviewed history.

The ‘real’ events in Eberron or Greyhawk are whichever ones you found amusing.

 

[aco175]

I play FR 5e and do not really have any timeline. There was the Spellplague and the Sundering, but they do not affect my game unless I want them to. Same thing with the gods and NPCs from older editions. There is a ton of things on the internet for FR from older editions and none of my players care if I use a NPC from my 2e Guide to Waterdeep or a 3e websearch found something about a town that I just stole and kept.

 

[3catcircus]

What I find most difficult to grasp is that these calamities that are intended to jump between editions only happen infrequently. Greyhawk Wars lasted only a few years. Same with the Time of Troubles. Everything else happened in antiquity and are lost to time.

Real-world, calamities of various sizes and impacts happen almost continuously throughout history. Europe was in near-perpetual war for hundreds of years with only minor breaks between late 1400s and 1600s, for example. Vesuvius wiping out Pompeii wasn't the first time, nor the last.

Rather than treat them as reasons to jump editions, it would be best to treat them as normal occurrences, if you want to add some verisimilitude.

 

[reelo]

Really, the sensible way to do a campaign setting is to have a fixed "Year Zero" for official products, anything that happens later is up to the DM and players.

Any novels and tie-in media should be set in the setting's past, so that they help explain how things got to "Year Zero".

Iirc this is exactly what Columbia Games is doing with Hârn. Cutoff date (and thus official "start" for all campaigns) is midnight of the first day of year 720. No product ever goes past that date.

 

[jayoungr]

Or even franchises. We saw this with virtually every D&D setting and other franchises such as Star Trek/Wars.

That is crash TV erm crash RPG. Crash RPG is when someone invents something that people like for whatever reason. A future author takes over and what do they do? Some combination of.

1. Kill off existing characters

2. Blow something up. A big war, world shaking event or literally blowing the world up.

3. Something involving time jumps/travel.

4. New characters heavily handed replace the old.

I've noticed the phenomenon you describe, but I'm curious where this term comes from--do you have a link? Has someone written an article/essay/blog post that goes into more detail about the idea?

 

[Zardnaar]

I've noticed the phenomenon you describe, but I'm curious where this term comes from--do you have a link? Has someone written an article/essay/blog post that goes into more detail about the idea?

AFAIK it's my term.

Crash TV isn't though.