Submitted by Sid on Thu, 05/12/2005 - 04:14
Posted in
Here's an interesting question, applicable to setting and specifically to how players will label their posts. How do you mark time in a setting that is a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?
Do you come up with a timeline for Vogrell, the base of operations, and count from there? Do you name a Hchni'i messiah--say, Melch'nee--and begin a post with
3034 M.M.
10:33 p.m.
?
"M.R." equals "Melch'nee Reckoning" in this off-the-cuff example. Inspired by "A.D." to mean anno Domini.
How does a player mark time in the Star Wars universe?
(By the way, Dave, I dig your setting proposal.)
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Dating convention
I am going to propose the same timing plan for Fantastic Legends...
We keep a "dead-reckoning" calendar. Day 1, 13:00 would be 1 pm on the first posting day. Occasionally (say each season) the counter would be reset. In Star wars they never say O'Clock or AM or PM so military time works perfectly. Heck we could adopt a decimal clock 100 time periods of 1000 ticks each. 100 ticks is a segment.
Recap: 100 ticks (seconds) to a Segment (Minute) and 10 segments in a period (roughly 10 minutes) 100 periods in a day. Just a suggestion. Frankly I'm happy to keep standard military time.
Comic books and Star Wars films follow a sort of chronological but not real-world calendar. As needed we could even add a "Year" or "Eon" (or Aeon for you Brits and Aussies) counter for decades.
So next year we'd be in Year 2, Day 15 or something.
Dating convention
Actually in re-reading your comment, Jeff, howabout this...
The planet was founded the same date as the Shipwreck - 150 standard years ago today.
Add days to that...say 720 days in a year divided into 24 months (Designated by the Greek alphabet: Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, Zeta, Eta, Theta, Iota, Kappa, Lambda, Mu, Nu, Xi, Omicron, Pi, Rho, Sigma, Tau, Upsilon, Phi, Chi, Psi, Omega) of 30 days each.
And then you can have basically 2 years of our time to 1 year of game time. That makes 1 "standard year" = 2 years (more or less) of Planetary reckoning.
So the date would be 75 P.F.(since planetfall) and the month would be Delta 20 14:20
Dating convention
Ok, I'm just going to go ahead and put up my first post. At the moment, at least, I figured that I would use 'dead reckoning' and try to draw attention to Dave's idea. Got to admit, I kind of like his idea with how long a Vorgrell year is compared to a game year, though that still leaves the issue of Galactic Standard to convert to.
Anyone else have any thoughts? Should we all stick with reckoning or Dave's 24-month suggestion?
Dating convention
In using this 'dead recokening' idea I'm not too sure how to go about doing flashbacks or things set in the past. For my post I just used 'Year -2, day -24' to show it was two years and twenty-four days ago, but does anybody else have any potentially less confusing ideas?
Dating convention
I have arbitraily set the Day 1, Year 1 of the "dead reconing" as Epislon 1, 75 P.F. of the Vorgrellian calendar.
The Months are 30 days each and there are 24 months in a Vorgrellian year. A "Imperial Standard Year" is 1/2 a Vorgrellian Year (give or take some insignificant fraction) so if you want to work from the movies...
Palpatine was declared Emperor only 3 years ago. The was in Ep III. In the SW universe almost everyting is measured from the Battle of Yavin (Ep IV) on the fan sites and elsewhere. So by that makes this the timeline as I see it:
I am using this site as my source for events :
http://www.theforce.net/timeline/default.asp
Dates are formatted as follows:
Republic Style (American Style): MM-DD-YYYY (example: 01-01-20)
Empire Style (UK Style): DDMMYY (010120)
Vorgrell Style: YY.MM.DD or DD Mon YY (75.01.01 or 01 Alpha 75)
Day 1 of the game is 05 Epsilon 75
Is that a little clearer?
Dating convention
Jeje, Dave. You beat me to it :) I was writing something like that.
I found this while looking for a standard time-scale for Star Wars. It doesnt really answer our questions, but...
According to that article, the standard galactic time is:
[/]1 minute – 60 seconds 1 hour – 60 minutes
But it doesn't give us a good timescale for our dating. Yours is good, Dave.1 day – 24 hours
1 week – 5 days
1 month – 7 weeks
1 year – 10.51 months, 73.60 weeks and 368 days
Dating convention
However, i wanted to ask something.
I dont think Greek letters really fit in our universe. I was thinking that we could name the months with Huttese numbers, since it was them that surveyed the planet, as Dave said. What do you think?
The list of numbers I found got only to 20, but i sort of figured out their system so i wrote what i suppose would be the following 4 numbers (Hutts have eight fingers, so their system of counting is Base 8)
http://www.starwarsdotcom.com/_languages/dictionaries/huttese_numbers.html
Huttese numbers.
I know these words are difficult and completely strange to us, but to be honest, apart from a small number of Greek letters, the rest are completely strange to me too. Let alone naming them in the right order. So i figured that between looking up a list of Greek letters and Huttese numbers... I'd prefer to write them in Huttese.1 ... Bo
2 ... Dopa
3 ... Duba
4 ... Fwanna
5 ... K'wanna
6 ... Keeta
7 ... Goba
8 ... Hunto
9 ... Beeska
10 ... Boboba
11 ... Goboba
12 ... Joboba
13 ... Soboba
14 ... Koboba
15 ... Foboba
16 ... Donocha
17 ... Honocha
18 ... Bohonocha
19 ... Dohonocha
20 ... Duhonocha
21 ... Fwhonocha
22 ... K'whonocha
23 ... Kehonocha
24 ... Gohonocha
So, day 1 year 1 would be:
05 K'wanna 75
I'm sorry i took so long to propose this, but somehow this thread had completely gone under my radar so far.
[/]Dating convention
I think I like the Greek alphabet, just because of the fact that it's easier to deal with. Rather than these odd Hutt names. :)
So, let's get cracking on conversion! When I timeline, it'll be based on this.
Day one: 05 Epsilon 75
Day Two: 06 Epsilon 75
Day Three: 07 Epsiolon 75
Greek Alphabet:
Alpha
Beta
Gamma
Delta
Epsilon
Zeta
Eta
Theta
Iota
Kappa
Lambda
Mu
Nu
Xi
Omicron
Pi
Rho
Sigma
Tau
Upsilon
Phi
Chi
Psi
Omega
I'll get to converting Matt's flashback dates later.
Dating convention
Oh, i think he already used that system. His first flashback is on 12 Kappa 73, i think.