Building a New Calendar for Mystara
by Lance DuncanLet me start by saying this is a thought exercise, not really something I plan to implement.
So in Canon sources there are 2 different but related calendars presented for Mystara. The first is presented in B10(which I use in my home game), and the 2nd, more commonly accepted is in the gazetteer series. Both are based on a lunar year(sort of implied) and use the same month and weekday names, but with different lengths of the months and years.
So to recap for those less familiar with the calendars:
B10 presents us with 12 months with the days grouped into 7 day weeks. The days of the week are called Lunadain(Monday), Gromdain(Tuesday), Tserdain(Wednesday), Moldain(Thursday), Nytdain(Friday), Loshdain(Saturday), and Soladain(Sunday). The calendar is arranged in such a way that every Lunadain is either a full moon, new moon, or half moon; and every Nytdain is either a waning or waxing crescent moon. I really think this synchronization of the week with the moon cycle is really elegant.
Here's the weird the thing in the calendar from B10, the number of days per month, they are all over the place. It does make it feel somewhat organic, like there must be some historical reason to it...
Nuwmont(January) 31 days
Vatermont(February) 28 days
Thaumont(March) 27 days
Flaurmont(April) 29 days
Yarthmont(May) 31 days
Klarmont(June) 30 days
Felmont(July) 32 days
Fyrmont(August) 29 days
Ambyrmont(September) 31 days
Sviftmont(October) 31 days
Eirmont(November) 29 days
Kaldmont(December) 32 days
Which if you add that all up would be an even 360 days, which could be divided into 12 months of 30 days each(probably why the number 360 was chosen).
And as for the calendar presented in the gazetteers, the month names and weekdays remained the same, just the number of days per month was changed. Each month just got an even 28 days with exactly 4 weeks, ie 1 lunar cycle. Which brings the year to just 336 days, a huge change from what we are used to on earth. A change from 365 to 360, doesn't seem that big a deal, but 365 to 336 is huge you could for a whole other month in there(13 months of 28 days each would be 364).
So that's the state of things, and as far as I've seen most fans use the gaz calendar. Now I've known for a long time the year and length of a day has changed on earth throughout its muti billion year history, but I was just trying to look it up and I came across this chart.
So basically over the years the day has gotten longer(the earths spin is slowing down) and there are less respective days in each year(though it seems the actual time to orbit the sun remain the same). This has to with tidal forces enacted by the moon on the earth, or something...
What this implies then, is that if we take the view of Mystara as "the Age of Magic"(named in the master set, and a term used by TraverseTravis) of Earth in the Jurassic (c. 150 mya), the calendar should have more days not less. If we take the 23.5 hour day, 372 day year that would divide evenly into 12 months of 31 days each. Of course the 23.5 hour day makes a difference too. Are the days divided into 24 shorter hours(with fewer minutes)? Do we keep hours exactly the same, but add leap years/days? Maybe the seconds are shorter so keep the same number of seconds and minutes in an hour and still get 24 hour days? Or just ignore that discrepancy? (Yeah, probably that last one)
What I would like is to keep using the calendar from B10(because I like it), but maybe adjust it for those 12 extra days. Maybe a 12 day period between the end of the year and the start of the year, the issue I see with that is messing up the moon cycle with days of the week(which I really like). Maybe implement a leap every so often to make up for those 12 missing days every year, or maybe an extra month every couple years, idk
It would also be interesting to see a gazetteer like calendar system for 372 days. I guess the easiest solution is just increase the number of days in a month from 28 to 31, of course that means you have to plot out the weekdays like the modern Gregorian calendar, and the lack of that is what made the simplicity of the gazetteer calendar so appealing.
Just something to explore. Anyone willing to crunch some numbers and come up with some revisions to the calendar(either version)?