gvdammerung asked a very good set of questions in his response to my GreyChrondex link...I'd like to post his comments, and my response in this subject:
He writes:
The Chronodex introduction indicates it is intended as an accurate reflection of GH dates, a timeline. Appended to the Chronodex are a list of sources from which the entries are drawn. On first glance, this appears both thorough and useful. On closer examination, I have some concerns. I will preface my comments by noting that I have not fact checked this document completely for such would take quite awhile. Spot checking leaves me with questions. 1 - Are the dates listed literal from the source documents? 2 - Are the names associated with dates, being historic figures or events, literal from the source documents? 3 - Are the relationships between historic figures and events literal from the source documents? While some entries are labelled "figured" or "approximate" or similar, the vast majority appear to be literal from the source material. I doubt they are as literal as given and believe that the billing of the Chronodex may be misleading. It strikes me that, in each of the above three instances, the Chronodex is as much an interpretive document, as not, particularly the farther back in time you go. That is, it is an elaboration on given source references. While in some cases, it is literal, in others, it does not appear to be so. I am mindful that the Chronology that first appeared in Oerth Journal 1 by the same author was a wonderful interpretive work but was by no means literal. I have no argument with the present Chronodex, but if it is not a literal listing of dates from source material without interpretation that should be made expressly clear. Personally, I have no use for a non-literal document, except as it may be interesting as fiction and as one person's interpretation of events. As an example of a literal document, compare Jason Zavoda's Greyhawkania encycolpedia. Not meaning to start a fight but the question hangs pregnant over the Chronodex featured so prominently and with an appearance of authority - is it literal?
GV,
First, the "vast majority of sources" are literal. In all cases where an exact date is given, it is pulled from source material. This took more hours of research than I can possibly even begin to explain, but check them and see. As for the "early" dates, (where only approximations are given...this is especially true for the earliest entries) The goal of the GreyChrondex was to establish a timeline for Team Greyhawk to work with when we were developing products for TSR/WotC. We had a five year product line establisehd, and needed a guideline for determining when events happened in relation to other events. The ChronoDex (v1.0) was developed for that purpose, and helped us "fix" events in relation, historiclally. Ergo, it was our working document for time. Unlike the History I presented in OJ 1 (which was composed in large part from mine, Len's and Frank's imaginations in large part to try to make an attempt to unify Greyhawk's history, in large part in relation to our own campaigns and imaginations), the purpose of the GreyChrondex was to draw solely on published Greyhawk material as source. In cases where I could not fix an exact date, I drew on relation to other related occurence (these are the "assumed", "circa", etc., entries) Most of these have textual reference to give a close date (e.g. something like "The Valley Elves lived in the Vale of the mage for 15 centuries" or some such).
In some cases, the dates represent decisions made by Team Greyhawk to set events in specific order so that we could work with the material in reference, as I've said, to other events, although these were kept to a minimum. This can most clearly be seen in entry's where the "preferred" tag line exists. The "preferred" indicates the preferred date set by Team Greyhawk for the event. Some few items were dated by reference to occurences in other dated material where an actual date was known, and a set relational point existed. There might be some rare instances where I have made a arbitrary decision in relation to the history, but that was within my scope of operation on Team Greyhawk at the time, and these instances are very few at most.
The un-dated Pre-Devastation Items were included to show the great age of those events, without trying to set them in any necessary relation to other dated items (this was generally how I handled items that I couldn't reference or place from a specific published text, or for which the Team did not set a date. You will note that I did date some of the events in the OJ 1 article...this clearly, I think, deliniates the difference in intent and purpose of the two documents. The OJ document was a colorful "History", the GreyChrondex, a highly controlled "Chronology" )
If I did happen, in some instance, to place an item in such a manner that it could not have happened or be construed or figured from a text (and that was not so placed by Team Greyhawk), or if I just made a mistake somewhere (I know I "lost" a shield land reference date source, I deleted the product number by accident and haven't been able to find the source since, although I've been looking for it for three years). I would be happy to fix it. This is not supposed to represent "my Greyhawk" but rather a Generic Greyhawk initially for Team Greyhawk development of Greyhawk products, so that we could have a baseline for future product development that related back to the historical publication and presentation of Greyhawk products. One of our goals was to try and keep the types of errors that plagued many of the previous products from happening!
In any event, this is not meant to confine your home campaigns or your own dating of any item in "Greyhawk History". Components of my OJ 1 material are deeply rooted in my own campaign, and are not affected one whit by the GreyChrondex entries that might contradict them. Keep in mind the purpose of this thing was to help guide published TSR/WotC material, primarily as a corrective, so that we didn't end up with three different dates for the same event. (It even was used to help us flesh out some of the problems like Celene's affectation vs. effectation problem...)
But ultimiately, it was not about "my" vision of Greyhawk, so I took very little creative license (although there is bound to be some editorial license as is true in all publications of any kind) in relation to the material here..
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