Approved Submission Yamataian Calendar (YE system)

[Wes]

Submission Type: Calendar
Submission URL: https://wiki.stararmy.com/doku.php?id=calendar:yamatai

Faction: Yamatai, Nepleslia
FM Approved Yet? Yes for Yamatai, Nepleslian parts need approval from @Gunhand4171
Faction requires art? Not for this type of submission

For Reviewers:
Contains Unapproved Sub-Articles? No
Contains New art? No
Previously Submitted? No

Notes: FINALLY, right?

 

[CadetNewb]

I had never previously considered that pay varied per month since the monthly pay was the same, regardless of how many days were in the month. I think for simplicity's sake we should assume that, before implementation of this calendar, Earth day and Yamatai days are not 1:1, rather Earth years and Yamatai years have been 1:1. That way there would be no need to mess with the age of previously made characters. Everyone will just start aging faster OOCly than they have previously.

I'd have to agree with Gabriel regarding the year thing though; having the years be on a 1:1 ratio would make things a lot easier. Is this not possible?

 

[Fred]

To me, this is a lot like the number of fingers nekovalkyrja hands.

You started out with five;
tried four to be original;
and because it's going to be an hassle to keep that up with everyone, it'll go back to five.

I'm entirely willing to accept that Yamatai might have a different local time due to the orbit of the planet around the sun, and the speed of the planet's rotation (at some point, the Yamataian day was shorter, until this was reversed for X reasons).

But universal time has clearly proven different, with holidays matching ours consistently for over a decade. Basically, I find introducing this as standard time all across the nation of Yamatai and Nepleslia as a measure of universal time extremely unwelcome. And inaccurate. and an overcomplication yielding little benefit. Renaming the weekdays is another needless complication - not that weekdays are commonly referred to IC, but I don't see anyone bothering to check everytime on the wiki what thursday actually is.

I'll grant that this must have been tons of effort, but not in a direction that is in actuality constructivly effective to our roleplaying medium.

 

[CadetNewb]

I have to admit, as neat as this idea is, it's going to be quite a headache in the long run. In an enclosed setting, like a book or novel, that's fine, but here, we got a lot of people, and potentially a lot of headaches coming on I think.

Again, it's cool, but impractical.

 

[Wes]

I'd have to agree with Gabriel regarding the year thing though; having the years be on a 1:1 ratio would make things a lot easier. Is this not possible?

It's possible and it's the first option on the list and it's winning pretty strongly!

 

[CadetNewb]

We got a poll? Because I agree with both Fred and Gabriel here, and in the end of the day, Fred's got the better point, with both of them being in the same direction.

 

[Navian]

I like the new calendar, and I know I won't have any trouble sticking to it... I run a D&D setting that has 225-day, 8-month years and 6-day weeks, and I find it easier to keep track of than Gregorian calendar.

This one's even more convenient to use, since all the months are the same length, and there's exactly five weeks in each month. Do the benefits outweigh the drawbacks? Maybe not... Do the drawbacks outweigh a feather? I don't think that's the case, either.

 

[Nashoba]

Nice work on the calendar

 

[Wes]

Nice work on the calendar

Thanks! It seems like one of those things I should have detailed more --long-- ago but I'm glad we're finally doing it.

 

[Fred]

Raz raised a point in another thread that just like there is the "Trade Language", the could be a "Trade Calendar".

If a Trade Calendar can be used (which it has effectively been so far) in addition to the Yamataian calendar as an option for those willing to explore it, I have much less of an objection to this.

 

[Wes]

But Yamatai's calendar is the "Trade" calendar that everyone in the RP has been using since it started. We just never listed what the actual months were until this week, so everyone's been operating under false assumptions. Nepleslia has a 220-day year and 16 hour days, Nepleslia Prime has a 295 day year and 18 hour days. Earth doesn't exist in the setting. At least Yamatai has a 24-hour clock. Basically what I'm saying is adding more calendars for other factions is not going to make anything less confusing. An international trade calendar that's based on Earth will just make everyone have to do even more conversions since I don't know what faction would have IC justification to use it.

Using the YE calendar is going to be the same as it was for the last several years, it's just now you can look up the IC month too.



Example: I'm making a post on May 2, 2017, I can look at the wiki and see that the suggested IC month is Sangatsu, YE 39.

Edit: I closed the poll, it was clear that almost everyone wanted to keep 1 year IC = 1 year OOC.

 

[CadetNewb]

Honestly, I don't think this is a cut and dry decision in any way. It does add depth to the setting, but it's irritating to both have to do conversions for character age, and for the months. Yes, they're theoretically easy, but it's still another hassle to deal with as well. Overall, I'm not comfortable with the idea at this time.

 

[Wes]

You don't have to do anything with your character's age. To characters, a year is a year. Converting ages is only something that people with really young characters will need to consider, and I'd be happy to help with it in each case. I don't plan to change Hanako's age or anything.

 

[raz]

Wes's chart made any necessary conversions of past RP really easy. The minor character age changes matter very little, and it's not like we really need to be concerned with child characters too much because the setting makes them largely irrelevant due to technology and culture.

To speak to a "trade calendar," though, even Wes has used real life shorthand in canon when he posted about "December." So I don't think it'd be particularly hard to have some kind of generic system that lets people feel comfortable for essentially OOC reasons.

 

[CadetNewb]

Yeah, but it's still irritating to know that IC years don't directly correlate to OOC years. Doesn't matter if it's a 1 year old Neko or a 100 year old ancient really.

 

[Fred]

So, this is being shoved down our craw and there's basically no way out. No mitigating factor at all. It's not even a submission that can be ruled as approved or not.

I don't want to throw a tantrum because I've seen how pleasant that was when Kampfer did that to me. But if this is enforced on us, it'll be under protest from me. I really don't care for it and it comes off as an hassle more than anything else. This is no fun at all.

 

[CadetNewb]

In the end, I have to agree with Fred here. It's honestly a hassle that's not worth the tradeoff in lore, since we'll be constantly RPing and it'll become more of a drag as time wears on. However, I have a suggestion; why don't we just rename the months on the IRL calendar? We already have 9 there, and need just a few more to make the full 12. Meanwhile, Nepleslians would just run off the IRL calendar. No hassle with slightly shorter years with less days in them, yet with that extra touch of setting immersion.

EDIT: I forgot to add that In-Character age according to this proposed setting calendar wouldn't matter to me at all. That is, I wouldn't care for it. The reason for that is because I would be more interested in their age measured by our IRL/OOC calendar, as it would more directly relate the characters to me. By using this calendar, there is a sense of disconnect, and the characters don't feel as close anymore.

Unrelatable, basically.

 

[Navian]

I really don't see an easier alternative, other than 'keep it as an ad-hoc mess'. Creating a new standard based on the Earth calendar doesn't make any sense, and would take an appreciable amount of work to adapt to... changing all the character pages that want to stick with using Earth-years, for one thing. I don't think this new calendar will take much work to use, and once it's in use 'what month is it IC?' won't be a touchy topic, anymore. That seems nice.

 

[raz]

It's unfortunate that it's come after so many years of not existing, yes, but calendars are almost universally synced up to the sun or the moon. We've had Yamatai's solar cycle as approved canon on the wiki for a while, as Wes has mentioned, so all this does is fill in a little part of the setting that wasn't detailed. Much like all filled-in details, it's always existed and we just haven't had access to the information.

This is not even a retcon. I can speak from experience and say my RP use of 12 months has been in absence of a canonical system to refer to. And, moreover, specific numbered day dates are only ever used as starting points in RP, which the calendar still allows with minimal effort. So the concern that days don't match up is kind of thrown out the window.

Everyone's feelings on the matter are certainly real and stuff. But, if you really think about it, you'll see that the new calendar is not a big bad deal at all. It's just Wes filling in something that needed to be filled in. He even used previous approvals to make the calendar make sense, which further makes this a truly top-tier setting submission.

 

[Fred]

It's not a matter of how easy it can be to convert. It a matter of having to convert at all, which is something that some of us haven't needed to bother with for 10+ years.

Like I said, I'm perfectly willing to accept that Yamatai has local time and that most of the Empire might come to want to function that way. That's why the 9 month thing doesn't bother me, as long as there's an alternative that fits how we've been operating right now (as in, we didn't really bother).

IF you want to have a new toy and play with it, more power to you, but don't force me to like it "just because". I'm fine with names like "terraforming". Wes is fine with inconsistencies like NMX ships having labels "NMX" in english alphabet rather than their own language. It won't be the first inconcistency ever that we've lived with just for convenience.

As I see it, the new calendar should be introduced and that'd make sense - Yamatai is a relatively young nation. but it was operating off something else before being based on Yamatai and we can just handwave that some just refer to it out of habit. Then pretty much everyone ends up being happy with this. If the new calendar does end up being good and nice, and awesome... then those whom want to employ it can lead by example and overtime perhaps it'll win more people over.

Basically Wes, you have two camps. I don't see what you lose by making both happy. You either win but have a few people disgruntled, or you win and have everyone happy about it.

 

[CadetNewb]

To be honest, I believe sticking to our IRL calendar makes perfect sense Navian. Not only from the OOC perspective of making things easier for us, but also from an IC one. They are still the descendants of Earth, and as we can already tell, some traditions just don't die. Perhaps this could be one of them; using a calendar system of a world long gone and lost. I do agree that Wes did use a lot of the pre-existing assets to make this work the way it does Raz, but ultimately, it's still some extra hassle to deal with. And it's not like I'm simply complaining without suggesting a compromise or fix either.

12 renamed months based off our IRL calendar. Or, Fred's suggestion; having previously used Earth's calendar, and transitioning to this new one as of now. That way, both versions would technically be correct, and there are options on the table.