Just got my Inner Sea World Guide and was wondering something. If the Golarion calander is supposed to track with the real calander with a 2700 year bias, why are leaps years 8 years apart?
Creative Director
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Just got my Inner Sea World Guide and was wondering something. If the Golarion calander is supposed to track with the real calander with a 2700 year bias, why are leaps years 8 years apart?
There's a very slight difference in planetary rotation and what-not between Golarion and Earth.
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As the Earth revolves around Sol once about every 365.25 days, leading to four year leap years, Golarion would revolve around its sun approximately every 365.125 days. This would lead to the accumulation of one addition full day every eight years. ( I still have to pick up the new Inner Sea Guide soon. By the way, is there a name for Golarion's sun?)
There may be a need for some minor adjustment beyond this if the number is not exactly even -- as it is in the real world. Tolkien in the appendices in the Lord of the Rings talks about this sort of adjustment in the Middle Earth calendars, which uses real world calendars as a basis. Or you may be able to find a calendar expert. I know that some century years that would normally be leap years are not in the Gregorian calendar. If Golarion revolves around its sun once every 365 days plus half of the extra portion that Earth revolves around Sol, such adjustments should be easy to figure out.
For those who are interested, you may want to check out Gregorian Calendar, which also shows what years that end in 00 are not leap years, and the Iranian calendar, which is apparently less prone to inaccuracies than the Gregorian Calendar.
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On Earth, different cultures use different starting dates for their calendars. Some cultures use lunar calendars as well or lunisolar calendars. (The Hebrew Calendar is an example of a lunisolar calendar with leap months. (In a 19 year cycle, 7 of the years have an extra month. As I write this, it is currently the 20th day of Second Adar in the leap year of 5771 in the Hebrew Calendars.) The Hindu and Chinese calendars are also lunisolar calendars.
Perhaps some of the alternate calendars are used in areas far from the Inner Sea, although I suspect that the Keleshite Empire likely shares the same calendar as Avistan does. (I doubt that Qadira, being an imperial province of the Empire, could have its own calendar.) Vudra and Tian Xia, if they follow similar systems to India and East Asia, likely would have lunisolar calendars. Chances are that both would use different starting points for their calendars than Aroden Reckoning. Several of the non-human cultures would likely have other starting points for their calendars or ways of measuring time. (I have no idea what an aboleth calendar would be like ... or if it would make sense to humans.)
Hopefully, I did not bore people with this talk of calendars and planetary rotation. Perhaps this discussion might give people a few ideas on how to personalize their version of Golarion.
RPG Superstar 2012 Top 32
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On Earth, different cultures use different starting dates for their calendars.
Coptic Calendar - Had to add this one, since it basically the same as the Ethiopian calendar and as we should all know, "Ethiopia - 13 months of summer(or sunshine)."