Post/Author/DateTime	Post
MavrickWeirdo 07-05-04, 10:16 AM	Has anyone taken a close look at the "Mabar, the Endless Night" entry? "Mabar enters coterminous phase for three dark nights once every five years, on the nights of the new moon closest to the winter solstice." The new moon? There are twelve visible moons. Then it gets better. "Mabar is remote for a period of five autumn days once every five years, around the full moon nearest the summer solstice, " Now I realize mistakes happen, but with them so close together I had to point it out. ;)
Bubba333 07-05-04, 03:27 PM	Call me kooky, but I don't get it?
Klintus Fang 07-05-04, 06:52 PM	That threw me for a loop when I first read it too, but after I thought about it carefully I realized that it's not actually a problem. They do say "The new moon nearest the winter solstice", but that doesn't actually imply that there is only one moon. Nor does it say that its always the same moon. Think about it. If I tell you that the "the person standing when the music stops in a game of musical chairs looses", am I claiming there is only one person in the game? The statement about the moons in that sentence is identical grammatically and logically. When the winter solstice comes along, imagine the twelve moons in their orbits. All of those moons will be "new" at various times. One of them will be new on a day that is closest to the winter solstice. That is "the moon" the book is talking about. Could be any moon at all and could be a different moon each time around. The book doesn't say. It's completely consistent and non-contradictory. Of course, they tell us nothing about the periods of the 12 moons so it's quite impossible for us to know much more. That said, there are a number of minor errors in the descriptions of when the planes are coterminus and when they aren't. There are at least three cases where the numbers they give you don't add up to the period (Dolurrh is one of them). But it's fairly easy to figure out what they meant in those cases.
Bubba333 07-05-04, 07:13 PM	First, I don't see this as too much of an issue, so we're lucky. The map on the other hand... Second... <<Think about it. If I tell you that the "the person standing when the music stops in a game of musical chairs looses", am I claiming there is only one person in the game?>> *L* What a great analogy!
Jhaelen 07-05-04, 08:22 PM	The way I see it, you can pretty much ignore the fact that there are 12 moons rather than one. The only difference is that each month there's a DIFFERENT moon going through its phases. The other eleven moons are simply too far away to identify which phase they are curently in. I'd say, you'd be able to make them out because they are somewhat brighter than the stars, but that's about all (similar to Venus or Mars as seen from Earth).
Klintus Fang 07-05-04, 08:56 PM	Originally posted by Jhaelen The way I see it, you can pretty much ignore the fact that there are 12 moons rather than one. The only difference is that each month there's a DIFFERENT moon going through its phases. The other eleven moons are simply too far away to identify which phase they are curently in. I'd say, you'd be able to make them out because they are somewhat brighter than the stars, but that's about all (similar to Venus or Mars as seen from Earth). The book doesn't say anything of the sort. The book says that the moon corresponding to each month is closest to Eberon during that month. But that does not mean that the moon is as far away as Mars is from Earth during the other 11 months. The moons would have to have insanely eccentric orbits for that to be even possible. Nor does the book say that only one moon is going through its phases each month. That notion doesn't even make sense actually. But on the other point about the map. I agree that the discrepancies in the maps are a somewhat bigger deal. The maps still serve their purpose. They give you a rough picture of how things are connected together. Unfortunately, that is all they give you. There's actually no more precision in those maps than their is in the descriptions of the planar phases. ;) I'm not really upset either way. I do wish they'd at least taken the time to make sure the individual maps had consistent scale markers on them. (sloppy, sloppy, sloppy) But oh well. The 3E FRCS is the only one I recall that was any better in terms of the maps, and the only reason the 3E FRCS was better is likely becuase it had a decade of 2E FR detail to draw from.
MavrickWeirdo 07-06-04, 12:03 AM	Originally posted by Klintus Fang That threw me for a loop when I first read it too, but after I thought about it carefully I realized that it's not actually a problem. They do say "The new moon nearest the winter solstice", but that doesn't actually imply that there is only one moon. Nor does it say that its always the same moon. That said, there are a number of minor errors in the descriptions of when the planes are coterminus and when they aren't. There are at least three cases where the numbers they give you don't add up to the period (Dolurrh is one of them). But it's fairly easy to figure out what they meant in those cases. My issue is that which ever new moon we use, there are probably 4 other moons in the sky, and a couple of them are probably full moons, so the night won't be all that dark. Actually Dolurrh's period is right, assuming they mean that the remote phase begins "precisely fifty years after each coterminous phase" begins It does not say that fifty years is the interval between the two. But all this still doesn't explain why the summer solstice is in autumn
MavrickWeirdo 07-06-04, 12:09 AM	I also find it interesting that House Orien arranged the downfall of a McDonalds franchise on page 183. :smirk:
Cruhand 07-06-04, 07:09 AM	I'm with Maverick on that one. My guess is the person who wrote that description forgot the issue of twelve moons, it does say: for three dark nights, and thus it implicitly states that all the moons are dark all around the planet at that time. We could of course explain this with the plane somehow causing all the moons to become to dark though, but IMO it should not be the player and DM's guessing that should explain everything that looks strange and incomplete. That autumn-summer solstice was also wierd. Then again, that can ALSO be explained by the plane CAUSING this to happen when it is coterminous, however if this is the case it is even more sloppy work by whoever wrote that portion of the book. - C;
Klintus Fang 07-06-04, 01:27 PM	saying the summer solstice is in autumn is just screwy. I didn't even notice that previously. my mind skipped right over the word "autumn" in that sentence. That is clearly a dumb typo. as for the plane being coterminus during the "new moon": It's possible that the person who wrote that didn't even know the planet has 12 moons. But it's impossilbe to say. If one is concerned about the need for it to be dark on those three nights, it's possible for all twelve moons to be new at the same time once every three years as well. That is how I am intending to rule it if they never come out and make a clear statement on the lunar periods later. (That is how it worked on my homebrew world after all, except the new moons were coincident on the winter solstice once every 5 years there.) All we need is for each of the lunar periods to have a multiple that adds up to 1008 days. With 12 moons, that will be a little tedious to work out, but not impossible.