Winds of Chaos

I'm with macd21 on this one. Having it there just to modify or ignore is a waste of word count IMHO.

You also have the opposite issue to what someone said earlier. Some GM's see a date and have a hard time altering it. Played in a D&D Forgotten Realms game a couple decades back where the GM "couldn't" run a few of the adventures because they either "already happened" or "hadn't happened yet". He knew, conceptually, that it was his world and it was up to him but wasn't willing to play around with the timeline much. He wanted to keep things as closer to published as possible to make the use of future products "easier". YMMV.

Personally, I could take it out leave it. Maybe, if they advance the overall calendar several years during the run of the game, an updated timeline with it's "canonical" happening I could see, but other that that....*shrug*

Just my two pence.

Hi, for me the difference is that it is simpler to ignore a given date instead of deducting it from the dates that are given in the handouts.

I understand Jareth's point when you take into account an inflexible GM.

It's no big thing though. Anyone who wants to know the date that is implicitly defined by the handouts, will find it easily with his favourite search engine. It will likely guide to this thread. I went through the very same thing when I wanted to know (just for a friend;)), when the D&D tyranny of dragons starts.

Whatever your approach on exact dates, it's only fair that the adventure should communicate clearly to the reader/GM what is and isn't important.

In Shadows, for instance, IIRC the only important date is the start of the Schaffenfest, which the PCs will learn about from a printed flyer. If the GM wants to use the handouts as is, then s/he needs to time the prologue so the PCs can get to Bogenhafen in time but preferably not too far ahead.

Then again, if the GM is going to do their own handouts anyway (for example, as in my case, if they play in a different language), then the point is moot - but the adventure should still make it clear that "the festival should start about (say) 7-9 days after the PCs hear about it in Altdorf".