Chronological Aspect

Time flows at the same rate throughout the known multiverse. This section, however, deals with newly discovered worlds. Table 2 shows the rate of local time flow compared to that of the base campaign world. In worlds with ratings of 9 or less time flows more quickly than in the base campaign, allowing travelers to make extended visits and return home to find that almost no time has passed at all. In worlds with ratings of 13 or more time flows more slowly than in the base campaign, and travelers might return home to find their world greatly changed after even a short visit.

Chronological Notes

Characters are governed by the local time no matter where they are or what world they call home. For example, characters who visit a C2 world and stay a year return home to find that less than a minute has gone by, but they are still a year older. Characters who visit a C18 world and stay two weeks return to find that 20 years have passed, even though they have aged only two weeks. Likewise, the durations of magical effects are governed by local time, a spell that lasts 10 rounds on a C11 world also lasts 10 rounds on a C20 or a C2 world.

There is no simple way to judge the local time flow—it always seems to be normal. Time is pervasive; even the interiors of closed extra-dimensional spaces (such as portable holes, bags of holding, and rope trick spells) experience local time. The shift from one time flow to another is imperceptible by itself, but clues are sometimes obvious—such as when a character steps through a portal at noon and steps out into a moonlit night.

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