This is just a little pointless wonder, but if I dig through the books of FFG's lines, they try to throw a date something like 817m41, while most "current" material is, and has been, right around 999m41. Which do you use, and do you find it important? With so many of the main characters of 40k being ageless Space Marines, immortal aliens, or reincarnating monsters, it might not seem to matter; if you are more an Ultramarine fan, like me, then say a Blood Angels fan, or a Space Wolves fan, you even still get Marvelous Calgar, to go along with Dante, Mephiston, and Logan Grimnar, which is why I didn't post this on the other forums, but if you are a Human Guardsman, looking for Human heroes to emulate, you have none in the franchise save Lord Solar Macharius (and the Lord Solar lived 1,000 years ago), and maybe some Saints. You might argue that Yarrick is really old, but he'd be young here, and the Second War for Armageddon, which catapults him into fame, isn't until say 941m41 (AMC, p24). An Imperial Guard without Creed, Straken, Harker, and Pask, any of the others GW got rid of in 6th (al'Rahem, Bastonne, etc.) seems like a sad Imperial Guard to me. In my opinion, the only real reason for the earlier date is to not pass the dawn of the 42nd Millennium, something GW has steadfastly avoided since 19...um, well they've sat on that spot in time longer than your grandmother has been 30. Still, other people's mileage might vary. Do you use the older date, and accept the loss of some events, maybe even feel less restrained by their absence (Necrons are new, even the "Oldcrons, and the Tau are still rather small, with their heroes frozen), or do you play in a time when Chaos is on the rise, Abaddon is an actual threat, rather than a distant memory, Creed directs Cadia against him, while Yarrick, Helbrecht, and Tycho fight off Ghazkull Mag Uruk Thraka, and on, accepting that the "time stamp" is largely unimportant? 40k can be much like Star Wars, where anything "new" was ALSO around 4,000 years before, to make KOTOR fun, and I'm thinking being in year 997m41 would be about the same. If the 42nd M starts, I'd expect it to be much the same continued bloodshed that ended the 41st, and that Abaddon wasn't likely to pull off any true watershed moment, if you will, that will place you either here or there, especially with his event being ret-conned into a stalemate by GW.

So, opinions? Practices? How do you play? As I said, to me, the issue CAN matter, when you want "legendary" heroes to follow, and maybe NOT to have to make them all up from scratch, but how do your Guard feel?

The Ciaphas Cain novels go beyond 999.M41 by a few years, so we know nothing drastic is felt through the Imperium at the very moment the millennium drops. But who knows with the Golden Throne failing and the Time of Ending motif fully gripping 40k.

As for the timing it's completely relevant to the story you wish to play. The loss of the official characters isn't a loss at all. The setting gives us plenty of heroes to use and draw inspiration from without having to deus ex machina those peeps into your stories.

I never even tell my players when it's set unless it becomes relevant. As far as they're concerned, guardsmen aren't educated in such trivialities as knowing the year. They're sent to fight and die standing, and that's all that command deems necessary that they know.

In my opinion, the only real reason for the earlier date is to not pass the dawn of the 42nd Millennium, something GW has steadfastly avoided since 19...um, well they've sat on that spot in time longer than your grandmother has been 30.

I don't think there's any reason to stop playing after M41. In a roleplaying game, we are already influencing the setting in a way that may run contrary to the intention of its original writers - not to mention that even the official products cannot make up their mind on how stuff works (see the Cain novels mentioned by Cogniczar). What matters is that it makes sense for all the players in your party. Personally, I'd certainly discuss how the setting would develop with the rest of the group, but I'm convinced that a "Picking Up the Pieces" campaign in M42 could be very interesting.

The only reason GW does not venture into M42 is because they are preserving 999.M41 as a setting. To the studio, it's not a story. The story is what the players can make of it - Games Workshop only gives them a very detailed sandbox to play their games in.

Depends entirely on where you look; Games Workshop says ~300-400 years biological life expectancy, with the obvious exceptions such as the Blood Angels (who are famous specifically due to their strange longevity).

The loss of the official characters isn't a loss at all. The setting gives us plenty of heroes to use and draw inspiration from without having to deus ex machina those peeps into your stories.

Personally, I am more confused by some of the dating I have seen used in novels.

I mean, what in Empra's name is 50999814M41 supposed to be?

I understand the millenium. And I do see a "999" in there that would lead me to believe it is the year 999. But are they seriously giving me a date down to the time?

GW actually published a sort of key for that once in one of the rulebooks ... although this format was to be used only in astropathic messages as part of the "mail header". Part of the long number is the year fraction (1-999, allowing you to nail it down to about 8-9 hours accuracy, assuming a standard 365-day-year), and part of it is the time dilation - indicating how reliable the message is (something about distance to Terra, how many astropathic relays were used, etc).

From memory, I'd interpret your example as: dated to the 814th part (early morning of the 297th day) of the year 40,999, dilation level 5

I actually like that formula - it's both overly complicated and super-simple, depending on your perspective, but either way it's a nice way of "fluffing up" the background by giving it its own way to measure time.

That is awesome. The problem I have with it is that the explanation lies... somewhere... in one of the rulebooks and authors of the novels use it like it is common knowledge.

Knowing that, it just feels pretentious. The next author who does it is getting a swift mental kick in the nuts from me.

In their defense, they probably thought it was a good stylistic device rather than assuming that people would actually be able to decipher it completely. Similar to how all the Elite novels (just finished Wanted , currently reading Out of the Darkness ) have each chapter start with the name of a star system most of whose names I've never heard before ... but the reader knows what that name is supposed to be. In the same vein, the reader of a 40k would be able to guess that something with "M41" in it must refer to a time. It's something nice to put at the start of a chapter, rather than jumping straight into the narration.

Aha! As much as I normally recommend against relying on fan-edited wikis, I think this is the explanation that was provided in the TT rulebook: http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Imperial_Dating_System

So I guess your date would be the 999th part of the year 40,814 rather than the other way around. It looks better that way (year fraction before year before millennium), but I thought GW likes 999.M41 so much, sooo ...

On a sidenote - that a time dilation of 1+ year is recorded only after an astropathic message has passed through 4 relays before reaching Sol also bears some significance for how short Warp travel normally is in GW's own writings. I noticed most novels (and the Rogue Trader RPG) assume significantly larger travel times.

Yeah, but all of us reading the books (ok MOST of us) know how to tell time. We know how to read a date. And we are (hopefully) intelligent enough to infer the name of a star system regardless of whether or not we have any previous knowledge of the name being used.

For example: "The Orgalakk Bunny Kiss region is decimated by Warp storms and several planets have been lost."

That must be the name of a larger grouping of planets since some planets within have been lost! Also, bunnies!

As opposed to: "OK, Kids. Today's date is 11/12/14."

That is a date. If you are an American, it is November 12th, 2014. If you are anywhere else on the planet it would seem, it is December 11th, 2014.

Now try to infer this date (not you Lynata, knower of obscure 40k things): "OK, Empra's little blessings. Today's date is 77615999M41."

As people not living where Time Dilation is a problem for communication, this seems like a D bag move. Granted, it would make me feel like I was doing something cool as an author. As a reader, only anger bombs.

This is to say that I really appreciate "999M41." Mmmmmmmmm yeah.

Heheh, yeah, I get what you mean - I just don't think the author cared .. or thought the readers would (should) care.

Their reasoning may have been as simple as: "Okay, I want to put a date here, because that's how I write my books ... but using a normal contemporary Earth date would be lame. How do they write dates in 40k again? Let's ring my Black Library editor and get a few pointers!"

You're not supposed to know what that date refers to exactly, just that it's some date in 40k. With all the stories being regarded as hearsay, it would be folly to try and establish a clear timeline, anyways, since we can't be sure of anything in that book actually having happened that way for realsies - much less at what exact date.

In a philosophical sense, the time dilation of a novel event is representative of how the IP as a whole treats its material.

Haha, yeah exactly. Understanding the date would be heresy anyways.

The only times a proper Imperial servant has to know

(credit to KnowYourMeme for providing the template, and A6A7 for the cute Sister)

I worked it out once. Ignoring the header, which is about signal strength, the smallest part of each date equated to about 8 hours (assuming everything is based upon a 24 hour Terran day/365 Terran year).

BYE

Yeah, it can get a bit messy, but then even Mars, a planet very close to Terra, has different measurements for "days" and "years". I think their days are about the same as ours, maybe a smidge longer, but their years are each 687 Earth days long. Measuring time on a foreign body can be tricky, especially if you don't intend to use the local features, sticking to say Earth's days, months, and years, even though Scintilla is a long way off from it, and might move at a greatly different speed. You might've never visited Holy Terra, and have no idea what a day looks like there, but you still might use their measurements, regardless of when your sunrises/sunsets occur, or how long it takes your fifth planet of a much bigger star to fly around it, because the gov't makes the rules, and it, for all anyone actually ever meets it, is on Terra.

40k measurements of time have often made me scratch my head, and that's part of why I liked someone's suggestion that the "time stamp" is a part of what the Astronomicon psykers do, since you might have no idea how long you were ACTUALLY in the warp, and you might have next to no information on stellar positions, if you are exploring new space. Still, at least it feels a bit more structured than, say, star dates from Star Trek. If you ask the writers, they'll blatantly say they just made some **** up, and only when they were a much more successful franchise, around the same time Wesley Crusher was on the show, did they stop "Wesley Crushering" dates (you know the song, so hopefully the reference), and actually structure it in accordance with various episodes. And, with so many of the aspects of time in 40k taking a long time, such as weeks or more in the warp, and wars that last decades+, I always accepted that, so long as I knew the year within the millennium, I was pleased enough, at least.

someone's suggestion that the "time stamp" is a part of what the Astronomicon psykers do, since you might have no idea how long you were ACTUALLY in the warp

That's a pretty cool idea...

"At the next thought, the time will be 1500 and 53 minutes at the 297th day of the year 999 M41 of His Divine Majesty the Emperor of Mankind. OMMMMMM~" ... "At the next thought, the time will be ..."

(plot twist: the Emperor doesn't actually eat any psykers - it's just that anyone who messes up one of the numbers gets BLAMmed)

I keep it vaguely in the early 800s.M41. The exact year doesn't matter so much in the Koronus Expanse.

A bit late, but this vid explains the imperial calendar pretty nicely for the ones interested:

So, if my guess is right, then this setting's internal time stamp not only predates Creed, but also the Siege of McCragge, and the Fall of Iyanden. Would be interesting, if it was in the right place, to have a group of players go there, who know a bunch of 40K fluff, and describe it as a live, bustling place.

Weird how so much of 40K reuses old ideas, and here, they act like the Eldar have already been doing necromancy with their dead for years, when, while I know that they have, a few times, I didn't remember it being at all common before Iyanden had to do it, just to survive.

Weird how so much of 40K reuses old ideas, and here, they act like the Eldar have already been doing necromancy with their dead for years, when, while I know that they have, a few times, I didn't remember it being at all common before Iyanden had to do it, just to survive.

Different writers, different ideas?

Occham's Razor.

A bit late, but this vid explains the imperial calendar pretty nicely for the ones interested:

...Good God.