The world in general

[Augenstein]

I've seen some screenshots and read a bit about Radical Dreamers. I noticed that, according to some sites, one of the characters happens to be Serge, meaning Radical Dreamers must take place after CC. But I've also heard that it uses some of the same locations as CT, such as Guardia castle. So where are these locations during CC? I have never actually played RD, so please don't start flaming me if my info is incorrect.

[Sentenal]

RD was a little game made after Chrono Trigger.  When they decided to make CC, they took the crappy husk that was Radical Dreamers, and completely remade it into an actual game.  RD is not canon in the Chronoverse IMO, and could only be considered a paralell dimension at most.

[Burning Zeppelin]

It used to be canon, but is now dismissed with the advent of CC. RD was pretty much the sequel, but CC built off it.

[GrayLensman]

Chrono Cross establishes that Radical Dreamers takes place an different dimension.  It is not part of the Chrono Trigger/Chrono Cross continuity.

[Burning Zeppelin]

According to director Masato Kato, Chrono Cross is actually a remake of Radical Dreamers into a full game, more in the style of an updated Chrono Trigger sequel.
quoth Galbadia X

[Augenstein]

But surely the geological and political changes that happen between the two games would've taken much more than 20 years. Why is it that all of a sudden all of the kingdoms in CT are gone and there are so many new ones? Also, isn't Fort Dragonia supposed to be really old? Where is it in CT? So much global developement and geological change would take much longer than 20 years.

[cupn00dles]

And so they did... Like, thousands of years Read the articles section of the Compendium and every doubt you have regarding the subject should be cleared up

[Zaperking]

Fort Dragonia never existed in the original timeline.
After the Time Crash, in 1020AD, it has pretty much been there for approx. 11020 years. FATE had to create the El Nido archepalego and then the Dragonians had to create Fort Dragonia.

[Darth Mongoose]

Look, with any RPG, you should NEVER assume that the whole world contains ONLY the towns and places you can actually visit and go into. Otherwise the entire world has a population of under 100 people, which is highly doubtful.

In an RPG, the places you go are the places that are significant to the story. Hence why any country will have only one to three towns, and why towns never have enough houses for the number of people out on the streets, and why you don't see enough people to possibly sustain an economy etc in a town. Only those things that are significant are shown, for ease of programming and playing.
Fort Dragonia and El Nido existed in the time of CT, they were just never significant to Crono and friends' adventure so they never visited the place.

[Zaperking]

Look, with any RPG, you should NEVER assume that the whole world contains ONLY the towns and places you can actually visit and go into. Otherwise the entire world has a population of under 100 people, which is highly doubtful.

In an RPG, the places you go are the places that are significant to the story. Hence why any country will have only one to three towns, and why towns never have enough houses for the number of people out on the streets, and why you don't see enough people to possibly sustain an economy etc in a town. Only those things that are significant are shown, for ease of programming and playing.
Fort Dragonia and El Nido existed in the time of CT, they were just never significant to Crono and friends' adventure so they never visited the place.

Wrong - Until they defeat Lavos, The saved future is not created and hence the time crash can not occur, so El Nido can not come into existance with Fort Dragonia etc.

The fact that it only appears after can show that Crono and Co did not defeat Lavos again as if in a loop (since this time, El Nido would have existed and Porre would have gone their 100 years before Crono's existance, which could have meant that Crono's ancestors could have gone to El Nido and him never been born. So the point that El Nido and everything appear and don't change anyones existance (except for the people in Termina) can show that there are no loops anyway and that time changes accordingly.

[Augenstein]

Look, with any RPG, you should NEVER assume that the whole world contains ONLY the towns and places you can actually visit and go into. Otherwise the entire world has a population of under 100 people, which is highly doubtful.

In an RPG, the places you go are the places that are significant to the story. Hence why any country will have only one to three towns, and why towns never have enough houses for the number of people out on the streets, and why you don't see enough people to possibly sustain an economy etc in a town. Only those things that are significant are shown, for ease of programming and playing.
Fort Dragonia and El Nido existed in the time of CT, they were just never significant to Crono and friends' adventure so they never visited the place.

Once you get the epoch, you can go AROUND the freeking planet! And yet even if you go around the planet there is no sign of Fort Dragonia or a majority of 1020s locations.

[Darth Mongoose]

Just because you can fly around the planet, it doesn't mean places become significant enough to visit. In fact, it'd make places LESS significant since you have to search an entire world for answers and wouldn't go to every single place.
A world with a population as low as the number of NPCs in CT simply couldn't function! It certainly wouldn't reach the level of technology it has! Why? Because before you can have scientists and scholars, you have t have people providing enough surplus food and labour to support people who are not producing food or labour. Saying that There are only, what? SIX VILLAGES in the whole world is utterly ridiculous!
Even if you have a space ship that can fly around the whole world, if the person you're after is in New York, and you're from London, you don't say, 'Hey! Let's go to Milton Keynes! Or Sacramento!' Why? Because Milton Keynes is completely irrelevent to your search, so may as well be invisible on your map. RPGs take this a step further by simply not including those places you don't need to go.

[GrayLensman]

At least in Chrono Trigger, there are obviously numerous cities and towns which are irrelevant to the story, so they are left in the background.  The flying Epoch sequence in the ending is a more accurate display of what the territory should look like.

Places like Truce and Porre are probably major cities and industrial centres, but they are reduced to villages for simplicity.

In 600 AD, Guardia must have had hundreds of thousands of soldiers, and Zenan Bridge must have been a major battle, but only a handfull of knights were displayed.

This is all due to the limitations of the SNES as a storytelling medium.

[Chrono'99]

Look, with any RPG, you should NEVER assume that the whole world contains ONLY the towns and places you can actually visit and go into. Otherwise the entire world has a population of under 100 people, which is highly doubtful.

In an RPG, the places you go are the places that are significant to the story. Hence why any country will have only one to three towns, and why towns never have enough houses for the number of people out on the streets, and why you don't see enough people to possibly sustain an economy etc in a town. Only those things that are significant are shown, for ease of programming and playing.
Fort Dragonia and El Nido existed in the time of CT, they were just never significant to Crono and friends' adventure so they never visited the place.

Once you get the epoch, you can go AROUND the freeking planet! And yet even if you go around the planet there is no sign of Fort Dragonia or a majority of 1020s locations.

Fort Dragonia never existed in the original timeline.
After the Time Crash, in 1020AD, it has pretty much been there for approx. 11020 years. FATE had to create the El Nido archepalego and then the Dragonians had to create Fort Dragonia.

[Sentenal]

Okay guys...  Chrono Trigger takes place before Chrono Cross.  We all know that.  But any location in El Nido (the place where Chrono Cross took place) does not get created until after the events of Chrono Trigger complete.  El Nido does not exist until after Crono defeats Lavos, and there is a saved timeline.  If you want to be technical, El Nido doesn't even have to exist then:  It exists technically 2 timelines after Chrono Trigger, because El Nido requires Chronopolis to be sent back in time as well.

If El Nido was to exist in Chrono Trigger, it would have just been a small chain of islands.  Chrono Trigger had to put the world in proportion.  Chrono Cross does a archipelago.  El Nido (and thus, Fort Dragonia) would have just been a small, unlandable island on CT's map.