These games were just amazing for their time. With the remake of Realms of Arkania: Blade of Destiny (which looks freaking awesome on Steam), im hoping someone remakes all the classic SSI rpgs. Including the two Buck Rogers rpgs.

The novels are terrible. I had the horrible misfortune of having picked up and read part of one of them. I didn't finish them; they're trash.

Fortunately, the BG series and NWN 1 (not 2) actually have the kindness to date-stamp your journal, so we know what date they ostensibly take place.

BG takes place in 1368, while NWN 1 takes place in 1372, so they're practically contemporary.

This may have been mentioned, I apologize. I found a small article which listed the chronology of the books and said that while technically the games should follow the same line, the designers had the liberty to alter whatever they needed to in order to suit the needs of the game and game play. So if they were working with one time frame but thought another character from another time frame would make a really cool boss or NPC then they were free to break the chain and make those alterations which in the end can make the game(s) REALLY hard to follow with regard to time.