Forgotten Realms "Canon Lawyers"

[Derulbaskul]

Originally Posted by thecasualoblivion

The novels themselves would be the other half of "continuity porn"

I maintain that it is the novels that cause all the problems. Staying abreast of the Realms is quite simple if you only rely on the game books but the novels are a problem (in part because many of the earlier ones are turgid dreck).

I try to run a canon game as much as possible but, by the same token, I'm enjoying my attempts to run a post-Spellplague 4E game neither aided nor hindered by canon.

I always tell my players that the game will be as close to canon as possible but the novels will be ignored.

(And folks... some of us are semi-autistic arch-pedants. It's "canon" unless we're talking about a big gun.)

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Nymrohd

The thing is, WotC has access to at least a dozen writers who are experts in anything FR. They wrote the best 3.5 FR books and novels after all. I don't think they would have had any issue keeping up with the Realms canon.

Actually, some WotC freelancers have personally mentioned on these very forums that writing to the library of FR canon had become increasingly burdensome because it required an unseemly amount of fact-checking and research far in excess of that demanded by other RPG writing projects.

[Nymrohd]

That does sound like an issue and I have to admit I know nothing of how WotC assigns projects. There just are certain writers who I'd expect do not need to do much research to write a book in FR and I don't see why they could not limit FR projects to those, given that they usually have produced better books.

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Nymrohd

That does sound like an issue and I have to admit I know nothing of how WotC assigns projects. There just are certain writers who I'd expect do not need to do much research to write a book in FR and I don't see why they could not limit FR projects to those, given that they usually have produced better books.

I suspect it's because most of the FR novel authors know little or nothing about writing game supplements (these things are two entirely different beasts), and the few freelance game designers who know FR inside and out are, well. . . freelancers (meaning that they may not be available for a project when WotC needs them).

[National Acrobat]

I have run across a couple at the RL game table, and a few in online games that I run. I always throw out the disclaimer for anyone and everyone when I start at Realms game that I don't know nor care to know all of the canon, and that it's 'my realms interpretation', i.e 'objects in the mirror may be closer than they appear, your mileage may vary, see store for details' because I still use the Grey Boxed set from 1E, which was fabulous. It gave little snippets on each area and person, and it was up to the GM to fill in the rest. I've had lots of players thank me for this approach, and I've had a few people decline to play in my realms games online after reading that. A simple sentence like that can make all the difference.

[Faraer]

Originally Posted by S'mon

Slightly OT - These tales of Ed - in his own words, usually - always make wonder to what extent his players can actually have enjoyed his game. It just seems so appallingly bad GMing.

Given that his main campaign's still going after 30-odd years. and the uniformly enthusiastic reports of both his regular players and those at convention and library games he's DMed, we know that his players enjoy his DMing very much.

I also wonder about the thinking in TSR at the time they chose Ed and his setting to be, effectively, the new face of TSR, replacing Gygax and Greyhawk. Was this deliberate, moving away from Gygax's pseudo-malevolent GMing & rather bleak setting? Did they not know, or think, about the implications of what we now call Mary Sue-ism? Did they think "Well it's like Gandalf, saving the hobbits. No fun if your hobbit gets killed..."?

You're blowing that one tiny, mischaracterized aspect out of all context and proportion.

Originally Posted by GMforPowergamers

But how can players who hate when there DMs railroad, mary sue and everything else even try to ask for them to do better, when the DM can come back with "The creater of the whole damn world agrees this is the RIGHT way to play it"

This is complete fantasy: far from either of those two things, Ed's DMing is extremely open-ended and player-driven; "Suffice it to say that the “home” Realms campaign is far more intrigue and plots upon plots and roleplaying daily life and commerce and politics and the like than it is drawing swords and hacking monsters."

[GMforPowergamers]

Originally Posted by AllisterH

Heh...I guess someone has to stick up for the canon lawyers...

fair is fair, they are not all bad...

If you're going to say "I run the Forgotten Realms" and pretty much change stuff around, why not at the outset simply say "This is a homebrew that I took elements from FR"

see this is the arguement that makes the most sense...If I go to play in a star trek game, and I am told the Fedration is at war with the vulcons, and that USS Enterpirse B is captianed by Capt Tash Yar...I don't think I could take it seriusly...


See this is why I homebrew most of the time...You see if I say we are playing in FR or Ebberon, or any other setting it sets up some expactations...on the other hand if I say my new world is realms like...it allows the tone without the history...

Originally Posted by Faraer

You're blowing that one tiny, mischaracterized aspect out of all context and proportion.

no, now again I will say I can not provide anything but my word but I have herd these stories before...I cane tell you search for the Tomb pod cast with him...he says that it is the CORRECT way to hanndle Elminster in your games...

This is complete fantasy: far from either of those two things, Ed's DMing is extremely open-ended and player-driven;

Yea , except when Mary sue shows up...becuse gods know that a King will stop what he is doing (screwing over PCs to keep it in perspective) to take an urgent 'call' (not on the phone but in person) from elminster...and all of it is to let the PCs escape when they could not without him...

"Suffice it to say that the “home” Realms campaign is far more intrigue and plots upon plots and roleplaying daily life and commerce and politics and the like than it is drawing swords and hacking monsters."

So give a counter example...an artical he wrote, and interview he gave where elminster...no change that...any of the big superheros of the realms where used in a way that the PCs mattered at all...I ask only 1 example becuse that is all I can give as well...


I thank Gary Gygax, Ed Greenwood, and many others for creating awsome worlds...but that doesn't mean I agree with everything they do.

[skeptic]

Originally Posted by Faraer

"Suffice it to say that the “home” Realms campaign is far more intrigue and plots upon plots and roleplaying daily life and commerce and politics and the like than it is drawing swords and hacking monsters."

There is worse than DMs badly imitating Ed with Mary-Sue characters, the ones trying to replicate this simulationist "roleplaying daily life is so much better than roleplaying combat" style.

Originally Posted by Faraer

Ed's DMing is extremely open-ended and player-driven;

Player-driven is a very good thing, but I'm not sure I am seeing this in THO's reports.

[skeptic]

Originally Posted by GMforPowergamers

Yea , except when Mary sue shows up...becuse gods know that a King will stop what he is doing (screwing over PCs to keep it in perspective) to take an urgent 'call' (not on the phone but in person) from elminster...and all of it is to let the PCs escape when they could not without him...

There is one simple of using "powerful" NPCs to save the PC's life without frustrating them : letting the player's call for them !

If Gandalf/Dumbledore/Elminster/etc. comes to the rescue when Frodo/Harry's player call on its relationship to the former (the ending of the fifth Harry Potter book is a good example), the players don't feel useless anymore.

[DaveMage]

I can certainly understand why FR "Canon Lawyers" exist.

I mean, they've probably spent a lot of money - not to mention a lot of time - on FR books. It's quite understandable that they'd want to adventure in a world in which they've invested so much.

To have some DM change that which they know is undoubtedly disappointing, and diminsihes the fun they thought they'd have in such a game.

Of course, one doesn't even have to be knowledgable about all the Realms to be a "Canon Lawyer" either. Even if they'd just read a supplement (or novel) or two and know that person X plays a particular part in an area, it could be very disappointing if the DM says person X doesn't exist in that area.

Personally, I think that if a DM is not fully versed in a setting, then they shouldn't run it for knowledgable fans of that setting - unless, of course, the players are fine with the DM's lack of knowledge.

[GMforPowergamers]

Originally Posted by skeptic

There is one simple of using "powerful" NPCs to save the PC's life without frustrating them : letting the player's call for them !

If Gandalf/Dumbledore/Elminster/etc. comes to the rescue when Frodo/Harry call on its relationship to the former (the ending of the fifth Harry Potter book is a good example), the players don't feel useless anymore.

yes, and sometimes it works well (especialy in books/movies/fiction where the writer controls it all)...sometimes it just pisses the DM off though to...


Again my example of (A real game I ran) I had 6th/7th level PCs who went into a dungeon following an evil wizard who had just wreck a bunch of stuff...through the cource of the dungeon (and a nother level or 2) the PCs found out he was a red wizard...He had been part of a group sent out in advance of there invasion...They were going to martch out with thousands of undead and constructs by the end of the year and begin to start a whole war...My intent was for the PCs to try to stop this...BUT there intent was to make the following rounds (First symbul...she I guess is the ruler/archmage that is always fighting them...then elminster...then the lords of waterdeep) when they got to symbol I had her tell them she didn't care...opps I guess that is way out of character...this lead to the argument of I don't want chosen of mystra in my games solving the plot...so I had elmister on a nother plane...so they pulled out 5 or 6 more names I never even herd of before...that was what ended my game...

[GMforPowergamers]

Originally Posted by DaveMage

I mean, they've probably spent a lot of money - not to mention a lot of time - on FR books. It's quite understandable that they'd want to adventure in a world in which they've invested so much.

To have some DM change that which they know is undoubtedly disappointing, and diminsihes the fun they thought they'd have in such a game.

see this is the real problem...there is no badguy here...Player A Player B Player C all sit down to play the game, if A has read the setting back and forward and expects it to be the setting, B knows most but iisn't really that into the setting, and C knows nothing of it...they all have diffrent expactations... If the DM says "X and Y don't work like this" then they know...but if the DM doesn't know waht to say or disallow it get hard.

Imagin you sit down to play Star trek in the Dominon war...but the DM never watched even a min of DS9...you expect changling infltrators, and cardasian enemies.
when you sit down an NPC acts weird...you jump to test for changling the DM say "What are you doing??" or worse just react in game with people thinking you are crazy...and why becuse he didn't know it could happen, so he thinks your weird...

now put it back in the realms you can't change 20+ year of history and not expect fans to look at you like you grew a second head...

[skeptic]

Originally Posted by GMforPowergamers

yes, and sometimes it works well (especialy in books/movies/fiction where the writer controls it all)...sometimes it just pisses the DM off though to...

Or in RPGs where the division of power between the GM and the players is less ackward than in D&D (any edition).

[Faraer]

Originally Posted by GMforPowergamers

So give a counter example...an artical he wrote, and interview he gave where elminster...no change that...any of the big superheros of the realms where used in a way that the PCs mattered at all...I ask only 1 example becuse that is all I can give as well...

They almost never appear in Realms scenarios; on the contrary, it's always been indicated, for instance, that by default, PCs who knock on Elminster's door will usually find he's just not in (he spends much/most of his time walking other worlds). Still, there's the play guidelines in The Seven Sisters, "Realmslore: Storm Silverhand's Quieter Days", and the scenarios in Spellbound. Elminster's principal role in Realmslore is not as any kind of NPC but as an unreliable narrator, one of several devices intended to further assure DMs that their campaigns needn't match published lore. On the other hand, in the short stories (and vignettes in Elminster in Hell) Elminster is used in, the other characters clearly 'matter' very much -- indeed, one of the hallmarks of the Realms is a kind of humanistic egalitarianism in which common folk are quite as important as the bold and the mighty.

Your disproportionate focus on this handful of characters is understandable because TSR and Wizards have encouraged it, but that's not the same as the world of Toril.

Originally Posted by skeptic

There is worse than DMs badly imitating Ed with Mary-Sue characters, the ones trying to replicate this simulationist "roleplaying daily life is so much better than roleplaying combat" style.

I think the roleplaying-over-rules intrigue-heavy style is a perfectly fine one.

(Edit: Just as it's a valid preference to use highly detailed worlds, snide 'continuity porn' accusations notwithstanding).

Player-driven is a very good thing, but I'm not sure I am seeing this in THO's reports.

The basic structure of Ed's campaign is a layered web of rumours (the 'current clack' which was such a notable feature of pre-3E Realms sourcebooks and articles, like the month-by-month run-down of 1356 and 1357 DR in the Old Grey Box) and closer-to intrigue from which the players take up the things that grab them: everything from trials (as in an old Dragon article on law in D&D) to dungeon-delving (for specific PC-chosen reasons rather than general exploration) to training apprentices or maintaining individual investments in distant cities. There's one particularly evocative post where Ed laid out a typical (actually simplified) set of situations and hooks from one point in the Knights campaign, but I'm having trouble digging it out.

[Faraer]

---

[jdrakeh]

Originally Posted by Faraer

Your disproportionate focus on this handful of characters is understandable because TSR and Wizards have encouraged it, but that's not the same as the world of Toril.

OTOH, the only Toril that most people know is that which has actually been published — and that Toril is undoubtedly one of Mary Sue NPCs.

[Faraer]

'Mary Sue' is used so vaguely that I'm not sure what you mean by that. Speaking of Ed's work, if you're referring to the core meaning of a perfect self-insertion egoboo character (originally and still primarily in someone else's world as a kind of one-upmanship), that's a long-ago-debunked factual mistake. If you mean something looser, I won't argue your interpretation -- I think the sources, and Ed, speak well enough for themselves.

[Burrito Al Pastor]

If you look at the Eberron books, you may notice something interesting - there's a lot of "Some people say" and "There are theories" and the like. Eberron is a setting that loves to put "maybe" and "usually" qualifiers on information about the setting, and I think it's much easier to use because of this. They keep the amount of objective information to a minimum, for the most part - cosmology cycles and detailed region maps were the biggest issues in 3e that I saw - and there's a lot of things where very little canon is even possible. (My personal favorite here is Xen'drik, which is magically unmappable.)

I think this style makes Eberron both easier to run and more fertile for ideas for GMs. If you want to do something with some famous NPC in FR (or Greyhawk, to some degree), you have very little control over how that character works; if your PCs meet Elminster (or Mordenkainen, for that matter) and he's a lich, your players will cry foul. If your PCs meet, say, the Lord of Blades, and he's actually a big warforged suit operated by a team of Tiny telepathic gnomes... well, your players don't have a whole lot of room to say "Hey, that's not right!", because 98% of the lore about the Lord of Blades is rumours.

[Faraer]

It's odd that Wizards did that with Eberron at the same time as they removed or downplayed the multiple framing devices that serve a similar purpose in the Realms: the discussion of given NPC levels as provisional possibilities in the DM's Sourcebook, the use of current clack rather than hard news, mortal ignorance about the gods and the afterlife, local picaresque storytelling more than the eventual ongoing timeline of large-scale 'canonical' 'major' events, the unreliable narrators who explicitly or implicitly conveyed all Realmslore -- so far from an all-knowing 'Mary Sue', a big part of the point of Elminster's early appearances especially is that he's fallible. "On my word as a sage nothing within these pages is false, but not all of it may prove to be true."

[JoeGKushner]

Impossible To Run A GameForked Thread: I Owe Wizards an Apology

I started a thread with some similiar thoughts.

I still 'don't get it'.

Maybe I'm just too much of a jerk but if a player tried to hold my GMing hostage to his imagination, I suspect he'd be playing with another GM quickly.