And I am trying to explain that I don't think the issue you are having with your DL character is the result of canon changes. It is the result of different opinions as to what the setting is about. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] (with whom I happen to agree) think that the setting is about recovering the truth of the gods and of the things they stand for - love, hope, loyalty, friendship, as we see in the character arcs of Tanis, the twins, Sturm, etc - and thereby redeeming the world.I want to inform those who are self-professed to "not care about canon" why canon matters to others (or at least to me). And thus, presuming I'm not unique in this, to demonstrate that changing canon matters, and has a potentially significant, highly variable, and ultimately personally subjective cost.
The issue you are having with your gnome who hates the gods could have arisen, just as easily, using nothing but the 1st ed AD&D DL Adventures hardback as the vehicle for character creation. Which is why I assert that it is not a canon-change matter.
Our interpretations can be different, but for the purposes of this a particular game, we should be on the same page about which of the many different interpretations is the "true" one for that game. We should agree on what "a Dragonlance game" means for this campaign, even if we'd do things differently or don't know about some bit of the lore or something.
Obviously I don't know all the details of your experience. And I'm not part of this game. So I can only post in response to what I've read in this thread.The canon changes failed me.
From that reading, I'm not sure how the canon changes you refer to (and I'm not 100% clear on what they are) failed you.
From your post 584 (quotes in bold):
I knew from osmosis that DL had a Cataclysm and that is one of the things that it had that no setting did. . . . how the Cataclysm caused mortals to lose their faith in the god . . . in that wilderness and chaos, [the PC] opened up a Discovery about the history of the world and all that inhabited it that lead to him embracing Chaos as his cause, and seeing the Cataclysm not just as divine violence, but as divine violence whose express purpose was to control mortals, to punish them for being "too Good."
The Cataclysm is not a canon change. That it is "divine violence" is not a canon change. That it caused mortals to lose faith in the gods is not a canon change. Establishing the PC (on this basis) as hostile to the gods is something that is being suggested is at odds with canon - but there is no canon change you've pointed to that inspired it. It seems to be your own response to these core conceits that have been part of DL from the beginning.
a mythical creation of the gnomes as a curse from a god concerned about their hubris. About the Greygem, and how it created wild sorcery and how it's tied very closely to the gnomes once again (either creating them in one version of the myth, or being unleashed by them in the other version of the myth).
crazy comic relief gnomes who invented dangerous technologies . . . [who] think big, push the limits, are always in development, and embrace failure, and don't think much about the risks. . . . a Life Quest to constantly improve an invention defines their lives.
. . . a gnome born in Mount Nevermind who was delighting in failure and learning about the birth of the race and who, at adulthood, adopted a Life Quest to further the knowledge of wild sorcery . . . The way other gnomes work on rocket-powered ironing-boards, he works on wild surges, the fabric of reality, his own mind, and the gods themselves. Because gnomes don't think small, and they're never happy with the end result, and there's always more cogs to add.
None of this gnome lore is canon change. It's all there in the original DL books (eg DL Adventures, which says that "each gnome has a Lifequest . . . to attain perfect understanding of one device.") The only change that I can see is one that you have introduced, namely, treating the obsession with technology as metaphorical rather than literal, and hence having your gnome be concerned with perfecting magic rather than perfecting a device.
. . . a mythical creation of the gnomes as a curse from a god concerned about their hubris. . . . the Greygem, and how it created wild sorcery and how it's tied very closely to the gnomes once again (either creating them in one version of the myth, or being unleashed by them in the other version of the myth)
None of this is a canon change (except the use of the Greystone to explain wild magic, which is a retcon designed to accomodate a rules change).
But DL Adventures says, in relation to Reorx's creation of gnomes, "Reorx was angered . . . Reorx, although still angered at the gnomes, had never forsaken them. He loved them . . ." Again, the issues with your character seem mostly to be the result of your interpretation of core DL canon, rather than of any canon changes.
As I said, I don't know exactly what you read that gave you your ideas. But the canon you've presented doesn't seem to involve any changes at all - and all the issues with your character seem to result from your own (non-canonical) responses to that canon.
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This is not a consequence of canon change. It's a consequence of rules change.So a DM who wants to run DL in 5e has to determine whether or not "there are bards now" is a cost she's willing to pay for her own group.
And a publisher who wants to make a 5e DL setting has to determine the same thing, but for all groups who play the game who may object to the change for any arbitrary personal reason.
As soon as you change the PC generation rules, you have to decide how these affect setting that were written presupposing some different rules situation.
And while I've encountered people who object to canon changes, I'm not sure I've ever encontered someone who objects to rules changes on the grounds that they muck up already-published settings. (Or, if I have, the objection hasn't come out so clearly as this thread seems to be bringing it out.)
This comes pretty close to what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is saying, though. If the canon change is liked, that mitigates the risk of someone having a bad time as a result of it. If a canon change is disliked, then that compounds the risk of someone having a bad time.The goal isn't "never change setting lore," or "achieve perfect accord with what a setting means." It is to make a better-informed decision about how and when to change a setting's lore.
There are things that make that cost worth it, there are points against it, but because canon matters, those changes DO have a cost, and ignoring that cost means that the risk of someone having a bad time is greater.
To the extent that I noticed the 4e canon changes, I liked them, and that more than outweighed any risk of confusion about the character and traits of eladrin, tieflings and grey renders. (The storm giant change I would regard as more significant personally, because I see giants as far more central to D&D and its traditions than eladrin, tieflings and grey renders, but when I ran G2 I had no trouble coming up with a rationale for the storm giant prisoner, and the encounter played quite well.)
You wouldn't. But do you really think that WotC thought that people wouldn't want to use the 4e MM? Obviously they hoped, and believe, that people would want to use it.I guess a better question would be; Why would you want to make a product that people do not want to use? Where is the angle to that?
This all seems just grist to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s mill: the issue is not preservation of canon, but whether or not material is liked.
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