D&D 5E Do you care about setting "canon"?

[JeffB]

Can I ask what the advantage of call either of those setting "Forgotten Realms" or "Nentir Vale" is then?

I mean, your pretty much home-brewing a setting, but stealing proper-nouns and perhaps a few maps. Why not go the extra mile and make it your own with your own names and places? At least nobody playing would have an expectation of cannon or setting knowledge.

I mean, if I tell you I'm going to run a STAR-TREK game, but I'm replacing Romulans with the Galactic Empire (complete with Sith and Death Star), weakening the Federation so that is a collection of infighting planetary states, making Cylons a playable race, and having them face Reapers from Firefly as primary antagonists, can I really say I'm playing STAR TREK anymore?

Like the new Star Trek, I look at it as an alternate timeline.

I am not replacing things from one setting with another setting ...e.g. The Circle of Eight with The Seven Sisters, or the Zhentarim trading places with The Slave Lords, or the Church of Bane with the Church of Hextor (though I very well might prefer some details of the Church of Bane and use those details for thr Church of Hextor in my Greyhawk game.

I grew up in the 70s when settings were a mish-mash of earth mythology and folklore mixed with the literary influences of the game. Where a Paladin of Odin battled minions of Set in heir hidden temple somewhere deep in the wastes of Barsoom

I find this a feature of RPGs, not a bug.


Edit- to answer "why"? Its much easier to pick and choose from extensive works like FR or GH than create from whole cloth. I barely have time to prep/write adventures these days let alone spend hours creating lots of detail about a setting. Instead I use the Nentir Vale (for example) as a framework and build off of it as I see fit.

 

[Blue]

One of the biggest reasons to use a setting is the lore, history, politics and background of it - the canon.

I dislike using other people's canon. Started hating it when I joined an FR game playing a bard but not having read the FR books. There was so much the DM assumed I knew, NPCs and places he'd name drop that I was the first time hearing them because all of the other players had read all the novels.

So I almost exclusively run a homebrew world. Because I know all the canon. (Not that I make all the canon - I have been blessed with players over the years that love to grab part of their character's background and run with it, fleshing out things for me that become canon.)

The only published setting I've run in the past 15 years is the 13th Age default setting, because it's broad strokes and "that's awesome" bits and explicitly leaves all the details for the DM to fill in.

So yes, I care about canon, because it gets in the way of me running. I'll play in a game where the DM knows it and is will to be our guide in it. Had a fantastic time in an Eberron game. But that would be as true if they were running a homebrew.

 

[robus]

I thought I would but I find the FR to be such a mishmash of stuff that it bugs me. I want a world with better internal consistency. FR seems to be everything but the kitchen sink.

 

[AaronOfBarbaria]

I care deeply about canon right up to the start of a campaign. The point of using a setting, rather than making it up on my own as I go along, is to provide answers to questions about the world the characters live in at the start of the campaign.

But once the PCs start actually doing stuff, my concerns firmly fix themselves to that stuff and how it changes the world around them, and if it isn't compatible with some bit of canon - especially a bit of canon that comes along in a published product released sometime during the campaign - then it is the PCs actions and their consequences that stay true.

Also, there is one special circumstance in which I care not the slightest for canon and toss it entirely to the wayside: if a player knows it better than I do and tries to dictate to me along the lines of "Um... didn't you mean [this]?" while we are at the table trying to play the game.

 

[Mercule]

Greyhawk was intended by EGG to be a static setting. The folio/boxed set would start everyone at the same time frame, and then individual DMs would add to the setting the events would be determined by the DM and Players. Adventures referenced each other, so that you could advance the plot with them, but only if you ran them (only the players' actions really advanced the story). All other products were going to expand the world beyond the Flanaess (those were never made, unfortunately). This was EGG's vision, and so I run what is called Gygaxian Greyhawk, where no product or information after EGG's ousting is canon. This leaves very little canon, comparably, so it's only partially canon.

I like this for an RPG. Once the books are in my hands, it's all open for change. Anything published after my first session -- where I've probably had to answer a question not covered by the source material just to make characters -- is probably suspect and likely to contradict.

Realms was intended by Ed to be an expanding story, especially considering it was a story setting before a D&D setting. This is why the Realms has a glut of novels and stories that are all canon. The downside of this is twofold: it's hard for a DM to actually have perfect Realmslore, and some of it really sucks. DMs can just run it as best they can, using the knowledge they have and minimizing the canon they don't like. I don't run Realms often, but I try very hard to expand my Realmslore for when I do (I've read a ton of the novels, but I've not read much of the sourcebooks because I can't find them).

It should stay in the novels. Having a D&D setting that is consistent with the D&D rules is a nice jumping off point. Using as more runs the risk of the above conflict. Once the novel or movie line is done, then it's all good because we have a stable starting point.

To answer the original question, I actually am more interested in the random name-dropping that Gygax did in the AD&D books. Those spark ideas, but don't actually have any true "canon". I'd even throw in the original Ravenloft/I6 adventure, which ended up being used as the wrongly-conquered familial home of a (quarter-elven) PC. Second choice would be the Greyhawk style. This is the Eberron mode and I'm using the setting quite well, thank you.

I hadn't really considered things in the way [MENTION=6775477]Shiroiken[/MENTION] put it, but it would definitely explain why I've pretty much always despised (hated is too weak a word) the Realms but enjoyed Greyhawk and Eberron while being lukewarm on Dragonlance.

 

[Zardnaar]

Kind of yes otherwise why bother using the setting at all. I do not like some of the TSR/WoTC metaplot for the settings though.

 

[SkidAce]

I port stuff I like into my homebrew world, so canon isn't really an issue. I've got a "Sword Coast"-ish area, a "Bissell and Barrier Peaks"-ish area, a "Zamora and Stygia"-ish area, and so on. The world's "canon" is internally consistent (mostly) but the rest is mostly name-checks to give the world a context.

-The Gneech

 

[Umbran]

I haven't used published settings much for D&D, though my current 5e game may wind up in FR sort of by default because I'm using WotC published modules for it.

But, there are other games with a greater tradition of having a setting tied to the mechanics, like Shadowrun or Deadlands, or Marvel Superheroes. And I've used those settings, and my general notion is this - the canon ends where my game begins. The canon exists only insofar as my game uses it. It is not sacrosanct, not a sacred cow. My game does not exist to explore canon. It exists for the PCs to have cool adventures in, and anything in canon that doesn't serve that purpose can take a hike.

 

[robus]

The key bits are the protagonists (the PCs) and the antagonists (the key NPCs that are plotting against the PCs or the world they live in). The rest (regions, cities, monsters and miscellaneous NPCs) are all scenery to be included, removed, replaced or expanded as needed. I really don't care much for the history of a place unless it's directly relevant to the plot. Otherwise these things all just exist for the PCs to interact with as they romp around the world.

 

[GreenTengu]

I don't feel like any D&D setting aside from maybe Dragonlance was ever meant to be played with the idea of it following a strict canon with an evolving metaplot.

Generally speaking, sooner or later any novel series protagonist become so powerful and world-shaping that it is really difficult to envision your heroes having any real use if they are occupying the same existence. Moreover, any PCs given sufficient ability to affect the world are going to derail it from strict canon sooner or later.

Instead, I feel like the settings are meant to be played as everything was "canon" prior to the PCs popping into the picture-- to the extent the GM cares to research it anyway-- and at that point you are basically playing within a multiverse spin-off of what is happening in the setting in the hands of novel writers.