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

[Maxperson]

First, I agree with Hussar. When I think of a setting, I don't think solely, or even primarily, of an imaginary geography and history. I think of tropes, themes, broad-brush backstory, etc.

This is why I've been able to play Oriental Adventures - the same setting - using two different sets of maps (home-drawn one, inspired by the description in the back of the original OA book; and the ones published by TSR).

This is why my Greyhawk games don't always involve the exact same backstory. Eg in my current GH game, Slerotin is the name of a Suel figure of some importance whose mummy was buried in a pyramid in the Bright Desert, and then at some time reinterred in the catacombs of Hardby. I can't remember if Slerotin eve figure in my other GH campaigns, but if so certainly not in this manner.

Okay, but this is not typical definition of setting. The typical definition of setting includes the geography and history. An OA setting without that geography and history is not the OA setting. It's a homebrew asian setting using the OA mechanics.

Second, the fact that a given setting, grounded in a given set of canonical texts, can nevertheless produce these quite different responses and interpretations is, in itself, evidence that @I'm A Banana's hope of ensuring conformity by reducing or elminating additions/changes to those texts, is unlikely to be realised.

Conformity is nearly impossible where you have a whole bunch of elements that have subjective aspects to them.

What I think RPG settings can usefully do is (i) handle some of the grunt work (of drawing maps, coming up with names, etc), and (ii) provide a ready supply of what I'll call "trope implementations". So if you want to play some sort of sand-and-sandals/sword-and-planet thing with evil overlords and mind powers, Dark Sun gives you stuff that implements those tropes. If you want to play spirit bureaucracies and kung fu, OA gives you stuff that implements those tropes. If you want to play something fairly Conan-esque, with wizards of ancient empires in a mash-up of pseudo-mediaeval European/Mediterranean/West-and-Central-Asian lands, GH is an alternative to the Hyborian Age itself. These tropes, in turn, tend to feed into the themes of the game.

This is what I mean when I talk about "using a setting".

You run your games differently than most, and I think that's skewing your perception of what a setting is. What you are describing is the creation of a homebrew setting that incorporates elements of other settings.

I think this is probably also why FR has never appealed to me - I've never seen what particular trope implementations it is providing me with.

The FR is a high adventure and high magic setting that uses real world cultures as models for the various nations. Cormyr is roughly England, and Mulhorrand is roughly Egypt for instance. Spain, France, Aztec and others are spread around as well.

 

[Maxperson]

I'm not Hriston, but here is my answer: because the moral status of Gondor is not "neutral" nor up for grabs. Part of the "canon" of Middle Earth is that Gondor is a bastion of virtue holding back Sauron's evil.

Wanting to redeem Gondor is a morally permissible motive (qv Faramir). Wanting to fight it is choosing to oppose virtue and side with Sauron.

Gondor also had the evil and fallible. Boromir and Denethor. It was not some pure bastion of virture.

 

[Hriston]

How is that?

At the time [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] is talking about, Harondor was held by the Haradrim, a people under the dominion of Sauron. PCs in this milieu who hate Gondor and seek to thwart Gondor's ambitions in the area would be working to uphold the rule of the God-king.

I'm not Hriston, but here is my answer: because the moral status of Gondor is not "neutral" nor up for grabs. Part of the "canon" of Middle Earth is that Gondor is a bastion of virtue holding back Sauron's evil.

Wanting to redeem Gondor is a morally permissible motive (qv Faramir). Wanting to fight it is choosing to oppose virtue and side with Sauron.

That's a good answer too!

It's actually moving from "rebels against Gondor" to "rebels against Gondor". People living in a land that has been repeatedly attacked, with its citizens killed and subjugated off and on for hundreds of years would harbor resentment for Gondor. They have no need to be working for Sauron to not like Gondor.

At the time of which you speak, Harondor had been subjugated by Harad and Mordor for hundreds of years. If there were any people left in Harondor (on the map it is called a "desert land", i.e. deserted) they would have had far more reason to resent and fight against the armies of the Haradrim that marched through their lands than they would the armies of Gondor which had been unsuccessful in their last attempt to hold back the Haradrim over one hundred years earlier. Gondor is not the aggressor in this situation. In fact, Gondor had no presence to speak of in Harondor at the time of the War of the Ring, having mostly abandoned Ithilien as well. A resident of Harondor would have no reason to rebel against Gondor because Gondor was no longer its ruler.

 

[Hussar]

Okay, but this is not typical definition of setting. The typical definition of setting includes the geography and history. An OA setting without that geography and history is not the OA setting. It's a homebrew asian setting using the OA mechanics.

Really? OA is only OA if you use the OA setting?

Which one would that be? Would that be the original OA setting in the 1e Oriental Adventures? Would that be 2e's Kara Tur, which was the Oriental Adventures Setting for 2e. Would that be Rokugan, which is the OA setting for 3e?

Which one of those is the "true" Oriental Adventures setting?

Which does tie in rather nicely to how canon is used in RPG's. The canon for D&D is whatever you want it to be whenever you want it to be that thing. Changing canon is part and parcel to the setting.

But, I'm STILL waiting to hear how my vulcan jedi with a TARDIS is a canon Star Wars character. Pre- or Post Disney. Don't really care. After all, pre or post, I'm not actually countering any established canon. I've never seen anything in Star Wars that says there are no Vulcans. Pre or Post Disney does not preclude time travel. So, I guess when I sit down to a Star Wars game and drag out my Vulcan Jedi with a Tardis, no one in this thread would have the slightest quibble. And I should be shocked and outraged if anyone tries to claim that my character isn't a canon adhering Star Wars character.

 

[MechaPilot]

I don't care about setting "canon," because I don't care for the canon of most settings. When I do adopt a setting's canon, I'm likely to only adopt it in part.

For the most part, as it relates to my DM'ing, published settings exist solely for me to plunder maps, monsters, and a few interesting NPCs from them. They are ingredients that go into a soup of my making (or not) as I so choose.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I checked out when I read the LOTR is "true art" and dnd settings are "b-fiction at best" post, but I just wanted to point out that part of the fun of playing in Star Wars is making up new races, cultures, technologies, etc. So, while i'd argue that genuinely taking a thing from one setting and plugging it into another with no explanation is lame and weak storytelling, a pastiche of the Vulcan and tardis would be fine in Star Wars, contradicting nothing.

 

[pemerton]

Gondor also had the evil and fallible. Boromir and Denethor. It was not some pure bastion of virture.

Gondor is a bastion of virtue. But it is not pure. That's why I mentioned the possibility of redeeming it.

I don't think that you can separate the history, geography, even demography of Middle Earth from its moral/spiritual meaning and say that you've remained true to the setting. Because the setting is defined first and foremost by those moral/spiritual meanings. Minas Tirith is not a city that happens to be a bastion of virtue. Rather, it is an outpost of Westernesse - a moral statement and a moral reality - that happens to take the form of a city.

Okay, but this is not typical definition of setting. The typical definition of setting includes the geography and history. An OA setting without that geography and history is not the OA setting. It's a homebrew asian setting using the OA mechanics.

<snip>

You run your games differently than most, and I think that's skewing your perception of what a setting is. What you are describing is the creation of a homebrew setting that incorporates elements of other settings.

There are plenty of other posters in this thread - especially but not only its earlier stages - who think about settings and canons in a fashion similar to what I am describing.

I don't think it's that uncommon.

Just looking at OA: when the book was published there was a verbal description of Kara-Tur in the back of the book, plus a whole lot of information about family structures, cosmology, etc; but no maps or history.

People who ran games using that material were running OA games using the OA setting. The fact that they happened to have different maps is not that big a deal. The maps aren't what define a game as OA - the fact that (eg) dragons are officials in the Ministry of Thunder (or are river and ocean spirits, etc) is what makes it an OA game.

The FR is a high adventure and high magic setting that uses real world cultures as models for the various nations. Cormyr is roughly England, and Mulhorrand is roughly Egypt for instance. Spain, France, Aztec and others are spread around as well.

That's not making me change my view that it does not give a ready supply of what I called "trope implementations" in the way that the settings I favour do.

 

[MechaPilot]

I checked out when I read the LOTR is "true art" and dnd settings are "b-fiction at best" post, but I just wanted to point out that part of the fun of playing in Star Wars is making up new races, cultures, technologies, etc. So, while i'd argue that genuinely taking a thing from one setting and plugging it into another with no explanation is lame and weak storytelling, a pastiche of the Vulcan and tardis would be fine in Star Wars, contradicting nothing.

That reminds me of a game I ran for a good friend. We were playing the Robotech RPG, and had gone through the Macross, Southern Cross, and Invid Invasion storylines. We were playing it so long that it started to feel stale. So, what I did was I had the REF return to Earth to try to liberate it from the Invid once and for all. But, they didn't. Instead, the reflex cannons impacting the earth triggered the Rifts Earth apocalypse.

The resultant world (which we unceremoniously dubbed "Robo-Rifts") led to an explosion of anything-is-possible-ness. We essentially had Rifts Earth with the repatriated REF replacing the Coalition States, the Invid thriving and farming protoculture plants where the Xiticix should have been, the entirely homebrewed southern state of Talladega and their hover-NASCAR military warring with the occult nations that ironically sprung up through the area of the US commonly called the "bible belt" in the real world.

 

[jayoungr]

Nothing I have described is an outlier or non-mainstream.

They are non-mainstream in the sense of not being directly represented in the source material. And a natural mage in a world where magic is explicitly said to be taught would be an outlier.

 

[Maxperson]

At the time @Maxperson is talking about, Harondor was held by the Haradrim, a people under the dominion of Sauron. PCs in this milieu who hate Gondor and seek to thwart Gondor's ambitions in the area would be working to uphold the rule of the God-king.

At the time of which you speak, Harondor had been subjugated by Harad and Mordor for hundreds of years. If there were any people left in Harondor (on the map it is called a "desert land", i.e. deserted) they would have had far more reason to resent and fight against the armies of the Haradrim that marched through their lands than they would the armies of Gondor which had been unsuccessful in their last attempt to hold back the Haradrim over one hundred years earlier. Gondor is not the aggressor in this situation. In fact, Gondor had no presence to speak of in Harondor at the time of the War of the Ring, having mostly abandoned Ithilien as well. A resident of Harondor would have no reason to rebel against Gondor because Gondor was no longer its ruler.

[FONT=&quot]"Fengel's two older brothers, [/FONT][FONT=&quot]Folcred [/FONT][FONT=&quot]and [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]Fastred[/FONT][FONT=&quot], were killed in [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]Harondor[/FONT][FONT=&quot] while fighting for [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]Gondor[/FONT][FONT=&quot] in [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]T.A.[/FONT][FONT=&quot] [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]2885[/FONT][FONT=&quot], meaning that even by the late [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]Third Age[/FONT][FONT=&quot], it had not given up its claims to the region. However, by the time of the [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]War of the Ring[/FONT][FONT=&quot] all the land south of the river [/FONT][FONT=Trebuchet MS, Arial, sans-serif]Poros[/FONT][FONT=&quot] was occupied by the Haradrim."[/FONT][FONT=&quot]

As you can see, Gondor was still waging war in Harondor at LEAST as recently as 56 years before Bilbo got the ring. Probably more recently than that. The Haradrim held Gondor when the War of the Ring started, but nothing says that they held it even 4 years before that. We do know that it was in dispute a maximum of 56 years prior to Bilbo gaining the ring, which as a far cry from the hundreds of years that you are claiming.[/FONT]