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

[Shasarak]

For me the first time I lost interest in the Forgotten Realms was after the Spell plague.

It frankly just felt like corporate BS, lets reset the game and change things just to fit in blink elves, dragon people and devil people. Well except for the popular bits so obviously Waterdeep is going to be OK, no changes there and yeah the Novel characters will need to stay the same.

I would have loved to see the back-patting and self congratulations that went on at that staff meeting.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I disagree. I think it perfectly demonstrates how slavish fetishism about canon caused the problem. As several people have told me in this thread, my views are stuck in an earlier interpretation of the setting, and, so, I should get with the times.

For me, the irony of that statement is amazing considering the exact same people are telling me that 4e changes are bad because they changed things and we shouldn't do that.

You can "get with the times" if you want, man, but I'd encourage you to put down the club instead of beating yourself with it. You don't need to abandon the old Dragonlance experience, and you're free to say that this new lore about wild sorcery and whatnot is not lore that you're really interested in accepting for DL. It's okay to say "I think Dragonlance is a better setting without gnome wild mages." Or "I think Dragonlance is a better setting when everyone wants to restore the gods."

The fact that you can't play a Dragonlance game in 2016 and have that stuff be understood by newbies like me is a fact brought about by the designers' choice to change canon.

And that's the crux: we don't share a meaning, because the meaning changed, either deliberately or through sloppy design. That change made my play goals more difficult to realize. Canon changes caused the problem. If canon never changed, I'd be having a fun time playing an abjurer of the Tower or something, firing on all cylinders, and you'd not be feeling like you have to "get with the times." Because we'd be on the same page. Because there wouldn't be two similar-but-subtly-very-different pages. There wouldn't be two flavors of gnome canon (...there's gotta be a patent for a gnome canon somewhere in Mt. Nevermind...) competing at one table. There'd just be one, and it'd be the same one.

 

[Hriston]

How did we get from the soldiers of Gondor would mistreat(rape, steal from, kill, etc.) the people of Harondor, to Aragorn?

Upthread you said:

They would fight Gondor for killing and raping them. They would fight Gondor for burning their homes. They would fight Gondor for destroying their crops and stealing their food. That's what happens to the locals when two powers fight in your land.

If "that's what happens" when there is a battle, then I suppose you imagine that the Riders of Rohan were raping the peasants of Gondor as they rode to the Battle of Pelennor Field, and that these crimes were condoned by Theoden as their leader. Also that the Army of the West raped and pillaged its way through Ithilien as it marched on the Black Gate with Aragorn at its head. If you don't, then why do you imagine it happening in Harondor? Do you imagine that Aragorn exercised better discipline over his troops than did Steward Turin II? If so, why?

 

[pemerton]

On one hand you have the 3e Forgotten Realms Guide and on the other you have the 4e Forgotten Realms Guide.

One is arguably one of the best Campaign Guides of all time and the other is the 4e Forgotten Realms Guide.

For me the first time I lost interest in the Forgotten Realms was after the Spell plague.

It frankly just felt like corporate BS, lets reset the game and change things just to fit in blink elves, dragon people and devil people. Well except for the popular bits so obviously Waterdeep is going to be OK, no changes there and yeah the Novel characters will need to stay the same.

I would have loved to see the back-patting and self congratulations that went on at that staff meeting.

So it is obvious that trying to force your ideas does not work.

It's clear that you don't like the 4e FR campaign guide.

But who was forcing it upon you? Weren't you just free to ignore it and use the book you liked?

 

[CapnZapp]

Do you care about setting "canon"?

Yes. Unless I don't.

That is, I place my adventures in Forgotten Realms, not because I like being overwhelmed by colossal amounts of minutae, but because it provides a rich tapestry from which I can draw setting details when I need or want to. No matter where I throw a dart on a Sword Coast map, there will be at least some detail I can the either use or ignore.

The best part is that since the Realms is so contradictory I feel quite free to say whatever I please either because my plot needs it or simply because I can't be arsed to check the official word out.

I mean, if I have a NPC start an adventure by saying something like "the god N is dead", chances are good this is true, false, unknown and complicated - all at the same time!

 

[pemerton]

If it is the intent of the setting's designers that the players in a Dragonlance game play characters that want the gods to return, then they have a rather critical failure of design in encouraging that.

Either that wasn't the intent, the designers did a pretty lousy job of presenting the 3e version of the setting to realize their intended gameplay, since that didn't come through.

If that ever was clearly the intent, then it was further revision that obfuscated it.

<snip>

If it was never clearly the intent, then a character who doesn't have that motivation can't rightly be said to violate that nonexistent designer expectation

<snip>

Then, the 3e writers did a fine job of expressing the game's intents. Also, in that case, there's no support for what you and Hussar insist are the setting's expectations, so the other posters here would be more right in their assertion that my gnome is as authentic as the next character. There's no requirement to play a character who wants the gods to come back. That's not what the setting was designed to do.

I don't agree that intent is the crux of what a setting is about, or for. An artwork clearly can have significance, and generate consequences and implications and also, thereby, restraints and restrictions (qv [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]'s comments about Aragorn and the violence of Gondorian soldiers), that it's author didn't fully recognise or understand, and hence cannot be said to have intended.

Suppose you were to come across the definitive document (say, a private diary or letter to a close confidant) in which Weis and Hickman say that the various apparent redemption arcs in the Chronicles series - eg the return to reverence of the true gods, and the recovery of the true meaning of the Code and Measure of the Knights of Solamnia - were not intended as such, but rather were included just as convenient plot devices. I don't think that would change my view of what the story is about - it would just make me think that the story's authors lacked insight into what they were creating.

After all, if authorial intention solved all these issues of point/theme/tone/etc, then the only critical debates would be about evidence of authors' intentions. But they're not - because critics take works to have their own life and significance.

 

[Maxperson]

Upthread you said:


If "that's what happens" when there is a battle, then I suppose you imagine that the Riders of Rohan were raping the peasants of Gondor as they rode to the Battle of Pelennor Field, and that these crimes were condoned by Theoden as their leader. Also that the Army of the West raped and pillaged its way through Ithilien as it marched on the Black Gate with Aragorn at its head. If you don't, then why do you imagine it happening in Harondor? Do you imagine that Aragorn exercised better discipline over his troops than did Steward Turin II? If so, why?

I suppose I should have said war, not battle. Besides, it's not as if Gondor was entirely mounted in order to get somewhere non-stop to arrive in time. Also, do you really think those riders went around every farm and field, or in their haste would they have trampled the crops underneath the hooves of their horses? I doubt when racing to get somewhere on time, they detoured around every farm and home garden. As for the army of the west pillaging Ithilien, why would Gondor pillage Gondor? Harondor isn't a part of Gondor.

 

[jayoungr]

I know you didn't. @pemerton has been touting them as bastions of virtue, though. They aren't bastions of virtue.

Actually, I agree with @pemerton there. Your assumption seems to be that any population composed of humans, in any fantasy setting ever, will have exactly the same (fairly low!) level of virtue.

If it were real history, you could say that we only get one side of the story and the narrator is obviously biased, but when it comes to fiction, I believe that argument usually doesn't wash. LOTR isn't the story of two equally flawed/equally virtuous sides that clash and misunderstand and struggle to come to terms with each other. If that is your preferred narrative, I recommend Warcraft, which does a fabulous job of it.

 

[jayoungr]

Also that the Army of the West raped and pillaged its way through Ithilien as it marched on the Black Gate with Aragorn at its head.

A point--Ithilien was almost completely deserted by that point, apart from a few Rangers.

Also, do you really think those riders went around every farm and field, or in their haste would they have trampled the crops underneath the hooves of their horses? I doubt when racing to get somewhere on time, they detoured around every farm and home garden.

Actually, I imagine they took a road for most of the way. There was plenty of commerce between Gondor and Rohan--heck, you even imagined a thriving bread-importing business! --so there should be well-established pathways that would be much faster than cutting through people's fields.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I don't agree that intent is the crux of what a setting is about, or for. An artwork clearly can have significance, and generate consequences and implications and also, thereby, restraints and restrictions (qv [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]'s comments about Aragorn and the violence of Gondorian soldiers), that it's author didn't fully recognise or understand, and hence cannot be said to have intended.

Yes, but you can't say that some element of the work fails to be authentic if it doesn't fit that interpretation comfortably. WWII is written all over LotR regardless of what JRRT intended, but that doesn't mean you can say that the scene with Tom Bombadil is "non-canon" or "against the setting's expectations" just because it doesn't fit snugly into that interpretation and in some ways contradicts it.

Suppose you were to come across the definitive document (say, a private diary or letter to a close confidant) in which Weis and Hickman say that the various apparent redemption arcs in the Chronicles series - eg the return to reverence of the true gods, and the recovery of the true meaning of the Code and Measure of the Knights of Solamnia - were not intended as such, but rather were included just as convenient plot devices. I don't think that would change my view of what the story is about - it would just make me think that the story's authors lacked insight into what they were creating.

After all, if authorial intention solved all these issues of point/theme/tone/etc, then the only critical debates would be about evidence of authors' intentions. But they're not - because critics take works to have their own life and significance.

All it would mean is that a maltheistic character is consistent with the original vision for the setting, and that playing a game about restoring the gods is one possible way to play it, but not the way it was necessarily made to be played.

So, in that case,the character might be inconsistent with someone's favored interpretation of the setting, but it isn't inconsistent with the setting, and the stories the setting was designed to tell. When someone says "let's play a Dragonlance game!" it can be reasonably inferred that they DON'T mean "let's play a game with the assumptions that the authors didn't intend in place!" unless otherwise stated.

Again, this is no comment on the quality of any of that. If a game with those unintended assumptions is better than one without, you can use 'em, but it's clearly not Dragonlance "as intended" (it might be better!), and you should be clear about that up-front. If a game without those uninteded assumptions is more the group's speed, then they shouldn't need to specify that they're playing Dragonlace as intended - that should be a safe default assumption to make when someone says "Dragonlance," and it shouldn't be a surprise when someone makes a character consistent with that who is not necessarily consistent with the unintended meaning of the setting. The are consistent with the intended meaning of the work, and no one mentioned that you'd be doing anything different than that.