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

[Hriston]

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

The same is said of Harondor (minus the Rangers, of course). Harondor had been deserted for longer than Ithilien, however, which had been deserted in waves, but wasn't completely deserted until the eruption of Mount Doom in T.A. 2954. Harondor's population, on the other hand, seems to have been hit hard by the Great Plague of T.A. 1635-7, and any who were left probably fled when Gondor abandoned all its territories east of the Anduin, except Ithilien, in T.A. 1856, and resettled north of the Poros or west of the Anduin. After that it became a highway for the armies of Harad, yet [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] imagines a population oppressed by Gondor. As Ithilien is a similarly contested land at the time of the War of the Ring (T.A. 3018-9), it seems fair to make similar assumptions about the existence of its population, and their treatment by the armies of Gondor and Rohan.

 

[Shasarak]

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?

Who ever green lit the book in the first place.

That it was not only ineffective but massively detrimental to the setting and some may argue the whole game really underscores the importance of canon when writing for an IP and is reflected in the current writing team.

 

[Hriston]

I suppose I should have said war, not battle.

In T.A. 2885 there was a single battle. To which war would you refer? To be fair, you said "fight", not "battle".

Besides, it's not as if Gondor was entirely mounted in order to get somewhere non-stop to arrive in time.

No, but I imagine that the Rohirrim were. Do you imagine that they didn't take part in the raping and pillaging after their victory, along with the Men of Gondor?

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.

Are you equating trampling some crops to raping and pillaging and imagining that it would stir up the same sort of resentment in the population? Pillaging is violent seizure, not destruction, of property.

As for the army of the west pillaging Ithilien, why would Gondor pillage Gondor? Harondor isn't a part of Gondor.

Gondor is a power fighting in Ithilien in T.A. 3019 just as much as, if not moreso than, Gondor is a power fighting in Harondor in T.A. 2885.

 

[pemerton]

That it was not only ineffective but massively detrimental to the setting and some may argue the whole game really underscores the importance of canon when writing for an IP and is reflected in the current writing team.

I don't see how this is not just an example of what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has been saying - your objection is not to the departure from canon per se, but to the fact that you didn't like what they wrote.

 

[pemerton]

you can't say that some element of the work fails to be authentic if it doesn't fit that interpretation comfortably.

But an author/creator can mar his/her own work with an ill-judged inclusion or addition.

And once there are multiple authors, over time, a setting can become incoherent or self-contradictory. This is the view that many GH fans have of From the Ashes - that it wrecked the setting by changing it from S&S to "high fantasy".

 

[Shasarak]

I don't see how this is not just an example of what @Hussar has been saying - your objection is not to the departure from canon per se, but to the fact that you didn't like what they wrote.

Of course he would say that, after all he said:

The first time I was ever actually interested in Forgotten Realms was after the Spell plague.

He was not even interested in the canon until they wrote something that he liked.

 

[Jeremy E Grenemyer]

The Canon of a published setting matters to me as a DM inasmuch as it requires me to ask two questions:

1. On average, how much of the setting Canon do the players at my table actually know?

2. How much do I plan to deviate from my chosen setting's Canon for my campaign?

The answer to the first question helps me to either scale down or scale up the answer for the second question.

It's like placing a weight on one end of a scale and then figuring out how much weight to put on the other end to get it to balance.

Figuring this out helps me be get things started--basically establishing a baseline--and then I can tweak things from there as play progresses.

Regardless of the answers to my two questions, one general rule I follow as much as possible is to draw only on the Canon that interests me and ignore the rest.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But an author/creator can mar his/her own work with an ill-judged inclusion or addition.

And once there are multiple authors, over time, a setting can become incoherent or self-contradictory. This is the view that many GH fans have of From the Ashes - that it wrecked the setting by changing it from S&S to "high fantasy".

Yeah, I don't disagree with any of that. "Authentic" doesn't have to mean "good." That's a point in favor for not changing what the lore is: changing lore can often replace good or perfectly fine lore with stuff that's worse or at least no better (and even when it is better, it's still "costly").

One just can't say that it's "against the setting's assumptions" that Greedo Shot First, even if we'd probably all prefer a different narrative. Or that Tom Bomabadil is "non-canon."

And in the case that DL wasn't intended to only tell a story of divine restoration, one also can't say that a maltheistic character is "against the setting's assumptions," even if it would arguably be a better game were that the case.

 

[pemerton]

He was not even interested in the canon until they wrote something that he liked.

And, conversely, it seems that you were happy to accept changes to FR canon (eg Time of Troubles) unitl they wrote something you didn't like.

Which is to say, I don't see how you're a counter-example to what he's saying.

 

[Shasarak]

And, conversely, it seems that you were happy to accept changes to FR canon (eg Time of Troubles) unitl they wrote something you didn't like.

Which is to say, I don't see how you're a counter-example to what he's saying.

Because I dont use my personal likes or dislikes as the sole criteria to judge the canon.

Like, for example, the DL Wild Mage Gnome who hates the Gods. I can use all the evidence to judge whether the character fits in the setting or not and other people use their feelings or rather personal likes to make the decision.