D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."

[Aldarc]

You find the question of canon from a D&D fan... absurd?? Now I find that anecdote strange as there are whole forums on the internet populated by D&D fans who discuss exactly that. But fine, it's not a question you would answer... though I fail to see how wanting to know about the canonical state of say Eberron or DL or Dark Sun as it stands currently necessarily leads to D&D settings as "dogma" rather than toolkit. If you are using Dogma in the sense of... that which is known to be true... I fail to see how a campaign setting can't serve both purposes? It can both set what is known to be true before play and serve as a toolkit and springboard during actual play...or do you disagree?

Wait...what? So now anyone with a "community" (whatever that means) can in fact create canon for anything they want?

So correct me if I'm wrong but what you seem to be saying is all those who claimed D&D 4e wasn't D&D... were right (Note... even as someone who wasn't particularly fond of 4e I still consider it D&D). Anyone with a community can proclaim Hyperborea, Middle Earth or the Young Kingdoms as official D&D settings and they are canonically correct?? I don't think it's a failure on my part to understand you, it's that I think you are using the word canon incorrectly and I'm choosing not to agree with you. A group refusing to acknowledge the Spellplague as canon in no way makes it any less canon.

EDIT: Also... "requires less thinking"?? Please expound because I'm not sure I agree with such a broad and general assertion... does it require less thinking than say a game where the setting is creating through play and decided on by the rolls of dice? Does it require less thinking then mixing and matching? In what areas exactly is there less thinking involved?

Uhm... JK Rowling (as long as she owns the rights) decides what is and what isn't canon. It's pretty simple really.

Imaro, you continue to implicitly perpetuate this idea of only one true canon, which is fallacious. You are making your own misconstructions about what constitutes canon. If you are not going to bother listening or understanding, perhaps even ignoring, what I have been saying about canon, then any chance for a fruitful conversation is pretty much over.

 

[Imaro]

Imaro, you continue to implicitly perpetuate this idea of only one true canon, which is fallacious. You are making your own misconstructions about what constitutes canon. If you are not going to bother listening or understanding, perhaps even ignoring, what I have been saying about canon, then any chance for a fruitful conversation is pretty much over.

You're the one constructing his own definition of canon which essentially boils down to anyone can make or decide what's canon... That's so far from any definitions for the word that I've seen that I'm not sure how to continue with a conversation predicated on that idea... You are basically calling the word meaningless and I am saying I don't agree with that assertion.

 

[Shasarak]

What Hussar said.

Instead of being confused over an example that you yourself coined (post 764) why not be non-conufsed by an actual play example that I have elaborated upon several times in this thread. (I also think my actual rather than imaginary example is what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] had in mind.)

In my GH campaign, there was an ancient Suloise magical tradition (this is consistent both with GH lore and with WoHS lore as established in DL), which operated in current times primarily in the Great Kingdom (which is little described in the GH folio/boxed set, except to the extent that it is full of mad wizards with ancient heritage). These wizards are called Wizards of High Sorcery; they live in Towers of High Sorcery; and they are governed by a wizadly Conclave; one joins this tradition by taking a test. (All WoHS lore.) The tradition is divided into 3 orders - black robe (mostly necromantic/illusion/anti-personnel magic), red robe (especially elemental magic) and white robe (protective magic and the like), whose power is in each case tied to one of the three moons (Luna, Celene and the invisible black moon). (Again, this is all taken from WoHS lore, although the moons have been Greyhawk-ised.)

This is an addition to the GH game. I think the far-and-away easiest way to describe it - which is how I have been describing throughout this thread - is as adding WoHS to my GH game. It doesn't contradict any GH canon. It takes the basic tropes of the WoHS and GH-ises them.

Can players play WoHS in this game? Yes - as I've already posted several times, to the best of my recollection there were 5 WoHS PCs over the course of this campaign (3 black robe, 1 red robe, 1 white robe). Other wizard PCs included a city of GH native trained by a Baklun refugee to be a Baklun firemage; a Baklun witch; and a psionicist from Keoland who ended up being fed by other party members to a demon (long story); and one of the WoHS started out as a non-WoHS wizard trained in a village outside the city of GH, who took the test during the course of the campaign in order to join the WoHS.

Except that this does not really answer my questions at all and hardly clarifies the change to the magic system to whit that it is trivial to port one magic system from one game to another.

 

[Shasarak]

Wait...what? So now anyone with a "community" (whatever that means) can in fact create canon for anything they want?

So correct me if I'm wrong but what you seem to be saying is all those who claimed D&D 4e wasn't D&D... were right (Note... even as someone who wasn't particularly fond of 4e I still consider it D&D). Anyone with a community can proclaim Hyperborea, Middle Earth or the Young Kingdoms as official D&D settings and they are canonically correct?? I don't think it's a failure on my part to understand you, it's that I think you are using the word canon incorrectly and I'm choosing not to agree with you. A group refusing to acknowledge the Spellplague as canon in no way makes it any less canon.

I think that he is right, any community can refuse to acknowledge WotC canon and the bigger the community the more affect it will have. Of course we are not talking about civil war levels of noping here so it is not as if you are ever going to see it on the news but there are plenty of examples through history.

 

[Shasarak]

When I changed canon in my GH game (by making the GH vikings actual vikings rather than Suel refugees) I didn't incur any cost at all, because the number of people at my table who both (1) knew the canonical GH account of its vikings and (2) cared, was zero.

From these two points, I infer that sometimes changing canon incurs no cost (significant or insignificant).

Except that there is a cost because now you have to remember that in your game GH Vikings are actual Vikings. It may seem insignificant but what happens if you have another 10 changes like this that you have to remember. Ok, now 100 changes - does that seem so insignificant? When you get to 1000 changes then where will you start to explain your changes to a player who just knows the original GH?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Shasarak]

Eh ... one might posit that we have seen instances of the "community" (loosely defined) refusing to acknowledge WoTC canon, and resultant (un)civil wars.

I would totally pay to see that on the news.

At the height of the "Edition Wars" what was the cost? A few hurt feelings?

You would need to be Rupert Murdoch to see those on TV. "Comic book guy tells Rupert he is playing DnD wrong! More news at 11"

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Aldarc]

You're the one constructing his own definition of canon which essentially boils down to anyone can make or decide what's canon... That's so far from any definitions for the word that I've seen that I'm not sure how to continue with a conversation predicated on that idea... You are basically calling the word meaningless and I am saying I don't agree with that assertion.

My definition of canon comes from religious notions of canon, from where fandom, in general, gets its notion. (Fandom also includes concepts such as "headcanon" or "fanon" as well, which I will not get into.) When we look at the biblical canon link I first linked to, it begins by describing biblical canon as a "list of texts which a particular religious community regards as authoritative scripture" (emphasis in bold mine). Canon is determined by a particular community. If there is only one canon then there would only be one biblical canon except there is not. There are a good number of them actually. And many more biblical canons were conceived and died throughout history. There would only be one textual canon for a number of other religious traditions too, except that there is not. There are usually a wide number of canons. Often with canons supported by secondary texts or some secondary texts regarded as equally canon. What constitutes as canon varies by the tradition and community. These are essentially anyone making or deciding what's canon, just as you say. Most people accept the authority or decree of the governing body in question, the church, the "mouth of God" (i.e. the author), or whatever powers that be. And that's fine. It's what most do. It's tacitly buying into that power authority structure. And it makes things easier for many. But that does not make the dogma of a one true canon any less fallacious. Multiple canons will always exist. These alternate canons may be small and marginalized, but their existence is just a reality. This is also true for gaming communities. We are also talking about particular gaming communities even within D&D. The size of which will vary in scope. The imposition of canon may come from TSR/WotC and there will be a large contingent of communities that accepts their canon, but we even know of other D&D gaming communities that will reject that canon. We have demonstrably watched this transpire repeatedly on this forum for over a decade. 4E rejected a large chunk of the materials originally regarded as canonical in Dark Sun. There are groups who don't. What is the true canon: the group that follows 4E's Dark Sun canon or the group that follows 2nd Edition Dark Sun canon? Or what of the group that followed the Athas.org canon? Or the group that followed the 3rd edition canon from Paizo's Dragon article? We are even in the midst of watching a sizable contingent of Harry Potter fans reject the author's assertion that newest book The Cursed Child is canon. "Canon" requires people tacitly supporting the canon imposed by the authority. What happens when that authority or canon is rejected? From what we see elsewhere, generally new authorities and canons are established.

 

[Shasarak]

A few years ago now, [MENTION=99817]chaochou[/MENTION] posted something along the lines of "RPG = fiction --> mechanical resolution --> new fiction --> mechanical resolution --> [repeat the pattern]".

So there is no contrast between "playing the game" and working with the fiction. Working with the fiction is playing the game. And the mechanics are part of the apparatus we use to work with the fiction - they regulate what is or is not allowed to become part of the shared fiction.

I would agree with this.

[MENTION=6873053]Simulocust[/MENTION] didn't say this - suppose it's true that part of having fun includes breaking the rules, it doesn't follow that any breaking of the rules will be fun.

So you agree with me when I said that "breaking rules does not necessarily equal fun"?

What if the giant is cursed by the gods? Or is destined not to slay this particular hero?

Of course he is not going to slay the hero if he only gets d4 damage. But even your example about Cursed Giants confirms my suggestion that mechanics have to match the fiction. You did not suggest that it was a normal Giant doing d4 damage, instead you came up with a fiction to explain the mechanics, a curse or plot immunity for the hero.

Minions in 4d do half the damage a regular creature of their level would do, because this befits their place in the story (ie of little individual significance).

I remember them doing a fixed damage because DMs are too stupid to handle things like hit points and random damage for lots of monsters at once. But I guess you could have remembered the lore explaining minions differently to me.

Here's a rebuttal: wizards in FR draw their power from the Weave (per various bits of lore, the one I know best being the sidebar in the 5e Basic PDF); wizards in GH draw their power from the Positive Material Plane (per Gygax's DMG). You don't need different mechanics to reflect this, but that doesn't stop it being the case in the shared fiction!

Maybe if Difilers on Athas could access the Weave or the Positive Material Plane then they would not need to suck the life out of the environment?