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

Maxperson · Feb 11, 2017

pemerton said:
Huh? Nothing in canon GH makes it impossible that some magicians should draw magical power from a moon. The folio/boxed set even talks about the astrological significance of heavenly bodies!

Astrology is not magical power. It's astrology. "You were born under the sign of Kord." and all that jazz.

(Not to mention, nothing in GH makes it impossible that the moons are foci for energy from the positive material plane.)

What were the bonuses granted by the moons above and beyond what normal Greyhawk wizards received?

Maxperson · Feb 11, 2017

pemerton said:
Gygax's MM has stats for lions. It describes lions thus (p 61):

Lions generally inhabit warmer climates - warm temperate to tropical. They will thrive in any region, from desert to jungle, swamp to savannah. Lions hunt in packs (prides), the males seldom doing any actual stalking/killing of prey. The lioness is the real huntress. . . . Lions do not climb trees well and they dislike swimming.

What animal do you think this is describing, if not the African lion? Yet the gameworlds that this creature is used in by default do not include Africa. (As I posted, the real-world geographical references in the MM are confined to Sumatra, Japan, China and India.)

That's very clearly a Greyhawkian Lion. Those lions don't roar like African lions. Males don't kill the cubs of other males like African lions. They also don't have males that live solo until they can get a pride like African lions.

Gygax was just "inventing a new thing and calling it a lion."

Imaro · Feb 11, 2017

pemerton said:
It's not a change to archons. It's inventing a new thing and calling it an archon.

Really...

pemerton said:
No one - no designer (as per W&M), no player - thinks that the elemental forces of the primordials are a new version of the beings of the Seven Heavens first published in Jeff Grubb's MotP.

Because they changed them...

pemerton said:
This is a contrast with (say) the 4e changes to eladrin - again, per W&M, this is a change. 4e eladrin are presented as a reimagining of the 2nd ed PS beings.

I agree with this part of your post... but disagree because both are changes to the lore of these creatures from the previous edition(s)... One is just more drastic than the other.

I'm A Banana · Feb 11, 2017

Mirtek said:
I see it exactly the opposite way. The lore and rules should be separated and this means that the rules become the part that don't matter and can be can be changed and trod on and disregarded and trivialized, while the "more important" lore becomes entrenched and unable to be changed.

Hahaha, sure, but the idea is that neither of these should be entrenched at the individual table level (andboth of these should be reasonably consistent at the publisher level).

Whether a longsword deals 1d8 slashing damage or a fireball 10d6 fire damage doesn't matter for the lore. There may be some interactions, but mostly the lore is more timeless and can just entirely ignore the current way the rules try to translate into the game.

When a goblin dies to a fireball but doesn't die to a 2-hp longsword wound, it's "lore." Fireballs more reliably kill goblins than longswords in the lore because they do so in the mechanics.

None of which requires rules but exist on a level above and beyond any mechanical rules

He had, but it doesn't need to be coded in game mechanics. Personally I find that the background rules add nothing to the game. The blanket "select a combination of X skills and proficiencies" would be fully enough. Tagging on specific background rules does nothing (neither enrich nor hinder the game, it just is)

Again, I think this distinction between "mechanical" rules and "non-mechanical rules" isn't a meaningful distinction. D&D is played by pretending to be a character, and the mechanics of pretending to be a character include referencing backstory. That is one mechanism by which "pretending to be a character" is accomplished. Backstory is a mechanic.

It's also useful to see things through that lens, because it avoids entrenching or trivializing either of these things, and recognizes that using backstory is like using encumbrance: it's something some players get a kick out of, but others might not. You can also find different rules that work at different tables. Perhaps you have some other mechanism to use backstory that works better for your group. Perhaps PC's in your campaign have no backstory, and you're cool with that. Backstory, encumbrance, these things are in the same category: they tell you how the game is played.

ProgBard · Feb 11, 2017

Maxperson said:
Gygax was just "inventing a new thing and calling it a lion."

So a sort of inverse smerp, then?

Nagol · Feb 11, 2017

Maxperson said:
Astrology is not magical power. It's astrology. "You were born under the sign of Kord." and all that jazz.

What were the bonuses granted by the moons above and beyond what normal Greyhawk wizards received?

It's a bit involved. I think it varied a bit between editions, but typically the wizard received a bonus/penalty to both caster level and saving throws against his spells depending on the fullness of his associated moon and then there were other events (like moons in conjunction) that also gave stacking adjustments.

I'm A Banana · Feb 11, 2017

Lanefan said:
Assuming, of course, you want that experience to be the same as what you had before. In chess, a valid expectation. In D&D, anything but.

If you want a different experience, you're going to want different rules for gameplay. D&D's customizability makes it very amenable to those changes, which is part of why it's the best.

Which, while it seems to be important to you, might not be nearly so relevant to others. My examples here would include [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] 's game, where his players didn't seem to notice or care what he'd done to Greyhawk; or my own players who, when informed my previous campaign was using a much-modified version of FR, came back with a mighty (and paraphrased) "whatever, let's play".

It still sounds like you had clear expectations that were communicated to the players. It'd sure be nice if "Let's play a Dark Sun campaign!" could consistently telegraph those expectations and get those players on the same page. I mean, that's the Magic Circle - if everyone's not agreeing to the same set of rules, you've got a lousy play experience. If on the one hand elemental clerics can form cults and on the other hand they are typically loners in the wilderness, not everyone's got the same set of rules they're playing by. Remembering that these are two different rules about how to portray these characters keeps the distinction quite clear.

It wouldn't surprise me if there is in fact a rule against foreign substances on the pieces.

But if the white pieces are all yellow and the black pieces are all red...doesn't break any rules I know of but changes the look of things.

Okay, fair enough, we'll go with your example.

White pieces are yellow and black pieces are red is an aesthetic. It affects gameplay (y'know, maybe the red player plays more aggressively because of what humans subconsciously associate with the color red!), but it's not concerned the steps of play. If you break out a yellow-and-red chess set, the two players still know what they're in for in the course of play.

Part of the gameplay of D&D is describing your character. So things that affect your character's description - backstory, appearance - aren't just aesthetics. They are telling you how to play the game.

Except in D&D (and most RPGs?). In D&D only 1, 3 and 5 above are universal, and even 3 comes with an added "at the same table". D&D's rules are sometimes anything but explicit (have you SEEN the rule-related threads in here lately?). They sometimes do change during play, either in the short term when a DM has to rule on the fly or in the long term when the DM kitbashes the rules into something she can live with. And they aren't necessarily portable, for example if I go from a table using a rules-lite 5e to a table using all the 5e crunch they can find it's going to be a very different game.

Now as you say...

Some rules are more robust than others and fit all the 6 points above. But if one table has a rule saying you threaten a fumble on a 1/d20 and another does not then points 3 and 6 above have just gone out the window.

You don't fully understand what I'm saying.

D&D's rules are explicit, even when there's confusion about them - it is explicit that a DM decides when the conditions are appropriate for hiding, to cite a recent example. (There's also plenty of room to argue that the vagueness makes them poor rules) They're also unambiguous in that anyone who wants to apply the rules of stealth needs to understand if the DM has decided that conditions are appropriate for hiding or not.

The rules don't change during play because one of the explicit rules of playing D&D is that the DM will adjudicate player actions. That's the rule that every player agrees to when they play D&D: that the other rules are contingent on the DM's adjudication. (Compare the card game Flux, where the rules change during play...according to the rules - Flux's rules are still fixed, including the rule that lets you change other rules).

If you go from a rules-lite 5e to someone using all the 5e crunch you are quite literally changing the rules you're playing the game with, but if you take your rules-lite 5e to another table able play the same rules-lite 5e, you'll be playing by the same set of rules, even at this new table!

And the same is true of lore or canon. It's out there, it's got some official weight behind it, but - as we've all too clearly seen over the 860+ posts in here - it's not necessarily shared, and it's not necessarily portable. Further, unlike some of the more mechanical rules, you can safely shove it way into the background and - depending on your particular group - leave it there.

Canon is shared - all the problems with changing canon happen because they stand in the way of canon being shared!

Canon is portable - if I play a game of Dragonlance in Addis Abababa, kender remain the same.

And it is possible to shove any "mechanic" to the background and leave it there, as every time you've ever gone a whole night without rolling a single die shows. Depending on the group, you might nearly disregard the "mechanics" entirely (certainly I think a lot of groups disregard encumbrance almost entirely!).

Where I see a massive difference.

The first is no more than a guideline: here's what makes a typical Dwarf tick as a starting point, run with it or not as you will for deciding how you'll play your Dwarf PC.

The second is a hard-coded mechanical rule that affects your Dwarf PC whether you want it to or not.

And both, of course, are equally malleable by any DM.

Lanefan

The first is no less hard-coded and no less binding. But a DM can certainly rule that hill dwarves don't have to be observant, just as they can rule that hill dwarves don't get a +1 to WIS. Neither rule is more "hard-corded" than the other.

billd91 · Feb 11, 2017

pemerton said:
It's not a change to archons. It's inventing a new thing and calling it an archon.

No one - no designer (as per W&M), no player - thinks that the elemental forces of the primordials are a new version of the beings of the Seven Heavens first published in Jeff Grubb's MotP.

This is a contrast with (say) the 4e changes to eladrin - again, per W&M, this is a change. 4e eladrin are presented as a reimagining of the 2nd ed PS beings.

They made a new thing, mechanically, and gave it the name of something else they already had. If that's not changing what an archon is, what that term means, in D&D canon then we're way down that rabbit hole.

ProgBard · Feb 11, 2017

I'm A Banana said:
It's not that everything that affects the experience of play is a rule. If all the queens in your chess game were slick with human saliva, that would affect the experience of play pretty profoundly, but it's not a rule of chess that queens not be coated in a layer of drool. It is, perhaps, a very important aesthetic.

It's that rules describe how a game is meant to be played - they create a play experience. Part of the play of D&D is describing your character. When you say "Rath is a dwarf," that's part of the play of D&D - everyone has some idea of what Rath looks like now, because they know the rules for how a dwarf looks (no one imagines him to be a twenty-foot tall column of eerie glowing gas).

According to at least one formal definition, all rules for all games have the following characteristics:

They limit player action.

They are explicit.

They are shared by all players.

They don't change during play.

They are an authority.

They are portable (in that anyone can use them to play the same game).

Okay, fair enough as far as it goes. But in addition to the points brought up by @Lanefan and @pemerton about this definition, it's the fifth bullet that particularly muddies things for me with regards to lore. Because - and we're getting into serious Nomic territory here, as if we weren't already - can a rule be "authoritative" if it claims itself that it isn't?

That's what we're looking at with every level of flavor text in 5th edition Dungeons & Dragons. Almost as soon as you encounter it, the rules text itself is at pains to tell you that you should feel free to disregard it as you please about lore in particular. It explicitly empowers both players and DMs to do so for the spheres of the game that are under their control.

I'm A Banana said:
"Roll 1d20 to make an attack roll" and "Dwarves stand well under 5 feet tall" both fit that. By the rules, I can't make my dwarf six feet tall, it's clear to me and to the other players that dwarves are under 5 feet tall, the DM won't suddenly declare that dwarves are six feet tall one day and ten feet tall the next, if I try to make a six-foot-tall dwarf you can point me at the rules to show me that this is not kosher, and if I'm using these rules in Brooklyn and someone else is using these rules in Burkina Faso, neither of us will have six-foot-tall dwarves in our games (and if one of us changes the rule, as D&D encourages, maybe one of us does!).

But you don't have to change the rule to make a six-foot dwarf. The PHB tells you this before it tells you anything about dwarves at all:

Each race's description in this chapter includes information to help you roleplay a character of that race, including personality, physical appearance, features of society, and racial alignment tendencies. These details are suggestions to help you think about your character; adventurers can deviate widely from the norm for their race. It's worthwhile to consider why your character is different, as a helpful way to think about your character's background and personality.

If anyone wanted to point to "dwarves stand well under 5 feet tall" as an authoritative rule that forbids a six-foot dwarf, you could point to the equally authoritative passage above as one that overrides it. If that was the way you approached a game whose philosophy is "rulings not rules," which I would say the game itself is discouraging you to do anyway! Rules-lawyering with clobber texts is kinda-sorta possible in 5e, but it's not really what the designers seem to want you to do.

All of which suggests to me that a plain-language, commonsense, rulings-not-rules reading of "dwarves stand well under 5 feet tall" does not in any way preclude "with the notable exception of Gjarnr 'The Summit' Mithralmont, who's rumored to have an ogre somewhere in his family tree." And I would give the serious side-eye to any DM who forbade Gjarnr as a PC based on what's in the Dwarf racial description text. That would be a textbook example of following the letter of the rules but not the spirit; it's RAW - maybe - but not RAI.

I'm A Banana said:
It seems to me that those that want to make a strong distinction between "lore" and "rules" are trying to draw a line that doesn't really exist - trying to remove acts like "describing your character" from the realm of playing D&D and put it in some aesthetic category that's not relevant to actual gameplay. In the process, that distinction winds up being pretty incoherent.

It can be relevant to gameplay without having the same kind of effect as your ability scores and bonuses. I would say the distinction is certainly fuzzy, but not especially incoherent.

I'm A Banana said:
It still respects those that it is true for.

Absolutely, as I hope I've been at pains to say!

I'm A Banana said:
They invite you to change all the rules, which includes the height of dwarves as much as it includes what you add to something you're proficient in, how you account for spellcasting, how many ability scores there are, what monsters there are, how skills work, if you can "mark" enemies in combat....

The assumed immutability of the d20-to-hit is more a function of impact than of nature (it'd be akin to perhaps changing the game into a Western, from a "pure fluff" perspective - something you can do, but not something that's exactly easy or straightforward, so probably best reserved for someone who already knows enough to know what they're going to break by doing it).

They invite you, by implication as much as anything, to change all the rules, but they also by implication privilege the relative immutability of some over others. As noted above, it's lore that gets offered up as the first dial for you to adjust, at almost every level of the game, from the racial descriptions and background details in the PHB, to the monster descriptions in the MM, to the worldbuilding advice in the DMG, to the word-of-god approach to setting canon as recently discussed on DragonTalk. The designers of the game want you to feel utterly free to make the fluff your own, and make a point of saying so in ways that they don't do nearly as much or as often as inviting you to redesign the play mechanics (even if they also clearly think you should feel free to do that too). If 5e itself treats "lore" and "rules" as distinct phenomena without loss of coherence - and I think it does - I think we can too, and I'm still unclear what the community as a whole would gain from pushing back against that feature of the game as intended.

I'm A Banana said:
Part of how you communicate better about expectations is by making those expectations less flexible, so that they can be safe assumptions.

But, again, this privileges one approach and style of play over others. I want 5e to be, as much as possible, everyone's game - the canon-purists and the canon-heretics alike. "We'll all get along better if everyone colors inside the lines" cuts no ice with me. No, we'll all get along better if we can agree that my coloring outside the lines isn't an act of blasphemy that is inherently harmful.

And, of course, context matters. In organized play, or in public games at the FLGS, increasing the number of safe assumptions is a good approach. Carrying that idea over as a prescriptive philosophy regarding what I do among other consenting adults in our private play is starting to feel, I'm sorry, creepy.

Mirtek · Feb 11, 2017

I'm A Banana said:
When a goblin dies to a fireball but doesn't die to a 2-hp longsword wound, it's "lore." Fireballs more reliably kill goblins than longswords in the lore because they do so in the mechanics.

Unless lore doesn't care about the current mechanics and just has goblins die with equal frequency from single longsword wounds and fireballs. Maybe because that was how the mechanics were when the first lore about goblins vs. longswords/fireballs were written and just because the current edition's mechanics no longer support that there is no reason to change the lore. The lore can just continue as it always had and ignore the most current mechanics. Maybe the next edition's mechanics happen to once again translate the lore more precisely, maybe they're even more off. In either case the lore doesn't need to be touched.

This goblin vs. longsword/fireball is a good example, because the lore is actually full of fights/kills that completely ignore the current combat mechanics from day one. No novel ever had "and hero X stabbed villian Y with his dagger 20 times (because by the rules he needed to do it with his 1d4+8 damage to defeat the villians hundredsomething hp) until he died". Most of the lore from novels and sourcebook can't really be replicated with the current editions mechanics (even in case mechanics for the heroes and villians are provided within the same sourcebook). The lore/story has always be above the mechanical rules from the very first novel onward (oh, they throw eastereggs to the current rules here and there, but never really follow them).