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

Status
Not open for further replies.

Irennan

Explorer
OK.... So you're playing D&D and haven't heard of magic.

There's a limit. Making drastic changes like that, then saying "it was magic" and providing no other explanation, just isn't good world-building as far as I'm concerned. For example, if two worlds are crossing each others (and I can't really picture this physically, even more without massive destruction. What are we going to say? Magic limited the destruction caused by an event that happened due to the fall of a magical barrier, which was the case for 4e FR?), at least give an explanation for why only a few carefully selected areas are being swapped. Besides, as I've said, the explanation is far fetched even within the context of the setting.

For example, the Weave *actually* going poof like 4e implied should have caused even worse stuff than the Spellplague, and then drain Toril of any magic sources (except the magic of the gods themselves, according to previous lore written by WotC. In fact this error was then fixed by Ed Greenwood with his late 4e/5e novels by saying that the Weave wasn't erased but reduced to "strands", still there). The Weave has nothing to do with the planes, it's a purely Torilian thing, yet its disappearance was used to "explain" the changes in the cosmology and all the gods that were lost with those changes. Besides, Mystra had already died and been brought back two times before, and no plane-wrecking, continent-swapping event had ever happened with that.

In my eyes, this is a clear example of canon not being respected in the published version of the setting, which is the only breaking of canon that I'd never want to see.
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad

A thread I just read about Mordenkainen in the FR, plus memories of an active thread from before the recent site crash, prompted me to ask:

Do you care about canon in RPG setting?

When I talk about running a GH game, or an Oriental Adventures game; or when I say that I am running a module; what I mean is that I am using some maps, some characters, some tropes and themes, taken from the setting or module.

But I don't pay much attention to the "canon" of the setting or module. I've run OA using homedrawn maps and the Kara-Tur boxed set. I'm currently running a GH game, using Burning Wheel mechanics, and I move between my old folio maps and 2nd ed and 3E era ones - whichever happens to be at the top of my folder - without worrying too much about it.

What makes this game a GH one is the basic geography and history (Hardby is a city ruled by a magic-using Gynarch, across the Wooly Bay from the Bright Desert, which is populated by Suel tribesmen). Not the minutiae of canon: the details of the setting I make up as needed for play or determined during the course of play.

I approach my 4e games - one using the default cosmology (but the "world map" is the map from the inside of the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror) and one in Dark Sun - the same way. Follow basic outlines, and use published material where it seems useful, but otherwise without too much concern for what is "canon" in the setting.

How do you use setting material? Is canon important to you?

I think it depends. If I were running a campaign set in David Eddings' world, I'd stick pretty close to canon because being able to rely on that shared backstory/setting is the whole point of the setting. If I can't say "He looks like he might have a bit of Arendish blood" and know that the players are going to assume "melodramatic, sincere, and just a bit dim-witted", because I've changed a bunch of other things and the players need to verify that I haven't changed this one before proceeding--if that's what I'm doing, why bother?

For this reason I'd avoid using any kind of setting where the players might be more expert in the details than I am--no Star Wars with a Star Wars fanatic, because there'd be too much danger that my lack of knowledge about the intricacies of the Galactic Civil War between the Jedi and the Youzhong Von (?) might disrupt that player's willing suspension of disbelief. But if everyone else playing is just going off the same knowledge of the movies that I have, then I can stick in a planet of transparent aliens made out of living glass for a certain adventure and expect no objections about how there's no such planet or about how blaster bolts couldn't possibly fail to damage the aliens.

Furthermore, I wouldn't run most D&D settings (too boring; might as well just run a homebrew setting in that case because there's no interesting shared background to speak of anyway) but for the ones I would run (Darksun, Spelljammer/Unhuman Wars) I would cheerfully disregard canon wherever it suits me. There is no Prism Pentad, there is no Dregoth, there is no Rajaat, humans are not mutated halflings, and Borys the Dragon is alive and well and terrifying.
 

doctorbadwolf

Heretic of The Seventh Circle
There's a limit. Making drastic changes like that, then saying "it was magic" and providing no other explanation, just isn't good world-building as far as I'm concerned. For example, if two worlds are crossing each others (and I can't really picture this physically, even more without massive destruction. What are we going to say? Magic limited the destruction caused by an event that happened due to the fall of a magical barrier, which was the case for 4e FR?), at least give an explanation for why only a few carefully selected areas are being swapped. Besides, as I've said, the explanation is far fetched even within the context of the setting.

For example, the Weave *actually* going poof like 4e implied should have caused even worse stuff than the Spellplague, and then drain Toril of any magic sources (except the magic of the gods themselves, according to previous lore written by WotC. In fact this error was then fixed by Ed Greenwood with his late 4e/5e novels by saying that the Weave wasn't erased but reduced to "strands", still there). The Weave has nothing to do with the planes, it's a purely Torilian thing, yet its disappearance was used to "explain" the changes in the cosmology and all the gods that were lost with those changes. Besides, Mystra had already died and been brought back two times before, and no plane-wrecking, continent-swapping event had ever happened with that.

In my eyes, this is a clear example of canon not being respected in the published version of the setting, which is the only breaking of canon that I'd never want to see.
The two worlds didn't physically move into the same space. The dimensional barrier between them got fuzzy. This was fairly clear in the 4e FR products.

It was also also fairly clear that the weave broke this time because nothing stopped it from doing so, and it wasnt worse because the gods mitigated the damage.

Im not sure what more explanation would have done for you. I think that you dislike the explanation, but that has nothing to do with whether there was one.
 

pemerton

Legend
Canon makes a setting feel more alive.
Can you say a bit more about why? Or how?

I've evolved away from using published settings over time precisely because of canon issues. If I'm in a game with a published setting, I have a strong desire to see canon matter.
Can I ask why?

1) Homebrew with Selective Borrowing: You see the published material mostly as inspiration for creating your homebrew world. If you keep to a theme or a map or something you consider important, you consider your game to be a <Insert Setting> game.

<snip>

pemerton said:
When I talk about running a GH game, or an Oriental Adventures game; or when I say that I am running a module; what I mean is that I am using some maps, some characters, some tropes and themes, taken from the setting or module.

But I don't pay much attention to the "canon" of the setting or module. I've run OA using homedrawn maps and the Kara-Tur boxed set. I'm currently running a GH game, using Burning Wheel mechanics, and I move between my old folio maps and 2nd ed and 3E era ones - whichever happens to be at the top of my folder - without worrying too much about it.

What makes this game a GH one is the basic geography and history (Hardby is a city ruled by a magic-using Gynarch, across the Wooly Bay from the Bright Desert, which is populated by Suel tribesmen). Not the minutiae of canon: the details of the setting I make up as needed for play or determined during the course of play.

I approach my 4e games - one using the default cosmology (but the "world map" is the map from the inside of the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror) and one in Dark Sun - the same way. Follow basic outlines, and use published material where it seems useful, but otherwise without too much concern for what is "canon" in the setting.
I used the above to define #1.
I don't think your description is accurate.

When I say I'm running a GH game, and it has Suel tribesfolk in the Bright Desert, everyone who knows GH knows what I am talking about. When I refer to Hardby and the Wooly Bay, everyone who has a GH set can understand the geography I'm referring to. I haven't authored the setting (ie it's not homebrew). Someone else (Gygax, Roger E Moore, etc) did that: they drew the maps, came up with the proper names, wrote the timelines, etc.

The fact that I'm not following everything they did - eg I don't use the GH gods as presented in GH, and to the extent that I do use them I do so in my own configuration - doesn't make me the author of the bits I am following. And the fact that I'm dropping other stuff in - eg in my GH games there are Chemosh cultists, who occupy the same role as Orcus cultists in my 4e game but who worship a dark god, not a demon prince (to the extent that the distinction makes a difference), and in a long-running GH game there were robed wizards a la Dragonlance, with a backstory relating to the Suel Empire - doesn't make the game not recognisably GH. (It's certainly not Dragonlance - in tone, maps, geography, backstory etc - I just like the three robes of magic and their three moons!, though the power fluctuation based on moon phase is a pain in actual play.)

But does it mean the same thing to your players? If they have familiarity with the setting, are you going to have problems where their expectations and yours don't match up.

<snip>

A setting is also a shorthand for getting player familiarity.

<snip>

What you are describing about using bits and pieces of a setting sounds like a movie "based on a book". If no one knows the book you've got a bit of work done, but you've got to introduce everything like it's a complete homebrew without the benefit of using a setting the players already know.

<snip>

I don't mind pilliaging settings for ideas and such. But at that point I'm not using the setting, I'm mining a few things from it and filing off the serial numbers.
Generally my players don't do much setting-related research. When they need bits of setting for their PCs they tend to make it up.

That said, this is what recognisable fantasy tropes and themes are for. When, in my 4e game, the player of the dwarf talks about coming from a dwarfhold in the mountains, that doesn't create any issues because the map I am using (from the inside cover of Night's Dark Terror, and old B/X module) has mountains. (Because it's a generic fantasy map.)

When I started my Burning Wheel GH game, the player of the elven princess clearly did some Googling and learned about Celene, and made up some backstory about the PC's membership of the Knights of Luna. That's fine.

Another player in the same game also did some Googling, whereby he learned that there were Suel nomads in the Bright Desert - which underpinned an action declaration to try and meet some of them. That's fine too.

In those two cases, the players are basically doing the same thing with the setting as I am - using it as a source of names and places for certain tropes or ideas which they want to bring into play.

As to why not file off the serial numbers - why would I (or my players) go to that effort? Why make up a new set of elven knights when the Knights of Luna have already been made up? Why make up a new version of desert nomads with somewhat mysterious and magical origins, suggesting that they might guard secrets beyond their current ken, when the Suel nomads of the Bright Desert have already been made up. Etc?

For me, that's what a setting is for - some of this work has already been done. Plus there are maps, and city names, and sometimes even names of mayors and other rulers, which makes my life easier.

since the players I know have little to no investment in the settings I do like, it's much easier for me to play in or run a campaign with only a loosely defined setting.
This is true for me too - but I don't see "loosely defined" as inconsistent with "use a published setting".
 

pemerton

Legend
The Greyhawk examples are two weak examples.
The first was a deliberate change. Canon wasn't ignored, the world was just altered.
There are two changes to canon in the transfer from folio/original GH boxed set to FtA.

First, there is the disregard of the invasion of the Shield Lands by the Horned Society that is a factor in the City of GH boxed set. Yes, it can be retconned into the FtA timeline, but it's not there by default and not a natural fit.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, what a lot of people liked about GH was it's non "one big evil" theme, and its more pulpy/S&S feel - which FtA undoes. This is analogous to your example, upthread, of a writer disregarding the personality of an established character. In this case it was a change in the moral/dramatic tone of the gameworld.

If you were writing a game supplement "Templars of Tyr" I'd assume you were doing the research and compiling all the past references. Small things (colour of attire) don't matter much, but there are big details that can shift.
When writers are given free reign to ignore continuity and canon, everything goes out the window as people try to leave their mark or rewrite small pet peeves or self declared bad ideas.

You can kinda see this modern comics, where every writer dramatically changes characters and they need to reboot and re-reboot comic lines every five years

<snip>

D&D lore is a little more flexible in terms of character, but the backstory of monsters and the universe shouldn't change on a whim. The entire backstory regarding giants, or mind flayers, or elves shouldn't just change in the base game. That should be consistent and shouldn't be reworked every time some writer has a new idea they think is cool.
I like Canon and there is nothing worse then other people derping things up.
That's the thing about "canon." If you're too slavishly devoted to it--and I mean this from the perspective of a writer/content producer, not just a gamer/reader--then you miss out on opportunities. Sometimes, a later idea is better than one that's already been accepted.

<snip>

D&D? Is a series of pick-and-choose ideas for you to build your own games first, and a platform for prewritten stories second. So no, I don't have a problem at all with things like the conflict between the Illithiad and LoM.
On this issue I absolutely agree with Mouseferatu - and that is as purchaser/player, not as an author.

I don't read D&D setting material, or MM lore, or whatever, to "learn about the D&D world" (whatever that is). As Mouseferatu says, I read it to find stuff to pick and choose from to build my game. So I want authors to give me their best work. If that means changing something, well that's fine - I'll sort that out. If I don't like what the author has written, it's no harder to ignore something they say about the past of the setting, or the geography of the setting, then it is to ignore something they say about the future of the setting, or the personality of a NPC.

If book 1 says the origin of giants is X, and book 2 says that it is Y, then I can choose whichever one I like. (If it's a small thing, there's the risk I'll forget which one I chose - but then if it's a small thing it probably doesn't matter if I forget! And if it's a big thing, then I'll remember, or it will come out in play and my players will remind me.)

Btw, as far as I understand the reason for frequent reboots in comics is precisely to kill off all the canon, so that new fans can get into the comics without having to grapple with accumulated lore that is, from their point of view, largely pointless. (And it's worth noting that plenty of comics used to functionally reboot back in the day as well - every few years there's another "supervillain tries to marry Aunt May" or "Peter breaks up with MJ" or "X-Men get taken prisoner by Magneto" or whatever story.)

What other errors are there? Will this contradict something that has already been established in my game? You just don't know...
To me this is hard to work through.

I mean, suppose that in my GH game the PCs kill Nerof Gasgal, the mayor of GH. And then I buy a new GH supplement and it assumes Nerof Gasgal is still alive. That contradicts something already established in my game. So I have to disregard some of the supplement.

Conversely - suppose someone publishes a GH supplement that rewrites who is the mayor of GH. It's not Nerof Gasgal any more. But in my game, following the older material, it is. So I have to disregard some of the supplement. The "error" on the part of the new author is no bigger a deal, in this case, than the "canon continuity" of the author in the first example.

As Mouseferatu says, it's all just stuff to pick and choose from in playing a game.

Compare this to... oh, the new cosmology of 4e.

<snip>

It was needless. The World Axis could have been presented as the background for the Nentire Vale setting.
It could have been, but how would that have made it better? I have used the core cosmology and history of 4e (ie the gods; the planar set-up; the fallen empires of Bael Turath, Akhosia and Nerath; etc) but have zero interest in the Nentir Vale (the earthly part of my 4e game takes place on the map on the inside cover of Night's Dark Terror, so is notionally the Grand Duchy of Karameikos - though I believe the Grand Duchy may not actually have been mentioned ever during play, except perhaps in the first session).

So for me it was better to have the cosmology and core conceits presented up front, and to have the Nentir Vale relegated to a chapter of the DMG that I didn't read for the first few years that I owned the book.

And the cosmology is novel and interesting, whereas the geography and details of the Nentir Vale add nothing very novel to the abundant supply of low-level adventuring settings (hence the fact that I can use Night's Dark Terror instead and need make no other changes to my default lore 4e game).
 

delericho

Legend
Btw, as far as I understand the reason for frequent reboots in comics is precisely to kill off all the canon, so that new fans can get into the comics without having to grapple with accumulated lore that is, from their point of view, largely pointless. (And it's worth noting that plenty of comics used to functionally reboot back in the day as well - every few years there's another "supervillain tries to marry Aunt May" or "Peter breaks up with MJ" or "X-Men get taken prisoner by Magneto" or whatever story.)

The "big two" comics companies are basically trying to have it both ways. Some decades ago, they discovered that having a big, unfolding story was good both for attracting fans and for retaining those fans - because people liked tracking all those story details as they unfolded over time.

Unfortunately, they didn't plan decades ahead (who does?) and so didn't realise that those same accumulated details would eventually become a major issue, precisely because they make it more difficult for people to buy in.

And so they try to reboot - providing an in-universe explanation to allow them to wipe the slate clean, with the hope that they can both retain their existing fans and provide an easy on-ramp for new readers. Unfortunately it doesn't work, because every writer has their own particular favourite story points that they absolutely have to bring back in the 'new' continuity, which come complete with a whole bunch of associated lore, and the universe therefore very quickly becomes overly complex again... and needs to be rebooted again.

And now they've done that a few times, the fans are sick of reboots, and every time it happens a few more drift away. So they're screwed.

(And, incidentally, we're already seeing that same "author brings back their favourites" thing with the 'new' Star Wars continuity - Thrawn has now been restored to canonical status, and Zahn is writing a new novel featuring the character. Which will no doubt bring back just a few more of his favoured creations.)

As far as I can see, what the comics should have done is taken a look at soap operas, which manage to have both an ongoing story without accumulating an impossible amount of lore - have characters come in, age and possibly die, move on, change roles (the student becomes the mentor), or whatever. But at any given time, they only ever have a manageable set of characters and plot threads going.

In effect, that means that Bruce Wayne should have retired as the Batman a great many years ago (probably no later than 1980), and should be dead by now - of old age, if nothing else. And when I say 'dead', I don't mean the comic book version.

(But, of course, that's easy to say now. It's not so easy to foresee the need for it decades in advance. :) )
 

I don't think your description is accurate.

When I say I'm running a GH game, and it has Suel tribesfolk in the Bright Desert, everyone who knows GH knows what I am talking about. When I refer to Hardby and the Wooly Bay, everyone who has a GH set can understand the geography I'm referring to. I haven't authored the setting (ie it's not homebrew). Someone else (Gygax, Roger E Moore, etc) did that: they drew the maps, came up with the proper names, wrote the timelines, etc.

The fact that I'm not following everything they did - eg I don't use the GH gods as presented in GH, and to the extent that I do use them I do so in my own configuration - doesn't make me the author of the bits I am following. And the fact that I'm dropping other stuff in - eg in my GH games there are Chemosh cultists, who occupy the same role as Orcus cultists in my 4e game but who worship a dark god, not a demon prince (to the extent that the distinction makes a difference), and in a long-running GH game there were robed wizards a la Dragonlance, with a backstory relating to the Suel Empire - doesn't make the game not recognisably GH. (It's certainly not Dragonlance - in tone, maps, geography, backstory etc - I just like the three robes of magic and their three moons!, though the power fluctuation based on moon phase is a pain in actual play.)

Would you say it's closer to #2? The details you just described seem more like they might fit that category. I was pulling out #1 from the impression I got about motive and approach.

For me, that's what a setting is for - some of this work has already been done. Plus there are maps, and city names, and sometimes even names of mayors and other rulers, which makes my life easier.

This is true for me too - but I don't see "loosely defined" as inconsistent with "use a published setting".

I agree that using a loosely defined setting is using a setting. I prefer those sometimes because they are easier to use. I think a point that some are making is that there is a limit to how far you can go and still being playing in a particular setting, as opposed to playing in a home-brewed setting inspired by that setting. An argument could be made that all games fall into that category--but we're talking about differences in degree here, and the differences are real.

Another tangential concept that has come up in this thread and others is how personal attitude towards settings can influence how you feel about using them. The same person might abhor deviating from canon in Star Wars or Middle-Earth, but see the Forgotten Realms as a big book of suggestions for making their own D&D world. So, for some elements of the discussion, we can probably add the consideration that a lot of it comes down to how you feel about the setting. If you really like a setting's implementation you are probably less likely to change it (why fix what you don't feel is broken?)

I mean, how many of us look at any world and think, "That is awesome! I completely want to run that. Now, let me change some of it in a way that I don't think is actually going to improve it."
 

pemerton

Legend
As far as I can see, what the comics should have done is taken a look at soap operas, which manage to have both an ongoing story without accumulating an impossible amount of lore - have characters come in, age and possibly die, move on, change roles (the student becomes the mentor), or whatever. But at any given time, they only ever have a manageable set of characters and plot threads going.

In effect, that means that Bruce Wayne should have retired as the Batman a great many years ago
In many ways, Marvel comics in the late 60s through (more-or-less) the mid-80s were soap operas. Like soap operas, the same plot sequences recur; like soap operas, you have recurring motifs and tropes. And like soap operas, the accumulated weight of law was more like backdrops (you see Flash Thompson occur, or see Gwen Stacy referred to, and even if you don't know the relevant story arc (for Gwen) or backstory (for Flash) you can work out, more-or-less, what their role in the story is/was from the current events and dialogue).

The one difference from soap operas is that, because the loyalty is to, and the interest is in, the characters rather than the story per se, the characters have to remain fixed. (Which means that you are continually retconning/rewriting the war that Prof X fought in, the style of Jean Grey's hair when she was a teenager, the "look" of your robots and other tech, etc.)

It seems to me that the overwhelming burden of story began in the X-Men in the late 80s (around the Fall of the Mutants). I stopped reading in the mid-90s and so can't comment on any more recent developments. But I can recall that when I bought my first New Mutants comics in the early 80s I could follow the events even though I didn't, at that time, know the parallel plot involving the X-Men and the Brood (other than what was referred to in NM itself). Which I think is illustrative of that earlier, soap operatic approach.
 

Irennan

Explorer
The two worlds didn't physically move into the same space. The dimensional barrier between them got fuzzy. This was fairly clear in the 4e FR products.

Thanks for clarifying. However, if the barrier became thin, that would have allowed things like travel between the two worlds for that time, not swapping entire, but carefully selected, continents. With 0 repercussions of swapping such huge masses of land.

It was also also fairly clear that the weave broke this time because nothing stopped it from doing so, and it wasnt worse because the gods mitigated the damage.

The Weave didn't break, actually, with the new lore. But the thing is, with the Weave breaking, which 4e assumed, all magic sources should quickly originate a huge burst of magic, and then dissipate, leaving Toril in the same condition as before the birth of Mystyl, with magic being accessible only to gods. This was stated, for example, in "Magic of Faerun" (and not as a matter of opinion), but in 4e they said that it merely was a false belief.

Im not sure what more explanation would have done for you. I think that you dislike the explanation, but that has nothing to do with whether there was one.

See what I said above. Plus, the planes and the realms of the various gods shouldn't have been affected by the Spellplague. What I'm saying is that the stuff that led to 4e was "convenient" (like the Sundering was too), and even dismissed previous lore.
 
Last edited:

delericho

Legend
The one difference from soap operas is that, because the loyalty is to, and the interest is in, the characters rather than the story per se, the characters have to remain fixed.

Indeed. Unfortunately, that one difference is also the big mistake.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.
Remove ads

Top