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

[I'm A Banana]

The default assumptions don't matter very much at all. They don't tell you anything about how you are meant to play the game. They're not normative in any shape or form. If you don't like them, you just ignore them.

If you want to argue that D&D is somehow uniquely excepted from the default effect, you are going to have to martial much more than just a contrary claim to convince me.

I can agree with the proposition that D&D encourages, rewards, and even, to a certain degree, demands non-standard use.

But I cannot agree with the proposition that the default assumptions don't matter, aren't normative, or don't communicate the intent of gameplay.

I'd think that at the very least, the reaction that 4e provoked would have shown that the default matters very much in practice, regardless of whether or not it should matter (and I think there's reasons it should, too).

This is just staggering to me. It implies that no one could ever have played Moldvay Basic at all, because it offer no default story for any of the PC races.

I don't know if we're reading the same Moldvay Basic...

A dwarf is short and stocky, standing about 4' tall and...
...[Elves] can thus be valuable friends (or dangerous opponents), but usually prefer to spend their time feasting and frolicking in woodland glades...
...[Halflings] are outgoing but not unusually brave, seeking treasure as a way to gain the comforts of home, which they so dearly love...

That's all default story.

It's also "thematically-laden contex and reason for action," though it's implicit.

Dwarves love gold, and so become adventurers to search for it. Elves are fascinated by magic and never grow tired of collecting spells or magic items, and so become adventurers to search for such things. Halflings seek treasure as a way to gain the comforts of home - and adventuring leads to treasure!

If you want to use tiefling with random appearance, and you have a table in a Planescape book for rolling up random tiefling appearances, then you already have the support you need.

You don't understand - it's not really the tables I want. It's the story those tables help me tell. Stating in no uncertain terms that the game as published isn't really interested in that story going forward (by changing the lore) means that I have to answer the question of whether or not I want to continue to play in a game that, by default, doesn't think the story I want to tell is all that important to support.

Because he is not talking about D&D players' ownership over their fiction and their stories. He is asking why people feel ownership over the fiction that TSR/WotC publishes.

Because they want the game to support the stories they want to tell.

It's not really all that high of a demand to place on a storytelling game: help me tell the stories I'd like to tell.

Thanks to its history and popularity, D&D has a lot of stories that can be told with the lore that already exists.

If someone has a lot of passion for the game, those are the things they have passion for - those experiences that D&D has helped them have and that they hope to have. If D&D's publishers come out and effectively pronounce those experiences and stories "non-standard," then it makes perfect sense to drop D&D like a hot rock and go play something that professes to want you to have those experiences (or just play nothing, since TTRPG's are logistically hard).

 

[pemerton]

If you want to argue that D&D is somehow uniquely excepted from the default effect, you are going to have to martial much more than just a contrary claim to convince me.

<snip>

I cannot agree with the proposition that the default assumptions don't matter, aren't normative, or don't communicate the intent of gameplay.

The "default effect" tells us that people will choose the default option in circumstances where they are not particularly motivated to choose otherwise, or there are obstacles in the way of choosing otherwise (eg I have to fill in an organ donor card, to use on of the examples on the Wikipedia page), or there is a degree of social pressure towards the default choice.

How does any of this apply to tieflings in D&D? If you already have a shelf full of Planescape books telling you about Planescape tieflings, why would you be swayed by what is published in the 4e PHB? For whom is the 4e PBH normative?

The reason that I do as the Romans do when I'm in Rome is because I want to fit in. But why would anyone who purchases a 4e book, but who doesn't like its version of tieflings, and who already knows about and likes Planescape tieflings, want to "fit in" with what WotC has written?

The only mechanism I can conceive of - which I referred to in my earlier post upthread - is that players feel an obligation to use the most recently published material. But why would anyone feel such an obligation? And to the extent that they do, once it is pointed out to them, why wouldn't they try and throw off that sense of obligation? The idea that anyone is obliged to use the published fiction - let alone the most recently published fiction - is absurd, and it only needs to be stated for its absurdity to be evident.

You don't understand - it's not really the tables I want. It's the story those tables help me tell. Stating in no uncertain terms that the game as published isn't really interested in that story going forward (by changing the lore) means that I have to answer the question of whether or not I want to continue to play in a game that, by default, doesn't think the story I want to tell is all that important to support.

<snip>

It's not really all that high of a demand to place on a storytelling game: help me tell the stories I'd like to tell.

If the Planescape books helped you tell stories about non-4e tieflings in 1998, why don't they still serve that function in 2008?

This is why I think the comparison to Star Trek is so inapt. If the new Star Trek stories include stuff you don't like, you're out of luck as far as enjoying new Star Trek stories is concerned.

But if newly published D&D material sucks, that's not a problem at all, because you can just keep using your old material. It's still there, still providing all the support that it did 10 or 20 years ago.

To give just one instance - I like Kara Tur and not Rokugan, and so, though I own the 3E OA book, I wouldn't use its setting, because I prefer the older one. And those Kara Tur books and modules are still all there, ready for me to use.

Thanks to its history and popularity, D&D has a lot of stories that can be told with the lore that already exists.

And publishing new material that is different, or that even contradicts that lore, does not change the current state of affairs one iota.

To give an example that I posted upthread and that no one has responded to: in the DSG, published in 1986, Mind Flayers were said to not long after empires or dominating others. Rather, their goal is to extinguish the sun.

I think that's an excellent story for Mind Flayers, although it seems to basically have been discarded by all later stuff about Mind Flayers. The thing is, I can stiil use that ficiton despite the other stuff having been published.

To give another example: when writing up the Scarlet Witch as a PC to be played in a forthcoming MHRP game I expect to run, I ignore some of the most recent character backstory that seemed silly to me, and just stuck to the stuff that I remember from reading the Avengers in the 70s and 80s. That old fiction is still there, still ready for me to use, despite more recent stuff I don't like having been added.

If someone has a lot of passion for the game, those are the things they have passion for - those experiences that D&D has helped them have and that they hope to have. If D&D's publishers come out and effectively pronounce those experiences and stories "non-standard," then it makes perfect sense to drop D&D like a hot rock

I have a passion for a lot of things in the neighbourhood of RPGing - D&D; FPRGing more generally; superheroes and Marvel comics in particular. If WotC, or Marvel, publish something that is different from what I like, they are not pronouncing my experiences "non-standard", and it makes no sense at all to stop doing something I enjoy.

Why is it relevant to my pleasure in my experiences that some strangers in another city (in my case, another country) happen to want to publish something different?

That has nothing to do with the "default effect". It's about adopting an orienation towards commercially-published serial fiction which is already a bit strange (instead of just not watching a new movie a person doesn't like, that person forms a normative judgment about the production of the film - it's a "betrayal" of the franchise), and then taking that orienation into a medium the whole point of which is to create your own fiction rather than slavishly replicate someone else's.

 

[DeltaEcho]

I'm not a fan of the "Conan' setting......

joke aside, it depends, canon for Star Wars or Star Trek or any other tv or movie based, absolutely

for d&d etc not so much, I like poetic license, and if I think I can do it better it changes,

 

[Maxperson]

One classic class that does carry thematic baggage is the thief class, and this is precisely why it is notoriously difficult to integrate into typical dungeon-crawling: because the only way the thief PC can carry out his/her thematic trajectory of stealing is by stealing from party members. (An exception is the all-thief party: and that's why there is a distinct tradition of all-thief games in classic D&D where there is no comparable tradition of all-cleric or all-fighter games.)

I disagree with this. As a thief, I stole from NPCs, tombs, houses, etc. I never needed to steal from the party in order to be a thief. A few of my thieves did so anyway, but that was dependent on other portions of the character's background.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't understand - it's not really the tables I want. It's the story those tables help me tell. Stating in no uncertain terms that the game as published isn't really interested in that story going forward (by changing the lore) means that I have to answer the question of whether or not I want to continue to play in a game that, by default, doesn't think the story I want to tell is all that important to support.

This strikes me as an excessive reaction. Sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Since 1983 when I began playing roleplaying games, I have found exactly 0 that were 100% what I wanted. I ignored or changed what I didn't like until it became a game that fit me.

If there were way too many things I didn't like to the point where I was essentially re-writing the game, only then did I put the game aside and decide I didn't want to continue. It doesn't sound like that's the case you are encountering here.

It's not really all that high of a demand to place on a storytelling game: help me tell the stories I'd like to tell.

Why you? Why not me? Why not Pemerton? What about the stories WE want to tell? There's no way that they can please everyone with their decisions.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The "default effect" tells us that people will choose the default option in circumstances where they are not particularly motivated to choose otherwise, or there are obstacles in the way of choosing otherwise (eg I have to fill in an organ donor card, to use on of the examples on the Wikipedia page), or there is a degree of social pressure towards the default choice.

How does any of this apply to tieflings in D&D? If you already have a shelf full of Planescape books telling you about Planescape tieflings, why would you be swayed by what is published in the 4e PHB? For whom is the 4e PBH normative?

I'd think it would be obvious - 4e's PHB establishes the default assumptions for playing 4e D&D. It sets the norms. If you want to play 4e D&D, that's the book that tells you how to do it and what is expected when you do it.

The reason that I do as the Romans do when I'm in Rome is because I want to fit in. But why would anyone who purchases a 4e book, but who doesn't like its version of tieflings, and who already knows about and likes Planescape tieflings, want to "fit in" with what WotC has written?

The only mechanism I can conceive of - which I referred to in my earlier post upthread - is that players feel an obligation to use the most recently published material. But why would anyone feel such an obligation? And to the extent that they do, once it is pointed out to them, why wouldn't they try and throw off that sense of obligation? The idea that anyone is obliged to use the published fiction - let alone the most recently published fiction - is absurd, and it only needs to be stated for its absurdity to be evident.

One feels an obligation to play the game as the game asks to be played (ie, with its own lore). That is, after all, what the book that gives instructions for the game asks you to do. That's the default - the thing that happens if you don't do anything to change it. If you don't want to play the game by what the book says, it becomes a question of if the rest of the book provides enough benefit to offset the effort of overcoming the default.

If the Planescape books helped you tell stories about non-4e tieflings in 1998, why don't they still serve that function in 2008?

The people who wrote the game didn't really want them to serve that function anymore. Doesn't stop you from restoring it, but it does make it a question of reward for the effort.

Why is it relevant to my pleasure in my experiences that some strangers in another city (in my case, another country) happen to want to publish something different?

They're the ones telling people what to do to play the game. They're setting the defaults, and thus setting the norms. It takes effort to resist those norms - effort that the player didn't have to go through until that (pointless for them) lore change.

This strikes me as an excessive reaction. Sort of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Since 1983 when I began playing roleplaying games, I have found exactly 0 that were 100% what I wanted. I ignored or changed what I didn't like until it became a game that fit me.

If there were way too many things I didn't like to the point where I was essentially re-writing the game, only then did I put the game aside and decide I didn't want to continue. It doesn't sound like that's the case you are encountering here.

That's not an unreasonable response, but it's also not unreasonable to have a lower threshold for the time and effort you want to put into fixing the dang thing to work how you want it to work. D&D is hard - even when everything in the books works to support what you're doing, it's hard to coordinate schedules, devote the time, keep a group together, run a year-long campaign...

Different folks have different breaking points, and if handlebar tiefling horns are one person's, well, that's no less arbitrary than some of mine.

Why you? Why not me? Why not Pemerton? What about the stories WE want to tell? There's no way that they can please everyone with their decisions.

Right - they just need to please most of the people. And if most people are perfectly happy with tieflings being varied in appearance, and changing it doesn't bring in enough to offset the people who don't want to put in the effort to overcome the default effect...

 

[Maxperson]

That's not an unreasonable response, but it's also not unreasonable to have a lower threshold for the time and effort you want to put into fixing the dang thing to work how you want it to work. D&D is hard - even when everything in the books works to support what you're doing, it's hard to coordinate schedules, devote the time, keep a group together, run a year-long campaign...

Different folks have different breaking points, and if handlebar tiefling horns are one person's, well, that's no less arbitrary than some of mine.

I agree that people have different breaking points. It just seems, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that you are drawing that line at any change at all. The tiefling change, and I agree with you that I think the original was much better, is really minor and easy to fix, yet you have chosen to make it the poster child of your argument.

I think that changes need to be made in the game fluff or the game runs the risk of becoming boring for people due to the stagnation.

Right - they just need to please most of the people. And if most people are perfectly happy with tieflings being varied in appearance, and changing it doesn't bring in enough to offset the people who don't want to put in the effort to overcome the default effect...

While I personally agree with you about the tiefling change, I'm not convinced that we are the majority opinion. During 2e I had very few people want to play tieflings. In 3e I had far more players want to play tieflings. Perhaps the change to a stable appearance makes more people happy.

 

[jayoungr]

Yes, I care about setting canon. For the most part, my attitude is "If I'm going to run an existing setting, I'm going to run it right"--i.e. in a game that is recognizable as belonging to that setting. Otherwise, I'll just borrow some elements, remix them for a homebrew, and not call it the existing setting.

Exceptions could apply, but that's my rule of thumb and preferred approach.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I agree that people have different breaking points. It just seems, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, that you are drawing that line at any change at all. The tiefling change, and I agree with you that I think the original was much better, is really minor and easy to fix, yet you have chosen to make it the poster child of your argument.

I think that changes need to be made in the game fluff or the game runs the risk of becoming boring for people due to the stagnation.

While I personally agree with you about the tiefling change, I'm not convinced that we are the majority opinion. During 2e I had very few people want to play tieflings. In 3e I had far more players want to play tieflings. Perhaps the change to a stable appearance makes more people happy.

Just a technical point: 3e tieflings didn't have a monolithic appearance, either - it was in 4e, with the One True Origin that we got "every tiefling looks a little something like THIS".

For the overall point: It's not my personal line to draw - it's each player's (or, each table's, anyway). My personal line is definitely inclusive of 4e's lore changes, and the work occasionally necessary to reverse them when I want to (4e remains my second-favorite D&D edition, after 5th, in part for its flexibility). But regardless of how I personally feel, if enough people reach enough breaking points with enough bits of lore, you end up giving your audience to a retroclone or to oblivion, and unless you're hugely growing without them, you're shrinking your hobby.

One person falls on the tiefling horns. Another falls on riverboat halflings. A third really thinks 2e Eladrin are important to their game. A fourth thinks this World Axis cosmology is for crap. A fifth hates Sword & Sorcery with a passion. A sixth feels like powers are samey. Or one person feels like all of those things are each minor in and of themselves but in aggregate make overcoming the defaults a hassle.

Do enough people think your changes are improvements to off-set all of that?

Or to maybe put it in a more brand-manage-y context: how many people does that risk alienating? And how many new people do you need to bring in to offset them?

It sounds like over 4e's lifespan, it alienated more than it brought in. And it sounds like 5e's more inclusive approach is bringing in more than it's alienating (even if Strahd's history is better in 2e than it is in Curse of Strahd).

For me personally, I'm kind of a lost cause - my brand loyalty to D&D is really strong, so I'm not very sensitive to the cost of changing the default. Homebrewing is fun for me - part of the reason I play the game! Again, a big point in 4e's favor.

But, I am certainly on an extreme end of the bell curve. There's probably more people out there like [MENTION=6785785]hawkeyefan[/MENTION] who can put up with some stuff for a while but might eventually transition to another game. And probably even MORE people out there who just stop playing D&D altogether when it doesn't work for them anymore. I don't have solid numbers or anything, but I'd imagine that to be the case, and I'd imagine that would be the scenario that spooks WotC the most.

Making the game inclusive is, viewed through that lens, a small price to pay for keeping people playing and buying books and starting new groups and inviting others to play and growing the hobby through word-of-mouth.

 

[DeltaEcho]

Yes, I care about setting canon. For the most part, my attitude is "If I'm going to run an existing setting, I'm going to run it right"--i.e. in a game that is recognizable as belonging to that setting. Otherwise, I'll just borrow some elements, remix them for a homebrew, and not call it the existing setting.

Exceptions could apply, but that's my rule of thumb and preferred approach.

But what if your ideas are better than what's written?
surely you owe it to your players,