D&D 5E (2014) Do you care about setting "canon"?

[Shasarak]

The feeling I get here is that I would have to play one of the Companions if I want to fit Hussar's vision of DL canon.

 

[Caliburn101]

All my games start with a discussion with players about which books, backgrounds and material are in, and which out. I then preface the game with a statement like this;

"I will/will partly/will not be using canon. A we go I will make case by case choices and apply canon (or not) where itsuits my game. If canon is central to your character, we will agree what and how much in your character background, after which, that is fixed canon. Everything else will be modified as suitable to suit the campaign, but this will be done with consistency in mind. If your characters change canon by their actions, then it changes. If I decide to change canon because it is not right for my npc's or campaign metaplot, then it changes. Any questions?"

Having a canon lawyer player at the table is a non-issue to me. If they are running the game, then it's their call. If I am running the game then it is my call. However, my call is always explained and negotiated in advance, because the game is shared. If I say that some canon is in, some not, and some is flexible and everyone agrees at the start, great...

... is a canon lawyer then pipes up later complaining about an inconsistency in canon that is nevertheless consistent with what we agreed at the start, then they are out of order.

The key thing is the initial discussion, and making it clear what you intend to run and how, incorporating everyone's input until you reach a mutual position everyone is happy with.

If I cannot manage that, I wouldn't run the game in the first place.

Thankfully, this has never happened yet...

 

[I'm A Banana]

The difference is though, I don't actually care. I don't judge your character by how well you stick to canon. I judge the character based on how fun it is to see played at the table. This is why someone playing an animated scarecrow doesn't phase me in the slightest. Or a beatbox Modron. The characters are fun and interesting. Canon can go hang for all I care.

You don't care. But I do. I want a character that uses the setting to tell a unique story. I don't want to play a character that is generic enough that it could be in Any Fantasy Setting, or one so against type that it creates conflict, or one that ignores the setting's new and interesting story possibilities. It's FUN for me to use the setting's unique traits in play!

If I'm going to play a Dragonlance game, or a Thule game or a Dark Sun game, I'm going to be a character that uses that fact.

AFAIC, you've basically taken canon behind the woodpile. AND THAT'S FINE. AFAIC, it's expected. I certainly don't expect players to adhere too much to canon, because, IME, there will always be one or two players at the table who have cool ideas that supersede whatever canon expectations there are. So long as it in no way impinges on anyone else's fun and it's fun to watch, why on earth would I give the slightest thought to canon?

I don't think anyone's asking you, specifically, to. The idea is just that people do. There are people for whom giving the slightest thought to canon is part of the fun of playing D&D (especially in a specific setting).

So it's not just about beating up others with the Canon Stick when you don't like the change.

So, to me, this is a total non-argument. Do I think your character is pretty far removed from a canon DL character? Yup. I do. But, at the end of the day, who cares what I think? It's your bloody character. I certainly don't judge the character based on canon or setting lore. I judge the character on how much fun it is to see it in play. If you think it satisfies canon, who am I to disagree?

It matters because part of the story I'm telling with the character is connected to the story of the setting and if you don't see that, then the character seems shallower than it is intended to be.

Conversely, who are you to tell me that I cannot have some new thing just because it disagrees with some canon that you happen to like? That's the problem I'm generally seeing though. People take extreme ownership over published lore and canon and freak out over changes. My point is always the same. You've already got what you wanted. You've got piles of books and ideas to draw from that you like. Why does it have to be a zero sum game? I cannot have something that I like because it conflicts with what you like, just because your got yours first?

You either care about canon, or you don't.

If you don't, then there's no harm to you in keeping it intact, and you'll gain from things like having other characters in the game who seem well-rounded.

If you do, then you care that it is changed because it changes the stories you can tell with it.

You can't say you don't care about lore and then also get in a huff because someone else does.

Just like I have zero right to tell you that you're playing your gnome wrong, you (and I mean this as the general you, as in anyone) have no right to tell me that I'm playing the game wrong.

If my goal is to play a character that uses the setting lore, and I fail at that in your eyes, then you are telling me that I am playing the game wrong, because I didn't do what I set out to do.

But if I tell you that lore matters to me, I'm not telling you that it has to matter to you.

You don't like that new thing they're adding to the game? Ok, fair enough. Just keep using the stuff you've got and ignore the new stuff. Wait a bit and it'll change again. Illithid that don't eat brains? Well, show me what you've got, and I'll judge it. I'm certainly not going to just simply write it off just because it's different.

It's not a matter of liking it or not liking it - I'm pretty agnostic. It's a matter of the change causing a frickin' hassle.

 

[jayoungr]

Speaking as an outsider ... it sounds to me like maybe the issue is that Banana wants to play characters that draw from the setting but go against the grain, while Hussar would prefer to have PCs who work with the setting's assumptions--? I don't think there's anything wrong with either attitude, but having both at the same table can lead to friction.

 

[Remathilis]

Speaking as an outsider ... it sounds to me like maybe the issue is that Banana wants to play characters that draw from the setting but go against the grain, while Hussar would prefer to have PCs who work with the setting's assumptions--? I don't think there's anything wrong with either attitude, but having both at the same table can lead to friction.

That's my takeaway form this. There is some joy in playing against the grain (a cheery Ravenloft pc or a non-savage Dark Sun one) but there is a point you need to see if youre challenging tropes or ignoring them

 

[I'm A Banana]

Speaking as an outsider ... it sounds to me like maybe the issue is that Banana wants to play characters that draw from the setting but go against the grain, while Hussar would prefer to have PCs who work with the setting's assumptions--? I don't think there's anything wrong with either attitude, but having both at the same table can lead to friction.

To highlight it's connection to the overall conversation about canon a bit more:

It's important to me that I have a character that makes use of setting canon (even if it's kind of weird and taking canon in a new direction - my DL minotaur bard was not your typical DL minotaur!) - part of the fun I like to bring is that the character works with and enhances the stories of the setting. If an irreverent gnome wild mage didn't fit the canon, that's not what I'd be playing. By my reading, it fits the canon nicely (the DM seems to agree, more or less), but by Hussar's, it doesn't.

That shows that I can't use that canon very effectively if the canon has gone through such dramatic changes that I have a different idea of what such a character looks like than other people who play at the table.

This ties back to why canon matters, and how canon changes can cause friction because if someone has fun with canon, changing it means that the fun that can be had with it is weakened.

It's not like canon has to matter to any particular player, but if it doesn't matter to you, that doesn't mean you can then presume that others are being disingenuous to dislike the change.

 

[Hussar]

See, I can't quite reconcile the idea that changing canon is a "big frikken hassle" with the idea of a gnome wild mage sorcerer in Dragonlance. That entire character concept is only possible because of canon changes.

Look, wildmage didn't even EXIST when DL started. It wasn't a class. It wasn't added to D&D until 2nd edition. We're talking about a decade or so after DL started. It was then retconned into the setting.

When DL started, Gnomes couldn't be magic-users. They could be illusionists, but, not wizards. It wasn't until 3rd edition that class/race restrictions were lifted.

Lastly, the sorcerer class ITSELF is a retcon as well. There were no sorcerers in D&D, let alone Dragonlance, until 3rd edition.

Every aspect of this character is only possible because of very large changes to the setting. The lore has been rewritten and ret-conned several times in order to make this character even possible in the setting. Now, I'll admit that my knowledge of DL lore tends to end in 2e. I largely ignored the changes to the setting after. So, yes, it is rather surprising to me to see just how much the setting has been changed to incorporate 3e rules. That's probably my own fault for not keeping up.

But, it does illustrate my point rather well. Without changes to lore, this character could not exist. If you were to take this character, travel back in time to 1982 and sit at any DL table anywhere, you would not be allowed to play it. The whole concept for this character didn't exist at that time.

So, I find it rather baffling to see arguments that lore is important and canon is important. Canon and lore constantly changes and evolves. It has to. Otherwise, the material just stagnates and dies. Things that seemed like great ideas twenty years ago, tend not to survive the passage of time so well. New ideas are needed.

In the end, as I said, I find it baffling to see arguments that "lore is important and canon needs to be protected". The lore and canon of the game has changed radically over the years. To the point where a character that is really bog standard - gnome sorcerer isn't exactly going to raise an eyebrow at any modern D&D table - wouldn't even be possible without those changes to the lore.

Like I said, "It's not canon" cries are just bludgeons to end discussions about changes. You don't actually have to show that your idea is good or my idea is bad. You just have to show that your idea came first. It makes your ideas proof from criticism. It doesn't matter what argument can be made, it came first, canon is important, thus any change is automatically bad.

Unless you happen to like the change and it enables you to play what you want to play. Then canon suddenly isn't important and change is good.

 

[Shayuri]

That's true, as far as it goes, but Banana is new to the setting. He didn't know DL before wild magic, or sorcerors. It's canon to him.

You knew it back when it was 1st edition, and elves all knew magic and could fight (but neither as well as a human specialist). That was canon for you.

So your experience of Dragonlance is of a continuum of continuity shifts, a constantly shifting paradigm.

Banana's...and for the record, my own...is of a relatively static, if immeasurably complicated, story that we're still trying to get straight. For us, further shifts threaten to distract from the meal we're still digesting. The fact that our meal includes more than the gruel you started with is not something we can really empathize with.

It's kind of like...because we don't know DL very well, and all we have to go on are these various written works that don't always agree, we need for some external order to be imposed on it. Imposing that order is generally the GM's job. No game uses ALL the canon of a multi-decade work that's been tinkered with by dozens of writers (not all of whom were equally versed in the setting) and translated into many forms of media.

It seems to me that Banana is just asking for one consistent, stable line of canon to be selected per game, and stuck with. So that a character that fits into that canon, and is harmonic with that canon, can be made and enjoyed.

 

[Mouseferatu]

And this, right here, is the true source of argument involving canon. It's not that people can't agree on whether it's important, though that is a factor; it's that people can't agree on what it is.

Is "true" Dragonlance canon everything that's appeared in official written material? Or is it only what was intended in the first two trilogies, with everything else being apocrypha?

(Actually, it can't be "everything that's appeared," because a lack of editing on some of the later novels made them literally contradictory to what had come before, but that's a separate issue.)

"Canon," ultimately, is heavily influenced by when we came aboard a property. Everything up to that point is official, no matter how often it changed. Everything after that point, unless we loved it, is questionable at best.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

It seems to me that Banana is just asking for one consistent, stable line of canon to be selected per game, and stuck with. So that a character that fits into that canon, and is harmonic with that canon, can be made and enjoyed.

Actually, at the level of "single campaign" I have to completely agree with you. The DM (typically) sets that single line. "This is a Heroes of the Lance era Dragonlance campaign" is a LOT different than "This is a SAGA era Dragonlance campaign". Or, IME, "This is a ((Insert setting name)) inspired game with my own twist" is pretty common too.

But, the "Canon is important" argument goes beyond a single campaign. It's apparently a call that canon must always be respected and not changed.

And, yes, I do believe it's very disingenuous. It's a means that people use to justify their personal preferences and try to force those preferences on others. All you have to do is look at Elves in D&D to see that. 1e-3e elves don't change too much. Yup, there's the whole "any race, any class" thing, but, even then, in 1e elves could be most classes anyway. And, yup, there's the multiclass changes as well. But, again, it's not too large of a change. Pretty minor stuff.

4e rolls along with blink elves and changes the name. People blow their tops. Eladrin are BAD. And they're bad because they change canon. Canon is important. Ok, fair enough. I'll buy anything.

But, then comes 5e. Sure, they change the name back. So, they have rolled back the change a bit. But, now, ALL high elves have unlimited spell casting. EVERY high elf comes packaged with a wizard cantrip of their choice. This has never appeared in any version of D&D. Being able to drop Fire Bolts at will is a pretty darn large canon change. At will Friends spells? How could any society possibly trust a race that you KNOW can influence your reactions at will?

And this change passes without comment. Being able to teleport 25 feet was apparently a HUGE change and there were numerous threads talking about how this was a major setting changing ability. But, at will magic is perfectly acceptable? If canon was actually important, CHANGE would be a problem. Whether you like the change or not shouldn't be the deciding factor in whether or not change is a problem.

But it isn't. Change to lore is only a problem when someone doesn't like the change. The changing part is never the issue. If change was the issue, then any change would be an issue, whether or not you actually agree with the change. But it never is. It's a rather transparent attempt to justify personal preferences and an easy way to shut down conversation. So, yes, it's IMO, completely disingenuous.