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

[flametitan]

I would also like to add on that while in OD&D elves were not innately magical like in 5e, elves did have an affinity for magic. For one thing, they were the only non humans that could be magic users. Not only that, but they circumvented a rule of OD&D: While it did not have multiclassing until greyhawk, it did have class switching. I believe you needed a 15 or better in the prime requisite you were switching to if you were human, but an elf could freely switch. This implies that the OD&D elf had a much easier time with magic than humans, thus they can pick it up without extensive training.

 

[pemerton]

I think I see your misapprehension.

I raised the default effect specifically to counter the claims that you can simply change the lore at your table and thus the default lore shouldn't matter. That perspective was causing you some confusion, and the default effect helps explain that perspective.

<snip>

People asked to change from the default assumptions of the game to tell the stories they want to tell incurs in them a new psychological cost that they may reject having to pay (if not over one change, than over another, or just over the course of many).

If you want to understand the anger over new canon, understanding why people choose the default is an important element of that.

I simply don't agree with this.

The "default effect" is an explanation for the distribution of choices across options where other sorts of explanation - eg rational preference - don't seem able to explain what is going on.

It is not an explanation for why some people complain about having to depart from the default.

For instance - supposed that Australia changed from an opt-in to an opt-out for organ donation. That change might cause some griping, but the explanation of that griping is not the "default effect".

In the context of RPGing, the "default effect" has even less to do with it because - as I, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] have been emphasising - the work required to ignore what is written in a book is no greater than the work required to pay attention to what is in the book. (In my case it's actually much less, because I find not reading is less work than reading! So when I see something that I think won't excite me very much - eg the 4e DMG's description of the Nentir Vale and Fallcrest - I just don't read it, and that saves me time and effort.)

 

[pemerton]

I'm inclined to believe that most players are less willing to put forth the effort to change the default than anyone on this message board would probably be.

I'm inclined to believe that most players are happy not to read big chunks of their rulebooks, and hence to ignore the stuff they don't read.

I think I have a pretty serious group: I've been playing continuously with some of them for nearly 20 years, an afternoon session every two to three weeks, and the current group composition is soon to enter its 9th year.

But most of them have not read any more of the class and race info in the 4e books than they need to build and play their PCs.

BUT, if that's not the case (or is less the case than I imagine it to be, anyway), it's good news for WotC because the more the general playing population is OK with making those changes, the more they can change without hitting the backlash that 4e caused.

<snip>

if most of your audience is less sensitive to the costs of changing the default than most people are, you gain some freedom.

But I think this is a non sequitur. I think the hostility to changes has very little to do with any costs of change. It's about attributing a certain normative status to the canon, and hence regarding changes to the canon as norm-violations.

And someone can have that response even if they've never engaged in practical terms with much of the canon at all; or if they don't have to do anything, in order to stick to the fiction they like, but ignore the new fiction.

 

[pemerton]

say Eberron, warforged in my game are not what you would call canon, they are the captured and trapped souls of fallen soldiers of both sides, necromancy, their minds wiped, (sorta robcop with amnesia) some fighting against their own side, all unaware from where they came,

An evil conspiracy the public would be outraged, so the forges that created them are destroyed, the people involved slowly, quietly murdered one by one... But the warforged dream...memories.....

i also made airships more common, and gave all the soldiers automatic crossbows, called 'golem bows' (automaton self loading from a magazine) there was a standard model, an officers model and a ballista sniper model,

See, this isn't your standard Eberron, better or worse?

Neither. I might very well happily play in such a setting; I just wouldn't call it Eberron. I might say "It's a world based on Eberron."

But what if within canon someone went back it time and changed history, and the fall out became that setting?

I think the time-travel thing is a bit of a red-herring - because it just leads us to debating whether time travel is canon in any setting but Dragonlance.

I'd rather just focus on DeltaEcho's initial post and jayoungr's response. This is in the same territory as [MENTION=6677017]Sword of Spirit[/MENTION]'s categorisation upthread of various approaches to canon-with-changes vs homebrew-based-on-or-inspired-by-canon.

I tend to find the distinction a bit ethereal. And if DeltaEcho's game with funky warforged and crossbows is happening in Eberron with the same maps, basic history, dragonmarks, etc, then it seems to me that it's absolutely an Eberron game.

In my GH games I change all sorts of stuff, as I've mentioned a couple of times upthread, but I still think of them as GH games. If you turned up at our tables and were familiar with GH, you'd recognise straight away the references to geography, history, personages etc.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], would you have a problem with 4e or 5e Tieflings having random physical traits using the Planescape tables, instead of set ones?

Not Hussar, but if a player in my game wanted to play a Tiefling with randomly rolled traits that wouldn't be an issue. We'd find a way to fit it in - the details of that would depend, in part, on whether or not they wanted the character to fit into the Bael Turath backstory for 4e tieflings.

 

[pemerton]

I guess I look at it this way: If you're picking a specific setting for your game, you are assuming a certain range of characters.

That probably depends on the setting, doesn't it? Settings like FR, and even GH, don't really seem to limit the range of characters all that much (relative to the sorts of characters that D&D permits at all).

Dark Sun and Dragonlance are different in this respect, though, because (unlike GH and FR) they deliberately push against, or at least vary, some default D&D conceits.

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.

This was rebutted upthread.

I don't care about canon, but that doesn't mean I want it kept intact. I want RPG authors to give me their best stuff, because some of that might be useful to me in running my game. And sometimes that requires departing from canon.

Eg. I can't imagine ever using Planescape eladrin. But my new Dark Sun game has two eladrin PCs: one is an envoy from the Lands Within the Wind on a mission to join the Veiled Alliance so as to try and save his homeland from the consequences of defiling; the other has been working on Athas as a "shadow templar", ie an assassin despatching people, including Veiled Alliance members, at the behest of the rulers of Tyr - but who might now be on a path to redemption. I think this will make for a fun game, or at least will kick off some interesting stuff even if the game ends up going in a different direction. And it wouldn't have happened if the 4e designers had not changed the canon about eladrin and high elves.

 

[pemerton]

It's important to me that I have a character that makes use of setting canon

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

<snip>

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.

This conversation right here is what dramatic lore change does to a game.

<snip>

I'm basically agnostic when it comes to which lore a particular game decides to use. I just want to be able to use it. I can't do that effectively if I keep having to talk about what one really means when one talks about gnomes or tieflings.

<snip>

I'm saying, "hit me with the canon stick." I tried to hit myself with it! I want to use the heck out of the canon, to make a character that could ONLY exist in this setting, or that has some special significance BECAUSE it's in this setting.

But if there's twelve different canon sticks, and they all look the same, and the only way to tell them apart is to have three decades in learning them...then my goal is basically impossible. I'll do my best to learn the setting and apply its logic to my character, but it'll be all for naught because someone else at the table is assuming some other version of the setting where my character isn't actually possible.

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.

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.

You are arguing that canon should stay constant because it solves a coordination problem (what does a Dragonlance game look like).

I don't think it does - even if we are just using the 1st ed Dragonlance Adventures book, your DL game might look pretty different from mine. (Eg look at ICE's MERP books, and then tell me what they have in common with JRRT's fiction other than maps and names.)

And in any event another equally good solution is available - the group just agrees what DL source(s) they are using to run their DL game. (Eg I, as GM, say "It's a Dragonlance Adventures game. So none of that 2nd ed wild magic nonsense.")

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?

I think this point can be pushed harder. Is an atheist PC canon to Dragonlance? Two players (eg [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and, say, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]) might disagree about this even if using all the same sourcebooks. This is why I think that the idea of canon as a coordination solution doesn't work.

There's also the commercial dimension, which [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] has pointed to: TSR or WotC has to keep publishing stuff to make money, which means the canon will grow, which means that any given game either (i) sets a cut-off, which can still leave some particular player stranded or confused, or (ii) becomes a slavish adherent to canon, incorporating everything that is released into the game setting. I think that an attitude in the neighbourhood of (ii) is what underpins the normative approach to canon that then produces such hostility to canon changes. (Because if you're using approach (i) canon changes don't matter - they just influence your choice of cut-off date.)

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.

But why can't you (probably the plural you - it's the job of the whole group) impose your own order? The game is about creating your own fiction, so do that.

Here's one possible response - "I want to play a genuine Dragonlance game!" (And maybe this is [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION]'s goal - to play a genuine Dragonlance PC. Hence the frustration with the plurality of lore.) But that assumes there is such a thing as genuine DL, which probably there isn't. And that also gives the setting canon a normative role in relation to RPGing that, to me at least, seems antithetical to the whole point of RPGing. I use GH, or Dark Sun, or OA, orthe default 4e cosmology, for my games because they offer material (maps, names, history, tropes, etc) that I think will be good for my game! Not because I've set myself the goal of running a game that is true to some other author's conception of some fictional world.

we're all talking about changes...who can change my game?

I mean that sincerely.

I can change my game.
My players can change my game.

Is there anyone else? Can the designers change my game? Authors like Greenwood or Salvatore?

I think this goes to the heart of it. If your answer to that last line is "yes", then you are saying that the fiction in your RPG gameworld is being established and changed by someone who isn't even a participant at your table. This is the normative attitude to canon that I don't share and don't really get.

 

[Maxperson]

Yeah, the bold part is the relevant part of that statement.
There are like 14 editions (no, I didn't count, so no, I don't guarantee the accuracy of that number, which is why the word "like" is used), that some of them are named with numbers like "1st edition" (which didn't come first) isn't relevant.

No, there aren't. There are things people consider to be editions, but officially there are only 5. Some those other "editions" may qualify and some may not, but they run over the course of two different games.

 

[jayoungr]

I tend to find the distinction a bit ethereal.

I don't, but maybe that's because my "homebrew-based-on-or-inspired-by-canon" would look so different from canon that you wouldn't be in danger of mixing them up. See below for more on that.

And if DeltaEcho's game with funky warforged and crossbows is happening in Eberron with the same maps, basic history, dragonmarks, etc, then it seems to me that it's absolutely an Eberron game.

Well, first off, what makes the maps and history more important than the flavor of the world?

Secondly, I don't think that I personally would design a game exactly like DeltaEcho's. As I tried to say above, either I like a setting well enough to want to "live" in it, or I don't. So let's say I read Eberron and think "Hmm, this has some great ideas, but I have a better idea for how the warforged could be handled."

My approach then would not be to use everything else about Eberron but just change the warforged. There would be no point, and I would probably find that an annoying "worst of both worlds" situation. (I say probably because I've never tried it, which is because I've never actually wanted to do it.)

Once I'd decided that I didn't like Eberron-as-it-was enough to want to live in it, the floodgates would be open. I'd feel free to grab other things from other settings. Maybe I'd pull a civilization out of some other setting and plunk it into that world. Maybe I'd invent my own dragonmarks, or make them something that only the bad guys have. Maybe I'd mix it up with Spelljammer and add a fantasy spaceport. Maybe I'd add a homebrew class. Anyway, it might still have the skeleton of Eberron and even the maps, but by the time I was done with it, you wouldn't mistake it for Eberron, and I'd probably give in a new name too. Say, Noberra.

 

[Shayuri]

Why can't I impose my own order?

I can, sort of. Any act of creating a character is me imposing order; converting the sea of possibilities afforded me by the rules of character creation into a single exemplar of those possibilities. My character.

But! The question of what sort of setting information will guide my choices is not primarily mine to make. I would agree that a good GM will work with their players to develop a canon that everyone is on board with, but it's technically the GM's privilege and responsibility to do so. If a GM says to me, "Come play my Eberron game, here's the variations to official canon I'm making" and doesn't seem to be allowing much room for my input on those choices, that's not a dealbreaker to me, pending my approval of those choices. I can always vote with my feet, but I don't have a specific expectation of a right to tell the GM what sort of canon choices to make.

I've been playing enough games with enough folks that I view 'canon' as a kind of Platonic Ideal thing. There is, somewhere in the ether, a 'true' Eberron, that no one has ever written about in its entirety. Not even its creator. Everything I've ever seen about Eberron, or Forgotten Realms, or Dragonlance, has been seen through the filter of whoever has been serving it up to me...be it an author, a fellow player, or a GM. A thousand and more iterations of the same fractal curve; sharing crucial defining traits, but otherwise entirely different and new.

So I have no expectations that any given game of 'whatever' will conform to any other iteration of 'whatever' that I've seen before. I just want that one game's iteration to make sense to me, on its own. If that happens, I am happy.