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

[billd91]

You realize you have just argued why home-brewed campaigns with significant rules/lore changes are bad, right?

I mean, if you invite me to play and I grab the phb and come up with a dwarf evoker, and then you inform me dwarves in your world are LN militant expansionists who convert all they meet to their god (by the sword) and burn wizards at the stake for witchcraft. Well, you might have a cool idea for dwarves, but you just buggered my pc idea. Why read the phb again if none of it is relevant?

I think it's fair to say that a GM who substantially revises assumptions for his or her homebrew is taking on the responsibility of remodeling their players' expectations and takes on that additional cost willingly.

 

[Shasarak]

What I care about is having interesting stuff to buy/read/use.

I think an excessive cleaving to canon can be an impediment to that.

But ultimately it's not a big deal - I already own plenty of stuff, and can make more stuff up if I have to!

What I'm puzzled by, though, in the context of this thread, is the idea that changing canon makes it harder to play the game. I don't really get that, because (i) I don't see how it is hard to ignore or mix-and-match, and (ii) I don't see how a single canon would get rid of the need for a given table to agree on what their game is going to involve (eg the DL canon issue isn't solved by sticking to the original AD&D material, because - as was discussed upthread - you have to work out how new rules fit into it (eg can dwarves be WoHS?), and also people read that material differently - eg is an atheist PC a legitimate option for a DL game?)

Also, at a certain point the discussion went from using canon in game, to the importance of the publisher sticking to canon. I don't really get that either.

If you think about what happened in Dragonlance with the whole Cataclysm and 200 years of abandoning Krynn, is it really a big surprise that there are Atheists in Dragonlance? The only other place where it makes more sense is Dark Sun.

But in any case, you only have a certain amount of mental capacity to remember things so ever changing lore is just another burden to add on to the other rules changes that you are expected to deal with so it is no mystery why people find it hard to ignore or mix and match canon.

 

[Elderbrain]

The point is - you ignore it.

Given how I ran devils and demons in AD&D, I just ignored the stuff in Planescape that changed them. If you liked the Planescape changes, and then didn't like the changes that 4e made them took them back towards AD&D, just ignore the later changes. What's the problem?

The same as everyone who used the Ilithiad ignored the mindflayer canon in DSG - which I've mentioned multiple times in this thread but that no one else seems to care about, not even the canon enthusiasts.

Soooo, if I don't like something, I am supposed to ignore it, whereas if YOU (or Hussar, etc.) don't like something, it's wrong, a mistake and needs to be changed, pronto. Changing Eladrin, Demons, Giants and Archons - not a problem because it doesn't bother YOU. Changing Orcs, Kobolds and Gnolls - HUGE problem. Yeah, that seems fair.

 

[Elderbrain]

I'm not talking about an in-game change. I'm talking about a retcon which changes the thematic significance/meaning of the setting.

If I rewrite my devils so that, instead of being a certain sort of exemplar of moral failing (which is what devils are, by default) they become other-dimensional alients whose main raison d'etre is the Blood War, I've changed their meaning as part of the shared fiction.

You are assuming, wrongly, that it must be an either/or: EITHER Devils are exemplars of moral failing, OR they can be at war with another race of evil beings on the grounds of mutual hatred and desire to conquer before being conquered. That does not follow. They can do BOTH. It's like claiming that Angels can EITHER be examples of moral excellence, OR they can be fighting the Fiends - not both.

 

[Elderbrain]

It baffles me that you can't see what a big deal this might be.

To use very rough metaphors, it turns the game from a morality play to Call of Cthulhu. (Part of the point of the Cthulhu mythos is that human superstitions are just that - superstitions - because the "magical beings" are in fact aliens whose motivations are wildly different from those imputed by superstitious humans.)

But even in a Planescape game, mortals are mostly CORRECT in their thinking about the Fiends (Demons and Devils). Mortals think they're evil, and they are - Check. Mortals think they want to turn them evil and take their souls, and they do - Check. So where is the huge difference? True, mortals on the Prime Plane don't know EVERYTHING about the Fiends, but so what? They ALSO DON'T KNOW EVERYTHING about a million other creatures, i.e. Orcs, Beholders, Dragons, etc. If there's ONE detail mortals don't know about Dragons, does that make Dragons not Dragons anymore, but "alien creatures"?!?

 

[Elderbrain]

Perhaps not, but willy nilly changes from edition to edition do mess with the cultural literacy of the game. Players who know about storm giants being a significant contrast to their more thuggish relatives are going to have a different reaction to the imprisoned storm giant in G2 than players whose D&D literacy is based on 4e where the storm giants are as evil as the other giant types.

EXACTLY! Many creatures that were either Good-aligned or at worst Neutral were made Evil in 4e because of the belief that every creature in a MM should be an opponent for the PCs to fight, so HEY! Let's make 'em all Evil to justify it.

 

[Elderbrain]

One assumption that has been repeatedly been put forth by Permeton, Hussar, etc. that I wish to challenge is the assumption that STORY IS NOT AN IMPORTANT PART of what makes D&D, D&D. That is, it's O.K. to ditch years of canon because nobody cares about it or uses it, or if they do that's too bad because they don't (or shouldn't) matter. Many games on the market (currently or formerly) have Character Classes. They have spells and magic items. They have Orcs, Goblins, and Dragons. BUT THOSE THINGS ALONE DO NOT MAKE THOSE GAMES D&D!!! Those other games do not have the rich body of lore and canon D&D has (when it sticks to it), and THAT is what makes D&D different than those other games. Not "better" - Pathfinder has a nice storyline too - but unique. Lots of games have spaceships and star battles, but only Star Wars has Luke Skywalker, Vader, etc.

 

[Shasarak]

Soooo, if I don't like something, I am supposed to ignore it, whereas if YOU (or Hussar, etc.) don't like something, it's wrong, a mistake and needs to be changed, pronto. Changing Eladrin, Demons, Giants and Archons - not a problem because it doesn't bother YOU. Changing Orcs, Kobolds and Gnolls - HUGE problem. Yeah, that seems fair.

I dont think that [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is saying that anything needs to be changed because he does not like it, it is just that he does not particularly care if anything (or I guess everything) is changed and does not understand why anyone else does care about the change.

If you listen to Chris Perkins on the official DnD podcast then you can tell that Chris in particular does care about what has come previously and in trying to make the lore as DnD as possible (considering the different takes on it over the years, good luck to him I say)

 

[Hussar]

That "fixedness" can be very important to player empowerment. If I want to play a character that makes use of the stories and lore suggested in the material, then it undermines my own motivations for play if those things are not agreed upon as shared elements. If I have to debate about whether or not a gnome wild mage is acceptable in a Dragonlance game or if it makes it "not Dragonlance," then my goal of making a uniquely Dragonlance character has failed already.

How? Since the group has agreed that that character is acceptable in that campaign then how is it not canon? At least for that campaign, which afaic is the only metric that matters. In that campaign, gnome wild mages exist. This has zero impact on anything outside of that campaign.

And any time a player wants to play a character this is a conversation that has to happen. "Is it ok if I play X" is a pretty standard question in every campaign, no?

You're not listening, so this isn't really a conversation. I'm not interested in continually knocking down your strawmen.

How is this a straw man? We're seeing it play out in this thread. This change is unacceptable but that change is fine. How do you reconcile that?

 

[Hussar]

Soooo, if I don't like something, I am supposed to ignore it, whereas if YOU (or Hussar, etc.) don't like something, it's wrong, a mistake and needs to be changed, pronto. Changing Eladrin, Demons, Giants and Archons - not a problem because it doesn't bother YOU. Changing Orcs, Kobolds and Gnolls - HUGE problem. Yeah, that seems fair.

Missing the point. Changing ANYTHING is fine by me. I don't care. I don't judge the change based on how well it maintains canon.

My point is that if your rationale for opposing changes is predicted on canon then EVERY change should be evaluated based on the same rationale.