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

[Hussar]

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.

Well, see, there's a host of problems with what you're saying.

In no particular order:

1. People will swear up and down that Pathfinder is D&D. I'm more than inclined to agree with them. I don't really see Pathfinder as "not" D&D. It may not be a game that I play, but, that doesn't make it "not D&D". I mean, good grief, the rules are strongly based on 3e rules, and, barring a few odds and sods that are unique WotC IP, pretty much everything in 3e is in Pathfinder.

Are you arguing that Pathfinder is not D&D?

2. If I play a Star Wars game where the players replace the heroes of A New Hope, so, no Luke, Leia or Han or Chewie, or Obi-Wan, and proceed to infiltrate the Death Star and blow it up by causing some sort of chain reaction in the reactor (or whatever), am I no longer playing a Star Wars game? Is it only a Star Wars game if I include, at the least, the Trilogy canon?

3. Star Wars, as a game, is also uniquely tied to a single setting - the Star Wars universe. D&D is not tied to a single setting. We've had dozens of settings over the years, ranging from fairly bog standard Tolkeinesque fantasy to Dark Sun to Eberron, to Scarred Lands, to Planescape and Spelljammer. Am I only playing D&D if I stick to Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk? Obviously not. D&D is, and always has been, at least in some part, a toolkit for designing your own fantasy setting. Home-brew campaigns abound. I'd be pretty annoyed if someone told me that my World's Largest Dungeon campaign wasn't actually D&D simply because it has it's own lore and whatnot.

4. It is not ok to simply ditch canon. That is not the argument. Or, at least, that's never been my argument. My argument is that canon, in and of itself, is not an objective enough criteria to use to judge changes. I argue that because every single canon argument I see is always based on personal preference. I like this change or I don't like that change so, we'll deem this or that change to be bad not because the idea is stupid or hard to implement or knock-on effects or any number of other criteria, but, it's bad because it's not what came before.

I have no problems with canon in and of itself. As [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION] has so eloquently pointed out, canon and lore provides a common language when discussing things. Fair enough. And when that's the discussion, no problems. "I want to play an orc in Dragonlance" "Well, there are actually no orcs in Dragonlance, so, that's going to be a problem". There's nothing wrong with that conversation. Cool. That's a conversation that is always going to happen in every campaign.

But, "I'm going to play a uniquely Dragonlance character - a gnome wild mage!" can (not necessarily will, but can) be something of an issue because that character is drawing on much later changes to the setting that were retconned into the setting. Now, IF (note the IF there, I'm not actually making this criticism) I were to say, "Well, no, that's not really a Dragonlance character BECAUSE of the canon changes", how am I wrong? In what way am I wrong? And, at the end of the day, since it's not my character, who cares what I think?

My point is, I DON'T make that criticism. Canon changes. Canon is mutable. And that's a GOOD thing. It allows for new ideas and new interpretations. Great. Fantastic.

However, many people DO make that criticism. Eladrin are different from what elves were previously so Eladrin are BAD. Not that Eladrin are bad because the idea is wonky or even more simply, "I don't like Eladrin", but, Eladrin are BAD. A qualitative judgement based purely on personal preference.

To me, canon is meant primarily to apply within a specific campaign. It's only when people enshrine canon into the broader game that it becomes problematic. If gnomes are 20 feet tall in my game world, how does that bother you in the slightest? If orcs are civilized members of society (Eberron), how does that impact orcs of the Pomarj in Greyhawk? Canon should be discrete and self contained.

Whenever you try to make the D&D Lore important beyond a specific campaign, then you are forcing everyone else to play one specific way. You are telling all and sundry, "No, your ideas are not right. If you want to play D&D, you have to do it THIS way". And I really don't want that to be my D&D.

 

[Elderbrain]

The difference is between a Player/DM group PRIVATELY deciding to alter something from its canon in their HOME GAME - which leaves other people's games and books unaffected - and WOTC making changes in the actual BOOKS, which affects everyone who buys them. I can play a Star Wars game where Vader isn't Luke's father, and that doesn't hurt anybody's else's games because the books still reflect the canon. But if a Star Wars RPG book is released that makes such changes IN THE ACTUAL BOOK, that forces it on everybody. "But, they can still ignore it" is missing the point - they shouldn't HAVE TO!!!

Eberron is an example of how to do things RIGHT - it introduced a new cosmology WITHOUT invalidating the old one, and presented its changes WHERE THEY BELONGED, in the Eberron books, NOT the core rulebooks or other campaign settings. (3e Forgotten Realms also managed to change its cosmology to a "World Tree" without killing off the Great Wheel.) If WOTC had done the same with its World Axis cosmology, nobody would have complained. Those who liked it could buy a Netir Vale campaign setting and a Netir Vale Monster book, leaving other campaigns unaffected. Instead, James Wyatt announced "The Great Wheel is dead" and argued for "no more needless symmetry" while introducing a slew of "Archons" who all looked almost identical except one was made of fire, one was made of mud, etc. (Oh, the irony... LOL! )

 

[Hussar]

The difference is between a Player/DM group PRIVATELY deciding to alter something from its canon in their HOME GAME - which leaves other people's games and books unaffected - and WOTC making changes in the actual BOOKS, which affects everyone who buys them. I can play a Star Wars game where Vader isn't Luke's father, and that doesn't hurt anybody's else's games because the books still reflect the canon. But if a Star Wars RPG book is released that makes such changes IN THE ACTUAL BOOK, that forces it on everybody. "But, they can still ignore it" is missing the point - they shouldn't HAVE TO!!!

Eberron is an example of how to do things RIGHT - it introduced a new cosmology WITHOUT invalidating the old one, and presented its changes WHERE THEY BELONGED, in the Eberron books, NOT the core rulebooks or other campaign settings. (3e Forgotten Realms also managed to change its cosmology to a "World Tree" without killing off the Great Wheel.) If WOTC had done the same with its World Axis cosmology, nobody would have complained. Those who liked it could buy a Netir Vale campaign setting and a Netir Vale Monster book, leaving other campaigns unaffected. Instead, James Wyatt announced "The Great Wheel is dead" and argued for "no more needless symmetry" while introducing a slew of "Archons" who all looked almost identical except one was made of fire, one was made of mud, etc. (Oh, the irony... LOL! )

See, whereas to me, those of examples of how to do things WRONG. The creativity of Eberron gets constrained by a cosmology that has absolutely no relationship to the setting because "Well, it's in D&D, and in D&D we have one cosmology to rule them all, so, all settings MUST adhere to that single cosmology".

Why does the cosmology have to be one single cosmology for ALL settings? Why can't the Great Wheel be the cosmology for Planescape and then other settings, which have no use for the Great Wheel, not have their own cosmologies completely distinct from each other?

So, we're "allowed" to have an alternative cosmology, but, only so long as it's completely modular and kept completely distinct from the "default" cosmology. Not because the default cosmology is particularly good or interesting or well designed or anything like that, but simply because it came first? Why not let Darwin decide? Produce lots of different cosmologies, same as you have different settings, and let the players choose which one they'd like to use?

I think it was this thread, although it may have been another, it's a long thread, where I talked about my personal perfect Planar Handbook. A 300 (ish) page book that details six different cosmologies - Planescape/Great Wheel, FR World Tree, Eberron, and three more. They are all different takes on cosmologies, and let players actually have a choice.

Why do you get to force me to only have Great Wheel/Planescape supplements available? Why does every setting NEED to be shoehorned into that single cosmology and never, EVER, contradict that cosmology? Just because it came first? That's not good enough.

Why is choice a bad thing? Even in 4e, where it presented a single cosmology, you STILL had choice. The Great Wheel was detailed in later supplements. You COULD use the Great Wheel in 4e. It was an option. Granted, not a terribly well supported one. Sure, I'll give you that. But, the option was still right there.

In 5e, the lore is being tightened ever further and every supplement will focus on that lore. Back when the 5e MM released, I complained about the link between kobolds and dragons, saying that this link would be played up further and further on subsequent releases. Now, a couple of years later, we get Volo's Guide and POOF, exactly what I predicted happened - the link between kobolds and dragons is expanded.

How much do you want to bet that the next AP to feature either dragons or kobolds will include both? The next AP that has kobolds will have dragon enslaved kobolds. Almost guaranteed. Once any producer of D&D starts down a lore road, that road will be wide and straight and will not deviate one inch. Hope you like slave kobolds because that's all you're going to see from now on.

 

[Shasarak]

See, whereas to me, those of examples of how to do things WRONG. The creativity of Eberron gets constrained by a cosmology that has absolutely no relationship to the setting because "Well, it's in D&D, and in D&D we have one cosmology to rule them all, so, all settings MUST adhere to that single cosmology".

I hate to get in the way of a perfectly good rant but you do know that Eberron presented a different cosmology, right?

Now it is not a particularly good one but cosmology is hardly the point of Eberron in any case.

 

[pemerton]

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.

Where have I called for anything to be changed?

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.

Where have I said this?

Anyway, I'm not sure what you mean by "story" - but clearly the minutiae of canon are not a big part of what makes D&D D&D, because that gets changed at the drop of a hat! Eg in the mid-to-late 80s (DSG), the goal of mindflayers was to extinguish the sun. That was subsequently dropped without qualms. Orcs were LE for 20-odd years of publication, then changed to CE. (And their gods' alignments were changed with them.) Etc.

 

[pemerton]

Many creatures that were either Good-aligned or at worst Neutral were made Evil in 4e

Can you give some examples? I can't think of many of the top of my head.

 

[pemerton]

WOTC making changes in the actual BOOKS, which affects everyone who buys them.

How doe it affect them? If they don't like it, because there's something else that they know of an prefer, why can't they just ignore the stuff they don't like?

 

[pemerton]

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.

That can happen even if everyone is working from the same text. Qv atheists in Dragonlance.

 

[Remathilis]

Can you give some examples? I can't think of many of the top of my head.

Metallic dragons, angels, and storm giants of the top of my head.

 

[Shasarak]

That can happen even if everyone is working from the same text. Qv atheists in Dragonlance.

Has anyone actually read Dragons of Autumn Twilight?