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

[pemerton]

Settings don't deal with the artistic in the same way books and movies do. Not inherently anyway. They're a pile of rules and lore that makes them stand apart from the core.

That's one view, but not the only one.

The reason I'm running Dark Sun at the moment is not because "it's a pile of rules and lore that thereby stands apart from the core". I'm running DS because it offers different (and somewhat distinct) tropes - sand and heat obviously, but also slave pits, gladiators, psionics, defiling, evil sorcerer tyrants, etc - and different themes (eg the relationship between power and corruption, and internalised vs externalised corruption).

Contrast default 4e, which doesn't make power or rulership problematic at all, but presents a conflict between (divine) order and (primordial) chaos.

 

[pemerton]

Hercule Poirot could also have been logically operating at the same time in Europe.

Just as an aside. If you've never seen it, you need to watch Murder by Death.

Murder by Death is a satire, though - which means that I think it runs my way!

 

[Imaro]

Everything else being equal, I don't think casual viewers care very much about consistency over episodes that come months and years apart. I've given my reasons upthread - namely, non-causal people I know don't care, and casual people I know also don't care. I don't know of any contrary evidence.

I'm not sure why we are using the qualifier of episodes that come months and years apart... but honestly I find it hard to believe that people watch long spanning shows and franchises such as GoT, The MCU movies, The Walking Dead, The DC Universe television shows (that do multiple crossovers) and so on if canon lore and consistency of such wasn't important. You're basically claiming that people would be just as happy with Z Nation as they would be with The Walking Dead since they both stick to the same tropes (following a core group of survivors, who have multiple deaths, through a zombie apocalypse)... and yet their audiences aren't the same and I guarantee that people would notice if you suddenly switched one with the other... Your reasoning just doesn't logically follow for me.

That said I don't think there is much more to say since I don't think either of us is going to come around to the others way of thinking, especially since you seem to draw this arbitrary line that distinguishes canon/lore vs. tropes... while to me all they are is different points on a scale that ultimately tie into the same thing maintaining the integrity and consistency of a particular work through establishment of it's lore and canon.

That depends entirely on the canon. To quote Ryan Dancey:

From: "Ryan S. Dancey" <ryand@frpg.com>
Newsgroups: RPG.DnD.Greyhawk
Subject: What is and is not Cannon
Date: Sun, 26 Dec 1999 17:45:00

. . .

2. If something is 'thrown out', why?

First, the amount of knowledge that will be considered "cannon" has to be of a reasonably minimal size. It is simply impossible to keep every piece of fact accurate and checked when the volume of such material expands to the size of something like one of our popular campaign worlds. Trying to do so has created false expectations in the consumer population, and triggered numerous conflicts within the company.

Second, there is a lot of data that contradicts itself. This is bound to happen when you have multiple sources for the content that are not centrally managed, and over time, even central management tends to change focus and introduce conflicts. Therefore, not every single fact in every single product >can< be considered cannon - something must be dropped.

Third, some of the material produced for our worlds is crap. Pulling no punches, not every word written under the banner of a D&D world logo is suitable for print or should ever have been published. Rather than hold our noses and pretend that such material is signficant, we're going to simply pretend that it does not exist and stop trying to patch it up or fix it.​

I'm confused... no where does he equate canon to bad story... he's equating material that's bad as bad material... that could be old lore (Eladrin as celestial enemies of Fiends) but he could just as easily be talking about the new lore (Eladrin as Elves) that you and @Hussar are clamoring for... He's not stating canon = bad he's stating bad material is bad material... which I don't think anyone disagrees with. The problem is that in creating new lore and changing canon continuously you don't consider what is good or bad it's just change for the sake of change... and this is what I believe most people who argue for canon are arguing against.

And Hawkeye, who doesn't have the purple hood/mask. And Thor doesn't have the yellow belt or winged helmet, and has armour rather than a tunic/leotard.

There are visuals that worked in 1960s/70s/80s 4-colour that just don't look as good in a contemporary film.

True and there are some that do. You made a blanket statement that was false because some do use their classic costumes...and made a statement about Wolverine's costume which you have no idea if it's true or not. batinthesun makes some pretty good super power beat down videos featuring Wolverine (as well as many other superheroes) in classic costumes so I'm not ready to totally rule it out as feasible (especially with a larger budget) just yet.

 

[pemerton]

made a statement about Wolverine's costume which you have no idea if it's true or not.

I know it's true that, in the original X-Man movie, Cyclops says to Wolverine - "What would you prefer - yellow spandex?"

And I'm pretty confident that's an allusion to the yellow costume with blue trimmings that Wolverine wore in his original outings. (Sometime around 1980 - I think between Death of Phoenix and the Wendigo arc - he changes to the brown and tan costume that lasted a fair while, maybe even up to the end of the Claremont run when the teams were re-costumed as "Blue" and "Gold".)

 

[pemerton]

I'm confused... no where does he equate canon to bad story... he's equating material that's bad as bad material... that could be old lore (Eladrin as celestial enemies of Fiends) but he could just as easily be talking about the new lore (Eladrin as Elves) that you and @Hussar are clamoring for... He's not stating canon = bad he's stating bad material is bad material... which I don't think anyone disagrees with. The problem is that in creating new lore and changing canon continuously you don't consider what is good or bad it's just change for the sake of change

No one has said that canon = bad story.

The point is that canon does not, in general, = good story. When [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and I say that we don't care for canon, we're not arguing for destroying canon for the sake of it - "change for the sake of change" - we're saying that we want good stuff and don't care if that means changing the lore.

Now for all I know Dancey thought that 4e's treatment of Eladrin as bad - who knows? But that would still be consistent with [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s point, that people complain about changes to canon when really what is irritating is simply that they don't like something. [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is not saying that people have to like the same stuff as him - he's calling on them to be up front about the criteria they are basing their criticism on. That is, actually make the case that the 4e treatment of elves is bad fiction, rather than simply complain that it's different from what went before.

(Because, as he and I have both pointed out, there's plenty of stuff that is different from what went before, yet no one seems to be out there objecting to it on grounds that it changed the canon.)

EDIT: A bit more on this idea of "change for change's sake" - who actually thinks that that is how WotC works? As far as 4e is concerned, there is a whole book (Worlds & Monsters) that explains how they approached the question of lore, and why they made the decisions that they did. You may not agree with their reasons, but there's no denying that they had them.

And one reason that motivated them was the desire to achieve narrative coherence and consistency. To try and unify the D&D "mythology" while preserving the bulk of its distinctive and long-lasting tropes. That's a respectable - personally, I would say admirable - motivation, and it can require disregarding canon where the canon is at odds with that consistency.

 

[Imaro]

I know it's true that, in the original X-Man movie, Cyclops says to Wolverine - "What would you prefer - yellow spandex?"

And I'm pretty confident that's an allusion to the yellow costume with blue trimmings that Wolverine wore in his original outings. (Sometime around 1980 - I think between Death of Phoenix and the Wendigo arc - he changes to the brown and tan costume that lasted a fair while, maybe even up to the end of the Claremont run when the teams were re-costumed as "Blue" and "Gold".)

What I'm saying is that you are claiming the visuals of the costume wouldn't work for an X-Men movie and I'm saying we don't know that for a fact.

 

[Maxperson]

That's one view, but not the only one.

The reason I'm running Dark Sun at the moment is not because "it's a pile of rules and lore that thereby stands apart from the core". I'm running DS because it offers different (and somewhat distinct) tropes - sand and heat obviously, but also slave pits, gladiators, psionics, defiling, evil sorcerer tyrants, etc - and different themes (eg the relationship between power and corruption, and internalised vs externalised corruption).

Contrast default 4e, which doesn't make power or rulership problematic at all, but presents a conflict between (divine) order and (primordial) chaos.

Sure, but almost all of that is spelled out in the rules and lore of the setting. Even those themes are a part of what is written, such as how they write about the sorcerer-kings, defilers, Templars, etc. You also left cannibal halflings off your list. How could you leave cannibal halflings off your list!?!?

 

[TwoSix]

I know it's true that, in the original X-Man movie, Cyclops says to Wolverine - "What would you prefer - yellow spandex?"

And I'm pretty confident that's an allusion to the yellow costume with blue trimmings that Wolverine wore in his original outings. (Sometime around 1980 - I think between Death of Phoenix and the Wendigo arc - he changes to the brown and tan costume that lasted a fair while, maybe even up to the end of the Claremont run when the teams were re-costumed as "Blue" and "Gold".)

Just as a historical clarification (because that's what we nerds do!), I imagine the yellow spandex comment is a shout-out to Wolverine's costume in the X-Men animated series which ran from 1992 to 1997, which is the same costume he wore in most of the X-Men video games of the 1990s (of which there were several). I imagine this material would have been more familiar to the 2000 movie fanbase than any of the pre-1980 comic book material. (Although I'm sure the cartoon costume was based on that comic book material.) As someone who's only knowledge of comic-derived characters comes from non-comic book sources, which I imagine is true for the bulk of the movie-going audience, just wanted to make that point. The popularity of the '90s animated series was a big driver of the success of the 2000 movie.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[TwoSix]

Point the first-
I'm not sure that we could point to a single inflection point (the 90s animated series, say) as being a sole, or predominant, cause of success of the movie. Just like the success of the Dark Knight (Nolan series) was not because of the excellent Batman Animated Series.

I agree, which is why I phrased it as I did. (Big driver != sole or predominant inflection point

Point the second-
Most easter eggs / fan service tend to cater to the "canon" crowd; in other words, while you might be correct, the real argument isn't that the film was giving a shout out to the animated series, more that the animated series used the "traditional" comic colors, and that the fan service was for the original costumes (which included the animated series).

I guess I agree with that, although I think it's highly unlikely that the bulk of the movie audience was more familiar with the comics than with the animated series. The shout-out, I think, was to the "controversy" (as small potatoes as those things were in early Internet days) of wearing the Matrix-inspired black costumes as opposed to the more brightly colored costumes the audience was familiar with.

Point the third-
It is a common trope that superhero movies or shows currently made will have a fan service moment that makes a joke about past costumes; see, inter alia, the X-Men as describes, Luke Cage (prison break out flash back).

Agreed.

Point the fourth-
Contra the suggestions made earlier, the issue with prior costumes isn't technical feasibility; it's the zeitgeist. The costumes say something specific about the era that they are in, as well as the medium. If the yellow costumes return on the big screen (other than wink wink fan service), it won't be because of reasons of technical feasibility, but because the audience is ... well, ready for that take. A mismatch of tone and audience can lead to interesting results (see also Joel Schumacher's attempt at a camp return, a la the 60s, of Batman in Batman & Robin).

Absolutely. You weren't going to see brightly colored costumes in a comic book movie of the early aughts, the post-Matrix effect was still too strong.