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

[Jester David]

1. No, they didn't "just" decouple. They specifically moved to a different timeline (Kelvin) to allow the reboot. And the Discovery timeline (which will fan service the TOS, but not interact with it) is apart from the Kelvin timeline because they don't want to have to worry about interactions with movies. Why? Because maintaining canon across multiple platforms is hard, man.*

1) Viacom bought CBS/Paramount and thus aquired Star Trek in the '00s. The company proved too large and split into movies (Paramount) and television (CBS studios). They *literally* decoupled. There was a debate over which would get Trek and it was decided to share. The movies opted to reboot, the TV has decided not to: very likely to avoid working in cross purposes or contradicting each other.

It's hard enough for Disney/Marvel to coordinate between movies and TV and they're owned by the same overall company. Paramount and CBS don't even have the same bosses anymore. They're completely different companies. As you say, multiple platforms is hard.
But the fact remains, the TV continuity is unbroken.

2. So, all those books, and everything ... that are officially licensed.... aren't canon. Hmmm... makes me wonder why you worry so much about FR novelizations. After all, fans like to pretend, but who cares, amirite?

2) The key word is "licensed". The WotC novels are done in house and thus not licensed. The Star Wars novels were, and were as canon as the Star Trek novels. You really think licensed D&D products (like Neverwinter or Sword Coast Legends or the comic books) are canon? WotC might allow certain elements into the canon (see: Baldur's Gate), but for the most part they're not.

3. Agreed. That's also why it's good.

3) It can be good. It works because of the constantly changing creative teams (like movies really). Buuut it works best when there's limited change. When things hew closely to reality or the reset button is pushed.
That every future companion doesn't remember daleks or the Earth being abducted is weird. That everyone on Earth has somehow forgot that they empirically know aliens are real is also weird.
And the show does give nods to its past and continuity. Quite a bit in the last few seasons.

But sure, discounting all the examples that have been laid out, your argument makes perfect sense, because of ... what? The long-running and successful canon of ? That was never retconned or rebooted?

Several sitcoms, with their spinoffs.
Most soap operas.
Most long running TV dramas. Gunsmoke, ER, Law & Order, CSI. Arguably the Simpsons and Family Guy haven't had a true reboot.
Dune. Middle Earth. Niven's Known Space. Stephen King's Universe. The Cthulhu Mythos.

There's just precious few examples of shared world fiction and universes in general. Most tend to be based around a single core foundation with everything else being of dubious canonicity.

5 & 6. Ahem. So, you discard the example of, arguably, the one source of "canon," that started everything? Okay then. And, sure, comic book sales decreasing has everything to do with canon, and nothing to do with other, broader changes.

5&6) Comic reboots directly relate to the constant change. Characters drift away from their baseline and things have to be rebooted. If the writers could avoid needless changes, there'd be less need for reboots... and likely better sales. Comic's reliance on change and shock instead of good stories is really killing that industry.
The reason I stopped reading comics is because the stories ceased to matter. Without continuity it didn't matter if the villain was defeated, a character lived or died, or the events of the story occurred at all. I read them, I owned them, but the events in comics in my collection were effectively never happened. Peter Parker never married Mary Jane. Those stories ceased to be.

We do not need D&D following the comic book model. Rebooting the Realms once or roll back changes was already a pain.

Without continuity, stories lack any and all consequence. Taken to the extreme things become an anthology series like Outer Limits, Twilight Zone, or even Aeon Flux. Which is fine if that's what you want. Those exist for a reason. But it's odd if you see the entire Earth destroyed in one episode and things fine the next. When the non-serial show ends before it pushes the reset button. Fred Flinstone doesn't get his job back after being fired.

If you just dump continuity then the lore of D&D ceases to matter. None of it has any importance. It's just words. Nothing is connected. You might as well be grabbing monster lore from a dozen different game systems and mythologies and cramming them together. Heck, you're just as well served reading straight from Wikipedia's entries on goblins for all the bearing it has on the game.

The game gains NOTHING by completely reinventing itself with each new edition. It just makes D&D generic. There's no shortage of other fantasy roleplaying game systems out there. Dozens. Without the lore that makes D&D into D&D it might as well be Dungeon World.
Just being published by WotC and having the D&D name on it doesn't make the game into D&D. Otherwise Gamma World is also D&D...

From a campaign perceptive it's a little like if you start a new campaign world with every campaign. At that point it doesn't matter if the heroes TPK or succeed. The entire world is erased. D&D has as much continuity as a game of Clue or Pandemic. "Oh well, viruses killed everyone on the planet. Let's start again."
What's the point then? If your actions don't have any consequences, if there's no cause and effect, what's the point of the story?
If it's just to get people sitting around a table being silly then you might as well be playing Superfight or Monopoly...

 

[Shasarak]

Did what? What did Star Trek do that needs explaining? That they, after many years of canonical shows and movies, went back hundreds of years to tell stories about the original Enterprise and its trailblazing crew? A crew that will have been dead for generations by the time of the ST:TOS show?

Ok, thanks anyway.

 

[Corwin]

Ok, thanks anyway.

And, in return, thank you as well. Its always nice to get confirmation when you believe you might be getting trolled.

 

[Shasarak]

And, in return, thank you as well. Its always nice to get confirmation when you believe you might be getting trolled.

Uh ha, yup.

 

[pemerton]

Essentially, once you get down to it, and people stop posturing, @pemerton is correct.

I endorse this proposition!

I'm pro-canon and continuity. I like connecting the dots and learning more. I love nods to the past. In gaming books, but also in television, novels, comic books, movies. I love a nice, tight continuity where everything makes sense and feels relevant. It makes me feel what I'm reading/ watching matters

This is a rather particular sort of taste in relation to stories.

I don't enjoy stories mostly for joining the dots. I enjoy stories for the more traditional reasons - dramatic plot, relevant and moving theme, imagination and ingenuity on the part of the writer, effective writing (in literature) or visual composition (in flim), etc.

When it comes to RPGing, I want material (eg entries in monster manuals; characters and places in modules; backstories in campaign settings; etc) that will help me get this sort of thing into my game. Whether or not dots can be joined is a long way down my list of desiderata.

Which brings me to this . . .

The D&D team isn't the owners of the game. They're the stewards. They're managing the brand for the people who created it in the past, with the knowledge they're going to hand it off to others in the future.

For people who don't like continuity as a whole and don't think it has a place in D&D… well, those people probably shouldn't have a say in matters of continuity.

<snip>

Because changing someone's favourite thing just because you don't like it is the pinnacle of selfishness.

There are multple ways to look at this.

One is from the commercial perspective - the job of WotC's team is to write stuff that WotC can sell as a commercial publisher. Morality doesn't really factor into that; nor such moral notions as "selfishness". WotC certainly doesn't owe duties to those who have purchased its products in the past. (Other than standard commercial duties like replacing products that weren't printed or bound properly.)

Another is from the fan perspective - but in that case, I'm just as much a fan as you are. I want good story elements just as much as you do. The fact that my criteria for a good story element are not the same as yours doesn't make me selfish in what I want, and you selfless. (This point has been reiterated by [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] in this thread - why is it selfish for him to want one non-Planescape supplement to be published? rather than selfish of all the Planescape fans not to allow him even that?)

A third perspective combines the previous two: the budgest of commerical producers of genre stories are finite. If WotC publishes X, it is not going to publish Y as well. If WotC only focuses on existing canon and continuity, those of us who want something else won't get it. Why are our consumption and aesthetic preferences (which become oddly intertwined in this eara of commercialised artistic creation) less significant than yours?

History has generally shown that when people *can* makes changes, they generally *will*, for good or for ill.

I'm not arguing entirely against change. Continuity can and should progress. The world should grow and shift and alter naturally. Characters die or retire, kings are overthrown, villains are defeated, etc. That's all good. But that doesn't change canon, that adds to canon.

<snip>

Changing canon itself I disagree with strongly. This is the retcon. The contradiction. The alteration of what has come before.
Continuity and canon is a tool. And if if you can't figure out how to use the tool then you're a handyman using a screwdriver to pound in nails. If you're a writer and can't think of stories to tell without changing history then you suck as a writer and should find a new career.

compare George R. R. Martin who is half making it up but is paying close attention, versus J. K. Rowlings who also had a loose plan for the future but just regularly made up as she went, with no consideration of how it might fit into the world

One of the most enduring of fantasy characters is Conan the Barbarian. One of the most enduring of fantasy world conceptions is the Hyborian Age (echoed countless times in RPG supplements like GH and FR).

REH made all that up as he went along. He was writing those stories at a furious pace, trying to make a living as a pulp fiction writer.

As I've already posted, there is no single timeline that integrates The Phoenix on the Sword, The Scarlet Citadel and The Hour of the Dragon (the first part of the third, after all, being largely a retelling of the second). (I mean, perhapsh you can retrofit one after the event, as some sort of fan endeavour. But there is no canonical timelines conceived of by REH.) What they share is certain motifs and a recurring character and background setting. And yet, despite their casual sexism and racism, they remain classics of the fantasy genre. I believe they will still be read in 100 years time. The same won't be true of very many (any?) FR novels. Or DL, I suspect.

The idea that REH "sucked as a writer" - the idea that the pinnacle of writing excellence is preservation of continuity, rather than (say) mastering the language, or maintaining a driving plot over 100+ pages, or memorable characterisation, or any of the other standard indicia - is just bizarre.

 

[Hussar]

Conan is funny in that, as I recall, there are three (four) completely different, distinct, canonical origin stories for him. There's a fantastic story/biography that I cannot for the life of me remember the title of that actually acknowledges that there are multiple origin stories and that we really don't know, for a fact, which one is true.

Personally, I really wish D&D would emulate this style. Nothing is carved in stone. There can be multiple, contradictory bits of lore and let the DM's pick and choose which one works. I would LOVE this approach to the game. Just like you have OA's backstory contradicting mainstream D&D. Fantastic.

Best of both worlds IMO. You get the baseline shared experience while at the same time, getting none of the shackles.

 

[pemerton]

Arguably the Simpsons and Family Guy haven't had a true reboot.

<snip>

The Cthulhu Mythos.

The Cthulhu Mythos is whatever an author wants it to be. Like REH's Conan, it's something that HPL made up as he went along.

The Simpsons, too, are whatever the authors want them to be. How many times can Apu's shop be robbed by Snake yet remain financially viable? Is Springfield inland or coastal? Etc, etc.

The Simpsons is a set of characters, motifs and some core background conceits. If that's enough to count as continuity for you, then why the hell would you care which layer of the Abyss some particular D&D author puts Demogorgon on?

The reason I stopped reading comics is because the stories ceased to matter. Without continuity it didn't matter if the villain was defeated, a character lived or died, or the events of the story occurred at all.

<snip>

Without continuity, stories lack any and all consequence.

<snip>

If you just dump continuity then the lore of D&D ceases to matter. None of it has any importance. It's just words.

Written fiction is, by definition, just words. And the only "consequences" it has are the mental events that occur in the minds of those who read it.

Many people around the world read fiction. I think the number whose main interest in the fiction is how the events of story A will be carried over into story B is a distinct minority, even among readers of genre fiction. For many, the interest is in the drama, thematic significance, sheer excitement, etc of the events in story A.

From a campaign perceptive it's a little like if you start a new campaign world with every campaign. At that point it doesn't matter if the heroes TPK or succeed. The entire world is erased.

<snip>

What's the point then? If your actions don't have any consequences, if there's no cause and effect, what's the point of the story?

When I start a new campaign it is typically in a new world. I currently have four (maybe five?) campaigns running, each in a different world (default 4e, Dark Sun, GH, Marvel - the fifth, which is currently a one-off but may get returned to at some stage, is generic AD&D).

What is the point of the stories? The same as the point of any story - they are (hopefully) fun, dramatic and worth participating in. (My view is that the participation element in RPGing makes stories acceptable which, as a mere reader, would be too crappy to bother with.)

Fictions - especially RPG-created fictions - are aesthetic events. They are experienced. That's where their value lies.

 

[pemerton]

Conan is funny in that, as I recall, there are three (four) completely different, distinct, canonical origin stories for him.

I don't think REH wrote one, did he? In the critical edition edited by Patrice Louinet, the story that is earliest in his imaginary life is (I think) The Tower of the Elephant. Perhaps The Frost Giant's Daughter - but given that it was never published in REH's lifetime, it surely can't count as canonical!

 

[Imaro]

One of the most enduring of fantasy characters is Conan the Barbarian. One of the most enduring of fantasy world conceptions is the Hyborian Age (echoed countless times in RPG supplements like GH and FR).

REH made all that up as he went along. He was writing those stories at a furious pace, trying to make a living as a pulp fiction writer.

As I've already posted, there is no single timeline that integrates The Phoenix on the Sword, The Scarlet Citadel and The Hour of the Dragon (the first part of the third, after all, being largely a retelling of the second). (I mean, perhapsh you can retrofit one after the event, as some sort of fan endeavour. But there is no canonical timelines conceived of by REH.) What they share is certain motifs and a recurring character and background setting. And yet, despite their casual sexism and racism, they remain classics of the fantasy genre. I believe they will still be read in 100 years time. The same won't be true of very many (any?) FR novels. Or DL, I suspect.

The idea that REH "sucked as a writer" - the idea that the pinnacle of writing excellence is preservation of continuity, rather than (say) mastering the language, or maintaining a driving plot over 100+ pages, or memorable characterisation, or any of the other standard indicia - is just bizarre.

Well his Conan stories/brand has enjoyed nowhere near the success or recognition that say someone like Tolkien (who very much has continuity as a part of his writing (since it's a gigantic strawman to imply that anyone in this thread has propped up continuity and canon as the "pinnacle of writing excellence") has in the mainstream consciousness... The Conan, Kull and even the Solomon Kane movies and stories have had nowhere near the monetary or mainstream impact that Tolkien's works have. I mean it's all well and good to claim that you "believe" Conan will be read 100 years from now but Dragonlance won't... but the available Conan books are ranked nowhere near DL on say the amazon best seller lists. In fact the more I think about it Conan, and Howard as a writer are becoming more and more niche as time progresses... how did that last Conan movie do? When were the stories last in print?

 

[Imaro]

Conan is funny in that, as I recall, there are three (four) completely different, distinct, canonical origin stories for him. There's a fantastic story/biography that I cannot for the life of me remember the title of that actually acknowledges that there are multiple origin stories and that we really don't know, for a fact, which one is true.

Personally, I really wish D&D would emulate this style. Nothing is carved in stone. There can be multiple, contradictory bits of lore and let the DM's pick and choose which one works. I would LOVE this approach to the game. Just like you have OA's backstory contradicting mainstream D&D. Fantastic.

Best of both worlds IMO. You get the baseline shared experience while at the same time, getting none of the shackles.

So a DM can never just have everyone come together and run a "default" game... not sure that's the best way to go if you want it easily accessible and to foster ease of play.