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

[Shasarak]

Which of these posts am I meant to believe? Shasarak is telling me that I can't have compelling story elements that depart from established canon because there is no market for them; while Jester David is worried that I am going to take continuity away from him. (How? Presumably by generating sufficient demand for WotC to publish stuff I want rather than stuff he wants.)

It seems pretty clear that if the story is changed to make it "more compelling" to those who never ever liked the previous "compelling story" and it fails because there is no market for the new hotness then Jester loses because now there are no further stories being made.

Like for example, if the latest Conan movie critically fails at the box office losing millions of dollars and putting the movie studio out of business forever preventing any further movies being made because no one is able to extract the IP from the resulting financial nightmare.

 

[Jester David]

I was responding to [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION]'s posts which stated (post 1450) that "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." And which also stated (post 1471) that "Without continuity, stories lack any and all consequence."

Two movies I really like are Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. The second is, in some respects, a remake of the first. Although both are set during the WWII, when watching one, one doesn't envisage that the action of the other is taking place more-or-less simultaneously. They're distinct fictions. That doesn't make them any less valuable. What makes them good movies is independent of the consequences they have for any later storytelling.

And those stories would be nothing without the second World War. Which is real world continuity.

Canon doesn't just apply to fiction. You can't just make up a fake war in the real world without breaking verisimilitude. There's just as much research required.

JRRT's continuity is not what makes his books good. And in some places the continuity is obviously strained: the Hobbit had to be twisted and tortured to become a prelude to LotR; Elrond is obviously very different in personality between the two books; and the reason there is continuity between Appendix B and the Silmarillion is because Christopher Tolkien edited the latter to bring it into conformity with the former. (Some of this is discussed in Unfinished Tales. Presumalby, also, in The History of Middle Earth but I've not read those books.)

I disagree.
One of the strengths of those books is the sense of history and the larger world. The feeling that the storyt is just one of many. Hence all the poems and songs and side stories sprinkled through the works. The hints of backstories.
That makes the books.

I'll let WotC figure out the commercial aspect of things. But I'll reiterate again my rejection of Jester David's moralised language: if WotC publishes what I want rather than what you want, that is not me "taking something away from you", anymore than WotC publishing more PS nonsense is you "taking something away from me". Those sorts of moral and proprietary notions have no application in this context

You want books without continuity that do their own thing.
I want books with continuity that respect what's already been published.

You can ignore continuity that is there. That's zero work.
I can't easily add continuity where there is none. That's a lot of work.

 

[Remathilis]

This is the bit I don't get. Publication of a new piece of fiction is not a direction to someone else (such as a D&D player) about how to deal with some past piece of fiction (such as an established player character).

So I'm puzzled that it gets interpreted that way.

In this situation, it did.

In 3e, a high elf could see in the dark, was proficient in some swords and bows, got bonuses to being perceptive, and resisted charms and sleep spells.

In 5e a high elf could see in the dark, was proficient in some swords and bows, got bonuses to being perceptive, resisted charms and sleep spells and cast a cantrip at will.

In 4e, a high elf could see in the dark, was proficient in a single skill, got bonuses to arcana and history checks, was proficient in one type of sword, resisted being charmed, and teleported 30 ft every 5 minutes

There is a clear lineage between 3e and 5e (though the mechanical expression of such is different due to the underlying ruleset). The only difference between the 3e and 5e moon elf is the added cantrip (which my high elf rogue explained away by taking true strike; which is easily explained by saying he used his magic to guide his blade a few times). However, his 4e version was radically different. He lost proficiency in his short bow (since 4e rogue didn't give it either, due to the stupid "small blade or crossbow" restriction on rogue powers), he was no longer as perceptive as he once was, and he could be put to sleep magically; in returned he learned to FREAKING TELEPORT.

The only good sign was by Essentials, they started to backtrack and make "elf" (which were all rangery and primal) start to cover the bog-standard elves of 3e and making eladrin more otherworldly and separate. It didn't stop FR from declaring every moon elf learned to teleport one day, but it was a start on reversing the trend.

 

[Imaro]

I was responding to [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION]'s posts which stated (post 1450) that "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." And which also stated (post 1471) that "Without continuity, stories lack any and all consequence."

Two movies I really like are Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. The second is, in some respects, a remake of the first. Although both are set during the WWII, when watching one, one doesn't envisage that the action of the other is taking place more-or-less simultaneously. They're distinct fictions. That doesn't make them any less valuable. What makes them good movies is independent of the consequences they have for any later storytelling.

I haven't seen the two movies, but I'm not sure your analogy is apt here... this isn't a case of two movies called Casablanca and Casablanca 2 that have no continuity and that you enjoyed. In fact I can think of a movie in particular that highlights exactly the problem with continuity not mattering... Highlander and Highlander 2... The fact that it so jarringly diverged from the first is what made it not just bad but horrible. Canon mattered in this instance.

JRRT's continuity is not what makes his books good. And in some places the continuity is obviously strained: the Hobbit had to be twisted and tortured to become a prelude to LotR; Elrond is obviously very different in personality between the two books; and the reason there is continuity between Appendix B and the Silmarillion is because Christopher Tolkien edited the latter to bring it into conformity with the former. (Some of this is discussed in Unfinished Tales. Presumalby, also, in The History of Middle Earth but I've not read those books.)

And they took these measures to ensure continuity because? I would assume it makes for a better story...

But you don't have to poke LotR very hard for it to break. For instance, hobbits have cheese, and hence presumably milk. Where do they get their milk from?

I'm not sure how this "breaks" the continuity of LotR... couldn't they just milk the cows (there's a scene in the extended version of the Fellowship where a hobbit is milking a cow), or maybe they purchase cheese from humans? Perhaps merchants pass through the shire who sell and barter with it? Or they have pygmy cows... I guess a better question is how does this break continuity?

They wear woolen clothes. Where do they get their wool from?

The same place as their cheese??

Hobbits are about the size of children, and I can tell you from experience children aren't big or strong enough to work with sheep. Hobbits herding cows would be a sight to see! (And, very sensibly, JRRT sidesteps the whole thing. In that respect he's more interested in writing a good story than in building a world.)

Yet they fight off creatures many times their size, wield weapons easily and do other things a child can't... so I think it's safe to assume there are differences in physiology...

I bought my copies around 10 years ago. I don't know if those editions are still in print. The stories themselves are all on Project Gutenberg as far as I know.

And yet how many people have actually read them as opposed to knowing Conan purely through Arnold Schwarzenegger... I'd wager a steadily diminishing number.

 

[pemerton]

Why cant Hobbits get their wool and milk from Goats? They seem about the right size for Hobbits.

See, this is exactly the sort of rabbit-hole one gets led down by canon fetishism!

We get told a lot about Bag End, but its resident goat is never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

We hear a lot about farmers, but where are the herders? Never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

Which doesn't itself deal with the issue that goats would be comparably hard for hobbits to handle (due to issues of size and strength - how does a hobbit shear a goat, given that s/he can't overbear it through sheer strength?).

Within the confines of JRRT's book, there are no answers to these questions. Nor to the questin where the elves get their wine from (as best I understand it, grapes grow on clear slopes, not in forests like Lorien or Mirkwood). The books aren't a treatise (even an implied treatise) on the primary industry of Middle Earth. They pay as much attention to the physics of hobbit shearing as do tales of kobolds pinching milk from the pantry pay to the question of where kobolds get their pottery jugs from (do they have kilns deep under the earth?).

And of course that is if we ignore the possibility of Hobbits trading with other more Human sized people.

Trading what? With whom?

The journey to Bree is painted, in the LotR, as relatively unusual for a hobbit to undertake.

The whole of Middle Earth makes no economic sense. The Shire seems to be in similar circumstances (from the point of view of economic geography) to mediaeval Ireland (it's a tremendous trip for Boromir to go even to Rivendell, and Sauron has no idea where The Shire even is), but with material living stadards (unsurprisingly, given the interests of the author and the narrative purpose of hobbits) comparable to an idealised vision of 18th or 19th century rural England.

Which is not a criticism of JRRT. It's a point against the logic of "canon".

 

[pemerton]

It seems pretty clear that if the story is changed to make it "more compelling" to those who never ever liked the previous "compelling story" and it fails because there is no market for the new hotness then Jester loses because now there are no further stories being made.

What's this got to do with anything?

I mean, if Seattle was to slide into the Pacific Ocean that might be equally the case, but that probably wouldn't be my fault either.

I'm guessing that [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] values Planescape among his continuity. Here is Ryan Dancey on Planescape:

We listened when customers told us that they didn't want the confusing, jargon filled world of Planescape.​

I'm not the one whose enthusiasm bankrupted TSR!

(I don't understand the snide remak about "new hotness", either. Everything was once new. Planescape is not an eternal truth.)

 

[Imaro]

See, this is exactly the sort of rabbit-hole one gets led down by canon fetishism!

We get told a lot about Bag End, but its resident goat is never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

We hear a lot about farmers, but where are the herders? Never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

Which doesn't itself deal with the issue that goats would be comparably hard for hobbits to handle (due to issues of size and strength - how does a hobbit shear a goat, given that s/he can't overbear it through sheer strength?).

Within the confines of JRRT's book, there are no answers to these questions. Nor to the questin where the elves get their wine from (as best I understand it, grapes grow on clear slopes, not in forests like Lorien or Mirkwood). The books aren't a treatise (even an implied treatise) on the primary industry of Middle Earth. They pay as much attention to the physics of hobbit shearing as do tales of kobolds pinching milk from the pantry pay to the question of where kobolds get their pottery jugs from (do they have kilns deep under the earth?).

Trading what? With whom?

The journey to Bree is painted, in the LotR, as relatively unusual for a hobbit to undertake.

The whole of Middle Earth makes no economic sense. The Shire seems to be in similar circumstances (from the point of view of economic geography) to mediaeval Ireland (it's a tremendous trip for Boromir to go even to Rivendell, and Sauron has no idea where The Shire even is), but with material living stadards (unsurprisingly, given the interests of the author and the narrative purpose of hobbits) comparable to an idealised vision of 18th or 19th century rural England.

Which is not a criticism of JRRT. It's a point against the logic of "canon".

I'm still failing to see how any of this actually breaks continuity or diverges from canon... All you're doing is speaking to things which were not covered in the stories not contradictions or changes of the established lore...

 

[Shasarak]

See, this is exactly the sort of rabbit-hole one gets led down by canon fetishism!

We get told a lot about Bag End, but its resident goat is never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

We hear a lot about farmers, but where are the herders? Never mentioned. Why not? Because it doesn't matter.

Which doesn't itself deal with the issue that goats would be comparably hard for hobbits to handle (due to issues of size and strength - how does a hobbit shear a goat, given that s/he can't overbear it through sheer strength?).

Can I ask why a Hobbit would need to overbear anything with "sheer strength"? Is that how you imagine Farmers look after their Sheep (or Goats, Cows, Horses whatever) is by wrestling them to the ground so that they can have their wicked ways with them? That does not seem very realistic to me and could explain why Hobbits with wool are some kind of elaborate fetish for you.

Within the confines of JRRT's book, there are no answers to these questions. Nor to the questin where the elves get their wine from (as best I understand it, grapes grow on clear slopes, not in forests like Lorien or Mirkwood). The books aren't a treatise (even an implied treatise) on the primary industry of Middle Earth. They pay as much attention to the physics of hobbit shearing as do tales of kobolds pinching milk from the pantry pay to the question of where kobolds get their pottery jugs from (do they have kilns deep under the earth?).

Maybe Elves ferment their wine from Spider milk which is why the Elven King was sending Legolas out to harvest more for their upcoming celebrations?

I imagine that Tolkien did not detail the physics of sheering sheep because he probably thought that the average Englishman reading his books understood that subject without him needing to go into great detail. It probably never occurred to him that later generations would imagine these Farmer Sheep death matches.

Trading what? With whom?

The journey to Bree is painted, in the LotR, as relatively unusual for a hobbit to undertake.

The whole of Middle Earth makes no economic sense. The Shire seems to be in similar circumstances (from the point of view of economic geography) to mediaeval Ireland (it's a tremendous trip for Boromir to go even to Rivendell, and Sauron has no idea where The Shire even is), but with material living stadards (unsurprisingly, given the interests of the author and the narrative purpose of hobbits) comparable to an idealised vision of 18th or 19th century rural England.

Which is not a criticism of JRRT. It's a point against the logic of "canon".

I dont know, maybe they trade with the Duke of Buckingham? Personally I would ask [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] because he seems to know more about LotR then I.

 

[pemerton]

And those stories would be nothing without the second World War. Which is real world continuity.

Canon doesn't just apply to fiction. You can't just make up a fake war in the real world without breaking verisimilitude. There's just as much research required.

Can't you?

It's notorious that the whole premise of Casablanca is nonsensical (the "Letters of Transit", signed by General deGaulle, are an imaginary form of travel document that, in any event, could simply be cancelled).

And the image of Morocco was purely fictional, conjured up in a Hollywood lot.

So that's fake documents and fake geography. As for fake wars, I've seen plenty of action movies that present accounts of paramilitary activities in (say) Central America that bear at best tangential connection to the actual events in those countries.

If a typical present-day American came across a story set in the 1910 war between Bulgaria and Romania, would s/he know whether or not it was a real or fictional war? What sort of weaponry or tactics might be mentioned without breaking verisimilitude?

In my Marvel Heroic RP game, the PCs infiltrated the Latverian embassy in Washington DC. Where is that again? (The embassy? The country? Both made up, and trading on the fact that the average comic reader is largely hazy on the details of Central and Eastern European geography and history.)

One of the strengths of those books is the sense of history and the larger world. The feeling that the storyt is just one of many. Hence all the poems and songs and side stories sprinkled through the works. The hints of backstories.
That makes the books.

But does not depend upon "canon". You can do all that without Appendix B. And Appendix B itself changed between editions, I think (Unfinshed Tales talks about this).

The Hobbit was itself revised, multiple times - and ret-conned (the original version was "a lie" by Bilbo about the true nature of his acquisition of the Ring) - to bring it into line with LotR.

In other words, JRRT didn't just stick to his established continuity - which is to say, by your standards, he sucked as a writer!

You want books without continuity that do their own thing.
I want books with continuity that respect what's already been published.

You can ignore continuity that is there. That's zero work.
I can't easily add continuity where there is none. That's a lot of work.

But I don't want books that I am going to ignore. If I'm going to buy books, I want to use them.

Which means I want books with compelling stuff in them. If sticking to "canon" is an obstacle to that (which, clearly, it can be - qv Planescape) then we can't both get what we want.

At that point, your preferences have no moral priority over mine.

(This point has been made very many times already in this thread, by me and by [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION], but it seems to need reiterating every 50 posts or so.)

 

[Jester David]

What's this got to do with anything?

I mean, if Seattle was to slide into the Pacific Ocean that might be equally the case, but that probably wouldn't be my fault either.

Except you created a thread asking how people used canon in their games.
You then proceeded to argue with people who said they liked canon, saying canon isn't useful and is a shackle on creativity. This thread is all about advocating dumping continuity.

You can't push for a change and then claim innocence as if it were an act of god.

I'm guessing that [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] values Planescape among his continuity. Here is Ryan Dancey on Planescape:

We listened when customers told us that they didn't want the confusing, jargon filled world of Planescape.​

I'm not the one whose enthusiasm bankrupted TSR!

(I don't understand the snide remak about "new hotness", either. Everything was once new. Planescape is not an eternal truth.)

o.0
This is a stretch.
Not wanting the story of the settings and monsters to arbitrarily change is not the same as wanting the same presentation.
Not wanting the planes to reshape themselves, the Blood War to end, or the nature of fiends to change also doesn't mean I still want boxed sets either.