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

[Mirtek]

Why are these changes acceptable?

I agree they are bad. In the big picture the novels are most likely just ignoring them (or mixing them with previous concepts such as Shar's Dark Moon monks who used to be monk/sorcerer already).

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - a question. Do you seriously envision a broad swath of DM's out there that neither create their own setting nor use a published one?

So how does that work? How do you play DND with no setting at all? No maps no history, no religions no organizations at all.

What, they just open up the monster manual and fight in alphabetical order?

I'll admit to being a lazy DM but even I do more work than that.

And if there are all these DM's that have no settings at all and are just stringing together the largely unrelated lore of DND, why would they possibly care about canon? And, how in the world did they play in earlier editions where lore was often told from an unreliable narrator POV?

Additionally, if we do use an unreliable narrator, that means you CAN have modules where Orcus is looking for his wand and others where he's dead. Fantastic. Sure you couldn't run both those adventures in the same campaign but so what? That happens all the time. Level restrictions see to that.

 

[Hussar]

An additional thought occurs related to my last point. Imari pointed out that many groups only use the core books. If that's true, then how do these groups care about DND canon? How do they even know?

 

[pemerton]

This whole line of discussion is, ultimately, pointless.

On the contrary - I am making a single point, namely, that one of the greatest and most revered fantasy worlds of all time enjoys that status although it has not realistic economy, no realistic politics or history (look at the absurdly enormous timelines in Appendix B), etc.

This is because consistency of that sort is largely irrelevant to most fantasy advenrtures. It is a quirk of a certain approach to RPGing, which has its origins in wargaming and accountancy-style boardgaming, that the opposite view is often exrpessed.

In my view, the details of what plane Eladrin come from, or what layer of the Abyss Demogorgon lives on, is in the same sort of category. These minutiae are secondary to running a fantasy game with a vibrant and engaging imaginary world.

 

[S'mon]

On the contrary - I am making a single point, namely, that one of the greatest and most revered fantasy worlds of all time enjoys that status although it has not realistic economy, no realistic politics or history (look at the absurdly enormous timelines in Appendix B), etc.

My appreciation for LoTR certainly took a knock when I realised the timelines made no sense. I find it quite weird Tolkien made no effort to create a plausible history, actually. It wouldn't have taken much effort for eg Eriador to have fallen (only) a few centuries ago, Osgiliath to have been in ruins for maybe a century, etc.

I have to say I never considered hobbit wool & cheese before, though! But it puts Tolkien looking down on CS Lewis's "juvenile" fantasies in perspective.

 

[jayoungr]

My appreciation for LoTR certainly took a knock when I realised the timelines made no sense. I find it quite weird Tolkien made no effort to create a plausible history, actually. It wouldn't have taken much effort for eg Eriador to have fallen (only) a few centuries ago, Osgiliath to have been in ruins for maybe a century, etc.

Tolkien wasn't trying to write "plausible history"; he was writing myth, where everything is on a grand scale. Narrativist, not simulationist.

 

[Maxperson]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - a question. Do you seriously envision a broad swath of DM's out there that neither create their own setting nor use a published one?

I don't know how many there are, but it's pretty easy to do.

So how does that work? How do you play DND with no setting at all? No maps no history, no religions no organizations at all.

It works like this. When I first started out in DMing, I would just make adventures for the PCs to run through. Those adventures were not set in a specific world. I didn't have specific countries. NPCs and towns were limited to the adventures. Farmer Tom might be in adventure A, but not in any others, so he couldn't be encountered in them. Any history was for that adventure and only mattered in relation to the adventure. They were fun adventures, but there was in no way an organized setting.

A buddy of mine, though, he created a home brew world. He created countries and pantheons of gods. He created history and interrelationships between them. He created NPCs and knew where they were in the world. He premade dungeons and rumors. And more. THAT'S a setting.

About the only downside in his early games(this was when we were both in junior high and high school) was that every dungeon was no less than 3 days and no more than a week away from town. These poor townsfolk all lived in mortal danger for some reason.

I have since become much better at DMing and only play in settings.

And if there are all these DM's that have no settings at all and are just stringing together the largely unrelated lore of DND, why would they possibly care about canon? And, how in the world did they play in earlier editions where lore was often told from an unreliable narrator POV?

Cannon =/= setting. Even when running games with no setting, I still used the monster canon.

 

[Maxperson]

An additional thought occurs related to my last point. Imari pointed out that many groups only use the core books. If that's true, then how do these groups care about DND canon? How do they even know?

It's in the books.

 

[billd91]

On the contrary - I am making a single point, namely, that one of the greatest and most revered fantasy worlds of all time enjoys that status although it has not realistic economy, no realistic politics or history (look at the absurdly enormous timelines in Appendix B), etc.

This is because consistency of that sort is largely irrelevant to most fantasy advenrtures. It is a quirk of a certain approach to RPGing, which has its origins in wargaming and accountancy-style boardgaming, that the opposite view is often exrpessed.

In my view, the details of what plane Eladrin come from, or what layer of the Abyss Demogorgon lives on, is in the same sort of category. These minutiae are secondary to running a fantasy game with a vibrant and engaging imaginary world.

For you, maybe. But don't project that on everyone. Don't assume that because you don't care about something, nobody else should either.

 

[pemerton]

My appreciation for LoTR certainly took a knock when I realised the timelines made no sense. I find it quite weird Tolkien made no effort to create a plausible history, actually. It wouldn't have taken much effort for eg Eriador to have fallen (only) a few centuries ago, Osgiliath to have been in ruins for maybe a century, etc.

Harsh words!

I look at it through the lens of "epic grandeur" - in the days of yore, everything was grander and more dramatic, even the duration of historical epochs.

I have to say I never considered hobbit wool & cheese before, though! But it puts Tolkien looking down on CS Lewis's "juvenile" fantasies in perspective.

As you've probably seen me post before, I think the idea of (say) Lothlorien is to take the ideas of faerie forests and recreate them in the form of a (more-or-less) naturalistic novel. That's not an easy achievement, and I'm not going to hold it against Tolkien that the naturalism frays a bit at the edges.

The hobbits have to do double-duty, both as the naturalised "little people" and as the anchoring characters for an (assumed) middle-class English audience. Again, I think some fraying at the edges is forgivable.

EDIT:

Tolkien wasn't trying to write "plausible history"; he was writing myth, where everything is on a grand scale.

But he is also writing a novel, which is a more-or-less naturalistic genre.

There are tensions in combining the two projeccts. Hobbit pastoral practices (and economic and social development more generally) are victims of those tensions.