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

[pemerton]

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.

This is why I used the phrases "largely irrelevant" and "a quirk of a certain approach to RPGing". And opened up my second paragraph with the words "In my view".

This post about the Star Wars RPG quotes, with approval, someone saying "Movies simply don’t require the level of exhaustive detail that a game would." But this idea, that gameworlds require exhaustive detail, is contentious. I've done plenty of RPGing without needing exhaustive detail of the sort that D&D traditionally favours.

 

[billd91]

This is why I used the phrases "largely irrelevant" and "a quirk of a certain approach to RPGing". And opened up my second paragraph with the words "In my view".

"A quirk of a certain approach"? You have any idea how dismissive that reads? Probably not since you just repeated it.

This post about the Star Wars RPG quotes, with approval, someone saying "Movies simply don’t require the level of exhaustive detail that a game would." But this idea, that gameworlds require exhaustive detail, is contentious. I've done plenty of RPGing without needing exhaustive detail of the sort that D&D traditionally favours.

Novels and movies aren't RPGs. Movies engage the public for a couple of hours, novels longer but not as long or in as much detail as RPGs typically do. We more or less passively consume movies and novels while we are required to take an active role in RPGs, writing the stories with our choices in play rather than just witnessing someone else's story. So the applicability of your arguments is limited. More and better information gives us more material to play on, more to deepen our immersion, and more to share that's relevant.

And I want to expound on that more to share bit. RPGers like to talk about their characters, their campaigns. But if there's nothing in common with their own games and experiences, no common connections, nobody wants to be the poor bastards listening to them. Shared canon enables shared interest and shared games like nothing completely disconnected games and campaigns can achieve.

 

[Hussar]

snippage



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

But, again, how would an unreliable narrator have changed that. In fact, presuming you starting gaming before 1999, that's precisely how D&D was written. It was never a book of facts, but very frequently, "sages think... there is evidence that points to... there are rumors that..." and so on. 1e lacked a great deal of flavor material. 2e had flavor in abundance but, almost always presented it in oblique fashion which an unreliable narrator (heck, there's a REASON that the Volo's guides were written - it says right in the introductions that Volo is unreliable).

It wasn't until 3e that you start seeing the game really pin things down. Where the "story of D&D" gets its start. That approach was continued in 4e, granted with a largely new story , and now in 5e, we're seeing it be nailed down even further. Kobolds are presented as possibly slaves to dragons. The first major expansion of Kobold lore has slave kobolds being expanded. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that the next AP to feature kobolds will feature slave kobolds, including a handful of new "types" of kobolds.

It's in the books.

Not really, no it isn't. Unless you had played 3e, you would have no idea what an Eladrin was. That was the first time that Eladrin were presented in a core book. AND, the lore writeup in the 3e MM is about two paragraphs long. Hardly extensive.

The idea of a link between dragons and kobolds would be unknown until 5e. It's not present anywhere in core in D&D. Here's the text for the 3.5 MM Kobold:

This humanoid is about the size of a gnome or halfling. It has a scaly hide, a naked tail like that of a rat, and a doglike head with two small horns.
Kobolds are short, reptilian humanoids with cowardly and sadistic tendencies.
A kobold’s scaly skin ranges from dark rusty brown to a rusty black color. It has glowing red eyes. Its tail is nonprehensile. Kobolds wear ragged clothing, favoring red and orange.
Kobolds usually consume plants or animals but are not averse to eating intelligent beings. They spend most of their time fortifying the land around their lairs with traps and warning devices (such as spiked pits, tripwires attached to crossbows, and other mechanical contraptions).
Kobolds hate almost every other sort of humanoid or fey, espe- cially gnomes and sprites.
A kobold is 2 to 2-1/2 feet tall and weighs 35 to 45 pounds.
Kobolds speak Draconic with a voice that sounds like that of a yapping dog.

...

Kobolds live in dark places, usually underground locations and overgrown forests. They are good miners and often live in the mines they are developing. A kobold tribe sends out warbands that patrol within a 10-mile radius from the lair, attacking any intelligent creatures that enter their territory. Kobolds usually kill prisoners for food but occasionally sell some of them as slaves. Their nasty habits and their distrust of most other beings mean that they have many enemies.
A kobold lair has one noncombatant child and one egg per ten adults.
The patron deity of the kobolds is Kurtulmak, who despises all living creatures except kobolds.

The only link to dragons is the fact that they speak draconic. However, since all "scaley" folk speak draconic, including lizard men, which have no connection to dragons, that's not much evidence. So, again, if your only experience is core D&D, what lore would you actually know?

 

[Hussar]

/snip Shared canon enables shared interest and shared games like nothing completely disconnected games and campaigns can achieve.

So, the advantage of shared canon is to enable gaming stories? Seriously? That's the advantage? To allow some guy to bore me in a gaming store and I'll know more about what he's boring me about?

And again, how is an unreliable narrator countering that? If the narrator of canon says X can be true, then if your gaming story/setting/campaign uses X, then everyone knows what you're talking about. OTOH, if you choose to ignore X, and instead substitute Y (from an official source perhaps) or Z (home-brew) and no one can tell you, "No, that's not how that works".

I'd MUCH rather play MY D&D, and not WotC's D&D.

It's so ironic that all I heard for years was how 4e WotC was "forcing" people to play a certain way and "telling" gamers how to play the game and that was a bad thing. But, if I wrap up telling you how to play and forcing you to play the way I want you to play inside a nice big bag of canon, everyone seems to just line right up and stand at attention.

 

[Maxperson]

Not really, no it isn't. Unless you had played 3e, you would have no idea what an Eladrin was. That was the first time that Eladrin were presented in a core book. AND, the lore writeup in the 3e MM is about two paragraphs long. Hardly extensive.

In a core book, sure. 2e did an intensive and very intensive lore specific write up in the Planescape Appendix 2 of the Monstrous Compendium, though. So the idea that someone would have no idea what an Eladrin was unless they played 3e is false. The might not know what one was, or they might. 8 pages of Eldadrin lore and mechanical write-up in 2e.

The idea of a link between dragons and kobolds would be unknown until 5e. It's not present anywhere in core in D&D. Here's the text for the 3.5 MM Kobold:

In 2e the Dragon Mountain adventure was about a dragon and it's kobold servants.

 

[Imaro]

But, again, how would an unreliable narrator have changed that. In fact, presuming you starting gaming before 1999, that's precisely how D&D was written. It was never a book of facts, but very frequently, "sages think... there is evidence that points to... there are rumors that..." and so on. 1e lacked a great deal of flavor material. 2e had flavor in abundance but, almost always presented it in oblique fashion which an unreliable narrator (heck, there's a REASON that the Volo's guides were written - it says right in the introductions that Volo is unreliable).


It wasn't until 3e that you start seeing the game really pin things down. Where the "story of D&D" gets its start. That approach was continued in 4e, granted with a largely new story , and now in 5e, we're seeing it be nailed down even further. Kobolds are presented as possibly slaves to dragons. The first major expansion of Kobold lore has slave kobolds being expanded. I'm willing to bet dollars to donuts that the next AP to feature kobolds will feature slave kobolds, including a handful of new "types" of kobolds.

The Monstrous Manual for 2e doesn't appear to be written in an unreliable narrator voice... in fact it seems pretty definitive in the lore that it states for various monsters... the only difference between it and 3e is in the focus and perhaps granularity of the lore... but claiming 2e's lore is written in an unreliable narrator voice is not true.

 

[Quartz]

In 2e the Dragon Mountain adventure was about a dragon and it's kobold servants.

The Dungeon adventure 'Flame Returns' had a dragon with kobold servants.

 

[Mercule]

In a core book, sure. 2e did an intensive and very intensive lore specific write up in the Planescape Appendix 2 of the Monstrous Compendium, though. So the idea that someone would have no idea what an Eladrin was unless they played 3e is false. The might not know what one was, or they might.

Since I found Planescape to be rather odious and the point at which I stopped using the Great Wheel cosmology, this is a worthwhile point to remark on.

The advantage of the "unreliable narrator" that has been mentioned is that it allows folks like me to be selective in the lie that we consider canon.

In my canon, so to speak, the eladrin were a form of angelic being. A new edition could have moved them up or down in the hierarchy, or even switched the name to refer to fallen angels and it would have barely registered. Using the name to refer to elves was a bit bizarre, especially when previous editions had defaulted to elves favoring magic over being rangers (wood elves were a late arrival in AD&D and 3E elves' favored class was Wizard). It was akin to them deciding to call invisible stalkers "kobolds".


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[Hussar]

In a core book, sure. 2e did an intensive and very intensive lore specific write up in the Planescape Appendix 2 of the Monstrous Compendium, though. So the idea that someone would have no idea what an Eladrin was unless they played 3e is false. The might not know what one was, or they might. 8 pages of Eldadrin lore and mechanical write-up in 2e.



In 2e the Dragon Mountain adventure was about a dragon and it's kobold servants.

I think you've missed part of the conversation. [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] was claiming that there are significant numbers of gamers out there that only play core and care about lore.

My point is that if you've only played core there really isn't much in the way of lore.

 

[Maxperson]

Since I found Planescape to be rather odious and the point at which I stopped using the Great Wheel cosmology, this is a worthwhile point to remark on.

The advantage of the "unreliable narrator" that has been mentioned is that it allows folks like me to be selective in the lie that we consider canon.

In my canon, so to speak, the eladrin were a form of angelic being. A new edition could have moved them up or down in the hierarchy, or even switched the name to refer to fallen angels and it would have barely registered. Using the name to refer to elves was a bit bizarre, especially when previous editions had defaulted to elves favoring magic over being rangers (wood elves were a late arrival in AD&D and 3E elves' favored class was Wizard). It was akin to them deciding to call invisible stalkers "kobolds".

I looked up unreliable narrator when it started being used in this thread. The bad news is that 1e and 2e are not reliable narrator at all. The good news is that you don't need reliable narrator to be selective in what you consider to be cannon. You can pick and choose anyway.