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

[pemerton]

So now we've moved from proving the claim by @Hussar that there was only unreliable/no lore before 3e to... does the lore of AD&D 2e impress pemerton.

As I pointed out in my post, the only bit of lore there that actually adds something to our understanding of doppelgangers and their place in the gameworld is the bit about them being artificial creations - which is, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, presented as a "rumour", not as fact.

one sentence out of the entire entry which puts forth numerous fact about dopplegangers that were not in the 1e monster manual ios written from the unreliable perspective... I'm sorry but that's a far cry from most to all of the lore being written in that tone.

My point is that it is the only bit of the "lore" that isn't just reiterating basic mechanical information about doppelgangers, or their appearance, or utterly banal and generic (yet oddly contradictory) stuff, like them being greedy and hence robbing the people they imitate.

You do realize before this there is no mention of skin color, being hairless or having a hide in 1e

In AD&D they also have AC 5 yet no armour in the picture - so we can infer they have some sort of hide. And the picture shows them to be hairless - the tops of their brains are exposed!

The greyness is, indeed, an exciting new fact. (Rivalled only by the rumoured off-white walls of their homes!)

this is the first time they are called out as intelligent which the 1e entry doesn't mention...

Except for the "Very" entry in their intelligence stat - which is why I pointed out the redundancy of the 2nd ed entry, which in my experience is a common feature of 2nd ed monster descriptions.

Remember we are speaking to whether there is or isn't lore in AD&D 2e not whether it impresses you specifically.

I'm saying that if generic verbiage about monsters being lazy (yet careful planners - not any less contradictory 24 hours later) and about using their shapeshifting powers to take the place of adventurers (something which is the whole raison d'etre for doppelgangers as monsters) is what counts as "impressive lore", then the bar is being set so low it's not even being set.

We already knew that doppelgangers hang out in small-ish groups (3-12 encountered in the 1st ed AD&D MM). We already knew they are greedy and self-aggrandising (Chaotic alignment in their original incarnation). Telling us that wizards sometimes hire them as spies is about as informative as telling us that their victims don't like having their identity snatched. It's banal and obviouis. It's not adding anything new to the fiction of the game.

The entry for doppelgangers in Gygax's city encounter chart actually tells us more about the place of doppelgangers in the world than anything in that 2nd ed entry: by telling us that encounters with doppelangers "will normally take place only near deserted
places where there are entrances to the underworld, ruins, and the like" (DMG p 191) Gygax calls out doppelgangers as creatures of the underworld (akin in that respect to mind flayers, beholders, ropers et al) rather than more ordinary beings of the surface world, human communities etc.

I have to ask what basics are you referring to?

The basics are that they are vicious shapechangers. To reiterate: I don't need "lore" to tell me that such beings are well-suited to being spies and assassins. It's self-evident. To borrow Mearls's language, even a rookie GM could come up with that.

Why would we assume they all come from the same tribe?

We wouldn't. As I noted, that's one of the two bits of genuine lore in that entry (the other being that they are artificial beings - again, why artificial beings would live in tribes is not explained).

But unlike the artificial beings bit, I don't think it's very interesting because tribes have never played any role in the presentation of doppelgangers (contrast, say, orcs and hobgoblins, or even - for a quite different take - cloud giants). So being told they are all one tribe is a bit like being told they all take the same size in underwear - like, OK, I didn't know that, but what difference does that make to how I think about doppelgangers in my game?

Were created to be assassins and spies in a great magical war ? That their creator died? They work efficiently as groups? That they are both greedy and cowardly? That they have grey hides and are hairless in their natural forms. None of this is in the 1e monster manual

The bit about being artificial beings I've already noted - several times now.

That they are greedy and cowardly (and lazy yet careful planners) is implicit in their original alignment (though strangely at odds with their neutral alignment). That they are hairless we already knew, from the picture in the AD&D MM. Likewise that they are AC 5 even unarmoured. That they are grey is new but (I contend) of little significance - I have run encounters with doppelgangers over the years, and their colour has never come up, because - wait for it - they are shapechanged into someone else! (Almost always one of the PCs.)

I was curious about the lore for the doppleganger in the 4e MM... leaving out the mechanical stuff of course.

Here is what I found on p 71 of the MM (my MM seems to carry a bit more text than yours; I've added some comments in bold):

The consumage shapechangber, a doppelganger can bring entire kingdoms to ruin through duplicity and subterfuge without ever drawing a sword.

This is an abbreviated version of all the stuff about this in the 2nd ed book - again, largely self-evident. I'll also note that the picture shows them with hair, though we don't know if that's a true form or not.

Doppelgangers are much like humans in their behavior, and as such, an individual doppelganger might have any disposition
imaginable.

This is a departure from the 2nd ed description - between this and the two examples given, one unaligned and one evil, we can see an attempt to reconcile the chaotic and neutral versions of doppelgangers, plus the stuff about them being greedy, lazy etc. I think this is also connected to the idea that doppelgangers and changelings are the same thing, and hence - in Eberron campaigns, at least - doppelgangers are a playable race.

[A] doppelganger sneak . . . has no reservations about fleeing if the battle turns ill, using change shape at the earliest opportunity to lose itself in a crowd.

This seems consistent with the cowardice mentioned in the 2nd ed AD&D entry.

A doppelganger assassin might trail the party, waiting to lure a single victim away from the others, murder him, and take his place. It might also pose as a potential ally or someone in need. Once revealed for what it is, the doppelganger uses shapeshifter feint to gain combat advantage and cloud mind to escape if the battle turns against it.

This is all pretty basic stuff - and is largely the same as the stuff in the 2nd ed book about imitating victims, adopting confusion tactics if the attempt fails, etc.

A doppelganger might look like an eladrin wizard, a dwarf fighter, or even a dragonborn paladin. It can’t duplicate a person’s apparel or carried items, so it must dress and equip itself for the part. For this reason, it keeps several changes of clothing in its lair.

This is mostly pretty basic stuff. The bit about clothes is a departure from AD&D, though -eg the AD&D MM even has a highlighted note (p 29) teling us that "A doppleganger actually forms itself into the likeness of the clothing and equipment of the imitated creature as well as the physical features thereof." When I ran a 4e doppelganger encounter I ignored this - living dangerously, I know - and ran it the old-fashioned way.

Doppelgangers can insinuate themselves into all sorts of groups. They also form alliances with intelligent creatures that realize the benefits of having shapechangers on their side.

This is much the same as the 2nd ed entry in respect of being spies and assassins, only briefer.​

The only thing that is in the 2nd ed lore that is not here is their origins as an artificial race, and the bit about a single tribe. Which is to say, the 4e entry has all the standard stuff one would expect in a discussion of shapechangers, and doesn't have these distinctive bits of origin story. (I assume that the entry for changelings in the Eberron book fills in this gap, though.)

talk about alot of words to say nothing

Not that many words - by my count (and exlcuding my comments) 202 words. The habitat and ecology entries that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] posted are over 450 words. The rest is 235, so a total of nearly 700 words to tell us that shapechangers work as spies and assassins and like to imitate people and steal their stuff.

The actually novel bit of the 2nd ed entry - "Dopplegangers are rumored to be artificial beings that were created long ago by a powerful wizard or godling. They were originally intended to be used as spies and assassins in an ancient, highly magical war. Their creator died long ago . . . All dopplegangers belong to a single tribe." - is 50 words, and could easily be edited down. The other 650 words is guff.

I mean, seriously - "They may wait until nightfall, or until their victims are alone, or even follow them to an inn." I can only assume that the writer was being paid per word (or, perhaps, that the one-monster-per-page format meant that they weren't too fussed about padding).

 

[pemerton]

The weight of a hauberk is probably already figured into a character's stats (and any penalties suffered for encumbrance or affected skills) so it's not exactly irrelevant for all characters. And had Erkenbrand not been diligent about restoring and supplying the fortress, perhaps the cost of a hauberk might have an impact on its scarcity, particularly when adventurers ill equipped for a siege (having been traveling relatively lightly for some months and having spent the last few days jogging across the eastern marches after a party of orcs) show up and now are interested in beefing up their armor.

I feel this is somewhat missing my point - and thereby, inadvertantly, reinforcing it.

I said, "If my game is hoping to recreate the atmosphere of (say) the Battle at Helm's Deep (either as penned by JRRT or filmed by Peter Jackson), then information about the cost or weight of a hauberk is irrelevant."

A game which focuses on the stocking of Helm's Deep for a seige - complete with inventories? - or in which the weight of hauberks figures in Gimli's action resolution is not a game that recreates the atmosphers of the Battle at Helm's Deep, neither as penned by JRRT nor as filmed by Peter Jackson. Neither of those presentations of the event dwells on inventories and encumbrance, except as dramatic devices. And dramatic devices don't need inventory mechanics to support them - just consider, say, how many GMs use weather as a dramatic device although they have no weather mechanics (eg random generation tables) to underpin this.

Arguably, in fact, dramatic devices work better without mechanical constraints - just as one brings on the rain for dramatic effect, so one can bring on the shortage of food for dramatic effect - the focus of play, after all f(in the sort of game I am describing), being how the PCs cope with adversity, not how well they do at averting it through careful accountancy.

Regarding the Marvel Universe, there have been story lines involve such things as affording things from time to time. The FF went bankrupt, Professor X got support from Angel's corporation due to expenses, and lack of finances was a major character element for Hank Pym in the early 1980s when he hit rock bottom. There's not much detail, sure

By "not much" you mean "none". These are perfect examples of "dramatic effect" - in the context of a RPG, that would be a consequence of a failed encounter/challenge.

but neither is there in D&D - just a bit here and there to provide a quick and dirty way to get things done.

Huh? The default way to keep track of encumbrance in D&D is by adding up all the pounds; and the default way of handling money in D&D is to add up all the coins.

That's not quick and dirty - it's about as detailed as you can get!

along the lines of Conan or denizens of Sanctuary. After all, not every D&D campaign is going to be Lord of the Rings in style and tone (nor should they be).

I'm glad you mentioned Conan because I was going to bring it up.

Although Gygax mentions Conan as a key inspiration, there is at least one fundamental feature of Gygax's AD&D that is a major obstacle to a game resembling REH's Conan: in classic D&D you only get XP if you get the treasure, and so the game becomes a square-by-square "special ops" attempt to extract all the loot that can be found in the dungeon. Whereas one of the more notable things about Conan stories is how often he loses the treasure (eg Tower of the Elephant, Jewels of Gwahlur). The point of the Conan stories (beyond just being high-action pulp adventures) isn't to tell a tale of how Conan amassed treasure, but rather of how - in the course of trying to make his fortune - Conan proved the merits of "barbarism" over (so-called) civilisation.

I'm far more interested in comparing notes about how our adventuring groups dealt with the giant party room in the Steading of the Hill Giant Chief, what approach other groups took, laughing at high points, and sympathizing with disasters.

I thought your claim was that we need to share lore to share a hobby - and now you're saying we have to play the same adventures? That a GM running his/her own campaign is splitting the hobby?

With one hand they acknowledge, but with the other they taketh away...

What is taken away by saying that individual GMs will do whatever they want?

What's the point of having servants of good in the game as potential encounters? Because PCs might be able to deal with them - just like any other NPC/monster in the game. Maybe the'd be more likely to deal with them in a peaceful fashion

<snip>

Oh, but why allow for that? D&D isn't about finding fairy rings, it's about slaying horrible monsters so let's turn just about everything into horrible monsters that PCs can slay

I think you've misunderstood. The point is about encounter design - it's about world (and hence scenario) logic. If the gods of good have lots of minions, what are the PC heroes for?

It's basically the Elminster problem writ large. The 4e team's solution wasn't to come up with a reason why Elminster is busy elsewhere - rather, they got rid of the Elminsters. That is, the gods don't have oodles of immortal servants who are, for whatever reason, not saving the world. Rather, they have the PCs!

And you wonder why people didn't think 4e was the D&D they remembered?

I'd be surprised if more than 10% or so of the D&D player base knows or cares about archons.

They were introduced in the MotP - not a book that every AD&D player was on top of. They peaked in Planescape - a setting that was not a great commercial success. Of the many pretty serious D&D players I've hung out with over the years, I could think of maybe two other than me who (without significant prompting) might know what an archon is.

And if you want hound, or light, or bear, or . . . archons in your game, how hard is it to build them? Pick a level, pick a role, stat em up!

 

[Maxperson]

To be honest, I don't find it all that impressive. I don't really see how it adds much to the classic D&D account of doppelgangers.

The classic D&D account isn't really relevant. When considering lore, you have to realize that players might never have played a prior edition of D&D. View the 2e lore through the lens of a new player and it becomes a lot more impressive.

This adds nothing to a picture: they're bipedal humanoids with grey skin.

It adds "thick" and "hairless".

This is all mechanical stuff.

It's still lore.

This is all pretyy basic stuff. Some of it is restates their ability to imitate others, and extrapolating fairly obviously from it. Some of it is restates their CE alignment (EDIT: I just checked - AD&D changes them from Chaotic to Neutral - so rather than restating their alignment, it seems to contradict the change by reasserting their original alignment!). Some of its seems oddly contradictory: they are "basically lazy", yet they "plan their attacks with care".

There is a great deal of lore there. There is nothing obvious about the specific type of lazy that causes them to prefer human forms with wealth to survive. There is no contradiction by the way. They detail a specific type of laziness and say "basically" lazy, which leaves open the ability to plan with care how they will take over that wealth human family to survive with easy. If they were sloppy planners, they would be caught and it wouldn't help them live in comfort.

There is a fair bit of repetation here, and redundancy (do we really need to be told that "they live on"?). This adds very little to the basics of doppelgangers: they obviously are well-suited to being spies and assassins.

Whether you like the information about what they live on or not, it's still lore provided for the DMs that do like it.

This is genuinely new. The "single tribe" doesn't seem that interesting, given that the notion of "tribes" has traditionally played no roll in relation to doppelgangers. But the bit about "artificial beings" is potentially interesting. Notice also that, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, it is presented as a rumour ie in the voice of an unreliable narrator.

You are confusing things. The single tribe is not a rumor. The only rumor is about their creation, not how they live.

"Dopplegangers are rumored to be artificial beings that were created long ago by a powerful wizard or godling. They were originally intended to be used as spies and assassins in an ancient, highly magical war. Their creator died long ago, but they live on, still working as spies for evil powers, thieves, and government. They have even been known to work as assassins."

Everything after that is factual and not rumor. You, like [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION], are also getting Unreliable Narrator wrong. The unreliable part is because of mental deficiency or some other similarity where you cannot rely on what they are saying. Being told something is a rumor is highly reliable. You know it's a rumor and can rely on it being true that it is a rumor. The narration part requires, well, actual narration. Nothing is being narrated in that lore. No being is sitting there narrating that lore to you. Unreliable Narrator is a classification for novels and the like, not for RPGs which aren't usually written with narration in mind. An example of narration in 2e would be those little quotes littered throughout Plansescape content.

To be frank, that entry reinforces my general impression of the 2nd ed AD&D monster entries - many words, but between repetition and redunancy rather little actual content.

There was a lot of content there. You just poo pooed on it or else knew it from a prior edition, which many players of 2e did not ever see.

The idea that doppelgangers live in groups, target rich adventurers with ambushes, and when there are no rich adventurers make money as spies and assassins, seems to fit into the same category. It's very obvious extrapolation from the basic monster feature, which is unchanged in both flavour and mechanical implementation.

Not everyone is as creative as you are, and not everyone who is as creative as you are wants to create everything. It can be nice to have that information there so you can spend time and energy creating OTHER content.

 

[Maxperson]

As I pointed out in my post, the only bit of lore there that actually adds something to our understanding of doppelgangers and their place in the gameworld is the bit about them being artificial creations - which is, as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] said, presented as a "rumour", not as fact.[

My point is that it is the only bit of the "lore" that isn't just reiterating basic mechanical information about doppelgangers, or their appearance, or utterly banal and generic (yet oddly contradictory) stuff, like them being greedy and hence robbing the people they imitate.

Again, not everyone has access to or has read prior accounts, so that lore adds a great deal to the understanding of dopplegangers.

In AD&D they also have AC 5 yet no armour in the picture - so we can infer they have some sort of hide. And the picture shows them to be hairless - the tops of their brains are exposed!

Not so! You could also infer from AC 5 that they are highly agile and thin skinned, and hair is more than just hair on the head. We can't tell from the picture if they have light body hair like humans do or not. Being told thick hide and hairless is a fact that prevents those mistaken inferences from happening.

The greyness is, indeed, an exciting new fact. (Rivalled only by the rumoured off-white walls of their homes!)

Facts don't have to be exciting to be useful.

We already knew that doppelgangers hang out in small-ish groups (3-12 encountered in the 1st ed AD&D MM). We already knew they are greedy and self-aggrandising (Chaotic alignment in their original incarnation). Telling us that wizards sometimes hire them as spies is about as informative as telling us that their victims don't like having their identity snatched. It's banal and obviouis. It's not adding anything new to the fiction of the game.

You and I knew that, but Fred, Harry and Sally who started with 2e had no idea.

We wouldn't. As I noted, that's one of the two bits of genuine lore in that entry (the other being that they are artificial beings - again, why artificial beings would live in tribes is not explained).

There's a lot more genuine lore there than you are giving credit for. The lore that comes from 1e is still genuine lore for 2e, since lots of people were unaware of 1e lore.

But unlike the artificial beings bit, I don't think it's very interesting because tribes have never played any role in the presentation of doppelgangers (contrast, say, orcs and hobgoblins, or even - for a quite different take - cloud giants). So being told they are all one tribe is a bit like being told they all take the same size in underwear - like, OK, I didn't know that, but what difference does that make to how I think about doppelgangers in my game?

But tribes could play a role. Just because an official module hasn't presented them that way, doesn't mean that tribes haven't played a role in home brew games that took that bit of lore and ran with it. What you find interesting isn't the definitive criteria for what is actually interesting or not.

Not that many words - by my count (and exlcuding my comments) 202 words. The habitat and ecology entries that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] posted are over 450 words. The rest is 235, so a total of nearly 700 words to tell us that shapechangers work as spies and assassins and like to imitate people and steal their stuff.

No. It says a lot more than that. The how and why of their thinking helps DMs, new and experienced, create encounters that have depth. You may not need that, but it doesn't stop that lore from being highly useful in general.

 

[billd91]

I feel this is somewhat missing my point - and thereby, inadvertantly, reinforcing it.

I said, "If my game is hoping to recreate the atmosphere of (say) the Battle at Helm's Deep (either as penned by JRRT or filmed by Peter Jackson), then information about the cost or weight of a hauberk is irrelevant."

A game which focuses on the stocking of Helm's Deep for a seige - complete with inventories? - or in which the weight of hauberks figures in Gimli's action resolution is not a game that recreates the atmosphers of the Battle at Helm's Deep, neither as penned by JRRT nor as filmed by Peter Jackson. Neither of those presentations of the event dwells on inventories and encumbrance, except as dramatic devices. And dramatic devices don't need inventory mechanics to support them - just consider, say, how many GMs use weather as a dramatic device although they have no weather mechanics (eg random generation tables) to underpin this.

Again, you're doing this in a game, not a movie or a novel. Your players are going to interact with it in a different way - through their characters (which are, among other things, a set of mechanical representations that will interact with the game system) - rather than as passive viewers/readers. There are games in which issues of inventory, for example, only come up as dramatic effects - like complications in Mutants and Masterminds, where it's voluntary at the outset. But a lot of players prefer to try to control the problems Legolas has with inventory at the outset... an approach, yes, D&D generally takes and a lot of players favor because they're the ones in more control of it compared to a GM fiat.

Arguably, in fact, dramatic devices work better without mechanical constraints - just as one brings on the rain for dramatic effect, so one can bring on the shortage of food for dramatic effect - the focus of play, after all f(in the sort of game I am describing), being how the PCs cope with adversity, not how well they do at averting it through careful accountancy.

But you have to know your audience for that to work. For a lot of players, such things imposed for them to react to and beyond their ability to proactively avert are adversarial moves.

Huh? The default way to keep track of encumbrance in D&D is by adding up all the pounds; and the default way of handling money in D&D is to add up all the coins.

That's not quick and dirty - it's about as detailed as you can get!

No, it's totally quick and dirty. There's no simulated economy of significance - just a weekly upkeep or maybe money abstractly generated via a profession check. Prices based on some weird estimate of power rather than scarcity or set by some abstract metagame factor. There's no supply and demand, there's no inflation and deflation. There's just enough to invoke some management of resources. Same with encumbrance - things are encumbering simply because of weight. But tracking by weight and/or movement, Dex, skill check penalties for armor abstracts it in a quick and dirty way.

I'm glad you mentioned Conan because I was going to bring it up.

Although Gygax mentions Conan as a key inspiration, there is at least one fundamental feature of Gygax's AD&D that is a major obstacle to a game resembling REH's Conan: in classic D&D you only get XP if you get the treasure, and so the game becomes a square-by-square "special ops" attempt to extract all the loot that can be found in the dungeon. Whereas one of the more notable things about Conan stories is how often he loses the treasure (eg Tower of the Elephant, Jewels of Gwahlur). The point of the Conan stories (beyond just being high-action pulp adventures) isn't to tell a tale of how Conan amassed treasure, but rather of how - in the course of trying to make his fortune - Conan proved the merits of "barbarism" over (so-called) civilisation.

Then maybe you're hung up too much on the XP mechanic and not the other ways Conan is an inspiration for the game. Not all campaigns are based on great quests and wars for the fate of the campaign world and that high level of drama. Sometimes they're based more on trying to make a few coins, survive, make a score (whether successful or not). Sometimes they're more on the edge of resources rather than having all that hand waved off through gifts of elves in enclaves and royal armories. Sometimes, the hobbits in the party have to conserve things themselves (via the player deciding to do so) and sometimes the PCs have to start planning the next caper after they fail to obtain the jewels in the last one.

I thought your claim was that we need to share lore to share a hobby - and now you're saying we have to play the same adventures? That a GM running his/her own campaign is splitting the hobby?

What is taken away by saying that individual GMs will do whatever they want?

No, but let's be realistic. There are issues of familiarity at work. Let's envision levels of familiarity as circles. Interest is generally going to fade as those circles get bigger. People are generally more interested in what's going on with the groups and people they know and the games they're playing. They're more interested in game systems they play, adventures known widely in the broader community, campaign settings, genres, etc. The smaller the circle, the more interest you generally have. The circle is smaller the more commonalities there are in all of these factors. And continuity of canon is one of those things that promotes the shrinking of those circles, breaks in that continuity grow the circles.

I think you've misunderstood. The point is about encounter design - it's about world (and hence scenario) logic. If the gods of good have lots of minions, what are the PC heroes for?

It's basically the Elminster problem writ large. The 4e team's solution wasn't to come up with a reason why Elminster is busy elsewhere - rather, they got rid of the Elminsters. That is, the gods don't have oodles of immortal servants who are, for whatever reason, not saving the world. Rather, they have the PCs!

That assumes the adventuring you're doing is something the gods would send their servants to do. Again, that's an assumption that isn't universal in D&D and never was (see again the Conan influence). But even with campaigns that involved world-shaking consequences, somehow, the presence of servants of good never stopped our Good PCs from adventuring - just as the presence of infinite numbers of servants of evil didn't overwhelm our attempts to fight the bad guys. Rather, the summoned servants of good served us in ways similar to how summoned servants of evil served the BBEGs.

But in a sense, you're right about it being about encounter design logic. Let's look at the page about Eladrin.
"As with the reconcepting of angels, we wanted opponents that the player characters could actually fight, not just mouthpieces of the gods or occasional allies." - Worlds and Monsters, page 40.

See what's going on? The reconcepting of angels and eladrin were about encounter design - combat encounter design - an issue of complaint for a lot of people. It certainly doesn't do much to dispel the criticism that 4e redesigned D&D around turning everything-including monsters that had been good-into a combat encounter for good PCs to win.

I'd be surprised if more than 10% or so of the D&D player base knows or cares about archons.

They were introduced in the MotP - not a book that every AD&D player was on top of. They peaked in Planescape - a setting that was not a great commercial success. Of the many pretty serious D&D players I've hung out with over the years, I could think of maybe two other than me who (without significant prompting) might know what an archon is.

And if you want hound, or light, or bear, or . . . archons in your game, how hard is it to build them? Pick a level, pick a role, stat em up!

Nice job missing the forest for the archon tree. I called out archons because the quote you used referred to them (and, as it turns out, they're an even more stark example of canon changes than eladrin). But the book you're pulling from is full of references to "reconcepting" virtually everything in D&D. Canon was heading right out the window. For those of you who claim you don't care about canon, that's all well and good for you. For those of us who prefer continuity, even upgrading our campaigns through the editions, 4e was already gearing up to fail to gain our support with the WotC Presents books and it was months away. Add in the difference in mechanics and, as people here claim, the very different way the game plays, and what do I have in common with 4e players? A lot less than every other D&D edition. The lingua franca of the gaming industry, D&D and its various -isms, was sundered. The changes in mechanics may always of taken their toll, but add in massive changes, sorry, "reconceptings" in the canonical identities and roles of things and you've got a one-two punch that caused some problems.

 

[pemerton]

that lore adds a great deal to the understanding of dopplegangers.

<snip>

Being told thick hide and hairless is a fact that prevents those mistaken inferences from happening.

<snip>

Facts don't have to be exciting to be useful.

<snip>

The how and why of their thinking helps DMs, new and experienced, create encounters that have depth.

It adds "thick" and "hairless".

<snip>

There is no contradiction by the way. They detail a specific type of laziness and say "basically" lazy, which leaves open the ability to plan with care how they will take over that wealth human family to survive with easy. If they were sloppy planners, they would be caught and it wouldn't help them live in comfort.

<snip>

it's still lore provided for the DMs that do like it.

<snip>

There was a lot of content there.

I dispute the claim that "there was a lot of content there". There are a lot of words there - I counted them as 700-odd.

But there is not a lot of content there.

Being told that a monster is grey, hairless and with a thick hide (when I already knew, from its stats, that it is AC 5) is not significant content. How often has the issue of doppelganger body hair ever come up on a game? Or the thickness of its hide?

And how does it improve anyone's game to be told that the AC 5 is due to thick hide rather than (say) agility, or luck, or magic, or some combination thereof?

That sort of descriptive stuff is all just words. It doesn't actually locate doppelgangers in the gameworld, or explain to a GM how to use them. And the stuff pointing out that shapechanges make good spies and assassins, and sometimes might be hired as such, likewise doesn't actually add anything. You could cut it and paste it into the wererat entry, for instance, and it would fit just as well!

The stuff about artificial origins is different in this respect, as is the "single tribe" bit, and that's why I called them out as being genuine contributions to doppelganger lore.

But tribes could play a role. Just because an official module hasn't presented them that way, doesn't mean that tribes haven't played a role in home brew games that took that bit of lore and ran with it.

This doesn't really address my reason for being relatively dismissive of this particular bit of lore. Given that doppelganger tribes play no role in D&D up to this point, and given that the 2nd ed entry doesn't actually tell us anything about doppelganger tribes, what is the point of being told they all belong to a single tribe? Does it mean they all pool their resources - the entry implies that it doesn't, that individual groups get by on their own resources and might sometimes be wealthy and sometimes not.

Does it mean that doppelgangers never oppose one another? Dunno.

One way to look at it is this: what difference should it make to my portrayal of doppelgangers, as a GM, that they all come from the same tribe? My first thought, as indicated, is that it would mean they pool resources - but the entry goes on to implicitly deny this. So what work is the concept of "tribe" even doing here?

That's what makes it unhelpful, in my view.

Not everyone is as creative as you are, and not everyone who is as creative as you are wants to create everything. It can be nice to have that information there so you can spend time and energy creating OTHER content.

Let me repost some choice extracts (I have altered the sequence somewhat to bring together common/overlapping points - that I have to do this is a sign of the poor writing/editing of the original entry:

Dopplegangers work in groups and act together to ensure that their attacks and infiltrations are successful. . . . Groups often set up a lair in an area well-suited to ambush and surprise, patrolling a regular territory. . . . Working as a unit, they select a group of victims . . .​

We already know that doppelgangers work in groups from their stat block (number encounter is more than 1). That they ambush and surprise is almost self-evident, given they are infiltrators. That they select a group of victims by working as a unit is redundant - and also in a degree of tension with the fact that a doppelganger is best against a lone victim, whom s/he kills and imitates so as to infiltrate the victim's circle of friends/companions.

[Doppelgangers] spend their lives in avid pursuit of gold and other wealth. . . .They prefer to take the form of someone comfortably provided for, and shun assuming the form of hardworking peasants. . . . [They] make a good living by attacking weak humanoid monsters or travelers and stealing their food and treasure. . . . If attacking a group of adventurers, for example, they often choose the richest-looking one to attack first.. A doppleganger who chooses a rich adventurer avoids risks once the treasure is safely in hand, and retreats at the earliest opportunity . . . If food and treasure are scarce, they hire out to a powerful wizard or thieves' guild.​

This tells me that doppelgangers wnat money, and reiterates some very basic ways in which a mind-reading shapeshifter might be able to do that. It's not "lore". It barely counts as GMing advice, because it's so obvious.

[G]roups of dopplegangers can be found anywhere at any time, and in unexpected locations. . . . [D]opplegangers often trail their targets, waiting for a good chance to strike, choosing their time and opportunity with care. They may wait until nightfall, or until their victims are alone, or even follow them to an inn.​

This pretty much speaks for itself. No one expects the doppelgangers! They can get you at night as well as in the day, alone or even when you're among your "friends" at an inn. Because they're mind-reading shapechangers.

To say it's redundant would be redundant. This is not stuff that I don't need because I'm creative, but that others might. It's utterly banal GMing advice (on how to use infiltrator-type monsters) masquerading as a monster entry.

You, like [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION], are also getting Unreliable Narrator wrong. The unreliable part is because of mental deficiency or some other similarity where you cannot rely on what they are saying. Being told something is a rumor is highly reliable. You know it's a rumor and can rely on it being true that it is a rumor. The narration part requires, well, actual narration. Nothing is being narrated in that lore.

First, I think perhaps you mean [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] rather than [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]; Hriston has not been participating that much in this thread.

Second, I think you are missing the point of why Hussar invoked the notion of "unreliable narration". The MM book is setting out a piece of fiction (namely, doppelgangers and their nature). It sets it out as a series of "truths" about the fiction ("Doppelgangers have grey skin", "Doppelgangers are of the one tribe", etc). It does all this from the point of view of an ominscient narrator. And then at a certain point, instead of telling us the "truth" about doppelgangers' (fictional) origins, it shifts into an in-world perspective, of being told that there are certain rumours about the origins of doppelgangers.

Why does it do this? It's not as if the authors of the MM couldn't have made a firm decision about the origins of doppelgangers, just as they decided various other things. The choice to adopt the in-world framing of "rumours" is a choice to make that particular "fact" about the fiction ambiguous or unsettled (hence [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s comparison to an unreliable narrator): when the MM says that such-and-such is rumoured to be the case, that is a device for saying that such-and-such may or may not be the case, but is at least a candidate for the former. It puts an idea on the table but doesn't commit to it as true within the fiction. In practice, therefore, it is leaving the GM's options open.

Much as, in storytelling fiction like a novel or a film, unreliable narration leaves certain "truths" about the fiction open, to be filled in by the reader. (In storytelling fiction the author might have some particular "filling in" in mind, and intend the unreliable narration to point at it; presumably the same is true in the MM, where the authors intend the referee - if in doubt or otherwise uncommitted - to adopt the "artificial origins" idea.)

 

[Maxperson]

I dispute the claim that "there was a lot of content there". There are a lot of words there - I counted them as 700-odd.

But there is not a lot of content there.

Being told that a monster is grey, hairless and with a thick hide (when I already knew, from its stats, that it is AC 5) is not significant content.

You didn't know that. You assumed it and could have been very wrong, also based on AC 5. It could have been very agile and had a thin skin.

How often has the issue of doppelganger body hair ever come up on a game? Or the thickness of its hide?

A few times. There have been a couple of dead dopplegangers in natural form and I had to describe them.

And how does it improve anyone's game to be told that the AC 5 is due to thick hide rather than (say) agility, or luck, or magic, or some combination thereof?

By providing depth and information. That's a game improvement over no depth and no information.

That sort of descriptive stuff is all just words. It doesn't actually locate doppelgangers in the gameworld, or explain to a GM how to use them. And the stuff pointing out that shapechanges make good spies and assassins, and sometimes might be hired as such, likewise doesn't actually add anything. You could cut it and paste it into the wererat entry, for instance, and it would fit just as well!

Wait a minute. You're really arguing that lore that says how dopplegangers behave and why doesn't explain to a DM how to use them?

This doesn't really address my reason for being relatively dismissive of this particular bit of lore. Given that doppelganger tribes play no role in D&D up to this point, and given that the 2nd ed entry doesn't actually tell us anything about doppelganger tribes, what is the point of being told they all belong to a single tribe? Does it mean they all pool their resources - the entry implies that it doesn't, that individual groups get by on their own resources and might sometimes be wealthy and sometimes not.

The point is to provide to DMs a starting point to work with when developing a doppleganger story. The DM can work out the details, but since he knows that they are one tribe, he's probably going to avoid making multiple tribes with multiple ways of doing things.

Does it mean that doppelgangers never oppose one another? Dunno.

Figure it out for your game. Lore doesn't have to provide every answer to every situation in order to be useful.

One way to look at it is this: what difference should it make to my portrayal of doppelgangers, as a GM, that they all come from the same tribe? My first thought, as indicated, is that it would mean they pool resources - but the entry goes on to implicitly deny this. So what work is the concept of "tribe" even doing here?

That's what makes it unhelpful, in my view.

Dopplegangers work in groups and act together to ensure that their attacks and infiltrations are successful. . . . Groups often set up a lair in an area well-suited to ambush and surprise, patrolling a regular territory. . . . Working as a unit, they select a group of victims . . .​

We already know that doppelgangers work in groups from their stat block (number encounter is more than 1). That they ambush and surprise is almost self-evident, given they are infiltrators. That they select a group of victims by working as a unit is redundant - and also in a degree of tension with the fact that a doppelganger is best against a lone victim, whom s/he kills and imitates so as to infiltrate the victim's circle of friends/companions.

You can assume that they work in groups from the number of appearing, but that doesn't necessarily make it true. They could be groupings of dopplegangers that don't really work well together. A bunch of individuals that do their own thing, but protect each other if threatened.

[Doppelgangers] spend their lives in avid pursuit of gold and other wealth. . . .They prefer to take the form of someone comfortably provided for, and shun assuming the form of hardworking peasants. . . . [They] make a good living by attacking weak humanoid monsters or travelers and stealing their food and treasure. . . . If attacking a group of adventurers, for example, they often choose the richest-looking one to attack first.. A doppleganger who chooses a rich adventurer avoids risks once the treasure is safely in hand, and retreats at the earliest opportunity . . . If food and treasure are scarce, they hire out to a powerful wizard or thieves' guild.​

This tells me that doppelgangers wnat money, and reiterates some very basic ways in which a mind-reading shapeshifter might be able to do that. It's not "lore". It barely counts as GMing advice, because it's so obvious.

It absolutely is lore. Lore is information about something. Just because you don't find it useful doesn't stop it from being lore.

[G]roups of dopplegangers can be found anywhere at any time, and in unexpected locations. . . . [D]opplegangers often trail their targets, waiting for a good chance to strike, choosing their time and opportunity with care. They may wait until nightfall, or until their victims are alone, or even follow them to an inn.​

This pretty much speaks for itself. No one expects the doppelgangers! They can get you at night as well as in the day, alone or even when you're among your "friends" at an inn. Because they're mind-reading shapechangers.

To say it's redundant would be redundant. This is not stuff that I don't need because I'm creative, but that others might. It's utterly banal GMing advice (on how to use infiltrator-type monsters) masquerading as a monster entry.

The bolded portion is the key here. This is not about you. This is about the monster lore entry in general. What you need or don't need doesn't dictate whether something is or is not lore, or whether it's useful in general.

First, I think perhaps you mean @Hussar rather than @Hriston; Hriston has not been participating that much in this thread.

Thanks! Yes, I mixed them up.

Second, I think you are missing the point of why Hussar invoked the notion of "unreliable narration". The MM book is setting out a piece of fiction (namely, doppelgangers and their nature). It sets it out as a series of "truths" about the fiction ("Doppelgangers have grey skin", "Doppelgangers are of the one tribe", etc). It does all this from the point of view of an ominscient narrator. And then at a certain point, instead of telling us the "truth" about doppelgangers' (fictional) origins, it shifts into an in-world perspective, of being told that there are certain rumours about the origins of doppelgangers.

It's a descriptive, but not a narration. A narration requires someone to be narrating the story, and there is nobody assigned to narrate these descriptives. An example of D&D narration would be the Ecology Of articles in the Dragon Magazine. Elminster narrates those.

Why does it do this? It's not as if the authors of the MM couldn't have made a firm decision about the origins of doppelgangers, just as they decided various other things. The choice to adopt the in-world framing of "rumours" is a choice to make that particular "fact" about the fiction ambiguous or unsettled (hence @Hussar's comparison to an unreliable narrator): when the MM says that such-and-such is rumoured to be the case, that is a device for saying that such-and-such may or may not be the case, but is at least a candidate for the former. It puts an idea on the table but doesn't commit to it as true within the fiction. In practice, therefore, it is leaving the GM's options open.

It's still not Unreliable Narrator since it's neither unreliable(since you KNOW that it's a rumor), nor a narration. An example of an unreliable narrator would be a crazy individual narrating something as a truth. You can't rely on it since that person is crazy, so you have to try and figure it out for yourself, if it's even possible to do so.

 

[Remathilis]

Basically, this thread had devolved into two separate arguments: one focusing on how much lore is needed to render a "usable" setting, and how valid any source for that lore should be. In essence, how much is enough, too little, or too much, and how immutable should it be.

D&D has taken many stances on both issues. During the 70's and early 80's D&D, the answer was "barely a sketch, but what is spoken is pretty much Word of God (WoG) unless the DM deems otherwise. A setting like Greyhawk didn't need a lot of continuity or cross-referencing, since it was basically a map with names on it. A monster like Tiamat didn't need a lot of info because her primary purpose was to be the level-1 boss of "Lets all Go to Hell and Kill Asmodeus" games.

Somewhere though, in the mid-80's, players wanted more. Settings like Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms, with detailed rich mythologies (and heroes and villains created by novels) became the vogue. Story became King. Suddenly, continuity became important and the pendulum swung towards detailed, intricate continuity, ecology, and metaplot. The only TSR had avoided was defining "one true" version of each story. The reason though, was pure practical: they were selling a dozen different settings with some wildly different lore for each. It makes sense to hedge your bets on a monster's origin when they could have different roles on Faerun, Krynn, and Athas! Still, there was money to be made in filling in the gaps D&D had left vague, and fill them they did.

Come WotC, there was a desire to "nail down" the D&D brand into something more unified. D&D in the 90's was hard to define precisely because it was defined by a hodgepodge of different rulesets and mythologies (which were often incompatible with one another) forcing a LOT of segmenting of the player base. WotC hoped to rectify that by presenting a "default" setting the previous PHBs lacked: Greyhawk. Now, it failed and failed quickly. Aside from RPGA and the God list, references to Greyhawk were quickly forgotten by the time 3.5 came around. Still, it was an attempt to present a more "unified" vision of what D&D was.

The next edition saw that on steroids. the Great Idea of 4e, which meant chucking the previous 30 years of D&D lore in favor of their own version, was a giant exercise in unification. It sucked in whatever was associated with D&D and plunked it down as a cohesive world: a world with Vistani, warforged, draconians, death knights, and any other piece of D&D it could borrow or steal. Things were re-purposed without regard to what came before (especially in terms of planar things). It was an interesting exercise in making a cohesive, unified D&D brand experience, but it left a bitter taste more than a few mouths.

(Aside: I actually kinda like 4e's take on the lore, once you remove it from any previous context. It feels a bit like a "D&D's greatest hits" mixed with "What if". If you didn't know or care about D&D lore before it; its pretty solid. However, its divorced heavily from nearly all lore that came before it; meaning it often invalidates all other non-4e sources. I find it both remarkable for its internal consistency and thought while being simultaneously frustrated by its brazen disregard for everything that came before it).

So now we're in the new era of D&D, which itself seems to embrace the paradox of its own lore. On the one hand, it strived hard to make a PHB full of multiversal references to all the worlds that came before it. It has tried to remedy some 4e changes which were popular with the more traditional lore hinted at in editions past. It makes nods to the concept of multiverse while attempting (this time more successfully) to establish a default world and vision. In some places, it replicates the old lore, and in some it tries to create a more interesting "new lore". (Again varying degrees of success on that).

So where you fall on this fight I think depends a lot on what edition's version of the lore you like. Old-school players want light-lore or multiple choice versions because its world-building friendly. Newer players prefer the model of "one lore" that is shared among all players. (so that when I mention how the PCs were trapped by gnolls, the listener knows there won't be a ransoming of prisoners involved).

Basically, we need to agree to disagree at this point.

 

[Manbearcat]

Just a bit of a curiosity. Dungeon World's monsters are like the masterful work in the opening scene of Super Eight:

The camera frames/second are slowed as we're looking at the obscured scene of a factory in disarray in the background. In the foreground we have a sign with a big number (1000 or something) that relates the time since the last accident. A figure comes in, takes the numbers down and hangs a single 1.

Cut to a little boy sitting on a swing, looking down...forlorn...lost. A stark winter landscape embraces him.

The whole of the thing is under 30 seconds (I think) with 0 exposition. But we understand completely and we inhabit that little boy and his helpless melancholy.

Less (done right) is more. The same principle applies to a lot of Spielberg's storytelling and Cormac McCarthy's minimalist prose.

Below is the Dungeon World Doppleganger. It isn't several hundred (to thousand) words of ecology. It is decisively to the point.

Under the Denizens of the Swamp section, we have this:

Denizens of the Swamp

All things give way to rot in the end. Food spoils on the table, men’s minds go mad with age and disease. Even the world itself, when left untended and uncared for, can turn to black muck and stinking air. Things dwell in these parts of Dungeon World. Things gone just as a bad as the swirling filth that fills the swamps. In these cesspit lowlands, adventurers will find such creatures as the deadly-eyed basilisk or the famed, unkillable troll. You’ll need more than a dry pair of boots to survive these putrid fens. A sword would be a good start.

Under the Doppleganger section we have this:

Doppelgänger

Solitary, Devious, Intelligent
Dagger (d6 damage); 12 HP; 0 Armor
Close

Special Qualities: Shapeshifting

Their natural form, if you ever see it, is hideous. Like a creature who stopped growing part-way, before it decided it was elf or man or dwarf. Then again, maybe that’s how you get to be the way a doppelgänger is—without form, without shape to call their own, maybe all they really seek is a place to fit in. If you go out into the world, when you come back home, make sure your friends are who you think they are. They might, instead, be a doppelgänger and your friend might be dead at the bottom of a well somewhere. Then again, depending on your friends, that might be an improvement. Instinct: To infiltrate

* Assume the shape of a person whose flesh it’s tasted
* Use another’s identity to advantage
* Leave someone’s reputation shattered

There is more than enough to provoke good GMs toward becoming that Doppleganger and sufficiently framing/expressing its antagonism toward the game's PC goals. We've got the where, what, and why and we can fill in the rest as we individually see fit. All (provoking) wheat, no (suffocating) chaff.

Why would we want more than that (especially with the opportunity cost of page count potentially being devoted to more of the same with other monsters/stuff vs expository dialogue run amok, blank-filling minutia)?

 

[Hussar]

One thing this thread puts me in mind of is Forgotten Realms. Early on, in FR, TSR flat out stated that they were going to leave one area largely blank (Sembia IIRC, although I could be wrong about that) in order to allow DM's to put their individual stamp on the setting. That lasted about fifteen minutes and then supplements came out and filled in the white spaces.

Whether you think this is a good thing or bad, I imagine, would define which side of the fence you sit on in this thread.