D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."

[Shasarak]

Okay, I follow you thus far. But I think the nature of your Spelljammer example is in some ways confusing the issue because of the nature of the setting. Spelljammer lore requires certain rules-like information that tells you what consditions are like for characters who are sailing between the crystal spheres; how that universe operates isn't intuitive until you read up on its aspects and understand what its nature is. It's a case extreme enough to allow you to make your argument, IOW.

There are other settings that definitely put their lore into the special rules category like Dark Sun while settings like Greyhawk and Forgotten Realms just use the standard DnD rules as their base line. I use Spelljammer as an example of Lore defining the rules because if I remember correctly the whole setting is based on an image of a Knight on the deck of a Sailing Ship heading into Wild Space.

So let's pull things back down to Earth, as it were, a bit. Let's even set aside monsters, since that subject likewise seems to lead swiftly down ridiculous paths.

Flipping through the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting - a volume widely prized as a source of reliable lore - my eye lights on the entry for the town of Beregost. I see that, as of the mid-14th century DR, what was know of Beregost was that it was a large town, with a population just under three thousand; that it was governed and policed by the clergy of Lathander; and that its founder was a wizard whose tower was destroyed by rivals some three centuries before. Those are all super interesting things that have plot hooks in 'em whether they're true or not, especially if that's what the players and their characters believe and expect before they go to Beregost. What's added to the play experience by treating any or all of those possibly-facts as a "rule"?

The advantages as I see it of using the "lore" of Beregost as you have detailed it is that everyone who knows that lore to be true can then use it. Like for example the PC Cleric of Lathander may have detailed in his backstory how he trained under the Lathander priests of Beregost or the PC Wizard may belong to one of the factions that killed the original founder. If the DM chooses to do something completely different with Beregost then you have lost that shared story. That is not to say that the new story the DM actually uses is not much better then the other and does have the advantage for the DM that he can just make up anything he wants.

(And tangentially but not incidentally, when you set up a choice between "make exceptions" or "make everything unique" - don't think I don't see the card you're palming there. See my previous entry this thread on false dichotomies for my thoughts on such matters.)

I guess it is just like Lanliss's racist Dwarves; the rule is that they are always racist and the exceptions are when he decides they are not.

 

[ProgBard]

I agree that lore isn't the same as rules. Lore is much more important then merely rules. Look, you can run the same setting in multiple different rule sets and people do all the time. (Or even in different editions of the same ruleset, some of which are quite different.)

But what makes a setting a setting? Is it Hyboria if barbarians, especially Conan, are weak and cowardly as a rule? Is it Middle Earth if the Urak Hai are treated as shades of grey where some are good and many are misunderstood or heroes in their own hearts?

The lore of a setting defines it. Which includes it's exceptions. In a world with owlbears and other remnants of ancient magical experimentation can you have a troll immune to fire but can't regenerate bludgeoning damage? Sure, because the fact that there are mysteries, oddities, and things left over from ages past are part of the lore - it doesn't break it, it reinforces it.

A friend used to watch the old "Hercules: Legendary Journeys" TV show but would always call it "Bob: Legendary Journeys". He explained that it was a fun show to watch, but it definitely wasn't Hercules. To him, calling it Hercules was a crime because Hercules meant something, and this show didn't deliver that. It didn't mean it was a bad show, it just wasn't Herc.

Same with setting. If you want to run Dark Sun but are meh on sorcerer kings and arcane desecration, Eberron but dragon marks and Houses don't interest you, of a happy shiny Barvarian for a better tomorrow, you aren't running those settings, just borrowing names from them.

And yet Sorbo's Herc was indeed Hercules to a great many people, whether your friend approved or not. Which is not the same thing as saying he ought to have enjoyed something for which he clearly wasn't the audience (and nor was I for that particular show). But none of us get to be the gatekeepers and arbiters of Real True $Thing for the stuff that's gone out into the culture, even when that culture is as small and weird as ours is. That's probably doubly true for RPG settings, enjoyed as they are in mostly private circumstances.

Remember: Our valorization of "authenticity" is a distinctly modern thing, not an eternal jewel of truth and beauty. Taken to an extreme, valuing authenticity for its own sake is no more virtuous than rules lawyering, and potentially as toxic.

And FWIW, the knob-twiddling you describe here for various settings sounds to me like any of them could produce interesting results that might be fun to explore, if I knew in advance that those changes were being made. I'm not about to tell someone their alternate-universe version of a setting is a bad idea, and I'm going to go out on a rare prescriptive limb here and say that, really, you shouldn't either.

 

[ProgBard]

The advantages as I see it of using the "lore" of Beregost as you have detailed it is that everyone who knows that lore to be true can then use it. Like for example the PC Cleric of Lathander may have detailed in his backstory how he trained under the Lathander priests of Beregost or the PC Wizard may belong to one of the factions that killed the original founder. If the DM chooses to do something completely different with Beregost then you have lost that shared story. That is not to say that the new story the DM actually uses is not much better then the other and does have the advantage for the DM that he can just make up anything he wants.

Oh, absolutely. As a DM, I looooove players who are that engaged with the setting, and am loathe to discourage them. I suspect, if I were planning to use Beregost in a way that contradicted the lore, and players came to me with the stuff you're describing here, I'd think very carefully about how married I was to my changes and if I couldn't do the same thing with another location.

All of which suggests to me that you and I might be in what I might call violent agreement, we're just quibbling on terms. The truth is that I approach lore changes with at least some degree of consideration and caution, and try to make my exceptions transparent (unless the surprise reveal is more interesting and fun). From what I can see, we probably use lore in quite similar ways, it's just that I'm the one stamping my foot and going, "But that's not a RULE, actually, is it." And you'd be forgiven for concluding that that likely makes me the one with the problem.

 

[Blue]

At the same time, Darksun elves, dwarves, and halflings are different from the default and I have had some people state to me that these and other differences from default D&D lore, and the lack of certain standard PHB elements make Darksun not D&D. I have seen people state Al Qadim and Ravenloft are not D&D, because they too make changes from the default. To me, they are all D&D and such changes from the default lore are what make settings and the game is better for it.

Glad you agree. Each setting has it's own lore, and the lore for the setting overrides any outside lore if you want to give the feeling of that setting.

D&D vs non-D&D is outside the setting as I mentioned in the post you are referring to. The same setting can be realized and played in a lot of different rules sets.

 

[Blue]

But none of us get to be the gatekeepers and arbiters of Real True $Thing for the stuff that's gone out into the culture, even when that culture is as small and weird as ours is. That's probably doubly true for RPG settings, enjoyed as they are in mostly private circumstances.

As DMs running a setting there is no one in a better position than us individually to control what gets put on our table. It could be a setting established by others, a homebrew the DM made up, the results of a game of Microscope by the players.

If a group decides that we all want to run a classic King Arthur flavored campaign and the DM starts bringing in warhammer goblins half way through because he like doing silly voices for them, the rest of the group dang well get to be arbiters of "Real True Thing" and ask to bring it back on course.

On the other hand, if we want to run an original setting then the lore is of that. But the lore that accumulates still is the lore for it and needs to be respected. If you establish early in the game that there are only three dragons in the entire world, and then when they gain a bunch of levels you have them fight a party of foes all mounted on dragon-back, it's breaking it's own lore.

Remember: Our valorization of "authenticity" is a distinctly modern thing, not an eternal jewel of truth and beauty.

And last I checked we live in modern times, so it's okay to pay attention to something modern? Ask your player if you'd rather you were consistant or inconsistant with how you portrayed your setting and I think you'd find the former.

And FWIW, the knob-twiddling you describe here for various settings sounds to me like any of them could produce interesting results that might be fun to explore, if I knew in advance that those changes were being made. I'm not about to tell someone their alternate-universe version of a setting is a bad idea, and I'm going to go out on a rare prescriptive limb here and say that, really, you shouldn't either.

I *never* said those would be bad settings to run in. Putting words in my mouth and then arguing against them, in italics to make your point more forceful is a rather lame piece of rhetoric.

I said they weren't the Named settings. If a friend comes to me "hey, I was inspired by Eberron's magi-tech, but instead of dragonmarks I've got these cool ideas of ancient rune magic, plus I brought in this caste thing from this series of books and this map someone on EN World made for free use." I'd be there in an instant. But he's not running Eberron, nor is he running the setting from the books. He's running his own setting with it's own lore that he's (or we're) making up.

As a side note, I almost often run homebrew. Because I want the freedom to work out a setting that will best fit the players wishes and the campaign needs and the freedom to create my own mythos and stories around it. I don't want to set expectations from players and also have them translate that into how their characters act/what they know as everymen in the world and then have that end up being at odds with how portray things.

Really, what is a setting except the lore about it? If the lore egregiously doesn't match, you don't have the setting.

 

[ProgBard]

As DMs running a setting there is no one in a better position than us individually to control what gets put on our table. It could be a setting established by others, a homebrew the DM made up, the results of a game of Microscope by the players.

If a group decides that we all want to run a classic King Arthur flavored campaign and the DM starts bringing in warhammer goblins half way through because he like doing silly voices for them, the rest of the group dang well get to be arbiters of "Real True Thing" and ask to bring it back on course.

Certainly within your group you ought to come to agreements about the world you're playing in. But you only get to decide that for you and your table. You don't get to make sweeping pronouncements about what is and isn't "really" a given setting to the community-at-large, based on the criteria you've decided is essential to the world.

On the other hand, if we want to run an original setting then the lore is of that. But the lore that accumulates still is the lore for it and needs to be respected.

"Needs to be?" Dude, come on. Says who? The lore is a fiction; our actions don't offend it.

Adhering to what's been established has certain effects that may or may not be beneficial, or desirable, to a given table. That's up to the group to decide.

If you establish early in the game that there are only three dragons in the entire world, and then when they gain a bunch of levels you have them fight a party of foes all mounted on dragon-back, it's breaking it's own lore.

Or it could be that something interesting has happened that supersedes what was "known" before. If the thing is cool, and what it introduces is fun and there's a reasonable way to retcon it in, then I'll almost-quote the magnificent Peloquin and say "F--- the lore."

And last I checked we live in modern times, so it's okay to pay attention to something modern? Ask your player if you'd rather you were consistant or inconsistant with how you portrayed your setting and I think you'd find the former.

No one is stopping you from valuing what's important to you. The issue is that what you've been saying here suggests you think it ought to be just as important to everyone. You don't get to make that call.

(And my players and I are cool, thanks for asking. If something started to contradict their assumptions about what they thought they knew about the world, they'd trust me that it was intentional, that there was a story reason for it, and that it was in the service of Cool Stuff. We've earned that trust of each other in our time together - starting with when I first asked, "How much do you mind if I depart from canon?" and got the response, "This is your world. Go for it.")

I *never* said those would be bad settings to run in. Putting words in my mouth and then arguing against them, in italics to make your point more forceful is a rather lame piece of rhetoric.

I said they weren't the Named settings. If a friend comes to me "hey, I was inspired by Eberron's magi-tech, but instead of dragonmarks I've got these cool ideas of ancient rune magic, plus I brought in this caste thing from this series of books and this map someone on EN World made for free use." I'd be there in an instant. But he's not running Eberron, nor is he running the setting from the books. He's running his own setting with it's own lore that he's (or we're) making up.

I'm afraid I wasn't clear the first time around, because it's the idea in the second paragraph there that I was addressing. What I'm saying is that I think it would be a fun experiment to say, "I think I want to run an alternate Eberron without the Houses and dragonmarks," and call it Eberron, and that it's ... unpleasant to respond to that idea with, "Well, but that's not really Eberron so you shouldn't call it that."

Again, what you see as essential to the setting isn't universal. Just because it isn't the setting from the books doesn't make it not be a variation on that setting, obligating you to change all the names.

(Yes, if you change enough things, eventually it's no longer even vaguely recognizable as the original, and so you may run into communication problems if you discuss it outside your circle by calling it the original name. But so what? Sure, there's probably some ineffable moment when if you fiddle with enough parts of Eberron it eventually becomes not-Eberron; I'm unqualified to delve into the philosophy of that question, but confident in declaring that the moment almost certainly does not occur with the first alteration, and probably not the second, either.)

If I may: What does it hurt you that someone, somewhere might be running a game that you'll never see in a way that you wouldn't like? Because that seems to be the subtext of a great many discussions here, and I am at a loss to understand.

Really, what is a setting except the lore about it? If the lore egregiously doesn't match, you don't have the setting.

Again, this gestures at a false dichotomy. There's a lot of room on the slide between "everything is excruciatingly canonical in every detail and particular" and "really, you might as well just call it something else." And a lot of space to breathe before we get to "egregiously."

Almost any setting would still be itself without some specific detail about its lore. Probably several such details. The lore defines it, in part, but does not constrain it - not if it's a living milieu. And if it's in the service of a game, it better be living.

As an aside of my own: what I find amusing (well, one of the things I find amusing) about the insistance on all-or-nothing adherence to setting lore is that the game setting most infamous for giving canon-detail headaches - the Forgotten Realms - was designed so that any particular detail of its lore could be discarded. That's what Elminster was - the voice of a potentially unreliable narrator whose word on anything at all might be true, or partially true, or a misdirection, or an outright lie. And that's the default setting for D&D - one that was built with a device that assumed you were going to make it your own anyway, so you always had an excuse to contradict what was in the book. I love that, and I love that Greenwood was a clever enough architect of his subcreation to make that explicit. But it's also a device that works for just about anything.

Because that's the nature of stories - and that's all "lore" is, is stories. They change over time with their tellers. They start to contradict each other. They're slippery and capricious; they serve the ends of one master, then another. You need them, but you can't trust 'em. They change the world - and sometimes they change it so that it was always different than how you remember it. They cannot be objective. And they're still all we've got.

And that, best beloved, is why, in the end, there's no such thing as "canon."

 

[Lanefan]

And that, best beloved, is why, in the end, there's no such thing as "canon."

Well, in my view not quite.

The built-in canon of any particular setting should (and, I posit, must), however, be treated just like the game-system rules in one very important way: they are but guidelines, and can be kitbashed at will.

Of particular concern is the Ogre example above. If "canon" says Ogres use club and javelin but your version of the setting tends to have them show up with axes in hand, no problem at all...axes it is. And if a canon lawyer challenges you tell him that nothing is sacred and your version of the setting isn't necessarily going to follow "canon" if for no other reason than to keep him on his toes; then ask him why is he reading the Monster Manual in the first place.

I ran a long (12-year) campaign using FR as the base setting - well, except for all the parts I re-mapped and re-skinned - and I know next to nothing about FR lore or canon. Oh, sure, there's this guy named Elminster out there somewhere, and some idiot named Drizz't who the party has freedom to slaughter on sight for the sheer fun of it and without fear of alignment audit (did I mention I despise Drizz't?). But that's pretty much it. So why did I use FR at all, then? Because there's enough been done with it that if the party did find their way to somewhere I hadn't jiggered (e.g. Baldur's Gate, in my campaign) I could quickly find out what's supposed to be there as the designers have already done the heavy work for me; I didn't have to dream up a whole city on the fly.

In short, I used the FR setting as a guideline then kitbashed the stuffing out of it to make it what I wanted.

Lan-"in case it's not already obvious, I don't like Drizz't"-efan

 

[Ancalagon]

To me there is only a problem when the lore says A, and the rules are completely silent on A or even worse contradict A.

Like

"The Flurmph use their magical powers to dominate the minds of others!"

... but the rules for the Flurmph indicate they have no magical powers whatsoever and have crappy charisma. Clearly, something "went wrong" here, and as a GM you have to fix it.

As far as "borrowing" from a setting or whatever, there is a... zone... where this can be a bit tricky. I wrote a bit Silk Road campaign but I don't know if could ever publish it. Some parts were close to earth but could offend - would the Turks be happy to know they are hobgoblins in my game? Others were borrowed from novel, and would be easily recognized - I must admit I didn't come up with Icarium.

So being halfway original can have consequences on the "usability" of the material, at least beyond your own table.

 

[robus]

Surely it's as simple as "the lore informs the role play" I.e. It provides context & richness to play off of. It's much more flexible than rules because new lore can be introduced at any time, a long lost tribe is discovered that don't subscribe to the usual customs associated with those creatures (for example)

As long as the players agree on the basic concept (I.e. lore) of the campaign world then happy roleplaying can proceed.

 

[Mishihari Lord]

IMO the relationship between lore and rules is pretty simple. Lore defines genre, setting, and game activities. The job of the rules is to mechanically implement the lore insofar is it is reasonably possible for a game. It's never going to perfect, and if you can't accept that you're going to drive yourself nuts trying to play an RPG.