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

[lowkey13]

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[TwoSix]

When people discuss "canon," they are often referring to the examples of a shared universe (a la Star Wars, or Star Trek). The continuity matters there because it is assumed that all the stories are taking place in the same shared universe.

I think the distinction between "shared universe" canon and "gestalt" canon is underexplored. That distinction might be why some people view new content as "replacement" instead of "add-on". I think we can (mostly) agree that D&D is a gestalt vision. Is Forgotten Realms? Particularly in its 5e incarnation as the placeholder D&D setting.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Jester David]

See, your position and my position (and by default, [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to the extent I have the same position as he does) are not really that far apart.

When people discuss "canon," they are often referring to the examples of a shared universe (a la Star Wars, or Star Trek). The continuity matters there because it is assumed that all the stories are taking place in the same shared universe.

James Bond canon, on the other hand, is closer to the "gestalt," that we think of. People can discuss what is and isn't more important to the James Bond gestalt (gadgets, casual intercourse, lots of booze, shaken not stirred, tuxes, MI6, license to kill, Q and M, Moneypenny, Spectre, gambling, casual misogyny, really bad and punny names for characters, etc.), but you can tell the gestalt of a Bond film from a Bourne film.

D&D, because it is a TTRPG, is much closer to the gestalt. And part of the gestalt of D&D is the d20. It would be indescribably harder to change the d20 (which is a simple mechanic) than it would be to change, say, the backgrounds for gnolls, or lore involving eladrin. That's why I used it as an example- there may be better ways of doing things, but that would be a much more difficult change to pull off. Just like people have made incredibly successful genre sci-fi adaptations of D&D using D&D rules, yet ... most people would not refer to that as D&D (or, at best, "using D&D rules."), because D&D has a gestalt of fantasy ... however loosely that might be described.

Again, there is nothing wrong with desiring that designers keep in mind that which has come before (we all stand on the shoulders of giants). Like I wrote- the chasm of small differences makes for an interesting philosophical, if not practical, debate.

To me, D&D is somewhere in the middle. While there isn't the same narrative as Star Trek events and lore *do* occur in a semi-shared world. AD&D/ 3e adventures took place in Greyhawk, Basic D&D adventures in Mystara. 4e in the Nentir Vale. 5e in the Realms. There is a default world and setting for the stories.

The 5e rulebooks occupy a weird narrative space partway between Greyhawk and the Realms, generally defaulting to the Realms but occasionally mixing in some Greyhawk/generic D&Disms.

While I think 3e could break away from canon a little in terms of splat (adding new races/ classes/ power sources), and its ties to Greyhawk were tenuous at best, 5e diesn't have that same latitude: it is more explicitly set in the Realms. The Realms does have a continuous narrative spanning 30 years. More than Star Trek, really, which has a collective life of 23 years on TV (plus movies).

 

[lowkey13]

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[Jester David]

I think that's a category error. Saying that 5e uses FR as the generic default setting is not exactly the same as saying that "5e is set in the realms."

It's a vital distinction. It's why 5e material can be easily used in a multitude of campaign settings; both the ones that have previously been used for D&D, as well as the usual homebrew settings.

And why people get tripped up with "generic" D&D (GH and FR are both relatively generic settings, and the majority of the lore would be imported by the DM, not supplied by the core rule books.)

The WotC team would (and have) say the setting of 5e is "the D&D multiverse". But apart from the excursion to Barovia, that has been the Realms.
Regardless, the "D&D multiverse" has its own continuity. The multiverse has a backstory.There are assumptions and commonalities.

While you can run a D&D game in your own world that is part of the multiverse, or run a D&D game in your own world that is completely and totally different. This this is like how you can take the Numenera rules and use them to run a game not set on Numenera. Or a Marvel Heroic Roleplaying game that isn't set in the Marvel Universe. Or strip out the space wizards from FFG's Star Wars game to play Star Trek.

D&D is not GURPs or FATE. It's not a generic set of rules. It's a ruleset with a baked-in setting where people ignore that setting as often as not.

 

[Jester David]

Huh? Except that it has players of fighters rolling d20 to hit, then rolling polyhedral dice to determine the damage that is deducted from an enemy's hit points.

And it has the same monster list as classic D&D. And the same basic elements (Orcus, Vecna, the Rod of Seven Parts, the same humanoid enemies, etc, etc).

Whenever people talk about how Pathfinder, 13th Age, and the like are D&D my mind goes:



All the same thing, right?

 

[lowkey13]

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[TwoSix]

Whenever people talk about how Pathfinder, 13th Age, and the like are D&D my mind goes:

All the same thing, right?

Not saying I don't get the joke (I do!), but that's a terrible comparison. You can lump Harry Potter, LotR, and Star Wars under the umbrella of cinematic fantasy stories that are all very popular, but other than that they don't appear very similar at all.

PF, 13A, and D&D all fall under the umbrella of fantasy RPGs, but they also share similar settings (moderate to high magic medieval fantasy), similar to very similar styles of magic, all of them use level and class system, six stats, d20+mod compared to target number to do checks, the same dozen or so base classes available for character creation, and the same default races. In terms of overall narrative and tropes used, they're virtually identical. The only difference is some different mechanics and some different character building widgets become available.

 

[Jester David]

....okay ....

But we both acknowledge that the default "setting" for D&D (the canon, if you will) has wildly changed from edition to edition. Just look!

OD&D: (Kinda GH/Blackmoor)
BECMI: Mystara/Known World
1e: (Kinda GH)
2e: None, but to the extent it copied 1e, kinda GH
3e: Explicitly GH
4e: PoL
5e: FR

Now one can point to various attempts at grafting the multiverse together (Planescape, Spelljammer), and we can discuss how prevalent campaign setting were at different times (FR in 2e, for example), but it seems wildly ... odd ... that you can refer to a canon for a setting that has only been "official" (as in default) in 5e, and then retcon that into saying that this is the same as the generic rules (canon) that came before.

Look, I'm not hostile to:
1) Gestalt of D&D; or
2) FR as a setting (although I don't run it) including all the accumulations of lore that came in other products; or
3) Trying to thread the needle of various "default" settings to ascertain gestalt; but ...

You seem to be arguing an odd position.

The "multiverse" existed as far back as 1e's Deities & Demigods. (If not the 1e DMG.) Way back in 1980. It was always assumed people would be setting their game in a world in the multiverse, and you could travel between campaign settings. This all happened well before Planescape, and years before the first Greyhawk setting book was published.

My point is really that D&D has *never* been generic. Prior to 4e the setting was Greyhawk, with the canon of monsters, gods, magic, classes and the like conforming primarily to Greyhawk and its conventions.
Now it's FR, which is slightly different but very, very, very similar to Greyhawk. By design.
In late 1e (with 2e on the horizon) FR was purchased/ licensed and then tweaked to be the generic setting for AD&D prior to the explosion of new campaign settings. The replacement for Greyhawk in case that had to go bye-bye with Gygax.
So we have wood, grey, and high elves. Trolls that regenerate and hate fire. Goblinoids. Orcs. Elves that are shorter than humans. Vancian magic. Clerics that grant spells. Smart dragons with four limbs and wings. Zombies that don't eat brains. Vampires that are paralyzed by stakes and not killed.

Regardless if you're talking Greyhawk or Forgotten Realms, D&D has its assumptions and tropes, aka… continuity.

Now, WotC could change any of the above. They could look at bugbears and ask "how the heck are these related to goblins? They work so much better as cousins of gnolls or orcs."
You could make a strong case for that change as goblinoid bugbears are weird. It's a small change: a line in the lore and the humanoid tag. No rules changes at all. Doesn't affect bugbears in play. And it'd be a change in the Monster Manual not a FR or Greyhawk product.
But it still changes canon. And you have to ask if it's really necessary.