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

[lowkey13]

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[Jester David]

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.

Okay then.

Marvel and DC comics.
32 page monthly softcover periodicals with storytelling by sequential art panels and word balloons featuring colourfullly costumed characters with superhuman powers solving their problems primarily through violence dating back to the ’40s.

There's no difference, right? Marvel is just a DC Clone.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Shasarak]

This is kind of related to the point that gets me a little irritated. A lot of the complaints about canon aren't "Oh, this change doesn't really work, they probably should have left it as the previous version." I'm absolutely fine with those kind of complaints. The complaints I find vexing are "Why did the developers ever have the audacity to think this idea wasn't sacred to us? This is too important to ever change!"

It is mainly because they live in their own echo chamber. Bob Salvatore has talked about the WotC attitude to Forgotten Realms during the 4e era. If the creator of the Realms is telling you this is a bad idea then maybe you should rethink what you are doing.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Maybe we are discussing different things, maybe not. I noticed the aside about "marketing dictate" the product, something I am also not in favor of.

This gets back to the whole issue of pinning down what people mean by lore. Rules are fairly easy to playtest. Do people like bounded accuracy or not? Then there is, for lack of a better word, "crunch," which WoTC already seeks opinions on (do you like the current iteration of the Warlock class? do you want more archetypes?). But I would put that under the purview of rules as well.

I had assumed that we were discussing "lore" as "art," or sometimes "fluff," which isn't so easily reducible. If you believe that this should apply to this as well, then, I guess we will agree to disagree.

I don't think it's reducible, but I think you can gather data on what people think about your idea and use that to inform your art production. Creativity is not an ex nihilo process.

I'd also assert that the line between "rule" and "fluff" is less bold than is often presumed. When you're making a D&D book, both boil down to the principles of game design. The most evocative and impactful fiction in the world can very easily be a crappy narrative for a D&D game - the principles of what makes good game fiction are more similar to what makes good game rules than it is to what makes a good novel.

the inherent characteristics of a system.

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).

Nothing in the gestalt of it.

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.

Here's the thing about genre definitions: they're personal.

To someone for whom, say, theater matters, the differences between La Boheme and Rent couldn't be more stark and obvious, and any attempt to bucket them together is farcical and superficial. To other folks, they're basically the same story, just with different trappings.

Neither of those people are wrong, and each person should be able to accept the validity of the other perspective. These things are both the same and different. Which one you consider them in the moment is largely a matter of your own knowledge and your goal for the works.

When canon is something someone cares about they're asserting that for their D&D fun times, the distinction between these things is important to them, for a variety of reasons. They want to make the distinction between hobgoblins and orcs. They appreciate the difference between the finer points of lore. It adds to their D&D fun times to play with the differences between these things, to play up their specific traits, to embrace the distinctions.

Other folks might not appreciate that canon at the same level, but no one has the right to tell that person who cares deeply about the canon distinction that they should not do that.

When my buddy from Texas comments on the remarkable and very real distinctions between various regional flavors of barbeque, he's not wrong. I just don't care. I haven't developed that taste. Mostly, my friend doesn't have a problem with this - he's a barbeque nerd. I'm not. That's fine. I'll go ask him what kind is the best (I mean, he'll say Texas, but there's probably the best among Texas!), and it'll be good barbeque!

I can tell him that all barbeque sauce is the same and that his opinion doesn't matter because most people don't care about barbeque, but I'm a huge jerk if I do that. This is especially true if I am the barbeque baron and I own 95% of the barbeque market and I determine that I'm only going to make...Alamaba-style barbeque. And if he's not a fan of that, well, he's just a hater, just a troll, just angry because of change, he's getting annoyed at things that don't really matter, he's taking it personally, he's just stuck in the old ways (everyone knows 'bama BBQ is the wave of the future!). Plus, no one's stopping him from starting his own BBQ bottling enterprise, really! He can just make it at home!

My buddy isn't wrong to be a big barbeque nerd and to love his Texas barbeque above all others and to note that there are differences between barbeque styles that - to him - are pretty significant but - to me - don't matter at all. He just appreciates genre distinctions that I don't. I can't fairly tell him his distinctions don't really matter. They matter to him!

If canon matters to you, you've made some tight distinctions, and that's fine and good and fun and nice and super and probably makes your life better and it's not really fair to tell those people that canon shouldn't matter to them, any more than it's fair to tell people that hate Rent that it's really the same as La Boheme, or to tell people that love barbeque that Alabama BBQ and Texas BBQ are the same thing in every way that "really matters." Those distinctions matter!

 

[Jester David]

No. I disagree with this assertion, and would require evidence for it. While there may have been "other planes," there was certainly no overriding consensus in the 1970s and early 1980s that all homebrew, 3PP, and other campaigns existed within the greater D&D multiverse. I mean, maybe I didn't hang out with the cool kids, but I certainly wasn't aware of this.

Then again, we weren't overly concerned about canon, either.

I was wrong here.
Discussion on the multiverse takes place in Appendix IV of the AD&D Player's Handbook. Page 120. So a couple years earlier than I assumed.

While it gives the DM the ability to "Rule 0" out of being part of the multiverse it presents this as the default. Our Earth and the various D&D worlds all together in the Prime Material Plane.

Yes, if you can say that something is regardless of the setting, then that is ... kinda generic, isn't it? Generic assumptions and tropes? That apply to most homebrew settings as well? Kinda sorta generic (gestalt) D&D?

They're somewhat generic. But they're still variations.
It could just as easily be bestial dragons that only breathe fire, green orcs, trolls that hide under bridges, vampires that turn to dust when staked, brain eating contagious zombies, mana spellcasting, and the like. You can make a lot of changes to D&D.
But, why?

And if it was an interesting change, why not? After all, hobgoblins have gone from leading orcs, to fighting orcs, and life has gone on. I don't think that such a change will be made (but for path dependency reasons), but if it is, I will get over it.

Which is a good example of the philosophical break here.

My first instinct as a writer and a storyteller and a worldbuilder is "Here are these two disparate elements that don't fit. How can I make them fit? How can I make this work?"
I don't think "what can I change?" I think "what can I add?" I look at bugbears and ask myself why? There's a *story* there. I think of a reason goblins and bugbears are connected.

Changing is what I do when I give up. When I can't think of an interesting way to connect goblins and bugbears.

 

[Maxperson]

I think you're confusing commercial branding with the inherent characteristics of a system. I can't comment on WoT, but if someone walked up to a table of RPGers and heard one of them talk about blasing some trolls with a 6d6 fireball, who could tell whether it's PF or D&D? But everyone would know it was not one of those other fantasy games that I mentioned.

That's what [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] was getting at.

Who could tell if it was PF, D&D, WoT, Game of Thrones, 7th Sea, or any of the several other d20 games that aren't D&D.

 

[Hussar]

How did I go from "wild mage gnomes aren't really canon in Dragonlance" to "We're not really playing in a Dragonlance game?"

I think someone might be misrepresenting my point just a bit.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

It is mainly because they live in their own echo chamber. Bob Salvatore has talked about the WotC attitude to Forgotten Realms during the 4e era. If the creator of the Realms is telling you this is a bad idea then maybe you should rethink what you are doing.

Salvatore didn't create the Realms. And he really makes no effort in his "stories" to try and work with the feel of the Realms. There's a lot of irony reading about RAS criticising others for not grokking the Realms when he is renowned for ignoring FR canon. Oh and for making up stupid names, dagnabbit....

 

[Shasarak]

Salvatore didn't create the Realms. And he really makes no effort in his "stories" to try and work with the feel of the Realms. There's a lot of irony reading about RAS criticising others for not grokking the Realms when he is renowned for ignoring FR canon. Oh and for making up stupid names, dagnabbit....

Thats right, Ed Greenwood created the Realms. Which canon were you particularly annoyed with Bob ignoring?