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

[ProgBard]

@pemerton mentioned that he plays with the Greyhawk map and makes up his own lore for it and plays Greyhawk. Most of the rest of us have disagreed and said things like, "If you change too much..." and "Multiple changes can..." and "If you change lots of things..." yada yada. His responses have been to ignore what is being told to him and fixate on single changes as if that's what we are talking about, and then he responds to his change. It's classic Strawman.

Okay, so:

1) So what?
2) Have you at any point asked him what he feels is the heart of Greyhawk, rather than tell him he's Doin It Rong?
3) Because if it were me, I wouldn't give a fig how "right" you are, by what standard of objectivity you measure it, or how thoroughly you debate your point: You tell me that what I'm doing at my table is Bad and I shouldn't use the Official Names if I'm going to just do what I want with it ... yeah, I'd probably ignore a lot of your argument too. Sorry.
4) What is it you want out of this fight? Is it for @pemerton to admit he's Wrong Wrong Wrongity Wrong? To stop doing what he's doing in private with friends to make you happy? I don't think you should hold your breath for either of those outcomes. You want validation that the way you use lore is right? You got it; it's perfectly and exactly right for you and the folks you play with. But the trueness and rightness of your way ends at the back of your chair. Pemerton and his table get to decide what's right and what works for them, and what they call it when they do.
5) Aaaaaand ... so what? I promise you that the way he uses Greyhawk neither picks your pocket nor breaks your leg. I swear to you that this is true even if what he does is take the Inner Sea World Map and crosses out "Golarion" and writes OERTH over it in Sharpie. You get to think he's a complete Philistine, but he still gets to do what works for him anyway, and I think by now it should be clear that your offense at his heathen ways matters to him no jot nor tittle. It probably would have been better if he'd said, some time ago, "Dude, whatever," and I still think that an advisable course of action; but in any case, this subject is worth no more of your upset. I think you're gonna have to Elsa it.
6) Or, yanno, not. It's none of my business, I'm just some chubby nerd on the Internet, and if fighting this fight gives you joy, by all means carry on. Just ... maybe... give the above a little thought, aye?

 

[pemerton]

This is different than never having had a Waterdeep in the first place. Or having a Waterdeep, but making it founded and ruled by a tyrannical Dragon-King and his cultist worshipers who enforce martial law with harsh punishment.

if you then told me that you also decided Elminster was the evil druid overlord of the Dales

So can there be no surprises? No extrapolations? No dramatic twists and consequent revelations?

I mean, why can't the Duke of Geoff turn out to be a werewolf? Why can't it turn out that the founder of Waterdeep was a dragon-king in human form?

Look at it this way: there was a first appearance of Skullport. Up to that point, it was taken for granted that there was no hive of scum and villainy lying deep beneath Waterdeep. Suppose, prior to that first appearance, some random GM had introduced a city of thieves on the third level of Undermountain - would that have made his/her game not a FR one? Would its status have changed again once Skullport was published?

(I'm sure I'm not the only GH GM to have anticipated elements of the GH Wars/FtA in my game, because they are one obvious way of extrapolating from the set-up in the original folio. Did those extrapolations stand in need of vindication by later publications? And did it vitiate the "GH-ness" of my campaign that the relationship between the Shield Lands, Furyondy and the City of GH was different from what ended up being published?

I would agree that werewolves in Geoff isn't a contradiction of Greyhawk as a setting. It may be too far afield from what a GH purist wants in their game, and while I think that's a little silly, I also think it's not on me to tell people they should be the audience for something when they're not.

Absolutely, if someone doesn't like some story element they're not obliged to play a game that includes it.

But - at least in my view - just because the hypothetical GH purist doesn't want to play in that game, doesn't make it not a GH game.

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned that he plays with the Greyhawk map and makes up his own lore for it and plays Greyhawk.

Have you at any point asked him what he feels is the heart of Greyhawk, rather than tell him he's Doin It Rong?

Maxperson hasn't. But he doesn't have to - I've posted it in this thread, and the canon thread in which Maxperson has been a prominent participant.

Those posts also illustrate that Maxperson's description of what I do is, at best, a very loose paraphrase.

When I talk about running a GH game, or an Oriental Adventures game; or when I say that I am running a module; what I mean is that I am using some maps, some characters, some tropes and themes, taken from the setting or module.

But I don't pay much attention to the "canon" of the setting or module. I've run OA using homedrawn maps and the Kara-Tur boxed set. I'm currently running a GH game, using Burning Wheel mechanics, and I move between my old folio maps and 2nd ed and 3E era ones - whichever happens to be at the top of my folder - without worrying too much about it.

What makes this game a GH one is the basic geography and history (Hardby is a city ruled by a magic-using Gynarch, across the Wooly Bay from the Bright Desert, which is populated by Suel tribesmen). Not the minutiae of canon: the details of the setting I make up as needed for play or determined during the course of play.

When I run a Greyhawk game, I use the GH maps. Now, I have a folder which has all my maps: from the original folio; from the City of GH boxed set; the City of GH environs map from FtA; maps from the Adventure Returns reboot, from the LGH gazetteer, from Iuz the Evil and the Marklands, etc. (But my From the Ahses world maps, and my boxed set ones identical to the folio ones but in better condition, sit on my shelf in plastic pockets.) When I'm running a game, I don't tend to worry too much about time period - I'll just pull out whichever map is at the top of the pile and has a helpful degree of resolution - because the differences across time periods often don't really matter to my game.

What the maps give me is a basic geography (physical and political) and some names to go with it. The centre of the maps, in particular, gives a lot of adventuring geography in a fairly small space - the Bright Desert; the hills north of that; GH city for European urban adventuring; Hardby and the Wild Coast for more Conan-esque, Zamora-esque urban adventuring; the Gnarley and Suss Forests; the Woolly Bay for ship-borne adventuring; Highport for slaver galleys; Furyondy and the Shield Lands for knights and paladins; and Celene, the Lortmils etc for elves, dwarves and other standard fantasy elements.

<snip>

But as far as history is concerned, I'll use the general tropes - ancient wars, Suel wizards who migrated east, etc, but won't bother with the details. For instance, I find the idea that GH's vikings are actually Suel migrants; or that the martial arts monks are actually survivors of the Suel Empire; too silly for words, and so I just ignore that stuff and use "real" (pulp) vikings and "real" (pulp) martial artists living atop a hidden plateau.

the idea that the Scarlet Brotherhood are Suel renegades <snippage> just dilutes and distracts from the inherent interest of the Scarlet Brotherhood as a hierarchy of thieves, assassins and monks under the Father of Obedience, by requiring that stuff to be tied into ancient Suel culture. It dilutes the secret martial arts plateau trope, and it makes the ancient empire trope carried by the Suel pick up stupid backage. All the Suel and the Scarlet Brotherhood have going for them is that they are workings out of these pulp tropes, so once you dilute them you just get less compelling stuff.

Greyhawk, for me, is a setting that supports pulp/S&S tropes (ancient empires with a legacy of ruins, magical traditions, etc). It's the Hyborean Age but with a handy integration of more-or-less Tolkienesque dwarves and elves. (I tend to ignore the halflings and gnomes, or treat them as dwarf variants.) And instead of Pelias and Xaltotun I've got Mordenkainen, Bigby and Vecna, with ideas of how to handle these personages in D&D mechanical terms. Etc, etc.

To my mind, that's what a setting is for: to save me the work of making all this stuff up, so I can get more quickly to the good bit of playing the game!

 

[Maxperson]

Yet it's still unclear where the boundary is. What constitutes "too much" or "lots of things" to one person might be utterly irrelevant to another and even welcomed by a third who would like it changed still more.

You guys aren't going to get a clear boundary, because the line varies from person to person.

For my own part the boundary is the map, pure and simple. If I'm using the FR map pretty much as is then as far as I'm concerned you're playing in the Realms, and I'll probably call my game Toril. If I'm using the Greyhawk map you're playing in Beory*. And so on. But if I'm using all the FR lore and canon but on a different map, it's not FR to me.

It's not possible to use all of the FR lore and canon, but use a different map. The map is part of the lore and canon, and a very large part at that.

Also, your position is one at an extreme. You will find a very low percentage of players who would agree that the map is all it takes to be the setting.

 

[Maxperson]

2) Have you at any point asked him what he feels is the heart of Greyhawk, rather than tell him he's Doin It Rong?

What would be the point? If someone told me that all it took to be fishing is to be out on a boat, I wouldn't bother to ask them what they felt the heart of fishing was. That person isn't fishing.

3) Because if it were me, I wouldn't give a fig how "right" you are, by what standard of objectivity you measure it, or how thoroughly you debate your point: You tell me that what I'm doing at my table is Bad and I shouldn't use the Official Names if I'm going to just do what I want with it ... yeah, I'd probably ignore a lot of your argument too. Sorry.

Then it's probably a good thing that not only have I not told him what he's doing at his table is bad, I've said it's perfectly fine to do. It's just not the setting. You'll have to try better than a Strawman if you want to refute what I'm saying.


The deleted portion were covered by the response to your Strawman #3. Try responding to what I am saying with your next post.

 

[Maxperson]

I mean, why can't the Duke of Geoff turn out to be a werewolf? Why can't it turn out that the founder of Waterdeep was a dragon-king in human form?

I don't know. Why can't it be that way? Unless the lore says, "The Duke of Geoff is not a werewolf" or "The Duke of Geoff is absolutely human and nothing else.", the lore is silent on whether he is a werewolf or not. The only thing fixed is that there is a Duke of Geoff, and perhaps a name and description of him.

Look at it this way: there was a first appearance of Skullport. Up to that point, it was taken for granted that there was no hive of scum and villainy lying deep beneath Waterdeep.

That was not taken for granted. That is wasn't mentioned doesn't cause people to think, "Well, it's good thing that there's no hive of scum and villainy lying under Waterdeep". The existence or lack of existence of Skullport was probably not considered by the vast majority of players and DMs, let alone assumed not to exist.

 

[ProgBard]

Okay, [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], babe, dude. Take a breath.

It's not the strawman you think it is; I think you're missing something.

When you keep saying, over and over, "it's just not the setting," that is what I'm pointing to. No, you're not telling anyone they can't make changes or create the game they want. But what you are doing is trying to draw a line for someone else about what they get to call it. You're trying to tell someone else that they shouldn't consider the gameworld they're playing in "the setting," and that's not cool.

So, I repeat: What do you want out of this? You want [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to just admit he isn't really using "the setting"? Clearly it's not gonna happen. There is no win condition for you here if those are your terms.

And, again, it's none o' my business. Except I admit I feel bad to see all your frustration and annoyance - not on pemerton's behalf, but for you. You've splashed an awful lot of pixels across this, in a futile effort to convince someone to accept your standards who clearly sees things very differently than you. And I'm sorry, but it's okay that he feels that way. The world is big enough for both points of view, even just our little corner of it.

One more thing, and then I'm done with this: I'd like to gently point out that when I inquired if you asked him how he saw things, your response was, "Why bother?" And that, right there, is the problem. If you want people to pay attention to your arguments, you have to be willing to listen back. Even if you do, you still might not convince them - but you'll have benefitted from seeing their perspective instead of just looking for points to refute.

And that is all.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Maxperson]

When you keep saying, over and over, "it's just not the setting," that is what I'm pointing to. No, you're not telling anyone they can't make changes or create the game they want. But what you are doing is trying to draw a line for someone else about what they get to call it. You're trying to tell someone else that they shouldn't consider the gameworld they're playing in "the setting," and that's not cool.

Let me try an analogy. I have a set of McDonalds characters, and so does [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. When I play with them, I play McDonalds. Ronald makes kids happy. Grimace(sp) drinks shakes, the Fry Guys run around acting like fries, and so on. Pemerton, though, would rather call Ronald Cobra Commander, make the Fry Guys into Snake Eyes and Destro, and so on. They LOOK like McDonalds characters, but he's playing G.I. Joe with them. That's fine for his house. No sweat of my back and doesn't bother me at all. G.I. Joe is fun. However, when he comes here and talks about it, he's never going to be right in claiming he's playing McDonalds just because they look like McDonalds characters.

That's what he's doing when he says that he keeps the map(McDonalds look) and makes up new lore(plays G.I. Joe). If he had just said that he plays an alternate universe Greyhawk that uses the map and little else, there wouldn't have been any issues.

So, I repeat: What do you want out of this? You want [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] to just admit he isn't really using "the setting"? Clearly it's not gonna happen. There is no win condition for you here if those are your terms.

I'm just enjoying the conversation. The only frustration comes when people misrepresent my position and then argue against their fiction.

 

[Maxperson]

But, why not? I mean, wouldn't you want to know why they thought that was fishing? Maybe ask them about fishing from a dock?

Because someone just standing on a boat doing nothing else, but claiming he's fishing is probably crazy. Not only am I not going to engage him, I'm going to go to another part of the boat to avoid any other possible craziness. Now, the fishing example is a more extreme example of what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is doing. I don't think he's crazy.

Understanding is not the same as agreeing. But it helps to understand the differences. Let's use the sandwich example again!

If someone tells me that a burrito is a sandwich, I'd want to know why. Now, maybe they'd point to a definition in a dictionary that encompasses burritos within the "sandwich" category. I can still converse them, even though this person is A CRAZY PERSON WHO HAS NEVER EATEN A REAL SANDWICH IN THEIR LIFE, because at least I understand their viewpoint. We are not going to agree, because that person obviously doesn't get what a sandwich is, but I can respect their viewpoint.

Well, as he pointed out, he has made his position clear multiple times. I don't need to ask him again.

I am not going to convince them, and they will not convince me, but at least (hopefully) we can understand why we have different viewpoints.*

**This was told to me by my good friend, and occasional hunting companion, Stevie Wonder.

And he's still probably safer than hunting with Dick Cheney.