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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Jester David]

Everyone knows that some players took some PCs from one campaign to another. Gygax gives advice on how to handle that in his DMG - I even quoted bits of that in the post you're replying to.

But that doesn't show there was a canonical "multiverse". That, by default, every D&D gameworld was to be taken to be part of the one big fictional realm. Gygax is giving practical advice on how to run a game, not setting out an account of a fictional world in which every setting is deemed to coexist. As I said, that idea has its first published expression in the MotP.

I repeat: it was the foundation of the multiverse. The start. The acorn is not the oak. But without the acorn there would be no tree.

And the multiverse was just one expression of the lore.

But people were playing D&D before GH was published. And many kept playing it ignoring GH. Not to mention Blackmoor, which is clearly more primordial than FR, which wasn't anything but an allusion of some Ed Greenwood Dragon articles (hence non-canonical at that time) until the first Grey Box which came out ten years after the AD&D Monster Manual.

So?
People use the rules for games and ignore the setting all the time. It doesn't change the existence of the setting.
If I use FFG's Star Wars rules for a Battlestar Galactica game, Star Wars does not cease to exist.

Trying to cabin D&D into these terms; or deny D&D status to DL and OA, both of which predate FR as published settings; is just untenable. Forget "canon" and "continuity" - that requires ignoring or rewriting the actual history of the game for it's first 15 or so years!

How? By insisting that D&D isn't a generic set of rules? That D&D has some baked-in lore? That what makes D&D identifiably D&D is the combination of both the rules and and lore?

That's the crux of my argument here. D&D is not a generic RPG ruleset. D&D has lore and continuity.

What part of that do you dispute?

Sorry, which claim are you making about 4e?

That the general ruleset for 4e was not dissimilar from 3e. That the combat rules and other base rules of the game were almost identical. But revolutionary changes happened to the design of characters, powers, and monsters. And the presentation of the game.
In contrast, the base design of classes and monsters to a degree was similar between 2e and 3e, but the underlying rules of the game shifted.

Look at Essentials. Still very much 4th Edition. Zero changes to the base rules of the edition. But the classes were much more closer to traditional D&D classes. And it would not have been hard to make them closer still.

The main categories of value I'm familiar with, and that get discussed in works on value, are morals, ethics, family/social life, and art/aesthetic value. (And maybe self-interest.) I'm not saying those categories are exhaustive or watertight, but I'm trying to establish what realm of value canon is intended to belong to. The most obvious comparison is to works of literature or film (ie other story-telling works) - which are works of art. Hence my taking art/aesthetic value as a starting point.

Films and literature *can* be art. They can also be commercial products. I love the Marvel Cinematic Universe and a lot of skill and craft went into them. But are they art? Video games. I think you can argue that videogames can be art. Just as much as a novel or film. But would the latest Call of Duty be art?

Defining art is one of those things you can drive yourself mad thinking about. Are chimpanzee or elephant paintings art? Are posters art? Even motivational ones? Would corporate music be art: a jingle for a commercial? Are commercials art for that matter?

Personally, I don't think RPG products are works of art. To me, for something to be art the primary purpose must be to evoke an emotional response. Themes and subtext are also nice. Art is a personal thing, where small number of people create the product in a unified purpose.
As the primary purpose of D&D is to give the rules for a game, I don't think it's art any more than Monopoly is art.
Running (or rather performing) a game of D&D *can* be art. Kinda sorta.

But I'm first to admit this is a crap definition, as even the most schlocking and shamelessly money grabbing horror films are designed primarily to elicit an emotion…
It's not something I'm going to debate much as arguing what is or is not art is something that can stump better minds than mine.

I didn't think it was that outrageous a question! Criticism, critical discourse, discussion of what is valuable and why, are all pretty commonplace activities in relation to cultural activities. People explai why they like some books and not others; why they think some authors are superior to others (not necessarily the same thing); why they enjoy fly-fishing; etc.

People explain what they like about books. But personal taste is subjective and not easy to quantify. Most of the time, people just justify what they like.
When you probe deeper, the arguments tend to become less solid.

One of my favourite books is A Fine and Private Place. I love the dialogue, the descriptions. The creepy setting and dark whimsy. The wit and how Beagle turns a phrase. I can explain all that. But if you ask me *why* I like the macabre setting, why I like the witty humour and sharp lines more than physical humour or slapstick then I start to falter. When you probe deeper into the "whys" rather than the "whats" things become trickier.
I've tried to elaborate my fondness for continuity elsewhere. How it feels like a reward for paying attention. How it encourages me to read more, to fill in those gaps, to get all the pieces of the puzzle.
But some of that comes down to who I am. I value consistency. I like things to make sense. Even getting to shows I enjoyed in my youth (we're talking pre-school here) I prefered content like Kimba the White Lion and Astroboy, that had some continuity and episodes that followed from previous ones. It irked me when characters who could do something in one episode forgot the lesson or skill later.

Who owns it? From whom is it being borrowed? What duties are owed to the lenders? And what is the source of those duties?

These are the sorts of questions I am interested in hearing answer to.

Who owns D&D.
This is tricky. Like who owns Star Trek or Spider-man. There's the obvious answer or "the rights holders". But that feels weak, as it's also owned by the fans who have the emotional investment in the character or franchise. The owners of the IP have the right to do whatever they want to the character, but the fans can reject that.

It's like how the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms gives me the right to tell my wife she looks fat in her jeans. But in practice I won't say that. Because I don't have the moral right to say that, and it doesn't serve my self interests.

 

[Jester David]

1. Does this mean that all official products are, therefore, D&D canon? I can run my Gamma World and Boot Hill (official products) and call it D&D because they exist within the D&D multiverse? I can run Lankhmar and call it D&D? What about cases such as running an unofficial 5e conversion of a prior product (such as Mystara)?

They're WotC IP. Whether or not they exist in the same multiverse is up to them. According to the 1e PHB, officially they do. But I don't recall any official crossovers.

But personally don't think they're D&D. Even though GammaWorld has used the D&D rules on multiple occasions (and even had the D&D logo on the box once). They're different RPG brands owned by the same company.
In the same way that Transformers and G.I.Joe are different things despite both being Hasbro properties that have crossed over numerous times.

2. Does this mean that any homebrew campaign isn't D&D? If I invent my own high fantasy world, as do many people, I can't say it's D&D because it's not an official D&D campaign world? That does seem kind of odd! Or are you saying, "Hey, you can call your home campaign D&D, but that's like your grandma calling a Sega Genesis a Nintendo; cute, misguided, and not quite right." Or, alternatively, are you saying that people can do whatever they want, they just can't call it "canon."

It'd be canon to you. Table canon.
You can kill Elminster and that's suddenly canonical in your world and nothing can change that.
But it's not going to be official canon.

Can you call your Pathfinder RPG sessions "playing D&D"? Sure. But that's like spending a couple days playing Halo with your friends and calling it "a PlayStation weekend".

3. So, assuming it's the last thing (sure, you can call anything you want D&D, just not canon), then what is canon absent specific campaign settings? The canon of "generic" settings (such as FR and GH) is closer to "generic D&D" than is the canon of other settings (such as Dark Sun, Eberron, Lankhmar, Birthright, Mystara/Blackmoor (both official and 3PP), Nentir Vale, DL, and many others), some of which are mostly known for their differences from generic D&D. How would you judge cases like, um, the Judge's Guild, which had its own official license and its own campaign setting?

Licenced canon is not really canon. Fandoms like to pretend, but when push comes to shove, licenced canon is the first to be dropped. It's canon until something says otherwise.

Star Wars had levels of canon for a while. Licenced material was given the designation C-canon. Below G and T-canon.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_canon#The_Holocron

For example, the D&D video games are licensed and not always canon. The events of Baldur's Gate were made canon, but the events of Neverwinter Nights were never acknowledged in other FR products. It's kinda sorta canon, except when the events contradict another element (like why Neverwinter is warm) in which case the RPG books or novels trump the video games.

The FR Wiki goes into lengthy detail in what they consider canon and noncanon:
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki:Canon

I think that the issue I get hung up on when reading your posts is (3). To people like me, there is a big difference between the following three things-
1. Canon as in rules. (Six abilities, use a d20, etc.).
2. Canon as in "generic" D&D. The base fluff that can be found in the core rulebooks (PHB, DMG, MM) for an edition that may or may not apply to a specific campaign setting.
3. Canon as in continuity within a campaign world.

I see these three things referred to as "D&D canon," and I can't say that I believe that all three are the same thing.

I don't see the rules as "canon". Those are something else. A trope? Branding? A recognisable element? Removing these sacred cows makes D&D less, well, D&D, but are too widespread to be considered D&D by themselves.

I don't see a huge difference between 2 and 3. They're different things for sure. But there's also an overlap. All the core elements of D&D fit into the canon of Greyhawk. And the vast majority of D&D fits into the Realms. Greyhawk and Realms are just baseline D&D plus. And the lines where Greyhawk and D&D begin and end are nebulous at best. It's hard to point to something and say "this belongs only to Greyhawk and not D&D", save nations and places. Even NPCs and gods crossover. Is Mordenkainen a Greyhawk character or a D&D character?
This means there is no "generic D&D". There's the SRD, but that's just the rules. It's literally D&D with stuff cut out. I don't see that as D&D.

You can use D&D as a generic RPG but it's not. It works, and you can kitbash it to be generic, but it's not.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Jester David]

[MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] -- It was very fun exercise trying to figure out which book your snapshots were taken from. I think I have 7 or 8 of them correct; there's 3 or 4 I'm not terribly sure about.

In order:
[sblock]
Star Wars Saga (d20, WotC)
Heroes of Fallen Kingdom (D&D 4e, WotC)
The Complete Ninja's Handbook (D&D 2e, TSR)
Forgotten Realm's Campaign Setting (D&D 3e, WotC)
Midnight Campaign Setting (d20, FFG)
Iron Heroes (d20, Fiery Dragon Productions)
Tomb of Battle: Book of Nine Swords (D&D 3e, WotC)
Book of Experimental Might (d20, Malhavoc)
Tome of Magic (D&D 3e, WotC)
Heroes of the Elemental Chaos (D&D 4e, WotC)
Babylon 5 RPG (d20, Mongoose)
Revised Star Wars RPG (d20, WotC)

So eight WotC/TSR books, four official books for D&D, two campaign settings, and a three sci-fi games
[/sblock]

 

[Shasarak]

You wouldn't call the knockoff tablet that looks just like an iPad an "iPad". It's a knockoff. That's like your grandma calling your Sega Genesis a "Nintendo". So why would you call Pathfinder "D&D"?

The sane reason why you would call your off-brand Vacuum cleaner a Hoover. Or your soft drink a Coke. Or any other thing or activity with a market leader that has been adopted as a descriptor.

Telling someone that you are going to play DnD should engender the question "Which one?"

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Shasarak]

Have you ever xeroxed a document?
Have you ever needed to blow your nose, and grabbed a kleenex?
Have you ever ridden on a jet ski?
Have you cooked with a crock pot?
Do you like popsicles on a hot day?
Have you ever had to hide out in a dumpster? etc.

Yeah, it would be amusing if you copied a document and then were told that you did it wrong because it was not Xeroxed.

 

[Shasarak]

Two RQ games will have the same commonality. So will two Monopolopy games! That's what happens when two groups of people play the same game with the same flavour text.

It doesn't follow, though, that the stories happen in the same fictional world.

Catch-22 is a fiction set during WWII. Sgt Fury and his Howling Commandos likewise. That doesn't mean we have to take them as happening in the same world. To suppose that Yossarian and Dum Dum Dugan might have crossed paths if only one had zigged instead of zagging.

And if someone were to write a Catch-22/Sgt Fury mash-up, well, good luck to them, but that would be a third fictional world, not part of a single "multiverse".

It would be even worse if you were able to take one Monopoly piece to another Monopoly game without someone telling you - you cant do that, this is a different Monopoly game!

That is the same as DnD, crossing the streams since ripping off Hobbits from Middle Earth.

 

[Jester David]

The sane reason why you would call your off-brand Vacuum cleaner a Hoover. Or your soft drink a Coke. Or any other thing or activity with a market leader that has been adopted as a descriptor.

Telling someone that you are going to play DnD should engender the question "Which one?"

Sure. It happens. A lot as [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] demonstrate (he forgot band-aid tho).

Doesn't make it correct.