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

[Maxperson]

Doesn't that mean you're not actually playing a Forgotten Realms game though? By your criteria?

No.

 

[Maxperson]

Ok. Let's take a real example. The first three Adventure Paths that Paizo did were all ostensibly held in Greyhawk.

Now the Savage Tide AP starts in Sasserine, a completely new addition to Greyhawk and then takes you to The Isle of Dread, which started out as a location in Mystara.

So is it a Greyhawk adventure or not? It certainly was heralded as such. It's certainly meant to be a Greyhawk adventure. But is it by your criteria?

For me, no. The Isle of Dread is in another setting.

 

[ProgBard]

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.

You can make your own call about what this says about me, but honestly? Even in your analogy, I can't imagine bringing myself to care what he calls it. It just doesn't seem that important to me. Frankly, I'd be too fascinated by his act of syncretism to be bothered. The differences between the way he views his toys and the way I view mine look like avenues for conversation, not argument.

I mean, I might be puzzled by them, but I'd also want to know how his thoughts led him to make the melding he does. When talking about it with someone else, I might refer to it as "pemerton's alt-McDonaldland," but it's not worth it to try and tell him to call it the "right" name. There's too much other interesting stuff about his playset to talk about!

(You must understand, tho, that my position is one of a card-carrying missionary descriptivist; my advice here to "let it go" is the same thing I offer to people who get bent out of shape about decimate. And, indeed, I see many parallels here in the lore debates to the perennial 'scriptivist wars that plague my professional circles, down to the same worries that people won't be able to communicate if the meanings of terms get diluted. But to me, Greyhawk is whatever someone is pointing to when they say "Greyhawk," even if that definition shifts through time or from context to context - and the truth is, with just a little effort, we can all understand each other just fine. And in the same way that I champion the legitimacy of dialect, I give the side-eye to arguments suggesting that only the "standard" version of the setting is worthy of the name.)

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

Okay, cool, then! As long as we're all having fun and being decent to each other, carry on, gentles.

 

[Harzel]

I think part of the problem with this debate is the difference between "d&d" and "D&D™"

Much like how gelatin is casually referred to as jello (even if its not Jell-o™ brand) or facial tissues are called kleenex (even if its not Kleenex™ brand) or someone "googles" something (even if they aren't using Google™ Search), "d&d" can refer to a lot of games that are similar games (retro-clones, homebrews, and d20 derivatives) without being Dungeons & Dragons™. Part of what makes D&D™ is the lore and flavor of the game. Pathfinder, for example, can mimic D&D rules 99% of the time, but it can't mimic Lolth, Faerun, the Hand of Vecna, or other parts of the D&D™ brand.

It is this lore, in fact, that makes D&D™ what it is; rules cannot be copyrighted and much of the cat is out of the bag as far as terminology thanks to the SRDs. I mean, what separated the Pocket PHB (which was the SRD in digest form) from the regular D&D Player's Handbook? Lore. Really, its the only thing WotC really CAN control and market.

That is an interesting take, but a couple of things about it seem problematic to me.

1. Which lore exactly are you referring to? You have given a few examples, but what else qualifies and how much of it do I need in order to be playing D&D™? Really, this just seems to circle back into an expanded and even less well-defined version of the debate that is already going on here (with no resolution in sight): how much of the lore of a setting must be present to still consider it the 'same' setting?
2. It appears to me that your definition runs counter to what is suggested by WoTC themselves:

Every DM is the creator of his or her own campaign world. Whether you invent a world, adapt a world from a favorite move or novel, or use a published setting for the D&D game, you make that world your own over the course of a campaign.

The world where you set your campaign is one of countless worlds that make up the D&D multiverse.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

One big problem that's being run into, is the simple matter that settings have a number of defining elements, and any of those elements might be incredibly important to you, while irrelevant or even unknown to someone else.

When I play in your FR game, and you mention that's FR without the novel characters and such at all, I might be disappointed- because to me FR is Drizzt and Elminster Novels. Meanwhile, I might run FR too, but I have the novel characters running around- but something else is different, maybe I run it with a completely different idea about how high or low magic the setting should be as a whole. The trick here, is that most of these settings aren't a singular gimmick- and what's central to the setting to me might not matter for you or vice versa.

I've seen people complain that the 5e realms are too low magic for items and stuff, and that it doesn't fit the realms. To those players high magic levels, was an important part of the realms, but others wouldn't care. For some players, throwing additional races into a setting, like warforged running around in FR, isn't a big deal. Some folks might love Eberron for it's tech level, and it's political intrigues, but they want a more traditional experience with the divine and incorporate the clear influence of actual gods. That's a pretty big change, but youd be hard pressed to call it not eberron as you fight atop a lightning rail car or investigate sordid stories in shar.

Dark Sun, could lose sorcerer kings and add cruel deities, and many Dark Sun campaigns would still function not much worse for wear. But to some people, the divine absence is a deal breaking trait, or the sorcerer kings, or psionics. But for each of those groups of people, the other things really aren't deal breakers. We can talk about what happens when you throw everything out, but it seems to me that to declare one's world FR or GH instead of something else, one must have gotten attached to something about it.

But in the context of lore, there's so much of it for all of these settings (i'm a veritable encyclopedia of middle earth, and Krynn based lore) it seems silly to insist that people lose the right to consider their setting something by not including all of it, or changing some of it to match their vision of what the setting should be like. If I were running a dragonlance game, I would probably alter things- Tinker gnomes might not be a part of the setting, for instance- I might add some more races and then change the demographics of some of the game's human dominated areas, probably preserving solamnia as the primary human nation, to make the game world more diverse in light of all the races i know we would like to play. If i were running Middle Earth, I would probably completely change it's view of easterners because i don't appreciate the way they're portrayed. I might even make it friendlier to DND by altering some of the way magic works- maybe go for a more hobbit type feel, where wizards aren't literally demigods.

But i'd still have hobbits, and shires, and lonely/misty mountains, and minas tirith, and mirkwood and ringwraiths, and fading elves, and stubborn greedy dwarves, and the majority of the history outlined in the silmarillion. Just with better easterners, and more magic, maybe some neat ideas to spice up the dwarves too idk, but i'd swear to my grave that we were playing in middle earth. If any of those things I took out define middle earth to you, you might disagree- but i'd challenge you to tell me it isn't middle earth while i'm using all of the elements of the traditional setting i did keep, and providing my take on the experience. Settings are their definitive elements, those are why we use them, but there's no objective litmus test for when it stops being the setting, because everyone is going to have different ideas about what defines a given setting. "everything" is one counter-argument i suppose, but that seems greedy, and disingenuous, as it would make it impossible to ever be playing in a published setting.

 

[pemerton]

He can also play around with canon, it's just more likely to disrupt things.

What things? I've never had disruption issues.

 

[pemerton]

You don't have to use every detail in every book. The PCs aren't everywhere and don't encounter everything

I did that with King Azoun. He never died, because I like him too much. That's the one flat out changed piece of lore in my game. I'm also in 3e stasis with my FR. The 4e spellplague is, well, just dumb in my opinion and since they are just going to build on top of that, I don't get to use any lore from FR products past 3e.

Doesn't that mean you're not actually playing a Forgotten Realms game though? By your criteria?

No.

How is your game still a FR game, whereas mine is not a GH game? What's your basis for this seemingly arbitrary contrast?

For me, no. The Isle of Dread is in another setting.

For me, certain elements of FtA are from "another setting" - namely, a variant GH (much as you treat Savage Tides as an "alternate GH", given you reject its canonical incorporation of the Isle of Dread).

Again, I don't see any basis for the distinctions you are drawing - if you're allowed to pick and choose your GH while keeping it GH, why does my doing of the same make it not GH?

Now, the fishing example is a more extreme example of what [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] is doing. I don't think he's crazy.

Again, it's pleasing to learn that you don't think I'm crazy. But what is mysterious to me is how you think what I'm doing is different, in any interesting way vis-a-vis fidelity to setting and lore, from what you're doing.

And [MENTION=6801252]The-Magic-Sword[/MENTION] - great post! I think I can see what is going on with the GH vikings being really Suel - it's an attempt to capture the pulp trope of "the present-day savages are remnants of a once-mighty empire" - but I happen to think that in this case the implementation of the trope has failed, because it robs the vikings of their viking-ness. But to someone else, that element of GH might be really important to them. There can be differences in GH interpretation like there are differences in the interpreation of, and extrapolation from, any other fictional work.

 

[pemerton]

I think part of the problem with this debate is the difference between "d&d" and "D&D™"

Much like how gelatin is casually referred to as jello (even if its not Jell-o™ brand) or facial tissues are called kleenex (even if its not Kleenex™ brand) or someone "googles" something (even if they aren't using Google™ Search), "d&d" can refer to a lot of games that are similar games (retro-clones, homebrews, and d20 derivatives) without being Dungeons & Dragons™.

<snip>

For most of us, this is a distinction without meaning. Just as nobody cares whether you google, search, or bing a result so as long as you find what you're looking for, few care if they call their heavily modified homebrew game d&d so long as they have fun. But for the Trademark holder, it IS a big deal. And Wizard's is wise to leverage their brand names (via lore) as much as they can; Pathfinder might be "d&d", but the Neverwinter MMO is more "D&D™" than Pathfinder is.

So the question of if the lore matters is partially a question of "does D&D™ matter?" Because there are dozens of ways to play "d&d", and many of them don't even require you to own a WotC or even a TSR book to do so. However, there is really only one way to play "D&D™", and that's how the game currently presents it* (demon-gnolls and all). I think its a far-more distinct difference than most would give credit for: when one person talks about D&D™ gnolls, while another is talking about "d&d" gnolls, they are talking about two different things.

<snip>

So, when someone takes a campaign setting and re-writes it, or modifies and house-rules the mechanics, he is still playing "d&d", but he is no longer playing D&D™. For most games, that is not a concern, but it does become a concern when a bunch of different people discuss the game, as one might be discussing it from a "d&d" perspective and another from a D&D™ perspective.

This post seems to elide perspectives as it moves from the beginning to the end.

It's true that WotC has a commercial and proprietary interest in the distinctiveness of its lore (though the interest is mostly one of copyright, not trademark - the distinctiveness of D&D or FR lore has no bearing on whether or not WotC enjoys exclusive rights to use those names to promote its products, but it does have a bearing on whether or not they can stop other people publishing copies of their books).

But what is the significance, to an individual player, of playing "D&D" (as you label it)? What does that even mean? What would it even mean to play a game that uses only D&D's intellectual property - how would new fictions, over which WotC does not enjoy the copyright, even be created? You give the example of changes in gnoll canon - but given that the express intention of WotC is that the demonic 5e gnolls should occupy the same conceptual, functional and "literary" space as 4e anti-Nerath gnolls, or Moldvay Basic gnome+troll gnolls, what is at stake, from a player's point of view, in drawing this distinction?

(Note the contrast here with archons - 4e archons are deliberately using the same name for a different being that is expressly not intended to occup the same space in the fiction as do MotP/PS archons.)

And also, what makes it limited to the current edition? WotC enjoys exactly the same intellectual property rights in respect of all editions of D&D (which is why some people, including me, doubt that OSRIC is consistent either with the OGL or general copyright law).

 

[Maxperson]

What things? I've never had disruption issues.

You are not everyone.

 

[Maxperson]

How is your game still a FR game, whereas mine is not a GH game? What's your basis for this seemingly arbitrary contrast?

I've answered that at least a half dozen times already. You can look one of those up.

For me, certain elements of FtA are from "another setting" - namely, a variant GH (much as you treat Savage Tides as an "alternate GH", given you reject its canonical incorporation of the Isle of Dread).

Where is the alternate Greyhawk setting? I'd like to look at it. Also, the incorporation of the Isle of Dread is not canon. Paizo is incapable of creating D&D canon as they don't own the rights to D&D.

Again, it's pleasing to learn that you don't think I'm crazy. But what is mysterious to me is how you think what I'm doing is different, in any interesting way vis-a-vis fidelity to setting and lore, from what you're doing.

Again, I've answered this at least a half dozen time already. It really shouldn't be mysterious.