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

[pemerton]

without the acorn there would be no tree.

This is not a good metaphor for the transition from Appendix IV and DDG to the "Multiverse". It is the telos of an acorn to grow into a tree. But it was not the telos of Appendix IV, or of Gygax's practical advice on worldbuilding and moving PCSs from campaign to campaign, to have it turn into Spelljammer, Planescape and the multiverse.

Those are just one way that the game happened to develop, during the late 80s and 90s. 3E watered it down; 4e ignored it; 5e is reviving it. It's a choice, not a destiny, and not inherent to D&D.

People use the rules for games and ignore the setting all the time. It doesn't change the existence of the setting.

But if that is what is expected and encouraged by the publisher of the rules (which it is for D&D, whereas it is not for Star Wars or Marvel Heroic RP), then one can hardly say that it is unorthodox, or not playing the game as intended, or - in the case of the D&D rules - not playing D&D.

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?

No one in this thread is denying that D&D has a tone, and some default tropes, and some distinctive ways of handling certain things (trolls, armour and weapon types, etc). But - as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s Scarred Lands example shows, or as Dark Sun shows - one can depart from these in various ways and still be plauying D&D.

That doesn't entail that anything counts as playing D&D. It's a fallacy to infer from the fact that (i) departure from defaults is possible, and (ii) we can't know in advance what sorts of departures will be permissible without destroying the identity of D&D, to (iii) anything goes. That was [MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION]'s point about James Bond, for instance. But the falsehood of (iiI) doesn't entail the falsehood of (ii). And the fact that we can't know, in advance, what range of changes is consistent with being D&D does mean that D&D can't be cabined into some static set of somewhat arbitrarily-chosen categories.

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.

<snip>

All the core elements of D&D fit into the canon of Greyhawk.

Well, Boot Hill is canonically part of GH (as per Murlynd), and so is Metamorphis Alpha (as per the campaign reports in Dragon magazine), so either GH extends beyond D&D or else Boot Hill and Metamorphis Alpha are part of the GH canon. And if they're in, why not Gamma World too!

And is it true that all the core elements of D&D fit into the canon of GH? One core element of D&D has been that clerics can't use edged weapons - but GH dropped that (as per articles in Dragon magazine, and then the GH boxed set).

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".

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

Doesn't make it correct.

My first experiences with 3e were set in Scarred Lands. <details snipped>

Cool. Sounds like you had fun.
Would I say you were playing D&D? Well… it's not really for me to say.

The thing D&D has going for it is it's ubiquitous. It's not a generic system. It's not always the most hackable system. But people know it. So they make it their own.
You can hack any system. Just the other day I was listening to the Tabletop Babble podcast and they were talking about using systems to play superheroes, and numerous non-cape systems were suggested included 3e and 4e D&D. You can make the D&D rules into anything with a little effort.

But none of that means D&D is a generic rulelset. Adding a different world doesn't mean the existing one ceases to exist.
You can mod Grand Theft Auto to let you play as Iron Man or the Hulk. Or add pirates or Pokemon to Ark: Survival Evolved. But that doesn't negate the story, characters, and lore of the existing video games.

The apparent implication of all this is that playing D&D in a home campaign world, or ignoring some bit of the Monster Manual ("In my world there are no lizardfolk, and kobolds speak Goblin, not Draconic") is not really playing D&D, but is a type of "hack" - and describing it as D&D is a bit like calling a Canon photocopier a Xerox.

That's bizarre. I mean, the D&D rulebooks tell you how to make your own campaign, and tell you to take what you want from the Monster Manual and leave the rest! They're deliberately presented as suggestions and tools, not necessary conditions for really being D&D.

 

[pemerton]

But, in seriousness, if you include Pathfinder, why not Castles & Crudades and 13th Age. Why not OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Hackmaster, Swords & Wizardry, Blueholme, and sooooo many others?
How can you justify excluding any?

I have to say I took it for granted that all those things are D&D. OSRIC is an AD&D clone, and deliberatel so. Hackmaster was published under licence from WotC (or TSR? My memory of the timing is a bit shaky, but my understanding is that it was the offshoot of a settlement over IP disputes arising out of the Dragon CDROM). Swords & Wizardy is OSRIC for OD&D; Labyrinth Lord is OSRIC for Moldvay Basic; etc.

None of these is a non-D&D game.

Which ones would you say are D&D

The first has a font that suggests a modern or sci-fi genre, rather than fantasy. I don't know, but I'm going to guess D20 Modern. It could even be Star Wars or M&M, but I think the labels "Martial Arts I" and "Martial Arts II", which are quite flavourless, suggests a more generic ruleset.

The fact that it uses "melee" as its term for hand-to-hand combat shows the influence of D&D on its drafting. These feats could easily be used in a D&D game, and I suspect have been.

The second is from one of the 4e Essentials books. It's D&D.

The third is also from some sort of SRD-ish ruleset - it uses the technical terminology of AD&D but not 3E (bonues/penalties "to hit" in the -6 to +2 range, saves vs paralysation, 1d4 hp damage). I think it's some sort of AD&D OA clone. It's clearly meant for use in a D&D game - it's in the category of unofficial supplement, like an article in Dragon magazine back in the day.

The fourth is a list of feats for some SRD-ish ruleset. It refers to "fire descriptor" rather that "fire" or "fire keyword"; and it refers to "class skills" - which makes it 3E rather than 4e. I'll guess some 3E-era FR supplement, maybe the SKR campaign guide. It's clearly for use in 3E D&D.

The fifth is clearly for a fantasy game even before one gets to "Magecraft" - the font tells us that. It's a D&D variant, because spellcasting is located in a feat ("Greater Spellcasting") rather than as a class ability. Magic seems to be called "Channelling" - I wonder if it's WoT? (Never read it, and I haven't Googled it for this purpose as that would be cheating, but I think it might call magic-use "channelling".) This could be used with D&D, but would require looking at how it interacts with existing classes. (I remember the 2nd ed Spell & Magic supplement had "channelling" as a casting option, but it was still class-based.)

The sixth is some 3E variant, because it includes standard 3E feats mixed in with stuff like "boosted" feats, feats that give an extra buff when taken as a fighter bonus feats, and "uberfeats", whatever exactly those are. This is a D&D variant.

The seventh is another list of feats intended for use in D&D 3E-type games. More supplements, and I would guess unofficial simply because the watermark in the middle of the page doesn't looke like WotC's style to me.

The eighth is like the sixth - some D&D variant with standard 3E feats mixed with "shadow" feats.

The ninth is from a 4e book - presumably Heroes of the Elemental Chaos.

The tenth is in a font that suggests modern/sci-fi rather than fantasy. It has Latent Telepaths, Independently Weatlhy and Pyrokinesis. The use of "credits" for currency, which I've just noticed under Independently Weatlhy, suggests sci-fi. I assume some sort of SRD-based sci-fi game

The eleventh has a very neutral font, but Zero-G Training suggests more sci-fi. Pluse I'm seeing "blaster pistols" as a weapon group. The style of the table layout makes me wonder whether it's a WotC book - the sci-fi supplement for D20 Modern?

If there's a twelfth, it didn't show for me (I can't tell whether it's a twelfth, or a "bluescreen" part of the 11th).

So anyway, they're all clearly D&D except for the three modern/sci-fi ones - which are still clearly D&D derivatives, and could easily be ported into a 3E D&D game - and for the one with the variant spell-using, which is D&D-esque but would require some hacking of existing spell-using classes. They all use the idiom of feats that 3E established and that has been inherited by SRD/d20-type games. (Even the AD&D clone one has tightened up the presentation in response to 3E norms - if you look at the presentiation of martial arts maneouvres in the original OA, it's far more sloppy.)

For a really non-D&D game I'd suggest looking at some of those that I mentioned upthread. They don't use these same idioms.

 

[Jester David]

Exactly, how can you justify excluding any? DnD is not the writer - there have been many writers creating DnD products. DnD is not the company - there has been more then one company creating DnD products. DnD is not the rules system - there have been more then one rules system called DnD. DnD is not the monsters - you can play essentially forever without ever encountering a "branded" DnD monster. DnD is not the art - there have been many styles and artists over the years.

I just see your definition of what is and what is not DnD to be simultaneously too strict by disregarding DnD clones and too loose by including disparate versions of "DnD" as the same thing.

Then what's your definition? Let's hear it. It's got to be better than mine, right?
Define D&D. Go.

 

[Tony Vargas]

But, in seriousness, if you include Pathfinder

As being a compatible clone of an edition of D&D, you mean?

, why not Castles & Crudades and 13th Age. Why not OSRIC, Labyrinth Lord, Hackmaster, Swords & Wizardry, Blueholme, and sooooo many others?
How can you justify excluding any?

Because they're not all clones, and not any of them as compatible? Maybe there's some OSR games that are compatible with some version of the classic game (the classic game having so many unofficial variations)? (IDK, I blipped through my brief paleo-gaming nostalgia phase a few years before OSR hit big.)

13A, for instance, is a d20 game, consciously emulates D&D, and, indeed had and succeeded at many of the same goals as 5e. But you couldn't just drop a 13A character in a D&D game and have it work just fine.

In contrast, playing a 3.5 character in a PF game or vice versa doesn't seem like it'd be particularly more involved than playing a 3.0 character in a 3.5 game or vice-versa.

Absolutely! Cooperative, rules-mediated authorship is (in my view) a huge component of RPGing.

Or it's anathema to it, depending on who you talk to.

This is not a good metaphor for the transition from Appendix IV and DDG to the "Multiverse". It is the telos of an acorn to grow into a tree. But it was not the telos of Appendix IV, or of Gygax's practical advice on worldbuilding and moving PCSs from campaign to campaign, to have it turn into Spelljammer, Planescape and the multiverse.

Those are just one way that the game happened to develop, during the late 80s and 90s. 3E watered it down

The multiverse was a feature of AD&D when I started playing it c1980, the PH (1978) had the rectangular version of the Great Wheel diagram, and, IIRC, referenced the infinite parallels of the prime material or words to that effect.

; 4e ignored it;

The World Axis had alternate primes ('Natural' worlds). The Feywild and Shadowfell are explicitly exceptions, for instance.

It's a choice, not a destiny, and not inherent to D&D.

IDK, I think the moment they decided to lift ideas from Moorcock, the Multiverse concept was inevitable.

But if (using the system in other settings) is what is expected and encouraged by the publisher of the rules (which it is for D&D, whereas it is not for Star Wars or Marvel Heroic RP), then one can hardly say that it is unorthodox, or not playing the game as intended, or - in the case of the D&D rules - not playing D&D.

Correct.

Well, Boot Hill is canonically part of GH (as per Murlynd), and so is Metamorphis Alpha (as per the campaign reports in Dragon magazine), so either GH extends beyond D&D or else Boot Hill and Metamorphis Alpha are part of the GH canon. And if they're in, why not Gamma World too!

The Warden was launched from the future Earth that became Gamma World.

the D&D rulebooks tell you how to make your own campaign, and tell you to take what you want from the Monster Manual and leave the rest! They're deliberately presented as suggestions and tools, not necessary conditions for really being D&D.

Trying to define what's 'really D&D' (beyond, of course, the obvious, that the IP holder gets to decide what to slap the trademark on), is just a first step in making a case to exclude from 5e something someone else may have dared to love about D&D in the past.

 

[pemerton]

These all evoke DL for you, but for me they weren't the interesting part of the gnome or the wild sorcerer or the setting itself as the actual sourcebooks that I read described it.

<snip>

The problem is that I tried to make an authentic DL character and, in your estimation, failed, because the lore I was true to wasn't lore that you recognized as in the Dragonlance "genre" (despite the fact that the designers and authors who worked in that genre saw them as within that genre).

If the lore hadn't changed, that wouldn't be a problem.

As I've said before, I don't agree.

The issue between you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] isn't that you read the wrong lore. It's that you read the setting differently. Hussar (like me) see a setting about redemption by restoration of divine order. And connected to that are other themes about restoring order (eg restoring the Knights; restoring the Towers of High Sorcerery; restoring friendships and relationships with kin; etc).

Whereas you have looked at the bits of the setting that are presented as marks of pathology (the Greygem; gnomish madness; etc) and have put them front and centre as ideals.

I remember reading a critic who said the bit in Tom Sawyer where Tom gets all his friends to help paint the fence teaches the value of work. I think that's a wild misreading; but in any event, it's not a difference of interpretation that flows from reading different passages in the book. You and Hussar are working from the same lore, but read the setting differently. No amount of promulgating more setting; or of not promulgating more setting; will prevent people interpreting things differently.

 

[Jester David]

Those are just one way that the game happened to develop, during the late 80s and 90s. 3E watered it down; 4e ignored it; 5e is reviving it. It's a choice, not a destiny, and not inherent to D&D.

But if that is what is expected and encouraged by the publisher of the rules (which it is for D&D, whereas it is not for Star Wars or Marvel Heroic RP), then one can hardly say that it is unorthodox, or not playing the game as intended, or - in the case of the D&D rules - not playing D&D.

No one in this thread is denying that D&D has a tone, and some default tropes, and some distinctive ways of handling certain things (trolls, armour and weapon types, etc). But - as [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s Scarred Lands example shows, or as Dark Sun shows - one can depart from these in various ways and still be plauying D&D.

That doesn't entail that anything counts as playing D&D. It's a fallacy to infer from the fact that (i) departure from defaults is possible, and (ii) we can't know in advance what sorts of departures will be permissible without destroying the identity of D&D, to (iii) anything goes. That was [MENTION=88539]LowKey[/MENTION]'s point about James Bond, for instance. But the falsehood of (iiI) doesn't entail the falsehood of (ii). And the fact that we can't know, in advance, what range of changes is consistent with being D&D does mean that D&D can't be cabined into some static set of somewhat arbitrarily-chosen categories.

Well, Boot Hill is canonically part of GH (as per Murlynd), and so is Metamorphis Alpha (as per the campaign reports in Dragon magazine), so either GH extends beyond D&D or else Boot Hill and Metamorphis Alpha are part of the GH canon. And if they're in, why not Gamma World too!

And is it true that all the core elements of D&D fit into the canon of GH? One core element of D&D has been that clerics can't use edged weapons - but GH dropped that (as per articles in Dragon magazine, and then the GH boxed set).



The apparent implication of all this is that playing D&D in a home campaign world, or ignoring some bit of the Monster Manual ("In my world there are no lizardfolk, and kobolds speak Goblin, not Draconic") is not really playing D&D, but is a type of "hack" - and describing it as D&D is a bit like calling a Canon photocopier a Xerox.

That's bizarre. I mean, the D&D rulebooks tell you how to make your own campaign, and tell you to take what you want from the Monster Manual and leave the rest! They're deliberately presented as suggestions and tools, not necessary conditions for really being D&D.

So, are you setting D&D is a generic roleplay game ruleset? Yes or no.

 

[Jester David]

As being a compatible clone of an edition of D&D, you mean?

Because they're not all clones, and not any of them as compatible? Maybe there's some OSR games that are compatible with some version of the classic game (the classic game having so many unofficial variations)? (IDK, I blipped through my brief paleo-gaming nostalgia phase a few years before OSR hit big.)

Again, being compatible with a iPad does not make something an iPad product.

If a gas station cord bricks your tablet, the people at the Apple store are going to laugh when you mention warranties.

 

[Tony Vargas]

Again, being compatible with a iPad does not make something an iPad product.

I believe I granted the copyright/TM issue, above. A better analogy might be the PC-compatibles of the 80s. Sure, PF isn't a WotC product anymore than a Compaq was an IBM product. But you could get a very similar experience using either, and use something meant for one with the other pretty easily.

(Happily that analogy doesn't extend to the point of IBM no longer making PCs...
...oh, I guess TSR no longer makes RPGs, so it kinda does, a little... )

So, are you setting D&D is a generic roleplay game ruleset? Yes or no.

It's an FRPG ruleset. If it were meant to be a generic RPG like GURPS, it'd be a pretty sad one...
... I suppose d20 could be called generic, but that'd be pushing it, IMHO, it's much more analogous to a 'core system' of the early 80s (like, say Chaosium BRP) than to a generic or universal one.

 

[I'm A Banana]

As I've said before, I don't agree.

The issue between you and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] isn't that you read the wrong lore. It's that you read the setting differently.

Hussar (like me) see a setting about redemption by restoration of divine order. And connected to that are other themes about restoring order (eg restoring the Knights; restoring the Towers of High Sorcerery; restoring friendships and relationships with kin; etc).

Whereas you have looked at the bits of the setting that are presented as marks of pathology (the Greygem; gnomish madness; etc) and have put them front and centre as ideals.

It's not like that reading came ex nihilo. It came because of what was actually written in the setting books and lore websites for the setting.

In fact: part of this DM's schtick is that he's drawing a direct parallel between each of the current party and one of the original Heroes of the Lance. I'm pretty ignorant of the original stories, but it turns out my gnome wild mage fits the "Raistlin Majere" model of Hero pretty nicely judging by TV tropes - Byronic anti-hero/anti-villain with an air of insufferable genius who uses the War of the Lance to further his own ends more out of a sense that Takhisis is bad than in support of any of the ideals of the other heroes? Potentially world-destroying in his myopic pursuit of what he thinks is Right? Criminey, if all the heroes have to want to bring back the gods, how the hell did Weiss and Hickman even conceive of this character, let alone make him arguably the Iconic Wizard of DL? A few little tweaks, but I can see what the DM is working with there!

Hussar read different books, different lore (from what I'm to understand, no wild sorcery, for one) so he came to a different conclusion about what DL expected from its heroes.

Genre is personal, so I'm not about to tell him he's wrong about DL as a genre, but what's clear is that we're not on the same page, and consistent lore would've helped that. If the only magic was through the Tower of High Sorcery and there was never wild sorcery, I wouldn't be a wild sorcerer. If the Greygem didn't make the gnomes, I might not think of that as an important facet of the character. If every tinker gnome had to build a rube goldberg device, I might've done that! If the lore didn't explicitly allow for the kind of character I'm playing, I would be playing a different character!

I remember reading a critic who said the bit in Tom Sawyer where Tom gets all his friends to help paint the fence teaches the value of work. I think that's a wild misreading; but in any event, it's not a difference of interpretation that flows from reading different passages in the book. You and Hussar are working from the same lore, but read the setting differently. No amount of promulgating more setting; or of not promulgating more setting; will prevent people interpreting things differently.

If he thinks every DL PC needs to want the return of the gods and that there's no such thing as wild sorcery or gnomish spellcasters that work outside of the Tower, he's clearly working from different source material than I am, because all of the material I'm looking at shows explicitly that there are DL heroes who don't think the gods are hot shakes (Raistlin), that wild sorcery is A Thing, and that gnomish spellcasters exist.

Both of us can't be right about those points, if we're reading the same information. Upthread, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] mentioned that a lot of these elements of my character were from later revisions to DL lore, not from the original lore he was familiar with (maybe Raistlin was a character introduced after the original book series?). I've no reason to contradict him on that.

 

[pemerton]

Guy walking by hears..

Player:I hit him with a fireball doing 6d6

Guy walking bylaying D&D?

Player:No. Champions. My superhero can throw balls of fire. It's kinda weak, but it's fun!

To be fully idiomatic Champions, wouldn't it have to e be 6d6 stun damage or 6d6 body damage? As opposed to 6d6 hp damage.