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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Imaro]

I think I stated it in quite clearly, here-

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...-quot/page45&p=7013269&viewfull=1#post7013269

To refresh your recollection, here is a pertinent part-

"Which is why there tends to be these lengthy and inconclusive threads regarding canon.

For people that are proponents of strong canon, they enjoy learning all the lore, and find that people that aren't playing to one aspect of the lore aren't really "doing X right." I mean, it's fine that they are playing D&D, but they aren't really playing, say, FR, in the same way that they would argue that a Star Wars film with Klingons isn't really Star Wars.

Those who don't see it this way view strong canon proponents as people who use nebulous definitions of canon as a club to exclude lore and play that they don't agree with on subjective grounds, which goes against their own conception of what D&D is.

...

In the end, I have always viewed "canon," as something as a fool's game. A person can certainly mine FR novels for ideas, and make their games more consistent with it if they chose, and that is completely awesome for them! But that's not really any different than mining Moorcock, or Lieber, or Vance, or Zelazny, or Donaldson, or Martin (R.R., assuming he ever gets pages) for ideas. If you want great ideas for FR, there's a whole wiki; but D&D has always been about mixing and matching. About fun and creation; not strict adherence to someone else's ideas. IMO."

I find that people such as yourself view "canon," not as a source of inclusivity, but as a source of exclusivity. Your game isn't "canon," and neither is anyone else's.

If you don't like sci-fi, and thus ignore Barrier Peaks, you're still running GH. Just like if someone adds in a third moon. Or puts in Dragonborn (or doesn't). Greyhawk is a set of lore (maps, ideas, etc.) to pick and choose from when it comes to running your game. There is a long history, and no one would argue that communication within the table hurts.

My table knows that I run GH based on the 1983 folio, as modified by the actions of decades of adventures. My Sea of Dust and Valley of the Mage, for example, are based on what I created; not what post-Gygax WoTC decided to fill in later. If someone new joins my table, they grok that pretty quickly. It's rather pointless for a self-appointed canon police to tell me that "You're not running Greyhawk," in the same way that it is pointless for me to say, "Anyone running 3e GH is a waste of oxygen, given how badly it was destroyed by WoTC." It's all good!

If it makes you feel better to judge what is, and isn't, canon, that's fine. If that includes making arbitrary distinctions between alterations, additions, changes, and whether or not official modules are canon, more power to you. But these are subjective, not objective, qualities, and you should expect some gentle (or not so gentle) pushback.

You really havent been reading what ive posted... have you?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Hriston]

I don't think we are discussing a contention around compatibility (I'm sure most DM's can make almost anything they homebrew into a setting "compatible" with it)... We are discussing whether a particular fact that a DM adds is a change in the canon of the setting or an addition within the parameters of the established canon of the setting. A change being the replacing or modifying of an already existing fact about the setting...while an addition is adding to or fleshing out lore within the parameters of what has already been established in said setting.

I'm not sure why you're taking issue with my use of compatible. In the terms you've set forth here, an addition is something compatible with established canon while a change is not compatible, thus requiring a change to (or more properly, disregard of) established canon to implement. Again, under this rubric, three moons is an addition because it is not contradicted by the canon established by the folio.

Again it's not about issues of compatibility... However I would argue that if the folio establishes there are two moons of Greyhawk/Oerth

It doesn't. It establishes only that there are at least two moons.

 

[pemerton]

What exactly is your definition of "canon" again? It can't possibly mean anything and everything because then it becomes meaningless... so how exactly are you using the word canon?

I'm not saying that the 3rd moon is canon - of course it's not.

I'm saying that adding it doesn't make the game cease to be a GH game. Any RPGing will mean that the setting takes on non-canonical features/elements.

 

[pemerton]

I doesn't have to say what's not there. It has to say what IS there. Without open language such as, "There are two known moons.", the statements are definitive.

And for the record no... we don't know what's in the folio since no one has actually posted what is written regarding Oerth's moons...

I have.

The folio and the boxed set are the same in their discussion of heaveny bodies. Both are written in an in-fiction voice, of a sage reporting what is known and speculating about astrological signficance.

To add a third moon unknown to that sage doesn't change anything. To have a campaign where one of the moons is really an illusion to conceal a sci-fi style orbital weapons platform doesn't change anything. Of course these are additions to, and hence departures from, canon - but they don't contradict the canon established in the folio/boxed set.

 

[pemerton]

We are discussing whether a particular fact that a DM adds is a change in the canon of the setting or an addition within the parameters of the established canon of the setting.

The canon material establishes that a sage wrote a treatise talking about three moons. It doesn't establish that there isn't a third moon of which that sage is unaware.

especially in the context of adding the Wizards of High Sorcery from Dragonlance into the setting (an order who draw their power from the phases of the moon in the setting...which in turn makes it kind of odd that no one was aware of that third moon until... well that hasn't been fully explained yet)

Secret cults with occult power sources are a dime a dozen in the S&S genre!

 

[pemerton]

Why stop at 3? Why not have 12,000 moons fill the night sky.

But this is like me saying "Because you've changed one thing about your FR game, why not change it all and still call it FR?" That is, it's silly.

For instance, if the moons fill the night sky then they would be visible to the sage (or alternatively would block views of the stars) and hence would be mentioned (or the stars wouldn't be mentioned).,

A 3rd, small, close-orbiting moon is compatible with canon in a way that 12,000 moons that block the night sky is not. Which is my point.

 

[pemerton]

Sounds like a Rain of Colorless Fire.

LOL Nice try, but we know what caused that.

Actually, if all we have read is the folio and boxed set, then no, we don't know what caused that. It's a mystery.

At some later stage, after he had left TSR, Gygax pubished details of the Baklun God Dorgha Torgu, who inflicted the Rain of Colourless Fire and was stripped of Greater God status for doing so. But by at least some of the accounts of canon being given in this thread, that lore is not canonical, and to adopt it would be to run a game that is not actually a GH game!

 

[pemerton]

[MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]

Yes... additions as opposed to changes. Thats been my stance in this discussion. It's [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] who seem unable or unwilling to differentiate the two. They've claimed there is no fundamental difference between the two and anything added is a chang.

But by your standards, the third moon is an addition, not a change. It doesn't change anything about the two existing moons, or the other astronomical/astrological elements of the setting.