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

[Maxperson]

It's very much the point to me! It recalibrates the lens through which we are invited to view the setting. The omniscient text of the game author is giving me "facts"; the voice of the in-world narrator is giving me a specific POV, one which encourages me to participate in the subcreation and weigh in with my own judgments. Which method, or combination of methods, the designer chooses to use tells you a great deal about how you're intended to interpret the information you get (or whether, indeed, there's meant to be an element of interpretation at all).

I ... buh ... I don't even know what that means, man. I'm forced to conclude that the weight and value you attach to the word lore is intended to loan this tautology some gravitas that is non-intuitive to me.

To me (si componere magnis parva mihi fas est), it's as circular and empty of meaning as if you were to look at the works of Shakespeare and say "the text is the text," ignoring that the Henriad and the sonnets are utterly different genres and making no distinction between the quarto and folio versions of the plays.

It means this. If I am a game creator, I have lore for the game. All that remains is how that lore is given to you. I can decide to give it to you through a narrator, creating the canon lore that way. I can also decide to give it to you directly, with no narrator, creating the same canon lore. There is no difference in the canon lore imparted by the two methods. Changes made to narrator canon have the same meaning and impact as changes made to direct canon.

 

[cbwjm]

Much as no plan survives contact with the enemy, no setting's canon lore survives contact with a gaming group. Every gaming group playing in Greyhawk will have a different campaign, in some the circle of Eight may have been replaced by their PCs or perhaps it is now led by an archmage named Elminster. Perhaps the city of Greyhawk was conquered, perhaps a group of wizards from another land draw their magic from the three moons of Greyhawk, two of which are known about, the third cannot be seen by naked eye.

Any of these individual changes wouldn't matter, the campaign would still be set in Greyhawk.You could add in the entire continent of Alphatia from the Mystara setting and have their wizards lead their armies to conquer the rest of the world and it would still be Greyhawk.

 

[Harzel]

You could add in the entire continent of Alphatia from the Mystara setting and have their wizards lead their armies to conquer the rest of the world and it would still be Greyhawk.

What if I start with Mystara, remove everything except Alphatia, and then add in all of Greyhawk. Is it still Mystara?

 

[ProgBard]

It means this. If I am a game creator, I have lore for the game. All that remains is how that lore is given to you. I can decide to give it to you through a narrator, creating the canon lore that way. I can also decide to give it to you directly, with no narrator, creating the same canon lore. There is no difference in the canon lore imparted by the two methods. Changes made to narrator canon have the same meaning and impact as changes made to direct canon.

Gotcha. Do I have the right understanding that you're defensive of lore because you want to preserve the creator's vision? (If so, I have Thoughts about this, as you will be shocked, shocked to learn. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

I'm curious, if this is so, whether that's simply a matter of empathy on your part, or if it's personal to you as someone who has invented, or intends to invent, published lore yourself.

 

[ProgBard]

What if I start with Mystara, remove everything except Alphatia, and then add in all of Greyhawk. Is it still Mystara?

I dunno. What's the quintessence of Mystara-ness? Is it geography or something else?

It's an intriguing philosophical question in a white-room theory kind of way, but the chance of encountering it in the wild seems astronomically small.

As with genre, it's probably a mistake to try and define the center by its edge cases.

 

[pemerton]

I wasn't trying to claim you were unoriginal or lacking in creativity.

I don't think I had a view on whether you were or weren't, and in any event don't care.

I take it that it goes without saying that there is little of originality in my WoHS. That's the point! Much as whatever is original in the classic ranger isn't the core ideas, but rather the minutiae of adaptation to the D&D context (including, say, the way that palantir use is included); so whatever is original or creative in my WoHS is the way they are integrated into the GH context (an ancient Suloise order; connected to GK politics, which both (i) gives them a place in the contemporary world, yet (ii) explains why they are not mentioned in the folio or boxed set, because those are written taking the City of GH and the Wild Coast as the starting point for exposition, and the GH and its satellites are treated as more peripheral).

I prefer the inventiveness and originality of the homebrew

This relates to my comment upthread about the significance of "authenticity" - when it comes to narrative work, I personally find that authenticity on its own doesn't make up for a lack of quality in the same way that it can in musical performance (where, provided a certain threshold of musical competence is met, the authenticity of a performance, or one's emotional connection to the performer/performance, can be as important as its technical quality).

Hence why, given the limitations of my capabilities as an author, I tend to rely on pastiche.

I think I do have some creativity as a GM, but I don't think that is particular so in relation to world-building. I think it's in relation to framing situations and adjudicating player action-declarations. (Which is what I primarily post about in my actual play posts.)

 

[pemerton]

What if I start with Mystara, remove everything except Alphatia, and then add in all of Greyhawk. Is it still Mystara?

With only that information, it's impossible to tell.

One way to think about it, though, is - how would the participants' describe it, and for what reasons? For instance, why would some who adds "all of GH" into a game which otherwise resembles Mystra only in one respect, think of it as a Mystra rather than a GH game?

Here's one possible answer to that question - by parallel to [MENTION=6788732]cbwjm[/MENTION]'s example, if the game is "Alphatia defends itself against a Suel invastion", then the answer is quite possibly that the participants would think of it as a Mystara game, because it is a game set in, and dealing with, events in Alphatia.

On the other hand, if by starting with Mystara you work your way towards the campaign cbwjm gave - and so most of the action takes place on Oerth and in Oerik, and Alphatia figures purely as an element in the backstory to explain where the attacking wizards came from - then to me it seems more of a GH game than a Mystara game.

If a D&D campaign starts in GH, but then moves to Boot Hill, and then for 10 years of play all the action is "paladins and wizards in the Wild West" is it still a GH game? Or has the D&D/GH game transitioned into a variant Boot Hill one? Again, there's not obvious answer, but relevant considerations would include the mechanics being used (D%D converted to Boot Hill? Or Boot Hill converted to D&D?), what the detailed tropes are that are in use, how the participatants themselves think of it, both unreflectively and under prompting and questioning, etc.

EDIT: Also this:

It's an intriguing philosophical question in a white-room theory kind of way, but the chance of encountering it in the wild seems astronomically small.

As with genre, it's probably a mistake to try and define the center by its edge cases.

 

[Maxperson]

Gotcha. Do I have the right understanding that you're defensive of lore because you want to preserve the creator's vision? (If so, I have Thoughts about this, as you will be shocked, shocked to learn. But let's not get ahead of ourselves.)

Yes and no. Setting lore is important to me as it sets the framework for the campaign. However, the framework is sturdy enough for some changes. Mess too much with the framework and it falls apart or distorts to the point where it no longer holds its original shape.

I don't mind messing with that framework, but I do so carefully so as to not destroy the setting. That said, if the players in the process of playing the game alter things to the point where it's no longer really the canon setting any longer, but rather is some alternate version, so be it. I'm never going to override player/character impact on the game. Canon isn't sacred enough to me to limit them like that.

I'm curious, if this is so, whether that's simply a matter of empathy on your part, or if it's personal to you as someone who has invented, or intends to invent, published lore yourself.

I generally try to stay as close to the setting ideal as I can, but as I said above I do make some changes here and there. Rarely I will try something radical with a setting and present it as an alternate universe.

 

[Maxperson]

I dunno. What's the quintessence of Mystara-ness? Is it geography or something else?

It's an intriguing philosophical question in a white-room theory kind of way, but the chance of encountering it in the wild seems astronomically small.

As with genre, it's probably a mistake to try and define the center by its edge cases.

The idea with starting at the edge is to figure out if something will change or not at the extreme. Once you figure out if it will, and I fully expect that the vast majority of us will agree that it does, then what remains is moving back towards the center to get closer to where the change happens. It's a mistake to define the center by the edge, but using the edge as a tool to help figure out what the center is has value.

 

[Hussar]

"An unreliable narrator is a narrator, whether in literature, film, or theatre, whose credibility has been seriously compromised. The term was coined in 1961 by Wayne C. Booth in The Rhetoric of Fiction."

Neither Elminster, nor the sage from Greyhawk have been seriously compromised in credibility. Greenwood may have wanted Elminster to get things wrong in order to allow the DM to change thing, which the DM could do anyway, but he was wrong in calling Elminster an unreliable narrator.

Umm, the author flat out telling you that you shouldn't believe everything the character tells you isn't compromising that character's creativity? What, exactly, has to be done then?

I also take it that you are going to ignore the fact that you blatantly and falsely accused me of calling [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] a bad DM. That's really uncool man.

Well, considering I wasn't the only one to point out what you've done, you'd better be asking for apologies from other people as well. And, the fact that other people pointed out that you called Pemerton a bad DM pretty much closes the case as far as I'm concerned.

Let's leave it at that shall we?