D&D General Is "official" lore important to you?

[jasper]

Need an option for "I like to see canon violated just to mess with people."

You have now leveled up. You are now Three Six.

 

[teitan]

Lol, you had the biggest fans in your group then. I just try to imagine how that could have gone down at your table:

DM: You have to fight big bad mob boss to resolve the adventure

Player A: OMG we will all die he is far to strong for our group!

Player B: I got the solution! Drizzt should be at Waterdeep within the next three days (i read it in one of the novels), we simply ask him to assist us, he cannot refuse. (If it were 5e: DM give me an inspiration for my kewl idea!)

DM reasons to himself: Oh my, did i ever talk with them about separrating in - and out of character knowledge? Next when they need mounts and have none available, the IRL mechanic will suggest to construct bicycles, and his character totally ought to know how this could be done, since he got metalworking as a profession

Lmao yeah not quite like that but oy

it was more like with this horrible thing going on why are we doing it alone and Driz’zt etc aren’t helping us?

 

[Hussar]

Hussar's First Law Of Canon

The degree to which canon is important is inversely proportional to the degree to which someone dislikes a change.​

In other words, canon is only important when someone doesn't like a change. Otherwise, canon can go jump in the lake. And, if you need evidence, I present for your edification, the three most recent versions of Spider Man on film - the Sam Raimi/Toby MacGuire version, the Sony/Garfield version and the most recent Tom Holland version. The Sam Raimi version is closest to Spider Man canon - it's about as close as you can possibly get and not be hand drawn really. And it was very popular. The Garfield version changed a number of key elements and was pretty roundly disliked and canon was certainly invoked as a reason why the movies failed. Then you have the Tom Holland version which takes canon out behind the woodshed and beats it to death. This is a completely different Spider Man, based on a re-write in the comic books (Ultimate Spider Man) which also had largely abandoned Spider Man canon.

Yet, the Tom Holland movies are pretty well regarded. People really like the movies and they did very well at the box office. If canon was actually important, should this be the biggest failure of the three? Or, could it be that canon isn't really all that important, unless you need it as a bludgeon to beat over the head of other people?

 

[Lanefan]

Fair point, but it doesn't explain how I - who knows nothing and cares not about Spiderman canon - also found the Sony-Garfield version to be overall the least appealing of the three attempts. Which is saying something, as I wasn't overly fond of the Raimi-McGuire version either.

Also,. the Tom Holland version had the MCU tie-ins and so forth to support it, which broadened its appeal. As for box office, given as over the last decade MCU could have made a movie about watching an ice cream cone melt in the sun and it would've been a box office smash, saying it did well at the box office isn't saying much.

That said, the Holland version makes the Garfield version even more redundant than it already was.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Yes, but I don't actually let it determine anything I want to do. Lore if just tools in my sandbox; if the tools aren't useful, I throw them away. But a lot of lore can be fun and inspiring, so I still find it useful.

 

[robus]

New edition? New setting. It'd need to be a generic setting, yes, but even if it's generic it's still new. 4e with Nentir Vale is thus far the only one that's got this right.

This seems like such a good idea. New edition, new world to explore (and a reason to collect older edition books to get info on other settings.

 

[fearsomepirate]

Nah, it's all pretend. There's not a "real" World of Greyhawk, so the setting is what I make of it as I run it.

 

[hawkeyefan]

I generally don't care all that much. For RPG purposes, whatever lore there may be is just material I can use or not. So I like to have a good amount of lore to draw from, even if some of it is contradictory. In those cases, I just see it as options I can choose.

In those cases, I definitely have options I prefer, so I suppose it matters a little, in that sense. For an existing setting that I enjoy....let's say Planescape.....I wouldn't want to see them make unnecessary changes if they created a version for 5E.

But if they did, I wouldn't hesitate to ignore what I didn't like and only use what I did.

 

[S'mon]

I always say "non canon campaign" if I'm running something like Forgotten Realms. I always treat it as an alternate universe. Few RPG settings maintain consistent canon anyway.

 

[dave2008]

..., I care that Gnolls can only be ravening murder-beasts, and that the Raven Queen is an interloper in the cycle of death rather than a guardian of it, etc, in 5e,..

Two questions:

1. I thought Gnolls were always ravening murder-beasts. Back in 2e they preferred eating intelligent mammals because the "scream better" and they completely "hunt out" an area (aka massacre everyone) before moving on. I didn't play 3e was it different then. I seem to remember them being demonic in origin in 4e too (yep - just checked the 4e MM). So I guess the change in 3e? I just check the 3.5 MM and it is pretty similar to 2e (including the screaming intelligent creatures as food). So maybe it is in a supplement? I don't know, it seems that generally gnolls have always been ravenous murder-beasts to me.
2. Wasn't the RQ an interlopper in 4e? She overthrew the original god of death and took his mantel didn't she (in 4e). Though I am not familiar with her 5e lore, so what changed?