D&D General Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Canon: Stare Decisis in D&D

[Sword of Spirit]

The reason I'm not a huge fan of that original multiverse version (I much prefer the 2e/Planes cape take) is because I have a hard time seeing how such a conceptually expansive Prime Material Plane can share the same other planes. One Plane of Elemental Fire for all of that? All that distinctiveness sharing the same City of Brass? Not to mention that the rest of the planes' existence doesn't even make sense relative to most of what is supposed to exist in the Prime Material, such as sci-fi universes and other non-D&D IP.

On the other hand, I think 3e went too far the other way making every world the center of its own different multiverse.

2e is great in maintaining a continuity of "this is what D&D is" with a flexible, "and here's how we fit this other new thing in without departing from that continuity."

 

[TiQuinn]

Apparently, The FR has a clause that stopped them for doing that, so they did a giant "a wizard did it" and everything magically is back to the way it was 100 years ago, except now Dragonborn exist.

Which is funny because even back in 2e, they had a popular character in the novels named Dragonbait who was a Dragonborn…oh, I’m sorry…a saurial.

 

[MoonSong]

That said, I am hopeful that by including GH as an instructional setting, WoTC intends to return it to close to the 1983 version, which is to say largely open and a blank slate for tables to fill in.

I'm a fan of Gazette era Greyhawk. However, I'm also a fan of going even further back in the timeline, and of messing with some of the established NPCs.

 

[Parmandur]

The second issue with canon in campaign settings is that a campaign setting is fundamentally supposed to be used as a backdrop for a home campaign. This means that every table will be running a slightly different FR. Now, the greatest strength (or weakness, depending on your view) of FR is that it isn't just a campaign setting. It has its own rich tapestry of lore through countless novels, video games, and other media (including the recent movie) that have added more story to the setting than other D&D settings. Even so, people can do whatever they want at their own table.

I've gone back and read the OG Forgotten Realms material, and become a radicalized Grey Box originalist, with provisional allowances for material in the FR series of books prior to the Hordelands mucking everything up.

And, even with extensive Greenwoodian color...early FR is pretty close to being as much a blank slate as Greyhawk, but with more maps.

 

[TiQuinn]

I've gone back and read the OG Forgotten Realms material, and become a radicalized Grey Box originalist, with provisional allowances for material in the FR series of books prior to the Hordelands mucking everything up.

And, even with extensive Greenwoodian colir...early FR is pretty close to being as much a blank slate as Greyhawk, but with more maps.

Yaaaaaas.

FR “went off the rails” almost from the get go with the Time of Troubles. That first box set was magic, though. Great maps that you could just lay down in front of players with cool named locations like The Battle of Bones or Darkhold or Warlock’s Crypt and just let their imaginations take them where they wanted. The attempt to bring edition changes into canon through apocalyptic events has always been weak sauce. Simpler answers were always present.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

I don’t even know what stare decisis is. I couldn’t follow really anything you wrote sorry.

 

[Parmandur]

I don’t even know what stare decisis is. I couldn’t follow really anything you wrote sorry.

Linguistically, "the decision stands" or something like that?

 

[Parmandur]

Yaaaaaas.

FR “went off the rails” almost from the get go with the Time of Troubles. That first box set was magic, though. Great maps that you could just lay down in front of players with cool named locations like The Battle of Bones or Darkhold or Warlock’s Crypt and just let their imaginations take them where they wanted. The attempt to bring edition changes into canon through apocalyptic events has always been weak sauce. Simpler answers were always present.

Even some of the post-ToT stuff was good (Forgotten Realms Adventures is solid gold), but...yeah.

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Linguistically, "the decision stands" or something like that?

Yeah I checked the translation, still don’t get what it means in this context.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah I checked the translation, still don’t get what it means in this context.

INAL, but my understanding is that it refers to the hierarchy of deterrence courts give to previous legal rulings when the letter of the law is ambiguous.