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

[hawkeyefan]

They surely made those changes because they thought that it would attract a lot more people. But, at least in 4e, they couldn't not know that they were going to drive away a lot of former FR fans, because they were removing a lot of the most popular characters and deities.

Besides, at least for 4e, they actually broke former canon. They did that for the lore concerning the Weave, they did when they dealt with the drow gods (to the point that in 5e they didn't merely bring back those gods, they have essentially retconned the 4e stuff and never mentioned it again), they did when they rearranged the planes and blamed it on the Weave, they did for the racial deities, etc.

When Richard Baker, the guy in charge of the setting for 4e, says that his stance on canon is "canon is what everyone makes it to be", then you start to doubt that they are really trying to respect canon. When he says things like "how many gods of X do the realms need" as the reason for killing gods--and some of those deities even had/have a huge impact on their followers and story, and aren't just a name that people speak when praying--he's ignoring one of the defining traits of the Realms, which Ed Greenwood wrote in, and that is the variety of local and racial deities. Now you may or may not like that trait, but it's a big part of the setting, and shouldn't be removed just because a designer doesn't like it. Want to make it easier for newcomers? Then include only the most powerful/known gods in the FRCS, leaving the rest of them to be detailed in articles/supplements. No need to remove them.

I hear you. However, you're talking mostly about fans of the setting who are already aware of the elements in question....someone who likes X deity, and is annoyed that the deity is removed later on. For gaming purposes, the fact that the deity is not in the 5E PHB or SCAG doesn't mean it can't be in that person's game. Yes, it may also be up to the DM and other players, but most of the time, it will be okay.

As for new players, it seems like their approach was to streamline things and make them more accessible. Whether or not that worked is arguable, but I can understand why they might try that approach. Canon can be a great tool to use, but it can also be a big obstacle.

Respecting a setting and what came before your work isn't reverence, it's just being respectful of other people's work and of what a lot of its fans have come to hold dear. Changing the status quo is ok, but--as I've said--it should be done because it comes naturally from the story of what's being changed. It should build, it shouldn't be "today, I'm gonna blow Eryndlyn up, and then send a dozen gods to the Astral, and erase their churches, because I don't like them/I think they're useless". Again, we have seen where that led to.

Sure, respect and reverence are different. So are opinions on what was good and what was not. In your opinion, must a story be adhered to simply because it came first, even if it's a terrible story?

I know, as a DM who runs only private campaigns, this is easy to avoid. But for players who have to find a campaign, it might be a deal breaker. And players are the majority of D&D users.

On a side note, it could be a problem even for authors, who might want to use something that they want to add to their story, but someone blew it up. Which isn't a problem, unless you start blowing up a lot of stuff.

If I'm a player looking for a game, and I find one, I don't think I'm going to skip out on it because the DM doesn't allow worshipers of Zehir in his games, or whatever. I'm sure that it is possible there are players who would opt out if that was the case....but I would then say that's their choice, and they are making it.

Ultimatley, though, I am looking at this mostly from a DM point of view, because that's mostly what I am. You're right that most people in the game are players, but I would say that most players likely don't have such strong ties to the canon. Most folks either don't have a strong familiarity with the canon, or if they are familar, they are willing to accept changes to it.

The Realms is something different to each person. Players/readers are introduced to the Realms at different times and in different ways...and usually, the version they were introduced to is the one they tend to cite as the "true version". Not always....especially with the radical changes of 4E....but generally speaking.

True, but that's because 5e tried to keep a lot of what all the other editions added, and to bring back all that the other editions removed. Not only that, they have made older pdfs available, making it easier and less expensive to get them. I was talking about 4e, when you would have to spend more money and buy more products from shops like ebay as a newcomer, if you wanted to know the older Realms (since 4e actively tried to leave the old realms behind, at least during like the first 2/3 of its lifespan). Which I did, since I was a newcomer (although already aware of the Realms through PC games) at the end of 4e.

Right. That's why I think a less strict canon is the better approach. If 4E had it's own canon, and 5E is incorporating elements from all of the past editions, you would think 5E would be the less accessible, no? It really isn't though. The only questions I see come up about the setting are basically lingering elements from the 3E or 4E days; "how did the Sundering change this?" and that kind of thing.

Sounds like that wasn't the case for you when you came to the game, and that definitely sucks, and I can understand your view on it, but isn't the fact that they've changed this in the new edition a good thing?

I don't care if my Realms match anyone else's too. I was talking about the Realms as a "story world". One of the reasons of why people care about the Realms more than as a background for their game, is exactly that.

Yeah, I agree that for purposes of fiction, lack of canon or continuity can be a major issue. But due to the nature of a shared world....especially one as long standing and with as many creative voices as the Realms have had...it's impossible to avoid some inconsistency. That's something you kind of have to accept going in. Add to that the fact that the world is intended to serve as a setting for people to game in, and persistence is even less likely.

I've read my fair share of FR novels, and read the old Dragonlance novels, and have plenty of familiarity with teh shared worlds of comic books....trying to make it all make sense drives people insane. I long ago stopped trying to worry about canon, and decided to simply enjoy the stories for what they are, and remember that it's all make believe.

And I do this too. It was not the point I was trying to make.

Sorry, then...I guess I missed your point. I took it to be people being disappointed in changes made at the design level of the setting. Something you like getting blown up, which sucks, as you said. And I can understand being disappointed in something happening to the continuity/canon, I don't know if I'd be that upset. Yes, I may decide "wow, I really don't like how they resolved the plot of the City of Shade returning to Toril....that story sucked", but that's simply not going to affect me that much. Especially since I can change any such event in my own game.

But again, I think this all goes back to the view of the Realms as a game setting versus a fiction setting. My primary use of the Realms is for my games, not for the novels.

 

[Shasarak]

I also think that it's much easier to see what worked and what didn't in retrospect. I don't think anyone set any out to disrespect the setting. I think they want to create a compelling setting that will work for games, and serve as a setting for fiction. I don't think they instill any changes thinking "I can't wait, this is going to be terrible!"

Except when two of your top authors including the guy that invented the setting tells you "dont do it, it is going to be terrible!" and you go ahead and do it anyway.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Except when two of your top authors including the guy that invented the setting tells you "dont do it, it is going to be terrible!" and you go ahead and do it anyway.

If I had been asked, I would have told them the same thing. So I get your point. But that doesn't matter. They proceeded with the changes despite some folks saying not to do it precisely because they thought it was a good idea, or that it was necessary.

And it's not like Greenwood and Salvatore (assuming that's who you're talking about) have never made mistakes, or changed things for the worse. Salvatore himself seems to be in a constant state of killing his characters off simply to bring them back.

I'm not saying that the changes that have been made are always good. I am just saying that I am free to ignore canon, so it doesn't matter that much to me as far as the game goes, and that I don't think anyone has made a change to the setting for the purpose of being negative.

 

[Shasarak]

And it's not like Greenwood and Salvatore (assuming that's who you're talking about) have never made mistakes, or changed things for the worse. Salvatore himself seems to be in a constant state of killing his characters off simply to bring them back.

Do you mean having to kill off his characters because of the WotC fiat choice of jumping everything forward by 100 years? And then having to bring them back when they realised what they had done?

I am not sure you can blame Bob for that.

 

[hawkeyefan]

Do you mean having to kill off his characters because of the WotC fiat choice of jumping everything forward by 100 years? And then having to bring them back when they realised what they had done?

I am not sure you can blame Bob for that.

I'm not really blaming him...the timeline advance seemed to certainly play a part in what happened. I don't know if it was required that he take part in it...his stories were always behind the "present" timeline of most of the rest of the Realms products. And it started with Wulfgar.

But did he have to kill the other characters? And if so, did he have to bring them back? I bailed a while back, so I am admittedly talking about things I am not too familiar with, so I could be wrong.

But ultimately, this is all beside the point. Whatever he may have counseled the 4E developers about messing with the setting, they went ahead with it anyway. Do you think they did so because they thought it would be the better approach, or do you think they did so to spite the setting and/or Greenwood and Salvatore?

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Well, it is. Or at least, most of it is. The primary function of the majority of material for these fictional worlds is to serve as a source of material for the D&D game. As such, I think it is expected for folks to pick and choose what is used.

Most other fictional settings were not created with that intent. That difference may be a bigger factor than people are acknowledging.

I don't know. I recognize that for many people that is the reality, but for others it may not be. I'm not sure it can be made as objective statement without taking into account what time in the gameline we are talking about.

Sure, OD&D was a toolbox for making your own games. But from AD&D on settings, and with most of them canon and metaplot, became a huge part of the game. My initial points of entry to D&D were through the Forgotten Realms, and an advancing timeline was an intrinsic element of my introduction. Looking around at the rest of what was going on in D&D in the late 80s and early 90s, it was all either core rules resources, or defined setting material. I never saw official campaign settings marketed as pick and choose setting materials. All setting materials were designed to be compatible within themselves, and to a greater or lesser extent (greater after Spelljammer and Planescape appeared, lesser but still present before then) with each other. The exceptions to compatibility were the fantasy-historical softcovers, which were designed to empower homebrew theme design. It seemed assumed to me that you would either design your own setting more or less from scratch, play with an established setting (potentially with more than one (which might include homebrewed ones) if you were using Planescape/Spelljammer), or make a homebrew inspired by one of the fantasy historical books or non-D&D materials.

So that had a huge, and very different, impact on my formative vision of D&D compared to someone coming into the game back in OD&D or very early 1e, or someone coming in during 3e, or 4e. Is one of these objectively the "real" D&D philosophy? As much as I'd like to dismiss the philosophies of 3e and 4e as doing it wrong, and acknowledge the OD&D and early 1e philosophies as valid but slightly inferior, I feel like it's really all a matter of timing and preference here.

 

[pemerton]

Is the function of D&D setting material to please canon fans? Or to provide material for playing the game.

Yes.
Those two are not mutually exclusive.

But they can come into tension - eg if sticking to canon will create material for playing the game that is not as good as material that disregards canon. (Eg I think that the 4e cosmology, because it is essentially dynamic rather than static, is better for playing the game than the 1st ed AD&D Appendix IV cosmology.)

When there is tension, how should it be resolved? I favour good material over canon.

That's not a reason for you, obviously. But it does show that the claim that sticking to canon has no costs for anyone is false. It has costs for me if it means I get crappier material.

Here's the issue as I see it.

Person 1 says: I don't care about X in my gaming products.
Person 2 says: I care about X and it's a factor in my enjoyment.
Person 1 says: I don't care about consistency in X.
Person 2 says: I appreciate consistency in X.
Person 1 says: If there is a discrepancy in X I have no strong feelings.
Person 2 says: If there is a discrepancy in X I strongly dislike it and it impacts by views of the product.

Now, in this case "X" is canon. It could be anything, but that's what it is in this instance.
You're asking for something to be removed or arguing it doesn't matter when other people DO like it and think it matters a lot. You're effectively arguing your apathy towards something is more important than someone else's enjoyment.
I'm sorry, but it doesn't matter if you don't like canon. Because some people do. And it's inclusion doesn't impact the book for you, but is presence and absence does impact products for people who do like and appreciate it.

As I've just explained, this is wrong.

There is a trade off either way, and I don't think I'm under any obligation to subordinate my preferences to yours. I want good material even if that means disregarding canon, and you are asking for me to suck up crappier material in pursuit of canon.

(The actual false premise in your argument is that the inclusion of canon doesn't impact the book for me. It does if it's crappy material.)

Now I can disregard crappy material. But you can disregard changes you don't like. Neither is, in general, easier or harder than the other.

But clearly no one is going to use both those ideas in a single game. It's not hard to add an extra couple of digits to one of the dates, or knock some off the other.

But what if you didn't notice? You just start running with it and then, at the table, your players ask "So... how can she be lich-queen LCVII and ruled for 1000 years and the Mind Flayers just have arrive 2000 years ago?"
Honestly, I didn't realize the problem on my first read through. Because I assumed the book I was reading was "accurate" and the writer and considered stuff like that.

To me, this is no different from the question: what if I am using supplement I, which assumes Nerof Gasgal is alive, and supplement II, which assumes he's dead; but in my game the events presupposed by supplement II's change to the canon have never occurred.

What does a GM do? Make stuff up: the continuing Nerof is really a simulacrum; the Mind Flayers arrived 2000 years ago and then travelled back in time; many of the previous Lich-Queens had rather short reigns. Or admit error and correct.

I see it as a GM's job to manage continuity in the fiction of the campaign.

If shoving Blink Elves and Dragonborn into the Realms is an example of your "best work" then we are either looking at a very low bar of work which seems doubtful or someone who is working with an agenda counter to that which they claim.

I've never run a game set in FR. I have no idea what counts as the best work for that setting.

But if you don't like the 4e FR books I don't understand why you wouldn't just ignore them. Like I ignore big chunks of FtA when I run GH.

 

[pemerton]

Magic missile and displacer beasts are D&D. Hill giants and ogres have different stories (by now, if not in the beginning of the game) that I am aware of and take account of. Now, if someone tries to approximate D&Disms (spells, monsters) using another system, it would be fine to say "I'm running a Rolemaster game set in Greyhawk." In other words, I'd know what they meant, assuming they kept the stuff I mentioned preserved. But otherwise it is a huge change.

I don't think I've used a displacer beast in a D&D game for 30 years, so they're not so important to my sense of what is D&D.

Likewise the difference between ogres and hill giants: 9'+ tall, "ugly-tempered and voracious [and] also fond of treasure . . . wear[ing] any sort of skins or furs" vs 10 1/2' tall, "dress[ing] in rough hides or skins" (AD&D MM pp 45. 75). That's not that different (they even have nearly the same AC, 5 for the ogre vs 4 for the giant; and 18/00 vs 19 STR), and keeping them distinct is only a function of the D&D system of HD (4+1 vs 8+1-2) - in mechanically different systems this distinction may well evaporate.

I'm not sure what different stories you have in mind for the difference between them, but they're not part of any GH canon I'm familiar with (beyond the fact that GH incorporates the D&Dism of treating them as distinct creatures because of their different HD).

Running GH or OA using a non-D&D FRPG system just doesn't strike me as a big deal.

If you start from any assumption except "this is an X" game--including your example of selecting various materials to use to create your world--I consider that the most massive change of all. You are then making a home-brew world inspired by a particular setting, setting theme, adventure, map, etc. Philosophically, at that point it doesn't matter how much Greyhawk you put in--it still isn't a Greyhawk game because you started with a blank slate and selectively added Greyhawk elements, rather than starting with Greyhawk and selectively adding, subtracting, and altering.

I still don't understand this description.

I start with GH: a map, a history (in which the difference between ogres and hill giants plays no role), some personages (Nerof Gasgal, the Gynarch of Hardby, Mordenkainen, etc), some themes and tropes (pulpy S&S, desert nomads guarding magical sites, decadent ancient empires, etc).

I don't see how that's a blank slate. It's just not a slate filled with mostly irrelevant minutiae.

Theoretically, if you had or were going to run a Star Wars or Middle-Earth game, would you feel the same way?

As I posted upthread, Middle Earth is quite different. The history, geography etc of Middle Earth is part of JRRT's didactic purpose. (And I'm not sure it would make for a very good game, so I don't think I'd do it.) REH's Hyborian Age, on the other hand, I would happily use if I didn't have GH as my default pulpy setting, and given that the Hyborian Age is nothing more than a map and a broad-outline history, my approach would be the same.

Star Wars, for me, is biome-themed planets, Jedi, and Death Stars. (The prequels are silly and, in my view, add nothing worthwhile or interesting to the setting implied in the original movies, and so I would happily ignore them.) If I was going to run a Star Wars game I'd probably need to make up some new senators, governors, space stations etc, and some new desolate places for Jedi masters to be found in, living as hermits. (As I type that, it's sounding broadly like the setting of the most recent movie!)

So I think that's also a yes.

I've recently run a bit of Marvel Heroic RP. The game has been set in Washington DC, and Tokyo. I've never been to either city, so my descriptions were pretty loose, and drew on my general knowledge (with a bit of help from those of my players who have been to Washington and so know the geography better than me). The characters broadly resembled their canon equivalents, but with a twist resulting from their play by their players.

I might be running another session of MHRP soon for a different group; I certainly won't be assuming any sort of continuity between this game and the other one, and likewise no general continuity with the comics, the movies or the minutiae of real-world geography of North American cities that I barely know. (This new session will be set in NY, where I spent two weeks over 10 years ago.)

The primary function of the majority of material for these fictional worlds is to serve as a source of material for the D&D game. As such, I think it is expected for folks to pick and choose what is used.

Most other fictional settings were not created with that intent. That difference may be a bigger factor than people are acknowledging.

In a more traditional fictional world...meaning one that was designed specifically for the purpose of telling stories and not to serve as a game setting, you don't encounter this kind of editorial mandate nearly as often. The Marvel and DC universes and maybe Star Wars are probably the big examples, where marketing gimmicks are "explained" in some way within the fiction. But with most fictional worlds, you don't really see this.

This goes back to the pick and choose aspect of the setting. Yes, taken as a whole, the history of the Realms is absurd. But if you ignore what you don't like, and simply use what appeals to you, then it isn't as big a problem. And given that the Realms is primarily supposed to be a setting for us to play in, I think that is the intention all along.

The makers of the setting expect canon to be ignored.

I agree very much with all this.

The makers expect people to make a setting their own, but I don't think that they expect it to be ignored. It's their default. It's what the newcomers read. It's the status quo of their IP. It's the result of changes that they made just to bring the setting to that given state.

<snip>

If something you enjoy gets blown up because of fireworks (or because the new devs for x edtion didn't like it enough), then not only you'll feel pissed, but you'll also know that that thing has been trashed and will be forgotten by WotC/whoever, that new people aren't likely to know/take interest in it, and so on. It's essentially "dead", and it sucks.

Respecting a setting and what came before your work isn't reverence, it's just being respectful of other people's work and of what a lot of its fans have come to hold dear. Changing the status quo is ok, but--as I've said--it should be done because it comes naturally from the story of what's being changed.

<snip>

it could become a problem even for authors, who might want to use something in their story, but then find out that someone blew it up.

<snip>

I was talking about the Realms as a "story world". One of the reasons of why people care about the Realms more than as a background for their game, is exactly that.

Whereas I don't really relate to this.

Even if I treat the D&D settings like FR as "story worlds" rather than material for using to play RPGs, I don't relate to it. To me, the objection to departures from canon seems to be simply that "I wanted WotC to publish story X, and instead they published story Y which I like less."

I can see that it's disappointing if something you enjoy changes so you don't enjoy it any more, but that's a general risk with serial fiction. (And not just in books, but in TV, movies, comics, etc.) But that happens. Authors lose their mojo. Or, in the case of mass commercial fiction (which includes FR), the publisher thinks that audience demand will be better satisfied by publishing Y rather than X.

The attempt to explain the disappointment in terms of unreasonable changes to canon vs natural change grounded in the unfolding story seems like projection to me. Or an attempt to elevate personal taste to some sort of general aesthetic analysis.

I was talking about 4e, when you would have to spend more money and buy more products from shops like ebay as a newcomer, if you wanted to know the older Realms

And this seems like much the same thing.

My X-Man collection (a mixture of originals, bound volumes, reprints etc) is complete from Giant-sized no 1 up to the late 90s, but for the issue (200-and-something) where Wolverine and Sabretooth clash during the Mutant Massacre. I'd like to own that issue, but the only time I saw it in the back issues at the comic shop I used to frequent I didn't have the money. And now I'd have to muck around on e-bay to get it and don't have the patience and (for different reasons) probably can't justify the expenditure.

A commercial publisher is not doing anything wrong by not keeping stuff in print that some people want to buy.

 

[pemerton]

OD&D was a toolbox for making your own games. But from AD&D on settings, and with most of them canon and metaplot, became a huge part of the game.

For some people.

Not for everyone.

My initial points of entry to D&D were through the Forgotten Realms, and an advancing timeline was an intrinsic element of my introduction.

I encountered an advancing timeline when I bought the City of GH boxed set and it was set in the "future" relative to the GH folio.

But it was in the past relative to my game - which was about 15 years ahead of the folio.

So I used the CoGH boxed set but changed the dates. The idea that somehow my game was meant to be subordinate to a published timeline never even occurred to me.

Looking around at the rest of what was going on in D&D in the late 80s and early 90s, it was all either core rules resources, or defined setting material. I never saw official campaign settings marketed as pick and choose setting materials. All setting materials were designed to be compatible within themselves, and to a greater or lesser extent (greater after Spelljammer and Planescape appeared, lesser but still present before then) with each other.

<snip>

It seemed assumed to me that you would either design your own setting more or less from scratch, play with an established setting (potentially with more than one (which might include homebrewed ones) if you were using Planescape/Spelljammer), or make a homebrew inspired by one of the fantasy historical books or non-D&D materials.

I never even got the least hint of such an assumption, either from material I bought or from the Dragon magazines I was reading.

When I bought my copy of Dragonlance Adventures in the late 80s, I incorporated Knights of Solamnia into my GH game as the Knights of Holy Shielding (which were an established element of GH but could certainly benefit from some mechanical development) and also the Wizards of High Sorcery, as a distinct magical order with Suel origins and still important in the Great Kingdom and satellites (but not in GH or Furyondy et al - further entrenching the difference between the "new" and "old" Oeridian kingdoms).

This seemed to me an obvious thing to do. Picking and choosing. Using stuff you liked to flesh out your game. (Just as Gygax's GH games no doubt included portals to Barsoom, the Moon, etc, though I personally never used any of that sci-fi stuff in my game.)

that had a huge, and very different, impact on my formative vision of D&D compared to someone coming into the game back in OD&D or very early 1e, or someone coming in during 3e, or 4e. Is one of these objectively the "real" D&D philosophy? As much as I'd like to dismiss the philosophies of 3e and 4e as doing it wrong, and acknowledge the OD&D and early 1e philosophies as valid but slightly inferior, I feel like it's really all a matter of timing and preference here.

I'm not sure that I'd count the mid-80s as "very early 1e", given that that is nearly 10 years in - but otherwise you're right that it's a matter of preference.

But there are some things that can be said objectively. Eg the idea that sticking to canon has no costs for those who prefer pick and choose is objectively false, for the reasons I've already given upthread: it is an impediment to the publication of good stuff.

And the idea that changing or ignoring canon is a "slight" to the audience is also, in my view, objectively false: a commercial publisher owes no duty to any particular audience member to publish stuff they will enjoy. It's the publisher's prerogative to publish what it wants; and generally, this will be determined by commercial considerations.

 

[Hussar]

Could not possibly care less about canon. Particularly DND canon which is such a hodgepodge of flat out contradictions that most canon arguments are laughable.