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

[Shasarak]

Nobody really does meta-plot anymore. Even World of Darkness stopped doing it, and the bulk of their identity in the '90s was based on it!

You dont need a meta plot when your strategy is to re-release your Classic Hits.

Is World of Darkness even still being produced?

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Shasarak]

Agreed. To be succinct (is it possible?), I'd rather see 5 editions tell 5 different stories of a monster, than the same story rewritten 5 times. Seeing all those different takes are what let me get to the real heart of the idea of the monster. (Much like how all the different games that are "like" D&D help inform me what the core of "D&D" is.)

I would rather see 5 different stories about 5 different monsters. The worst thing would be to keep on rehashing the same monster again and again but this time it is blue.

 

[Jester David]

The fact that the 4e Realms wasn't a critical success doesn't mean they shouldn't have tried it.

Actually... that's kinda exactly what it means. Even if most Realms fans had hated it, if it had been a critical success it would have been a "win". Being a disliked revision and a so-so book kinda means it was a failure. And businesses don't like failure.

It just means me they should be willing to shrug, and try something different. Realms fans didn't leave, they just didn't like the latest version. They're still there when WotC produces something they like. Realistically, if they weren't so beholden to canon, they could shrug off the Spellplague as an "alt-future" and just reboot to 1380 or so.

The better example would be Star Wars and the prequels. Lots of people don't like the prequels, and came right back for Episode 7 and Rogue One.

Well... they tried massive changes with Greyhawk with mixed results. And the late-line changes to Dark Sun were not well received, And equally massive for Dragonlance with even more mixed results and unhappy fans.
So it's not really a surprise that a major alteration to the Realms was met with criticism and concern by the fans. They weren't small changes either: nations were destroyed, entire lands were flooded or collapsed into a giant chasm the size of Nebraska. Some of the most famous places were seemingly destroyed. Characters people had grown to love were all effectively killed.
It was a pretty massive change.

It took a looong time and numerous adventures/ novels to start winning fans they'd lost back. Which is time and effort they could have spent getting new fans and having the Realms be better off rather than back where it was in terms of the fanbase.

I get the urge to want to applaud the effort and cheer them on for trying something new and different. But they could have still shaken up the Realms and had some change while showing a little restraint. A five or even ten year time jump and a little shake-up would have done much the same.


The Realms changes include some great example of what I was talking about with "pet peeve changes". Someone on the FR team didn't like the real world analogues, so nations (and a continent) that fit that description just got removed. And new kingdoms got slapped in their place. Someone didn't like "fantasy Egypt" so Mulhorand went bye-bye. Which is the definition of personal taste. Some people are fine with real world analogues. Some people like them. And there were bound to be lots of gamers who set their campaigns in Mulhorand. Removing that nation was arbitrary. But someone on the design team decided their personal taste and preferences were more important than that of the people who buy the books. Which is slightly egotistical.

 

[TwoSix]

I would rather see 5 different stories about 5 different monsters. The worst thing would be to keep on rehashing the same monster again and again but this time it is blue.

So only 1st edition should have had orcs, and then they moved onto something else? There are some concepts that are pretty defining for D&D. Like orcs. Not orcs being lawful evil or chaotic evil, that's much more arbitrary.

 

[TwoSix]

You dont need a meta plot when your strategy is to re-release your Classic Hits.

Is World of Darkness even still being produced?

Sure is, it just has much less metaplot. Several of the new releases are excellent.

 

[Remathilis]

The Realms changes include some great example of what I was talking about with "pet peeve changes". Someone on the FR team didn't like the real world analogues, so nations (and a continent) that fit that description just got removed. And new kingdoms got slapped in their place. Someone didn't like "fantasy Egypt" so Mulhorand went bye-bye. Which is the definition of personal taste. Some people are fine with real world analogues. Some people like them. And there were bound to be lots of gamers who set their campaigns in Mulhorand. Removing that nation was arbitrary. But someone on the design team decided their personal taste and preferences were more important than that of the people who buy the books. Which is slightly egotistical.

So, this is my tinfoil-hat, vaguely edition-warring conspiracy theory. You've been warned.

[sblock] By 2006 or so, WotC was sorely regretting having given up the pooch on D&D via the SRD. Part of the design theory that went into 4e was to make it as far from 3e as they could and still be called D&D. In essence, this gave them carte blanche to "fix" any problems they saw with D&D, damned the lore and tradition. The goal to was to make a D&D that couldn't be replicated using the 3e SRD. So they did. In the end, they created a game that no create could simply emulate well using the SRD.

But it wasn't just rules that got a makeover, its was story elements too. The regular tiefling was in the SRD, but the unified "devil-horn and tail" Baal-Turrath tieflings were not. Half-dragons might have been in the SRD, but dragonborn (and the associated concepts) were not. Hill giants might have been in the SRD, but the Earth Giants and Titans were not. Even some basic monsters got "unique" upgrades that were unreplicable using the SRD (like stormclaw scorpions) weren't. These also had the added bonus of being good fodder for their mini-line (as Reaper or any mini line could make an elf or dwarf, but the unique look of a tiefling or dragonborn could be a little more IP protected).

The 4e Realms was their first attempt at trying to reconcile the "new 4e paradigm" with a setting that was 20+ years old and firmly rooted in game concepts no longer relevant. So they effectively re-wrote the Realms (without making it a retcon) to fit "closer" to what was in the core-books. Dragonborn appear from out of nowhere. Tieflings all get the "Baal Turath" look. Eladrin over-write Moon and Sun elves. Gods that origins outside of Toril (like Tyr) get killed (and to be fair, a lot of FR deities do to; I mean they honestly tried to say Talos was really Gruumsh!?) And as part of the reshaping, any place that seemed like "real world culture X, in the Realms" got replaced by an Abeir portion (Mulhorand and Maztica most notably) in an attempt to make FR more "WotC IP focused" and remove elements that WotC didn't totally control (like the Egyptain pantheon chilling in Faerun).

Anyway, my point was I think a lot of the lore changes done both to the 4e Core and to the 4e Realms was done purely to shake things up and have a more "IP protected" version of D&D that couldn't be emulated by a third party and that they could exploit as their own unique versions. In the process, eggs were smashed and omelettes made. You can argue the omelette was tasty nor not, but I think one of the biggest drivers for 4e's changes was "different for difference's sake". [/sblock]

Rant over.

 

[TwoSix]

So, this is my tinfoil-hat, vaguely edition-warring conspiracy theory. You've been warned.

Rant over.

Doesn't seem very conspiracy-oriented to me, sounds like a logical business decision. It only comes across as shady if you think adherence to canon has some value that they're depriving you of.

 

[Remathilis]

Doesn't seem very conspiracy-oriented to me, sounds like a logical business decision. It only comes across as shady if you think adherence to canon has some value that they're depriving you of.

The conspiracy portion is that the changes were done not to make things "better" but "different", and that things that didn't necessarily need fixing probably got fixed just to make them unique from 3e or older version.

Its also because I can't *prove* any of it was done with an eye toward enforced incompatibility. They've never said the OGL was the reason 4e was such a radical departure in both lore and rules. Ergo, tinfoil hats for everyone.

 

[TwoSix]

Its also because I can't *prove* any of it was done with an eye toward enforced incompatibility. They've never said the OGL was the reason 4e was such a radical departure in both lore and rules. Ergo, tinfoil hats for everyone.

Oh, I'm a 4venger, and I still totally believe that. Getting control of the IP was obviously something that were concerned with in the late aughts.