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

[Shasarak]

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.

2e is not really a different story to 1e (or 3e etc) but having Temple of Elemental Evil and then Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and then even more derivatives on the Theme seems like a bit of a waste. Not as bad as Blue Orc, Green Orc I guess.

 

[Shasarak]

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

Good for it then. I know that it had a major continuity change with earlier editions so I wonder which version they decided to go with.

 

[TwoSix]

Not as bad as Blue Orc, Green Orc I guess.

That's my favorite Dr. Seuss book!

 

[TwoSix]

Good for it then. I know that it had a major continuity change with earlier editions so I wonder which version they decided to go with.

Both, actually. They released consolidated version of the original lines as 20th anniversary editions, and they've rebooted the followup lines with a more narrative 2nd edition.

 

[Maxperson]

Don't forget that Finder Wyvernspur killed Moander.

Hmm. I absolutely did forget that one. Thanks!

 

[Shasarak]

Rant over.

I do think that it is funny after so many companies are so successful after blatantly stealing their ideas from DnD **cough** Warcraft **cough** that DnD can not even successfully steal its own ideas.

 

[I'm A Banana]

If the issue never arose for months, how was it possibly a burden or a challenge?

The moment it came up, it's an issue. It's not less of an issue just because it took it's sweet time coming up. It is, perhaps, less noticeable of an issue.

I'll be honest, if there's an interesting back story for the gnome, that player needs to get over themselves. "But it's not REALLLLY X" players are the worst.

Well, if wishes and dreams were dollars and cents we'd all be millionaires, right? In actual play, you sometimes get folks who define a vibe or a genre different than you would. We should be able to play together without gettin' all huffed. Consistent lore makes that possible - we can all agree that This Is X, because it says so, just as we can all agree that an attack roll of 17 hits an AC of 17, because that's what the rules say.

Why? You know as a DM what you want. If it comes up, communicate it to your players. When are archons and giants going to come up at the beginning of the game?

At the start of play, these things impact character creation. If I'm an elementalist, and I'm a player who cares about lore, I'm going to find out what elementalists are in the world, what creatures they associate with, what conflicts are relevant to them, and use that information to inform my character options (maybe I speak Giant and seek a great tome said to bind powerful elemental Archons into servitude!). If I'm a dwarf who fights giants, I'm going to want to know about those giants I fight.

I'm going to want to know - specifically - what D&D elementalists and D&D dwarves and D&D giants and D&D elementals do that is distinct from the Generic Fantasy Versions of these creatures.

There's absolutely nothing stopping you from running 5e with 2e gnolls or 3e gnolls or 4e gnolls or 5e pre-Volo gnolls.

There's the not-insignificant effort of writing them up, examining the ramifications of using them, and getting your players on board with them. You have to change the default. Given how powerful the default effect is, I think it'd be pretty clear that this isn't a trivial amount of effort.

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.

If all you need for a "defining concept" for D&D is that it has a creature in it called "orc" and it doesn't actually matter what the orc is, then in what way is it actually "defining" anything?



Generic Antagonistic Nonhuman is a Generic Antagonistic Nonhuman, why does it matter if it's called an Orc or a Gnoll or an Ogre or a Troll or a Goblin or a Klingon or...anything? Why have all these different antagonistic nonhumans if the game only really needs one Generic Antagonistic Nonhuman that you can call whatever the hell you want?

Certainly, other games have gone this direction!

D&D hasn't, and I think part of the reason D&D hasn't is because its designers know that on some level, these differences are important. The distinction between these creatures - what each one uniquely brings in its story - is relevant to the gameplay.

But it's my general opinion that "art," (however loosely defined) gets watered down by consensus. To the extent that you're looking at the story elements, I would prefer bold vision ... it could be that the bold vision is incorrect, but you're more likely to get a better product, and even the failures are interesting.

It's no more art-by-consensus than the current developers are doing design-by-consensus. It doesn't tell them what they must do, it just gives them data and informs their decision-making. That's just a managerial skill, to use public information in the most efficient way, to not let marketing dictate your product to you. I'd imagine it's a skill D&D's devs have down pretty well after a few years of continual survey.

 

[pemerton]

The lore of 5e and the lore of OD&D overlap on almost no points. (Chainmail and OD&D still use LotR categories, like the Red Eye and the White Hand, to classify orcish tribes.) Yet there is clearly recognisable continuity from one to the other - in the monster and spell lists; in the class names and functions; in the races available to players; and in the core mechanics (ability scores; to hit vs AC, followed by a damage roll that subtracts from hit points). That's what makes D&D recognisable.

But that ignores the spells, the monsters, and the race and classes. Those, more than anything else, give D&D the closest thing it has to a set identity.

You can make any sort of lore changes you want, but if you can play an elf wizard casting fireball at a goblin with 6 HP and a 10 Dex who rolls a d20 to save, it's pretty much D&D.

I think we're in agreement!

Or Pathfinder. Or 13th Age. Or Shadow of the Demonlord. Or the World of Warcraft RPG.

(But not, ironically, 4th Edition D&D as the wizard would make an attack roll instead of the goblin making a save...)

Which just means you could argue almost every fantasy RPG is effectively D&D. Which isn't very useful definition.

Nonsense.

PF is at it's heart a re-release, by a different publisher, of the core 3E rules. 13th Age also uses the d20 SRD as it's core.

Here's a list of the non-d20 RPGs I have on my shelf that I can recall off the top of my head: T&T; Runequest; Rolemaster; HARP; Palladium; HeroWars, HeroQuest and HeroQuest revised; Burning Wheel; Maelstrom Storytelling; Stormbringer; Pendragon; Man-to-Man (GURPS predecessor); Dragon Quest; Chivalry and Sorcery (3rd and 4th eds only); Ars Magica.

None of these fits the description that [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION] gave of the D&D paradigm. And that's because they're not D&D clones. (Unlike SRD games, which are.)

 

[pemerton]

The great thing about canon is it's there for people who want it and it's easily removed for those who don't.

But this is true of any lore. It's not a distinctive feature of canon.

 

[pemerton]

Of course it is a work of art. I think the mistake you are making is looking at it like it is some kind of Painting or Sculpture where everything is fixed once it is complete. Things like the FR are more like an ongoing serial where you get a different producer and writers coming in every so often. Even Happy Days continued on for a while after the Fonz jumped the shark.

I mean I could go on about the beauty of a finely crafted meta-plot and on the other hand I do not believe the current stewards are interested in that other then where they can rehash or reimage old Greyhawk material into the Forgotten Realms.

Thanks for the reply!