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

[TwoSix]

That happens when you have a metaplot. Individual games are of no importance. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The lore is greater than any groups individual game.

While true, I think that exact de-emphasis is why metaplot in RPG products has been phased out over time.

 

[Hussar]

I missed responding to this. You've just rendered most of the Heroes of the Lance inauthentic. A half-elven ranger(Tanis), Human figher(Caramon), Human fighter(Tika), Human cleric(Goldmoon), Dwarven fighter(Flint), and Human Barbarian(Riverwind) are also about as generic as you get. Only Sturm as a knight of Solomnia, Tasslehoff who should thank his stars he's not just a halfling, and Raistin as a wizard of high sorcery evoke the setting.

Not really. Tanis' background is referenced multiple times through the novels and the fact that he's half-elven is a major deal. Goldmoon is a cleric of Mishakal, so, that's pretty Dragonlance right there. Riverwind is tied to Goldmoon. About the only really generic characters are Caramon, Flint and Tika. Caramon gets a fair bit of a pass because of Raistlin as well. So, yup, out of the eight or ten Heroes of the Lance, two are actually generic.

 

[Hussar]

Cool. Sounds like you had fun.
Would I say you were playing D&D? Well… it's not really for me to say.

The thing D&D has going for it is it's ubiquitous. It's not a generic system. It's not always the most hackable system. But people know it. So they make it their own.
You can hack any system. Just the other day I was listening to the Tabletop Babble podcast and they were talking about using systems to play superheroes, and numerous non-cape systems were suggested included 3e and 4e D&D. You can make the D&D rules into anything with a little effort.

But none of that means D&D is a generic rulelset. Adding a different world doesn't mean the existing one ceases to exist.
You can mod Grand Theft Auto to let you play as Iron Man or the Hulk. Or add pirates or Pokemon to Ark: Survival Evolved. But that doesn't negate the story, characters, and lore of the existing video games.

However, there's a point to be made here. What non-generic RPG game out there has close to 100 different published settings? Even more if we want to include non-official settings.

Is D&D "generic"? No, not really. It's best for telling a fairly specific type of story - typical heroes journey stuff. I wouldn't use D&D rules for playing a gritty war-game RPG set in Viet Nam, for example. It's not the right system for that. But, considering we have published settings for D&D that range from fairly bog standard Tolkienesque to Science Fantasy, to Gothic Horror, and all points in between, I'd say that while D&D might not be a "generic" system, it's certianly not a specific one.

 

[Hussar]

These all evoke DL for you, but for me they weren't the interesting part of the gnome or the wild sorcerer or the setting itself as the actual sourcebooks that I read described it. The verbal tic and the inventions were characteristic of a mindset, not definitive of it (like having a scottish accent and wielding an axe are dwarf stereotypes). Wild sorcery occurs due to the effects of primordial chaos, not the moons. All people in the setting after the cataclysm are explicitly said to turn away from the gods because of what they did.

The problem is that I tried to make an authentic DL character and, in your estimation, failed, because the lore I was true to wasn't lore that you recognized as in the Dragonlance "genre" (despite the fact that the designers and authors who worked in that genre saw them as within that genre).

If the lore hadn't changed, that wouldn't be a problem.



Genre definitions are personal. My character isn't inauthentic by some objective standard of authenticity, he just doesn't ring as authentic to you, because your genre definition is slightly askew of what the setting says about itself in other published products. I appreciate the nuance and unique flavor to certain aspects of DL lore that don't match your own appreciations. I like Texas BBQ, you like 'bama BBQ, and think the Texas stuff isn't real BBQ.

The issue is that we're getting two different flavors of Dragonlance when we're supposed to be having the same one. If our expectations were the same when we picked this thing up, we'd both be enjoying authentic flavors of DL (whichever flavor that happened to be). As it sits, because they've used the same label on several different flavors, we can be having the SAME THING and not agree on what it really tastes like.

This is a major issue with canon changes.

Thing is though, you don't get to pick and choose. Remove the tinker and speech pattern aspect of DL gnomes, are they actually DL gnomes anymore? You've just removed canon aspects of DL gnomes, not through a lore change but all on your own. You've ignored the whole Tower of High sorcery thing, not because of canon changes but because you wanted this for your character. You've taken up a point of view espoused by absolutely no one in the setting, not because of changes to the canon, but, because you wanted to.

Sure, the wild mage thing is a new bit of canon, fair enough. But, that doesn't mean that the other canon has been changed. You don't get to pick and choose canon when you want to make an "authentic" character.

You're pretending that the changes you've made to canon are due to changes made to the setting. Thing is, these are YOUR changes. You've chosen to ignore canon in order to make a specific character and then tried to proclaim that this character follows the canon of the setting.

 

[pemerton]

The problem as I see it is that Hussars vision of Dragonlance differs from the Weiss and Hickman version of Dragonlance. If the original authors can create a hero that does not fit Hussars vision of Dragonlance then maybe his vision is either too narrow or just incorrect.

Well, some fans of Star Wars think they know what is truer to the canon than George Lucas did.

You clearly think you know what is truer to FR than WotC did with the 4e changes.

In general: not every fan or critic concedes that the authors/owneres always know their own work best. Hence "jumping the shark".

 

[pemerton]

Does it need to be asserted? A Cosmology with a prime-material multi-verse seems to positively beg for the assumption.

<snip>

the 1e DMG had conversion rules to take D&D characters into GW or vice-versa.

Well, if it's not asserted it's probably not canon!

And the DMG conversion rules for GW are a good example: I don't think [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION] or [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] argues that, because of those rules, Gamma World is part of the "D&D canon" they refer to. I think they recognise that those rules were addressed to GMs as a device for running their games; that they were not intended to be treated as part of a guidebook to the D&D world.

DDG was the same - the various pantheons were presented as options for authors (GMs) to choose from - not as chapters in a cosmological/theological atlas of the D&D world. It is only MotP that takes it in this latter direction.

And similarly for the alternative prime material planes: they are a world-building device, so you can include new worlds, cross-overs, etc if you want to. But there is no assumption that, by default, everything anyone ever thought up in D&D world building is part of a common fictional world. This latter, "multiversal" idea - whereby, in playing GH you are ipso facto also making FR part of your gameworld, because "Greyspace" links to "Realmsspace"; or that, in playing OA you are ipso facto making Elminster part of your gameworld, because Kara-Tur is a part of the FR - was a subsequent invention. (Springboarding, as I said, of the MotP approach.)

Hence: someone who disregards this subsequent invention, and approaches the catalogue of settings, and even the catalogue within a single setting book, as a list of options and devices for a GM to use in world-building, rather than as a canoical accont of some "Platonic" fantasy setting, is not departing from the way D&D is meant to be played.

 

[pemerton]

It could be that this is what [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is limiting his view to (though I suppose he could say better than me!). If that's all I had to pull on for character information, I suppose I wouldn't be making a Greygem-influenced gnome, either! My goal to create an authentic DL character with a unique story that could only be told in DL would have produced a different character. The "inauthenticity" of my character arises in his mind perhaps because it isn't in line with those 6 novels and original modules.

There are elements of this discussion that contradict this assertion. I'm not scholar of DL lore, but if Greygem-influenced gnomes, wild sorcery, doubt in the gods, etc., weren't a part of the original 6 novels and modules, and that's what Hussar is using as a litmus test for authenticity, I can see his perspective!

I've read the whole thread. A fair way upthread I also posted extracts from Dragonlance Adventures. The only element in your character that is peculiar relative to those original DL stories is the wild magic.
[MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is familiar with Raistlin, with gnones, with renegade wizards, with the Greygem. These have all been part of DL from the start. He is contesting the authenticity of your character. That's an aesthetic judgement, not a quibble over the facts of the setting.

it should be clear that not all the Heroes of the Lance must have a heroic goal. That you can be a fully functioning and even very iconic character in the setting and be something of an anti-hero.

<snip>

Renegade wizards are no less authentic, though! And as far as the "tinker" aspect goes, this philosophy underpins the magic of my wild sorcerer

<snip>

Isn't Raislin a valid character archetype for a DL player? If I literally just played "Raislin, but called Lary," wouldn't that be "authentic"?

<snip>

And if none of those things were important in the original six books, then I can see that someone using those six books as a basis might wonder about this space-alien gnome...and I'd be playing a different character, if those original six books informed my character options.

It just strikes me as obvious that the difference between you and Hussar is one of how to read DL, not how to catalogue its permissible elements.

Suppose I'm running a Le Carre-inspired Cold War campaign. You're read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, so you decide your PC will be a librarian. After all, there's a librarian in the novel! But your librarian is not a communist, and is not caught up in Cold War politicking. In fact, your librarian rejects politics and just wants to retire to a little village in the Cotswolds.

Is that an authentic character for the game? I think it might be for an RPG inspired by Raymond Briggs's When the Wind Blows; but I'd have doubts about the character for the Le Carre game.

I think this is the sort of perspective Hussar has on your DL character - every element can be found in a DL character, but the way you've put them together occludes rather than establishes connections to key DL ideas/themes (a gnome, but not a tinker; a wizard, but not ToHS; linked to the Greygem, but via a non-paradigmatic class (wild mage); disavowing the gods like Raistlin but - I gather - not directly trying to overthrow them; etc).

 

[Maxperson]

Not really. Tanis' background is referenced multiple times through the novels and the fact that he's half-elven is a major deal. Goldmoon is a cleric of Mishakal, so, that's pretty Dragonlance right there. Riverwind is tied to Goldmoon. About the only really generic characters are Caramon, Flint and Tika. Caramon gets a fair bit of a pass because of Raistlin as well. So, yup, out of the eight or ten Heroes of the Lance, two are actually generic.

The fact that ANY half-elf is a bastard is a big deal. That's the trope and Tanis was about as generic as it gets in that regard. Riverwind and Caramon don't get passed on generic just because they have ties to non-generic members, if Goldmoon isn't anything other than a generic human cleric, which she is. That she follows a Krynn goddess doesn't make her race/class combo non-generic.

We have 7 out of 10 being generic, 6 if we allow Goldmoon to somehow not be generic due to having a Krynn god, but if we do that then we have to say that none of them are generic due to being born in Krynn countries. That doesn't work. She's generic.

The problem is this, though. Even were we to grant that only two out of ten are generic, that means that two of the freaking Heroes of the Lance are inauthentic PCs in the Krynn setting. If your definition results in even a single member of the Heroes of the Lance not being authentic to Krynn, there's something really wrong with your definition.

 

[Hussar]

Actually Mystryl committed suicide, Cyric killed Bhaal by stabbing him Mask (so it really was Mask) and Midnight was already Mystra in all but name at this very moment. Finder's killing blow was backed by Tymora
That happens when you have a metaplot. Individual games are of no importance. It's not a bug, it's a feature. The lore is greater than any groups individual game.

But then you cannot point to individual games (modules) as a source of lore. How do you pick and choose? If the lore for drow comes from GDQ, but the events of the module don't actually matter, then it means that invalidating lore isn't all that important. What difference does it make that your game used one version of Archons if individual games don't matter?

 

[Hussar]

Just a note about wild magic in Dragonlance. Wild Magic, according to the Dragonlance nexus (http://www.dlnexus.com/fan/rules/11852.aspx) enters Krynn after Dragons of Summer Flame. That's actually DECADES after the events of The War of the Lance, during the Age of Mortals. This whole argument about gnome wild mages is based on a misreading of the timeline of the setting.

Funny how all those who repeatedly told me that I didn't know the setting conveniently chose to ignore that little bit.