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

[Imaro]

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.

I don't believe they did...

EDIT: Numerous posters have made the comment that your lore knowledge seems to stop with the original trilogy...

 

[I'm A Banana]

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.

I haven't changed those aspects. The tinker aspect is expressed through the wild magic (that's why he's a wild mage! Too many bells and whistles in the ol' component pouch). The fast-talking is expressed through the fits of babbling madness he spouts. They're still there. They're core elements of the characterization!

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.

The direct quote from The Book On The Subject says "No gnome has taken the Test of High Sorcery" and "all gnome wizardars are renegades."

My goal is to create an authentic gnome wild sorcerer, so no Test of High Sorcery for me! Unless maybe I wanted to be the first? But nah, it wasn't required and being a renegade seemed in character. After all he was one of the "very few gnomes whose Life Quest" led him to study magic to make people's lives better.

Renegade wizards are canon, after all! It's not an impossible thing in the setting for a wizard to not be part of the Tower of High Sorcery.

I haven't played up the magic item building angle as much as maybe I could've, I suppose, but I definitely expressed interest in golem-building to the DM! Creating artificial life is right there in line with thinkin' bigger. And my lil' windup doll has been an important bit of characterization, too.

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.

Woah woah woah. Don't make the mistake of mixing up your genre definition of "Dragonlance" - which is personal and subjective - with the actual written lore on Dragonlance.

By your personal whims of "authentic," at least three Heroes of the Lance are disqualified, so when you talk about "authentic," you don't mean "Authentic to the Lore" you mean "In line with my personal vision of a Dragonlance character."

Which is actually a bit of an insight here I might not've fully appreciated before.

One can't pick and choose whether or certain lore exists or is true. You can't disagree with me on what the canon says a character can be. It says that a few gnomes study magic rather than technology and are renegades. It says that they consider themselves above such antiquated concepts as "good" and "evil." It says that they embrace failrure as a learning experience and appreciate the value of style and flash. That they set out to make life easier, but that their inventions often have the opposite effect (hey! Wild magic has the potential to make life easier, but it often has the opposite effect!). A renegade gnome wild sorcerer is quite consistent with the lore (at leas the 3e CS lore, which is where I got most of those facts).

If you disagree with that, you just need to read the book, because that's what the book actually says. That's canon. That's established lore. That's a thing you can be right or wrong about, and if you assert that the character isn't consistent with lore, at this point, you're flatly wrong. It quite clearly is. You just need to read more lore.

You can disagree with whether or not you think such a character is in line with the greater themes and meanings of Dragonlance as a whole, but the thing about that is that your personal subjective opinion about the genre definition isn't actually the arbiter of authenticity, and no one has to give three wet farts about what you think a DL game should be about if you ain't runnin' it. I don't think a fey-pact warlock is exactly in line with the themes and meanings of Dark Sun as a whole, but it's not up to me to decide what a particular Dark Sun game that I don't run is really about (if it's really about anything). I don't think a low-magic party with monks and paladins is really in line with the themes and meanings of Primeval Thule as a whole, but you're the DM there, so you get to decide what that campaign's about and no one has to give three wet farts about my opinions.

The DM (with perhaps with "advice and consent" of the players) determines the greater themes and meanings for any particular campaign they play.

A problem comes in when you insist upon your genre definition as the only true one. Look, if your version of "bacon" includes stuff like this, then I will never personally consider it true bacon, and in my mind you will always simply be wrong to think otherwise. It's not a logical argument, it's just a genre definition - my "bacon" genre absolutely does not include that stuff.

But if I come to your house and you say we're having bacon and we eat that first stuff, well, I kind of have to accept the validity of your genre definition for you. If I sit across the table and gripe about how this bacon is "inauthentic," I'm being a total cheekweasel. I've no right to impose my code of bacon on you when you're hosting. And the same goes for you when I'm hosting. And for both of us when Craig is hosting! I don't need to share your definition of bacon, but we have to agree that the thing in front of us is going to be called bacon because that's what the host wants to call it. Okay then.

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.

If you think a gnome renegade mage who studies magic as other gnomes study technology is out of line with what's written in the books, you're simply wrong.

If you think that character isn't bacon"Dragonlance" enough, you can't be wrong, but if you can't at least accept that your definition of "Dragolance enough" is yours in particular and that other people can have equally valid definitions of "Dragonlance enough", you're being a cheekweasel.

 

[I'm A Banana]

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 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).

Yeah, I think I'm beginning to better appreciate this distinction. The issue is obfuscated because points like this...

ild 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.

...are quite clearly points about the facts of the setting, not about aesthetics.

Elements like this reinforce my point, since if the timeline hadn't advanced, and if the lore would've remained consistent, I wouldn't be presented with Timeline Confusion in knowing when the game was going to be set or which ages occurred in which order, and I would've made a character who wasn't a wild sorcerer!. More consistent lore would've yielded a character who used that lore better.

Even the word "authenticity" is laden with this connotation about the factual nature of a thing, unclouded by interpretation, closer to the intended meaning. Claims such as "Because your gnome is a renegade mage he's not authentic" are absurd when the book literally says that all gnome wizards are renegades! A less absurd way to phrase that might be "Because your gnome is a renegade, he's not in line with my vision of Dragonlance." Hell, even official lore can be judged aesthetically inconsistent (get me started on the ideal way to play Planescape sometime...).

But sure, if the claim is aesthetic and not about authenticity, that's a subjective claim, as nonfalsifiable as the definition of bacon. Of course, my goal was never to create a character that fit Hussar's personal definition of a Dragonlance character - because Hussar's not the host of the game. I don't care about his preferred aesthetics. I care about the DM's preferred aesthetics. Those are the aesthetics that define this Dragonlance game, regardless of any personal opinions about it.

 

[ccs]

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.

Well if there's a gnome wielding wild magic decades before it entered the setting, then clearly there must've been some time travel involved.
But that's a tale for a different campaign I suspect.

 

[pemerton]

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

Why not?

Judgements of authenticity, or of "generic-ness", are not about lists of facts (at least, not solely and generally not primarily). They are aesthetic judgements, about the meaning of a work, a setting, etc; and how some newly-added element, or some element within it, fits with it.

This is why a critic can describe a particular character, or event, in a story as "jarring" or "misplaced" or otherwise at odds with the rest of the work.

Like many AD&D fighters, Caramon is a helper/"meat-shield" for a magic-user. It is the framing of this as a relationship, and to some extent a struggle, between twins that the DL story makes Caramon more than just another fighter. There is the family drama; but Caramon also gets drawn into the distinctive DL milieu by way of vicarious participation.

I'm not a participant in [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION]'s game, so I can't judge what, if anything, about the gnome wild mage PC makes DL distinctiveness emerge out of the play of the character.

Yeah, I think I'm beginning to better appreciate this distinction. The issue is obfuscated because points like this...

...are quite clearly points about the facts of the setting, not about aesthetics.

I think like many a forum poster, [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] is an adherent of the "multiple leaky buckets" approach to argumentation. And I'll accept that I'm interpreting and regimenting his comments in a way that he himself hasn't. (And of course am subject to correction!)

But what is informing my interpretation is the fact that, a long way upthread now, I went through the material that you relied on and pointed out how - as far as factual elements are concerned - it departed relatively little from what is in DL. Having gone back to find that post, here is the relevant bit again:

The issue you are having with your gnome who hates the gods could have arisen, just as easily, using nothing but the 1st ed AD&D DL Adventures hardback as the vehicle for character creation. Which is why I assert that it is not a canon-change matter.

<snip>

From your post 584 (quotes in bold):

I knew from osmosis that DL had a Cataclysm and that is one of the things that it had that no setting did. . . . how the Cataclysm caused mortals to lose their faith in the god . . . in that wilderness and chaos, [the PC] opened up a Discovery about the history of the world and all that inhabited it that lead to him embracing Chaos as his cause, and seeing the Cataclysm not just as divine violence, but as divine violence whose express purpose was to control mortals, to punish them for being "too Good."

The Cataclysm is not a canon change. That it is "divine violence" is not a canon change. That it caused mortals to lose faith in the gods is not a canon change. Establishing the PC (on this basis) as hostile to the gods is something that is being suggested is at odds with canon - but there is no canon change you've pointed to that inspired it. It seems to be your own response to these core conceits that have been part of DL from the beginning.

a mythical creation of the gnomes as a curse from a god concerned about their hubris. About the Greygem, and how it created wild sorcery and how it's tied very closely to the gnomes once again (either creating them in one version of the myth, or being unleashed by them in the other version of the myth).

crazy comic relief gnomes who invented dangerous technologies . . . [who] think big, push the limits, are always in development, and embrace failure, and don't think much about the risks. . . . a Life Quest to constantly improve an invention defines their lives.
. . . a gnome born in Mount Nevermind who was delighting in failure and learning about the birth of the race and who, at adulthood, adopted a Life Quest to further the knowledge of wild sorcery . . . The way other gnomes work on rocket-powered ironing-boards, he works on wild surges, the fabric of reality, his own mind, and the gods themselves. Because gnomes don't think small, and they're never happy with the end result, and there's always more cogs to add.

None of this gnome lore is canon change. It's all there in the original DL books (eg DL Adventures, which says that "each gnome has a Lifequest . . . to attain perfect understanding of one device.") The only change that I can see is one that you have introduced, namely, treating the obsession with technology as metaphorical rather than literal, and hence having your gnome be concerned with perfecting magic rather than perfecting a device.

. . . a mythical creation of the gnomes as a curse from a god concerned about their hubris. . . . the Greygem, and how it created wild sorcery and how it's tied very closely to the gnomes once again (either creating them in one version of the myth, or being unleashed by them in the other version of the myth)

None of this is a canon change (except the use of the Greystone to explain wild magic, which is a retcon designed to accomodate a rules change).

But DL Adventures says, in relation to Reorx's creation of gnomes, "Reorx was angered . . . Reorx, although still angered at the gnomes, had never forsaken them. He loved them . . ." Again, the issues with your character seem mostly to be the result of your interpretation of core DL canon, rather than of any canon changes.

As I said, I don't know exactly what you read that gave you your ideas. But the canon you've presented doesn't seem to involve any changes at all - and all the issues with your character seem to result from your own (non-canonical) responses to that canon.

The tinker aspect is expressed through the wild magic

This metaphoric interpretation of gnomes is yours. To the extent that someone else (eg [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]) doesn't think it is fully in line with the material, well the lack of fixed canon is not to blame!

One of the risks of re-interpreting an established trope in metaphorical terms is that others may not go along with you!

Claims such as "Because your gnome is a renegade mage he's not authentic" are absurd when the book literally says that all gnome wizards are renegades! A less absurd way to phrase that might be "Because your gnome is a renegade, he's not in line with my vision of Dragonlance." Hell, even official lore can be judged aesthetically inconsistent (get me started on the ideal way to play Planescape sometime...).

To me, this goes back to the Cotswolds's-aspiring librarian in the Le Carre game. Yes, England in that period had many non-communist librarians, some who no doubt aspired to retire to the Cotswolds. But does such a character speak authentically to the concerns and focus of the game?

If you want to play a character who evokes the spirit of morally-laden Cold War stories of the Le Carre sort, uncommitted and unimplicated librarians won't do the job.

If you want to play a character who evokes the spirit of DL, do you choose a race - but then set aside (or, at best, reinterpret along metaphorical lines) what is DL-distinctive about that race (tinkers)? And then, having built a wizard, do you set aside what is DL-distinctive about wizards (WoHS)? And then, when thinking about DL-defining history and cosmology, set up yourself not to redeem it, or even to destroy/replace it (as Raistlin did) but to bypass it and put something more modernist in its place?

Of course you might think this is not a flattering framing of your PC - but, under this framing, it surprises me that you can't see how the judgement of "not paradigmatically a DL character" is arrived at.

The DM (with perhaps with "advice and consent" of the players) determines the greater themes and meanings for any particular campaign they play.

Now that's an odd claim!

my goal was never to create a character that fit Hussar's personal definition of a Dragonlance character - because Hussar's not the host of the game. I don't care about his preferred aesthetics. I care about the DM's preferred aesthetics. Those are the aesthetics that define this Dragonlance game, regardless of any personal opinions about it.

Well, this is somewhat from left field - I thought you'd posted that [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s opinion of your character was an issue for you; and it frames the relationship between player and GM in a way that is a bit weird to me. But best of luck in pleasing him/her!

 

[Shasarak]

Well if there's a gnome wielding wild magic decades before it entered the setting, then clearly there must've been some time travel involved.
But that's a tale for a different campaign I suspect.

Yes, you never will see a Gnome time traveling in a Dragonlance trilogy.

 

[Shasarak]

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".

It seems that I was not the only one, or even the most important one to recognize the shark jumpingness.

 

[Mirtek]

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,

tge events within do matter, just not the version happening at your table. The official resolution of the module will go into the canon.

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?

none at all. Canon is of no importance to the game site, each table is already non-canon the moment you Start character creation. Canon matters for official releases and novels advancing the timeline/metastory

If you want a game where gnomes are 3 meters, gnolls are pink and all humans habe gills it doesn't matter.

If the next supplement/novel suddenly has this and prtends it has always been this way thats a problem

 

[Hussar]

/snip

You can disagree with whether or not you think such a character is in line with the greater themes and meanings of Dragonlance as a whole, but the thing about that is that your personal subjective opinion about the genre definition isn't actually the arbiter of authenticity, and no one has to give three wet farts about what you think a DL game should be about if you ain't runnin' it. I don't think a fey-pact warlock is exactly in line with the themes and meanings of Dark Sun as a whole, but it's not up to me to decide what a particular Dark Sun game that I don't run is really about (if it's really about anything). I don't think a low-magic party with monks and paladins is really in line with the themes and meanings of Primeval Thule as a whole, but you're the DM there, so you get to decide what that campaign's about and no one has to give three wet farts about my opinions.

The DM (with perhaps with "advice and consent" of the players) determines the greater themes and meanings for any particular campaign they play.

A problem comes in when you insist upon your genre definition as the only true one. Look, if your version of "bacon" includes stuff like this, then I will never personally consider it true bacon, and in my mind you will always simply be wrong to think otherwise. It's not a logical argument, it's just a genre definition - my "bacon" genre absolutely does not include that stuff.

But if I come to your house and you say we're having bacon and we eat that first stuff, well, I kind of have to accept the validity of your genre definition for you. If I sit across the table and gripe about how this bacon is "inauthentic," I'm being a total cheekweasel. I've no right to impose my code of bacon on you when you're hosting. And the same goes for you when I'm hosting. And for both of us when Craig is hosting! I don't need to share your definition of bacon, but we have to agree that the thing in front of us is going to be called bacon because that's what the host wants to call it. Okay then.



If you think a gnome renegade mage who studies magic as other gnomes study technology is out of line with what's written in the books, you're simply wrong.

If you think that character isn't bacon"Dragonlance" enough, you can't be wrong, but if you can't at least accept that your definition of "Dragolance enough" is yours in particular and that other people can have equally valid definitions of "Dragonlance enough", you're being a cheekweasel.

Hang on though. Because it's not just about me. You have stated that your goal for an "authentic" character is to convince everyone else at the table that your character is authentic to the setting. IOW, you are insisting that I MUST share your definition of bacon because, otherwise, you've "failed" to present your character as authentic and I'm harming your fun.

You are the one who has imposed a criteria on me that I neither asked for nor wanted. You say you want to create an authentic DL character that everyone at the table would instantly recognize as a DL character. I look at that character and do not see it as an authentic DL character. For one, it's anachronistic - there are NO WILD MAGES during the War of the Lance. For two, it espouses a point of view shared by NO ONE in the setting. No one, not one single protagonist or antagonist in the entire series espouses your point of view. Even within the campaign, no one has shared your point of view. For three, you've reinterpreted the core elements of a Krynn Gnome (wild magic as tinkering).

And then you're trying to take me to task for looking at this character and not seeing it as authentic. YOU are the one who has to convince me, not the other way around. YOU are the one who is hinging your enjoyment on whether or not I judge the character to be authentic. YOU made me the judge, a position I neither asked for nor wanted. It's up to YOU to convince me, not the other way around.

Now, as far as I go, your criticism is completely unwarranted. I don't care about "authenticity". Lore doesn't matter to me. At all. Lore is a convenient short hand, and that's about it. It can be changed, rejected, ejected, whatever on a whim. So, my Fey linked DarkSun Warlock was, in no way, an attempt at an "authentic" DS character. It was an attempt to create a character that fit in the setting well enough that it didn't cause waves. But, that's about as far as it goes. My Thule campaign is not about trying to present an "authentic" Thule campaign. Couldn't care less about that. It's about an experiment to see if 5e D&D can be played with low magic instead of the very, very high magic that it baselines at.

But "authenticity"? Couldn't care less. Good grief, our Dragonlance campaign featured Driders FFS. In a setting with no Lolth, no Drow (DL dark elves are simply elves that have been ejected from elven society, they don't have a society of their own), where the heck do we get Driders? But, the point is, I don't care. It's a complete non-issue AFAIC. It was an interesting scenario, and it fit with what we were doing ((cursed aquatic elves are transformed into driders? Ok, fair enough)).

You have repeatedly thrust this role of judge onto me, and then complained when I don't judge the way you want me to. That's not fair. If you honestly don't care about my interpretation of the setting, then why are you putting me in this position to judge how "authentic" your character is to the setting? You can't have it both ways. Or, are you simply expecting me to nod and smile and agree with everything you put on the table and give you a cookie? I assumed you wanted an honest reaction. Well, my honest reaction is that your anachronistic character that rejects setting themes and tropes is not an authentic setting character.

 

[Hussar]

tge events within do matter, just not the version happening at your table. The official resolution of the module will go into the canon.
none at all. Canon is of no importance to the game site, each table is already non-canon the moment you Start character creation. Canon matters for official releases and novels advancing the timeline/metastory

If you want a game where gnomes are 3 meters, gnolls are pink and all humans habe gills it doesn't matter.

If the next supplement/novel suddenly has this and prtends it has always been this way thats a problem

Why is that a problem, but, invalidating other official sources isn't?

At the end of GDQ, Lolth is dead. That is the only realistic successful outcome of that module. ((Well, a mountain of dead PC's is probably likely as well ) Hundreds, if not thousands of groups played those modules. Every Drow supplement that comes out after that module is basically telling those players that nothing they did mattered. Complete retcon.

And that's perfectly acceptable. Even though it's in a 100% official supplement that Lolth is dead, we can completely ignore that and that's fine.

But, change elves to blink elves and everyone loses their minds? WTF? What's the criteria here? How do you judge what gets to be canon and what doesn't?