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

[Mirtek]

If lore is so important as people here are claiming, why aren't people up in arms about this? 5e is chock a block with all sorts of changes like this, but, it heralded as one of the best Monster Manuals ever produced.

a lot of people are #### of by this (i still hate 5e gnolls in particular, poor Gorelik), but accepted that it's simply the best we can hope for. The huge changes are undone at least and the numeros small changes are not good but something we can never geht WotC to undo. So we'll have to live with the lemons they gave us and be happy it's at least no longer horses##t

 

[Imaro]

a lot of people are #### of by this (i still hate 5e gnolls in particular, poor Gorelik), but accepted that it's simply the best we can hope for. The huge changes are undone at least and the numeros small changes are not good but something we can never geht WotC to undo. So we'll have to live with the lemons they gave us and be happy it's at least no longer horses##t

Pretty much this... it's hard to get majorly bent out of shape about an edition making small changes when we just had to swallow an edition that decided to rewrite large swathes of lore and cannon.

 

[Maxperson]

In the same way I can't make a priest of Mystra set before the Time of Troubles and call it a canon character.

Just a nitpick, but you'd have to go back a bit over 1000 years before the Time of Troubles before you couldn't have a priest of Mystra. Mystra died in the time of troubles and was replaced by Mystra. Midnight kept the same deific name.

 

[Hussar]

You can not say that the events happened significantly after the war of the lance when they time traveled to before the Cataclysm. That is the whole point of time traveling that no event is significantly distant to another.

And of course we are just comparing that to one Gnome Wild Sorcerer which is, as you say, hardly something wide spread in the setting.



The War of the Lance covered large swaths of Ansalon and we were following the travels of one or two groups so it is a pretty sweeping statement to call something or another as non-canon. We did not even really see much of Mount Nevermind to be able to make a full determination of what a real Dragonlance Gnome is because Gnimsh certainly does not fit the standard model.



I would agree with that.

But, in this case we actually KNOW what the canon is. Wild Magic enters Krynn AFTER Dragons of Summer Flame. AFAIK, this particular wild mage hasn't been time traveling. So... wouldn't that make this a non-canon character?

Just a nitpick, but you'd have to go back a bit over 1000 years before the Time of Troubles before you couldn't have a priest of Mystra. Mystra died in the time of troubles and was replaced by Mystra. Midnight kept the same deific name.

I thought Mystryl and then the original Mystra both died in the ToT. Or did I read that wrong. Anyway, you still get my point.

 

[I'm A Banana]

But, in this case we actually KNOW what the canon is. Wild Magic enters Krynn AFTER Dragons of Summer Flame. AFAIK, this particular wild mage hasn't been time traveling. So... wouldn't that make this a non-canon character?

From the lore I'm reading, you're wrong.

"Magic was originally the province of the gods alone. Magical power resides in the world itself, however - primordial spiritual and arcan energies that were used in Krynn's creation. When gnomes freed the Graygem during the Age of Dreams, the gem amplified the magical energies and infused them with the essence of Chaos. Select mortals learned to tap into this source of power, shaping chaotic energies through their own will. These wild mages and mystics were known as Scions.

Though the Scions were critical in the defeat of the evil dragons during the Second Dragon War, their wild magic also caused great destruction and sorrow. The three deities of magic...vowed to grant ttheir power to the mortal races, a power based in order instead of chaos. They took disciples and formed the Orders of High Sorcery.

The Graygem's influence lasted for centuries, its power eventually diminishing. The Scions' power waned as wizardry gained ascendance. During the Age of Might and Age of Despair, the magic of the Scions was reduced until it very nearly vanished entirely, for only the faintest hints of power could be gleaned from the energies of chaos, while the magic of the gods flowed freely to those who followed them....

When the Age of Mortals began and the magic of the deities was lost, the poeple of Ansalon found their own magic in these energies. Though the Scions are long forgotten, their legacy endures with the mystics and sorcerers of the Age of Mortals.
...
Many consider [primal sorcery] a new kind of magic, but it is actually the oldest kind of magic - the magic of manipulating the natural energies imbuing the world...Unlike High Sorcery, primal sorcery is more difficult to harness and seems much less powerful...What primal sorcery lacks in strength, however, it makes up for in terms of its flexibility - sorcerers are not as constrained by the Curse of the Magi.
...
Sorcerers tap into the arcane energies that were used to create Krynn itself and focus those energies into magical spells...some sorcerers acknowledged and honored the gods of magic, while others repudiated them and the Orders of High Sorcery."

So while the Chaos War brought the magic roaring back, it was truly there all along, though not exactly prominent, depending on the Age (I have no idea what Age the version of DL we're playing is set in, but time-travel is a prominent enough trope in the campaign that I'm not so sure it's any of the canonical ages).

That's the fiction I used to build my character. It helpfully reinforces that it's not an accident that my gnome thinks the gods mucked everything up and that the Order of High Sorcery is for total wankers. And yeah, returning a rare and nearly forgotten art of magic to its rightful place while taking the gods and the wankers down a peg sounds exactly like what he's hoping to accomplish.

Hell, even if you were right and if there was canonically absolutely zero wild sorcery until after the Chaos War, all it would really do is ably demonstrate the problem with changing lore: it's harder for me to create a character that uses the lore when I can't even tell which of the dozen ambiguously-named Ages the game is supposed to be happening in and there are entirely different permissible heroic characters in different Ages, any of whom may apparently be involved in time-travel shenanigans (which would still be exceptionally on-point for this Dragonlance campaign, as time-travel features quite prominently in it! And it would be entirely consistent with my character to not really care what time period he's actually in.).

But this is all kind of beside the point. You don't actually care about canon. I could be playing a jedi with a Mad Max car in our Dragonlance game, and you'd be fine with it, I guess. So you don't actually give a flying doughnut about whether or not my character adheres to canon.

What you seem to be trying to do here is to beat someone else with the canon bat that you hate so much: to say "AHA! Gotcha! Canon can't possibly be really all that important to you, if there is any inconsistency that you do not object to!"

We've been round and round on why any individual lore point might be a hang up for someone but another pass just fine (because genre definitions are personal, what wrecks a settings "genre" for a player is also personal).

I'd personally care if my gnome was from the future and I didn't plan for that narrative. Of course, that just reinforces the point: consistent canon would be less prone to unintentional inconsistencies, and so would better serve the games of those people (like me) who want to use canon to make their characters, who think that maybe what the designers put into their setting is how they'd encourage it to be played, and who know that the soul of creativity is arbitrary constraint rather than laissez faire kitchen-sinking. All the while, doing nothing to hurt the people who want jedi in their D&D.

 

[ccs]

But, in this case we actually KNOW what the canon is. Wild Magic enters Krynn AFTER Dragons of Summer Flame. AFAIK, this particular wild mage hasn't been time traveling. So... wouldn't that make this a non-canon character?

Wow, you're so intent on bashing Bananas character (in a game you're not even in? I've lost track) you really missed the humor there about the time travel.
Not to mention the fact that it doesn't have to be the character in question who did the traveling....

 

[Shasarak]

But, in this case we actually KNOW what the canon is. Wild Magic enters Krynn AFTER Dragons of Summer Flame. AFAIK, this particular wild mage hasn't been time traveling. So... wouldn't that make this a non-canon character?

Do we know that? Or do we know that the Chaos Gem the Graygem of Gargath, which famously either changed Gnomes into Dwarves or Dwarves into Gnomes and the breaking of which started the Chaos Wars, existed much earlier then any campaign would start.

Arguably the games mechanics have taken a while just to catch up with the game lore.

 

[Maxperson]

I thought Mystryl and then the original Mystra both died in the ToT. Or did I read that wrong.

Well, either you read it wrong, or they wrote it wrong. I have no idea!

Mystral died when Karsus cast his spell and doomed the Netherese empire a bit over a 1000 years before the Time of Troubles. Like a phoenix, Mystra was born from the mystical ashes of that death, only to die at the hands of Helm during the Time of Troubles.

Anyway, you still get my point.

I did say it was a nitpick!

 

[Hussar]

When the Age of Mortals began and the magic of the deities was lost, the poeple of Ansalon found their own magic in these energies. Though the Scions are long forgotten, their legacy endures with the mystics and sorcerers of the Age of Mortals.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...setting-quot-canon-quot/page199#ixzz4WwDFgwIi

From your own quote [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION]. It states that wild mages make a come back AFTER the beginning of the Age of Mortals.

But, now, apparently, it's the writer's fault for using different Ages for delineating the time line of the setting. It's not like there's a handy timeline http://www.dlnexus.com/lexicon/13099.aspx anywhere to be found?

You're arguing that it's lore changes that make thing difficult. True, to a point, I suppose, particularly when you cannot be bothered to actually read the setting and learn the changes. I mean, your stated goal is to create a character using the lore of the setting, but, then turn around and make a mistake in using that lore, and apparently now I'm a bad person for pointing that out?

Look, you made a mistake. A fairly minor one and one that certainly doesn't really take anything away from the character. It happens. But, it's still your mistake.

What you seem to be trying to do here is to beat someone else with the canon bat that you hate so much: to say "AHA! Gotcha! Canon can't possibly be really all that important to you, if there is any inconsistency that you do not object to!"

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...setting-quot-canon-quot/page199#ixzz4WwF16oZ2

But, see, this is the whole point about this. Beating someone around the head and shoulders with the canon bat is such useless wankery. However, so many people here want to force anyone who wants to see something changed to conform to what came before. We cannot possibly have a different planar set up - it doesn't conform. We cannot possibly have different elves, it doesn't conform.

But, when push comes to shove, suddenly canon isn't important. We can make all sorts of allowances and changes (wild magic has always been around... even though that's not canon) and it's perfectly fine.

So, what makes it perfectly fine? People's preferences. Canon is only important when people want to force their personal preferences onto other people. Otherwise, canon can be changed, no problem.

 

[Hussar]

Wow, you're so intent on bashing Bananas character (in a game you're not even in? I've lost track) you really missed the humor there about the time travel.
Not to mention the fact that it doesn't have to be the character in question who did the traveling....

Actually your missing the point I'm trying to make.

I've argued all the way along that canon arguments can be boiled down to preference arguments. That canon only matters when someone wants to force other players to conform to a specific point.

Which is precisely what I've been demonstrating with the gnome argument. I've repeatedly pointed out that I think it's a fantastic character and that altering canon has resulted in a far more interesting game.

But I've repeated been told on this thread and others that canon matters. That it is important in and of itself.

Until it's not apparently. We are free to ignore canon .... sometimes. And the only criteria I can see is that we can ignore canon when it's convenient.