The problem is always someone's well-considered idea is someone-else's campaign-ruining change.
...
D&D: being Ruined Forever since 1975.
And this creates problems! Like I pointed out upthread, I'm remembering a [MENTION=697]mearls[/MENTION] quote somewhere in the run up to 5e where he's basically saying that the dramatic changes that D&D has gone through maybe weren't the best idea. That big edition changes create rifts and lose players. A casual observer can see this clearly with the Edition Wars and Pathfinder and the OSR. 5e seems to be designed with that assumption, too - in the many ways it recalls AD&D, for instance (Bounded Accuracy being one of the big deals there). It goes out of it's way in many ways to remind you that it's the
same game (whether that game is 3e or 2e or even 1e or OD&D in certain ways).
The same logic applies to settings and lore and "canon." Dramatic changes create difficulties, breed rifts, and stop people from enjoying a setting.
The fact that it's always somebody's campaign-ruining change means that
this cost should be considered! You know that your change is going to wreck someone's game, going to make playing with your Brilliant Idea (or with the Old Idea) more difficult. Your change needs to be worth that cost. Sometimes it will be anyway, but it's gotta be something earned.
pemerton said:
"Understanding the value of the thing for others", in the context of this sort of commercial publishing, = market research.
That's one vein, but it's not the only source of blood. A lore specialist might be a valuable hire. A collection of the text of all D&D books evar might give you something to search and find obscure references with. It's also important that in the corporate culture these voices are empowered. If in some meeting someone's afraid to speak up about the problems with Chris Perkins's Brilliant New Idea, or if their perspectives are just dismissed by a management or marketing team eager to make changes, they might as well not be there, regardless of their position or the amount of information that's out there. The culture is probably the hardest element to change, but it's also the most vital. The other changes are very useful, but they only work well if plugged into the right organizational decision-making process.
pemerton said:
The dislike (in many case, "hate" would not be too strong a word) one sees for aspecgts of the 4e lore isn't because people felt a cost in ignoring it. It's because they regarded as an aesthetic affront. You can see that in the way it is spoken about, in the dismissive terminology used (eg "blink elves", etc.
You've still got a ways to go to understand the root cause if you stop there. Why did they regard it as "an aesthetic affront"? What did it ask them to do that they were hostile to doing? When someone says that warlords are screaming your arm back on, what are they actually opposing? Where do their existing assumptions butt up against the new ones?
From where I'm sitting I can see that in most cases, it asked them to change their default assumptions about the lore of their games too dramatically. It asked them to abandon stories that they wanted to tell in favor of these new stories that the designers wanted to tell. Again, if you ask someone who "hated" 4e lore if they would hate it quite as much if the game explicitly said that this was some "Nentir Vale Adventures" campaign setting, you will often get a much, much different response to the lore.
pemerton said:
I've not come across a single person being confused, in any significant way, by 4e lore. It's about assuring potential customers - particularly those who are at the centre rather than the periphery of group attitude formation - that the product affirms rather than departs from their desires for the "brand".
The rejection of 4e lore by some folks is, in part, an attempt to avoid confusion over what "playing D&D" means to them. "Playing D&D" didn't mean teleporting extraplanar PC's before, and, to them, it still doesn't, and it never will.
But, every time that person signs up to a new D&D game, they still need to figure out which version of "playing D&D" the group is using. And if they're willing to play that version.
With specific settings, this becomes "Playing Forgotten Realms" or "Playing Dragonlance."
This is tied up in branding, too, but branding isn't separate from in-play experience. Part of the job of a brand is to set expectations for your product's use.
pemerton said:
Personally, I would think that this is easily ignored. I think this is one way in which it's actually quite different from the imagined example posted by @I'm A Banana - the latter posited a significant change/development to a piece of setting history and technology that is itself likely to be a focus of play in an Eberron game. Whereas the metaphysical origins of psionics being linked to the Far Realm is not likely to interact with any other details of play in most campaigns, except for the pre-existing stuff like mind flayers, gith etc being psionic.
You're writing off the different existing psionics stories too easily. Having psionics originate from the far realm does change every setting's narrative of psionics and is likely to be the focus of play in a game with a psionic character. It is likely to link to that character's origins, motivations, and goals. It is a different narrative for some psionics, and if asked to accept it as The Story For All Psionics, I expect some grousing and unhappiness and added confusion and trouble. If it's instead One Story For Some Psionics (in combination with other stories), I imagine that'd mostly evaporate.
