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

[Shasarak]

Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think you're entitled to!

**Wordlessly hands him a tissue to clean the spittle off his mouth**

 

[Shasarak]

Of COURSE it's a meta-game problem. How could it not be? Note, trying to cast a Feather Fall spell and getting a bunch of feathers isn't something a wild mage could do either. Everyone at the table knows this. And, of course, you're also ignoring the actual canon of the setting which retcons wild mages into the setting through the Greygem.

But, again, why are you arguing with me? I'm not the one insisting settings can't change. I have ZERO problem with changing the setting. Bringing in a wild mage in no way bothers me at all. If I didn't have an issue with a kender cleric, I'm certainly not going to have an issue with a wild mage.

Canon doesn't matter. You're saying it yourself. Canon is flexible and can be changed. Even your own "sniff tests" prove that. If canon was actually important, in and of itself, ANY change would be problematic. But, as you say, so long as you can justify the change in your own head, then it's not problem. Thus, canon is largely unimportant.

Of course canon is important. If it were not important then why is WotC producing most of their material in one place? Why do they create story bibles to make sure that everyone has the same idea about what is going on in the setting?

Because IP has value and canon is part of that IP and therefore has value as well.

The difference between Forgotten Realms and Eberron is that one is a living evolving world and the other is world stuck frozen in a moment of time. Forgotten Realms is also different to the Comic universe where characters constantly repeat their stories under different authors - how many Batman origin stories do we need? We dont see six different Elminster origin stories instead his tale just goes on instead of being recycled over and over.

So Elminsters story has value.

And when you have new writers come in to shake things up, make things cool for the new kids, we have to weigh what value their ideas have and whether they add or subtract from the existing value. Obviously Eladrin have a huge negative value compared to something like the ideas from Out of the Abyss. One adds to the value and the other subtracts. One adds to the ongoing story and the other just jumps the shark right over the story.

Been a long time since I read the books. I had forgotten that. Of course, it does kinda point to the idea that the gods are kinda important in the setting. If they weren't, then why would the author change things back? What is the lesson we're supposed to take from this? That we can challenge the gods in the setting? Or that the gods are part and parcel to the setting and any challenge to the gods is ultimately going to fail? I'd say that the message is pretty clear here.

I think that's an important point that's been floating through this thread. Settings are more than just dates and places. Things like theme and conceit are also VERY important to the setting. Feel is just as important as fact. Letting Raistlin kill both the major gods of the setting would feel very out of place in the setting would it not?

Raistlin did not only succeed in killing the Gods but everyone else as well so a very Pyrrhic victory that essentially destroys the whole setting and even TSR knows the value of a good setting. But in any case, the major theme of Dragonlance as I see it is the struggle against the Dragon Armies and uniting disparate people rather then bringing back the Gods.

 

[pemerton]

Because in the process of killing them and becoming a god, Raistlin destroyed much of the world and could not create to fix it. He abandoned his plan after being shown the pain and destruction he would bring to Krynn, not because Paladine and Takhisis are important to the setting.

This seems to be confusing the in-fiction motivation of a character, with the authorial motivation.

I mean, why can't Raistlin fix the world? Because he is not a god.

A parallel example: in REH, Conan doesn't make choices because it's good to be a barbarian. Eg In Queen of the Black Coast, he kills the judge because "they were all mad". It is the author, REH, who is affirming - in virtue of the events that he constructs around Conan's protagonism - that Conan is right.

 

[pemerton]

I think the Macbeth comparison is a bit of a mismatch, at least for some settings. A play is meant to be performed, which means it is always going to be a little different every time. The content of a book or movie doesn't change. Obviously, reader/viewer response can vary, but there's an extra layer of mutability in the case of a play.

A setting that was originally created for roleplaying is similar to a play script. There's a core, but it's understood and even intended that every table will interact with it differently.

But a setting that's based on a book or movie series isn't quite the same. The original source material isn't tweakable, because it's already set.

This came up quite a bit upthread.

To me, the idea that a RPG setting is a work that the game participants somehow perform is very foreign. Whereas an emphasis on the importance of canon seems to give the RPG setting something like this status - the point of play is somehow to realise the setting via performance.

 

[pemerton]

... Which, of course, uses the 3rd edition rules, which are incompatible with 4e rules. Why should we be forced to do all the conversion work? Why couldn't they have just released a 4e FR book that didn't screw around with everything, and let us continue play where we left off? Oh, right, normal FR is boring, sucks and needed to be massively changed to be "cool"... never mind nobody asked WOTC to do so. By THAT logic, WOTC shouldn't have released a 4e FR book at all, since according to you, we can all just use the 3e book... come to think of it, they shouldn't have released the 3e book, either, since we can all used the 2e boxed set...

I have run OA in Rolemaster using a mixture of my 1st ed rulebook, OA3 (a 1st ed AD&D module), OA5 and OA7 (both 2nd ed AD&D), Bushido, plus some other dribs and drabs including 3E/d20 material.

I don't see conversion as that big a deal. If it's hard to write up monsters in the system, it's a bad system. And when it comes to player-side stuff, you just work with what you've got. It's not as if there are a heap of FR PC concepts that are hard to do using 4e (including the 4e players' guide, which gives us Drow and Swordmages).

I guess I'm not sure what mechanics you really felt needed updating.

 

[pemerton]

I have neither the time nor the inclination to explain myself to a faceless internet commenter who rises and sleeps under the blanket of the very Canon that I provide and then questions the manner in which I provide it. I would rather that you just said "thank you Mr. Lucas" and went on your way. Otherwise, I suggest you pick up a pen and some paper and make your own Canon.

Either way, I don't give a DAMN what you think you're entitled to!

I don't know what you intended (which is deliberate, or ironic; perhaps both), but I take this to be a pretty strong critique of canon purism.

(Personally I prefer to make my own canon, and so think I avoid taking the self-contradictory stand that you identify.)

 

[jayoungr]

To me, the idea that a RPG setting is a work that the game participants somehow perform is very foreign. Whereas an emphasis on the importance of canon seems to give the RPG setting something like this status - the point of play is somehow to realise the setting via performance.

That wasn't what I meant to say. I only meant that the relationship between what's on the page vs what happens when live people interact with what's on the page is in some ways similar between an RPG setting and a play script. I'd certainly grant that RPG players have a lot more leeway than actors, though--you have to have the same basic story and say at least some of the exact words, or you're not performing Macbeth, but you can have thousands of different stories that are still Dragonlance (or whatever).

 

[Hathorym]

I only run homebrew games and setting canon is absolutely essential between campaigns and storylines.

 

[Maxperson]

This seems to be confusing the in-fiction motivation of a character, with the authorial motivation.

I'm not confusing it. I'm just not assuming the authors motivation was anything other than what was written. Do you have any hard evidence for the motivation?

I mean, why can't Raistlin fix the world? Because he is not a god.

He was a god. That was the entire point of the series. He replaced Takhisis. It was said that EVIL gods cannot create. His godhood was reduced to an "attempt" because his brother went back and stopped it from happening.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*