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

[I'm A Banana]

I agree that there is something there; that there is a continuity in Star Wars, in Star Trek, in Lord of the Rings, in the things that we love and find common ground in. But I also think that canon should be something that allows good stories to be told, not that prevents change from occurring.

For me, if you change the story of LotR (get rid of Tom Bombadil, forex), it's no longer the same story. Whether that change is good or bad isn't as relevant to my point as the fact that now when someone talks about reading LotR, you don't know what version of the books they've read and it's more difficult to share a meaning of what LotR is. Part of why people hated midi-chlorians is that they changed the meaning of what Star Wars was. Part of why my gnome doesn't work as "canon" for Hussar is because it changes DL from what it meant (at least to him).

It makes the word meaningless if it's definition is so flexible that it applies to basically whatever the author wants it to, and it dis-empowers players to run with the ideas the game lore presents if they're not sure if those elements are going to be retconned or changed dramatically or not in place at all.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Corwin]

Part of why people hated midi-chlorians is that they changed the meaning of what Star Wars was.

Part of why people hated midi-chlorians is that they changed the meaning of what Star Wars was... for them. When a creator of a setting reveals the existence of a thing, later in their story, nonacceptance is on the viewer/reader. Not the creator. A similar thing happened with the Riddick franchise. The sequel exposed the audience to a setting nothing like what they could have imagined, based on what little they garnered of it from Pitch Black. A lot of fans of the first movie were put off by the much more "fanciful" universe they were exposed to in the subsequent movies. The Matrix was another trilogy that created a similar experience. And the list goes on. Its always the creators of the setting that get the backlash. Not the myopic viewers/readers who want the next thing to match *their* expectations and needs.

Such is a similar thing with your Tom Bombadil. He did not exist at the beginning of the LotR story. His introduction comes later. Up until that chapter, the reader has no awareness of his existence. The moment we are told he exists the story changed. "Canon" changed. This is what happens throughout all stories. All of them. Canon is constantly changing. Adapting, as the next thing is introduced. I think that's the problem right there.

 

[jayoungr]

Not to derail the thread, but I like the Star Wars prequels and have no problem with midi-chlorians.

 

[billd91]

Not to derail the thread, but I like the Star Wars prequels and have no problem with midi-chlorians.

You are dead to me.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I honestly don't know what you mean here. You just wrote that the word is meaningless if the "definition is so flexible that it applies to basically whatever the author wants it to[.]"

That is exactly what canon is.

When you write, "you" want to get rid of Tom Bombadil, what if Tolkien did? What if he, later, wrote him out of the story? Doesn't he have the right to decide what goes on in his world?

This is why I wrote that the issue is complicated- you can't have it both ways. You can't both say something *has* to be canon (Tom Bombadil) because the author put it in there, and then in the next paragraph, argue that the author has no control over canon.

I'm not saying he doesn't. There's just a cost to that change. It's up to whoever owns the IP to decide whether or not the cost is worth it, but this doesn't make the cost vanish. It's still there.

IMHO, this is what I dislike- the hybrid author/fan canon nerd internet empowerment theory. Which is to say- canon is whatever the author put in, as extrapolated by empowered nerds, and can never be changed or altered, unless said empowered nerds okay the changes.

(I don't mean to be harsh or reductionist, but that's exactly the type of straight jacket I was discussing. Midi-chlorians were terrible because (all together now) they were a terrible idea that made the story worse. Not because of "canon." But because they were terrible. Jar jar, even though he's canon, is also a terrible, terrible idea.)

Saying "it's a terrible idea" isn't an end to the conversation, because it doesn't articulate why it's a terrible idea - because clearly not everyone agrees! Things can be terrible for many (subjective, somewhat arbitrary) reasons. Hence my "part of." This was one element of what people disliked about midi-clorians. Some people did not dislike it so much as others!

But that's it. You get people arguing over things (Peter Parker/Spider Man can't be Morales, because CANON) simply because they don't want change. Good stories are good stories, and can serve many purposes- enhancing, playing within the lines, or subverting the dominant themes of the prior canon. Canon isn't just a word that people use to say, "My version of this is what matters, and no one else can change it." Because what often happens is that, without you even knowing it, "good" changes to canon become ... canon.

When I say "My character's morality is like Batman's," that's a meaningless statement at this point in time. It tells you nothing about that character's morality.

When my DM says "Let's play Dragonlance!", how meaningless should that statement be? How much should it tell you about the heroes and conflicts and villains?

Part of why people hated midi-chlorians is that they changed the meaning of what Star Wars was... for them.

Exactly. Arbitray. Subjective. Personal.

The moment we are told he exists the story changed. "Canon" changed. This is what happens throughout all stories. All of them. Canon is constantly changing. Adapting, as the next thing is introduced. I think that's the problem right there.

At a certain point, one needs to stop putting paint to the canvas and call it "done," warts and all (typically for written works, this comes in publication).

That doesn't stop you from making a new painting. It does mean that you don't go back and keep tweaking the painting you have. No matter how many great ideas you have for improving Guernica and making it more relevant and "with the times."

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ah. I see your problem now.

Guernica can't be "canon" in the sense we are discussing. It's a single painting. You don't have a Guernica setting. What a person could say is that Picasso had a canon. So what if you wanted to "play" in the Picasso canon?

Would it have to cubist? What about his earlier, realist works? What if you demanded it be blue- would rose be out of the question?

You keep going back to Dragonlance. So? What if DL had ended with Chronicles? Just the first DL series of modules? What of the (190?) books ... at what point is the DL world "done"? You say that at a certain point, something is done, yet the examples people keep circling back to (from Batman, to Star Wars, to Dragonlance) are all examples of things that keep having new creations in them ... that aren't "done."

For a TTRPG setting, it's "done" when it's first published as a TTRPG setting.

This doesn't mean you can't make more settings or add onto the existing setting or make variant settings in alternate timelines or make sequel-settings, or whatever. You can even make new editions of the setting that clean up details.

I think Mearls made a similar point in the run-up to 5e about dramatic edition changes - yes, games have editions, and yes, editions change things, but the scope of changes that D&D goes through is several orders of magnitude larger than the scope of changes that other games go through, and that creates issues when one wants to "Play D&D" (because what does that even mean?).

And that's the rub. There is something to a shared universe; but those who spend their time debating it are usually using it as a cudgel to tell other people to put their pens down, because the universe is done, and they don't want things they disagree with in it.

(Until, of course, those things get accepted, and by the magical process of nerd empowerment transmogrification become canon, and those same people will defend the new additions to the canon. Funny how that works; that which was transgressive becomes accepted.)

Again, I don't care about whether or not I personally "agree with" or "like" the canon.

What matters most is just that everyone understands the meaning of "Let's play a Dragonlance game." You could like it or not like it, I don't care. But you can't even talk about liking it or not liking it if we can't even basically agree on what that is. It would be like saying I "like Batman." That's a statement almost devoid of meaning, since Batman could mean a whole host of things.

 

[Corwin]

Imagine you are reading this new book you stumbled upon called Fellowship of the Ring. You just finished through Chapter 5. You are talking with a friend about how cool the story is so far. You haven't gotten to Tom Bombadil yet, of course. He doesn't arrive until Chapter 6. But your friend has read the whole series and so he knows all about the guy. You have two different interpretations of the "canon". Its Schrodinger's Tom!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Imagine you are reading this new book you stumbled upon called Fellowship of the Rings. You just finished through Chapter 5. You are talking with a friend about how cool the story is so far. You haven't gotten to Tom Bombadil yet, of course. He doesn't arrive until Chapter 6. But your friend has read the whole series and so he knows all about the guy. You have two different interpretations of the "canon". Its Schrodinger's Tom!

I feel like in that scenario, I haven't finished The Fellowship of the Ring, so I'm in no position to tell anyone what it is. I can tall people my experience of it, but it's a provisional experience, based on incomplete information. I can talk about the first 5 chapters pretty ably, I guess. Once I've finished the book, I can talk confidently about the book, with references to things that happened in the book, with other people who've read the book. And I can say that I liked these bits and didn't like these bits.

...and even once I've finished the book, I can talk about the book, but I can't speak to the entire trilogy at that point, until I've finished that.

It's why I don't pretend that I know all the nuances of Tolkein's greater works on Middle-Earth. I haven't read them. I have no idea. I can speak to my experiences with LotR, but if I spoke about the entire works, I'd be speaking out of a sort of arrogant ignorance about something I only knew a small part of.

If I've only read 5 chapters of Fellowship, why would I pretend to be able to know what the entire book contains?