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

[Imaro]

Hmmm... could it be a complex mixture of the two factors that varies from case to case? I have no trouble believing the audience might have cooled for X-men: First Class because of the 3rd X-Men movie. And I have no trouble believing that people went to check out Star Trek because it was promoted as a reboot and were intrigued. They're different cases in which different factors may dominate.

It could be of course we don't know for sure about any of this... However I have yet to see @pemerton show any evidence that frequesnt rebooting and changing of lore has actually helped a property...

On a side note I think a major difference between the two was that from the beginning Star Trek's re-boot/change in lore took into consideration and worked around what came before without actually changing it (and in fact provided a continuing easter egg with the original Spock). It's an expansion (into alternate timelines) as opposed to a rewriting of the previous Star Trek lore. X-Men on the other hand... well I'm still not exactly sure what the connections are between all the movies... Were the first ones the future... an alternate timeline...invalidated...I'm honestly not 100% sure.

 

[Imaro]

No. I"m saying that you're making up your conclusion.

So I drew a conclusion you don't agree with...

I know very little about the market for movies. But, for the reasons @Lanliss and @Imaculata have given, I doubt very much that continuity of lore is a factor.

But you've yet to show a property that benefited by excessive changing of lore and canon. I mean we have comic books as the prime example and they are failing. What property is re-booted/changed at the frequency you and @Hussar seem to be suggesting with D&D... every edition having different lore so roughly 7-9 times in a 40 year period or once every five years... the only thing comparable are comic books and again they have become more and more inaccessible to casual readers and are generally considered a monetary failure.

Just as plausible is that X-Men: First Class is a political drama. That, more generally, the X-Men have a political edge that the Avengers do not.

Again then show me something that has changed as much as you seem to be advocating for with D&D and was successful because of , as opposed to despite that...

As I posted already, Days of Future Past was intended as an audience building reboot and rewrote a lot of lore. Clearly Fox doesn't agree with you about any causal relationship between lore and profits, and I believe they know more than you about these things.

I have to ask... how do you know what "Fox" agrees or disagrees with? If they thought a true reboot was the success you seem to be implying they did (despite the actual numbers) why the clumsy and confusing machinations to reconnect it to the earlier movies?

Here's another way to come at it: X-Men was released in 2000; First Class over 10 years later. What was the overlap between audiences? What did audiences in 2011 remember of the 2000 film?

You do realize movies are always available in this day and age via... Blu-ray, DVD, cable, Netflix, etc. So I think dismissing the older movies, especially when the last one came out only 5 years before the re-boot and they are easily attainable to watch is a mistake of assumption on your part.

As I said, you're just making stuff up.

You mean like claiming to know whjat "Fox" thinks... yeah I would imagine most of this conversation is hypotheticals and guesses... again what I haven't seen is you present a property where constant reboots and changes to the lore helped it thrive... got any?

EDIT: Also, why does The Hulk reboot not count in this discussion?

We seem to have different definitions of success and failure. Do you think Marvel was happy that The Incredible Hulk made a little more than 2 million more than the first hulk movie (adjusted for inflation it actually did worse than the first movie... wonder why)? You do realize we haven't gotten another Hulk movie since then right and that was over 8 years ago? In other words The Incredible Hulk was a failure.

 

[Maxperson]

See, I 100% agree with you. Why can't all these changes be kept cordoned off from the general game? Why is Planescape the default for all settings, where every single setting MUST conform to Planescape? Heck, even the Great Wheel, for that matter? Why does every single setting have to follow the Great Wheel, along with its attendant demon princes, devil lords, yugoloth, angels etc? You are forgetting that all those great settings HAD THEIR OWN COSMOLOGIES that were then retconned in 2e to follow a specific lore.

2e did not retcon Planescape to be the default for all the other settings. The DM had to CHOOSE to play the Planescape setting which made those changes. If that choice was not made, Planescape did not become cosmology for those settings.

Heck, take warlocks in Dragonlance. Ok, Raistlin made some sort of pact. Fair enough. But, that's NOT what Warlocks say. Warlocks make pacts with "mysterious beings... ancient knowledge such as fey nobles, demons, devils, hags and alien entities of the Far Realms". ((PHB p 105)) Simply making a pact with another wizard isn't what a warlock does. Warlocks are "defined by a pact with an otherworldly being". Number one, most of those things don't even exist in Dragonlance. There is no Far Realms, nor devils nor fey nobles. Granted, some of that stuff was added later, that's true. But, since canon is important, why do people accept those later changes?

Adding warlocks to the setting changes Dragonlance. Depending on the pact, it changes the setting considerably.

Canon for a setting doesn't dictate everything for that setting. It just tells you what is different from standard, so unless a setting says, "There are no demons, devils, and fey nobles.", those things exist, even if not brought up in the setting lore or adventures. Bringing them up later isn't a change to canon. It's just bringing up later something that already exists.

 

[Imaro]

No. I didn't just cite appearance. I cited information about their love of music, art etc and the fact that their queen is the FAERIE QUEEN of the COURT OF STARS.

That's the same themes and goals. I already documented abilities upthread - the wind ones are similar, but the Ghaele (I thnk?) is different.

Originally Eladrin were the enemies of Fiends and opposed them directly and through inspiring heroes... they were also good in nature as opposed to any alignment... Each subrace has an alternate form they can take and so on. What you did was carefully pick and choose the lore to strengthen your claim while seeming to leave out what actually made them different from elves.

 

[Maxperson]

Yes.

And all this discussion of DL has prompted me to re-read Dragonlance Adventures. Here are some extracts from the chapter on gods and clerics (the chapter is called "Messengers of the Heavens"):

Mishakal's Return: In the year 351 AC, a princess of the Abanasinian Plains was given a glorious gift. Mishakal appeared to her and gave her the Disks of Mishakal on which are written the true words of the gods and their power. It was the first manifestation of the true gods in over three centuries. From these beginnings, the message of the gods went out across the land and re-established the people's faith in the true gods. . . .

Railing against the Gods: Rarely does a mortal challenge the mighty gods of Krynn. . . . [M]ortals who wish to follow in the dark paths of Raistlin's footsteps find their task one of the most impossible in all of Krynn. Raitslin learned but one lesson: That selfish victories are hollow when all you wished to gain is laid waste in your attempt to attain it.​

This is the sort of thing I had in mind when agreeing with you, upthread, that an atheistic character, or one who denounces and opposes the gods, is not a canonical fit for a hero of Krynn.

I still disagree with you. Nothing in those passages says that everyone must follow the faith, or that you have to either follow the faith or try to destroy the gods. There's plenty of room in that canon for a character who doesn't believe that gods exist, or one who believes that the gods are bad for the races of Krynn.

 

[Imaro]

Yes.

And all this discussion of DL has prompted me to re-read Dragonlance Adventures. Here are some extracts from the chapter on gods and clerics (the chapter is called "Messengers of the Heavens"):

Mishakal's Return: In the year 351 AC, a princess of the Abanasinian Plains was given a glorious gift. Mishakal appeared to her and gave her the Disks of Mishakal on which are written the true words of the gods and their power. It was the first manifestation of the true gods in over three centuries. From these beginnings, the message of the gods went out across the land and re-established the people's faith in the true gods. . . .

Railing against the Gods: Rarely does a mortal challenge the mighty gods of Krynn. . . . [M]ortals who wish to follow in the dark paths of Raistlin's footsteps find their task one of the most impossible in all of Krynn. Raitslin learned but one lesson: That selfish victories are hollow when all you wished to gain is laid waste in your attempt to attain it.​

This is the sort of thing I had in mind when agreeing with you, upthread, that an atheistic character, or one who denounces and opposes the gods, is not a canonical fit for a hero of Krynn.

And yet the story of one of if not "the" most recognizable and popular character in the Dragonlance universe is based around challenging a god... It says rarely not never.

 

[Mirtek]

How is first class a reboot? It's a Prequel in the same timeline.

Days oft Future past also directly continues both the first three and first class and only from them created a New future timeline.

But that's an "ingame" continuation, not a retcon/reboot where one just starts anew and pretend the former stuff just didn't happen

 

[Imaro]

How is first class a reboot? It's a Prequel in the same timeline.

Days oft Future past also directly continues both the first three and first class and only from them created a New future timeline.

But that's an "ingame" continuation, not a retcon/reboot where one just starts anew and pretend the former stuff just didn't happen

I want to think it's a prequel... but if it is... why can Proff X walk at the end of X-Men Origins and yet is crippled by the end of First Class? There are a couple of these types of head scratchers that tend to paint it as a re-boot vs. prequel...lke Beast creating Cerebro in First Class vs. the professor stating he and Magneto created it in X1. Again how they did this was kind of confusing and convoluted.

 

[pemerton]

I think a major difference between the two was that from the beginning Star Trek's re-boot/change in lore took into consideration and worked around what came before without actually changing it (and in fact provided a continuing easter egg with the original Spock). It's an expansion (into alternate timelines) as opposed to a rewriting of the previous Star Trek lore.

The 2009 film made nearly $400 million. I don't know the precise ratio for converting that to viewers: but at what I would imagine is a conservative estimate of $20 per viewer, that is 20 million viewers. How many of them do you think cared about consistency with past Star Trek lore? Heck, even in this thread - which presumably has a higher-than-typical proportion of serious Star Trek fans posting in it - there was confusion over the whole timeline vs rewriting vs "imaginary story" thing!

But you've yet to show a property that benefited by excessive changing of lore and canon. I mean we have comic books as the prime example and they are failing.

All magazines are failing. All print media are failing. Why would you expect comics to be immune from this trend? Do you really think that, of all print media, comics would be flourishing if only they had preserved continuity and canon all this time?

I have yet to see @pemerton show any evidence that frequesnt rebooting and changing of lore has actually helped a property...

One of the most successful serial fictions ever is the Marvel Universe. And it has constant changing of lore, as [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] and I discussed not far upthread - eg Bobby Drake, who was a teenager in the 60s chatting up Zelda (?) at a cafe in Greenwich Village, was still in his 20s in comics published in the 80s and 90s, when (if continuity were maintained) he should have been middle-aged.

As far as preserving lore is concerned, one of the best Marvel examples would be Quasar in the 90s, but I don't think it sold especially well.

As far as revising lore is concerned, if you don't like the Marvel comics examples then look at (say) Batman or Sherlock Holmes - these are characters who have had immense longevity and popularity, but have also been consistently reinvented and reimagined.

Or look at the Star Wars prequels. These pretty-much disregarded the lore of the original films (the Jedi are not wilderness-dwelling hermits and hardly have the feel of an ancient or hokey religion; the force is explained biologically rather than mystically; the Senate is not particularly admiral; etc), and their own plot makes virtually no sense; yet they seem to have made plenty of money.

Another way I look at it is this: the people I know and hang out with include a higher-than-average number of sci-fi/fantasy types. Many of them have been playing D&D regularly since childhood. But they barely follow the continuity of D&D lore - I'm pretty sure none would know what an eladrin is outside of 4e - and I doubt they follow the lore of Star Trek or Star Wars much more closely. If they don't care, I've got absolutely zero reason to think the tens of millions of people who go to see the Avengers or the Hulk would give a toss whether the random mumbo-jumbo spouted about Agard and the dark dimension is the same in film A as film B that they go and see three years later.

The Incredible Hulk was a failure.

But not because it rebooted! The reboot was an attempt to make it a success.

Or do you really think that if the second Hulk film had preserved the continuity of the first one, it would have done better?

And another example: the series that began with Batman Begins seems to have done OK, despite disregarding the prior films that began with Michael Keaton in 1989.

 

[pemerton]

I want to think it's a prequel... but if it is... why can Proff X walk at the end of X-Men Origins and yet is crippled by the end of First Class? There are a couple of these types of head scratchers that tend to paint it as a re-boot vs. prequel...lke Beast creating Cerebro in First Class vs. the professor stating he and Magneto created it in X1. Again how they did this was kind of confusing and convoluted.

How many viewers do you think thought - You know what, that First Class was a great film except that, at the end, Xavier was crippled yet a few years ago I saw this other movie where he was played by a different actor who was older and he could walk?

My approximate guess is one: you.

I noticed it, but it didn't spoil my enjoyment of the film. My partner, who has seen all the X-Men films with me, many of them multiple times, didn't pick it up until I pointed it out. People just don't care that much about that sort of cross-story continuity. It's a learned thing, not an innate aesthetic impulse.