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

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jayoungr]

I just want to point out that the assumption that all continuity should work like comic book continuity is a fairly recent one, and it is still not entirely mainstream. It used to be that comics / graphic novels were the exception for their multiple reboots, retcons, and mutually exclusive versions of the same story.

Game setting source material is a pretty good stylistic match for comic book continuity, though, since it is also prone to retcons.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Ignoring a new mechanic is difficult because any products you buy after it comes out are likely to take that new mechanic into consideration.

This is equally true for lore. For all of 4e, eladrin were elves, always and everywhere.

 

[Corwin]

This is equally true for lore. For all of 4e, eladrin were elves, always and everywhere.

They were tiny Santa's helpers?

 

[I'm A Banana]

Sure, I can understand that trying to keep lore changes to a minimum is probably the best approach. But when changes are justified, I do think that they should go ahead and make them. This is from the design view.

From the view of a DM using material to create a game? Setting canon doesn't mean much at all to me....my players and I create our own canon.

And I'll add that when my players have sought to go against the grain in some manner, that is usually what got my gears going the most. Your gnome wild made...how do we make that work in Dragonlance? That kind of exercise is what usually binds a character closely to the setting precisely because the setting is being so strongly considered during the character creation process.

I enjoy lore for fictional worlds. But I enjoy using it as a springboard for ideas more than anything else.

Yeah, totally on the same page here.

 

[Jer]

They were tiny Santa's helpers?

All elves are either High Elves - who live at the North Pole and make toys - or Wood Elves - who live in trees and make cookies.

That's my canon. There can be no other kinds of elves

 

[Elderbrain]

The only people whom I encounter in my life who care about canon to that degree of detail are hardcore fans of the sort who are not enough, on their own, to keep this multi-million dollar enterprises afloat.

... and this is why we end up with rubbish like the Michael Bay Transformers movies, which give the middle finger to the fans while being wildly commercially successful with people who go "OOH! Big, shiny robots!"

 

[Elderbrain]

The introductory stuff in DDG asserted that it was a core book on a par with the other three, but I believe it was near-universally treated as optional. And in any event, I don't think it was intended that all the gods presented were to be understood as co-existant in every campaign world. The intention was for picking and choosing.

The idea that all the DDG pantheons co-exist in the "Great Wheel" was first presented, as best I am aware, in the original MotP. That is nearly 10 years after the publication of the PHB, and 10 years after the first presentation of the Appendix IV arrangement in Dragon number 8.

You don't get to decide what's core, except privately in your own game. Gary Gygax gets to decide what's core in the game he created, just like J.R. Tolkien gets to decide that the LOTR is canon. Gary Gygax said the Great Wheel is core, case closed. And don't planes with names like "Olympus", "Gladsheim", "Hades", etc. give you just a tiny bit of a clue as to what deities reside there, hmm?

 

[Shasarak]

I'm confused... no where does he equate canon to bad story... he's equating material that's bad as bad material... that could be old lore (Eladrin as celestial enemies of Fiends) but he could just as easily be talking about the new lore (Eladrin as Elves) that you and @Hussar are clamoring for... He's not stating canon = bad he's stating bad material is bad material... which I don't think anyone disagrees with. The problem is that in creating new lore and changing canon continuously you don't consider what is good or bad it's just change for the sake of change... and this is what I believe most people who argue for canon are arguing against.

Chris Perkins makes essentially the same comments where he wants to build on the shoulders of Giants and not from the stuff people were pulling out of their [the valley in Slice].

To be honest designers can have the very best of intentions and they can write as many books detailing their reasoning as they want, but when it really comes down to it new canon has to compete with existing canon. So it not only has to be good in its own right it also has to be essentially better then what they have already done.

 

[Elderbrain]

The merging of OA into Kara-Tur is, in my view, a mistake. I disregard it when I run OA.

There are of course other gods than the Celestial Emperor. The point is that he is in charge of them. If not, then it turns out that the whole premise of the Celestial Bureaucracy is overturned, and the setting becomes an ironic parody of the Planescape variety.

Hel-LO? Kara-Tur is IN the original Oriental Adventures BOOK! It's RIGHT THERE!!! As is the mention of Gaijin priests, who worship "western" gods not beholden to the Celestial Emperor. This was BEFORE Kara-Tur was added to the Forgotten Realms, in the Kara-Tur boxed set. Granted that Kara-Tur is not done up in as much detail in the OA hardcover book, but it's definitely THERE, with each kingdom/island mentioned by name. There WAS no "merging" of OA and Kara-Tur; on the contrary, Kara-Tur was introduced in the same book the OA classes and material were first introduced.