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

[Shasarak]

... 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!"

I actually liked the big shiny robots and exploding rubbish bins and trees.



I know, I'll see my self out.

 

[MechaPilot]

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

High elves make cookies too. With a special butter.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

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

Except that "elf" has mechanics attached to it, thus making it both lore and mechanics. "Drow being the ancestors of modern elves" is just lore, with no mechanics attached to it. You can't ignore the Eladrin being elves without running into a lot of mechanics problems, but you can ignore the Drow being the ancestors of modern elves and not see a problem outside of some flavor text.

So, no. Not equally true unless you count game mechanics as lore.

 

[pemerton]

Contra the suggestions made earlier, the issue with prior costumes isn't technical feasibility; it's the zeitgeist. The costumes say something specific about the era that they are in, as well as the medium. If the yellow costumes return on the big screen (other than wink wink fan service), it won't be because of reasons of technical feasibility, but because the audience is ... well, ready for that take.

Absolutely. I don't know where the idea came that the reason for costume changes was a technical one. It driven by a sense of what's silly vs what's aesthetcially feasible.

I do think that one of the considerations in respect of aesthetic feasibility is the medium. Four-colour printing rules some things out, and permits other things, that just won't work (visually) in film.

 

[pemerton]

Gary Gygax gets to decide what's core in the game he created

You mean like India, Japan, China and Sumatra?

Or are those geographical and historical references in the MM not canonical for some reason?

As far as Appendix IV is concerned: the whole approach to alignment, religion etc was different in the 70s compared even to the mid-80s. For instance, back when alignment was created, there was no assumption that any person (imaginary or real) could be located on an alignment graph and have an alignment label affixed. The choice to use Law vs Chaos as a framing device for the game was a decision to impose a particular (more-or-less S&S) framework onto the game. It didn't make sense to read Tolkien and ask who was Lawful and who Chaotic.

Appendix IV offered a way of linking 9-point alignment to received tropes in popular history/storytelling. The idea that it would be its own, self-referential, "canonical" thing was invented much later. (As I said, I would date this to MotP in 1987.)

Hel-LO? Kara-Tur is IN the original Oriental Adventures BOOK! It's RIGHT THERE!!!

Yes. By "merging of OA into Kara-Tur" I intended "merging of OA into FR".

As is the mention of Gaijin priests, who worship "western" gods not beholden to the Celestial Emperor.

It's one thing to have priests of minor gods who don't know of the Celestial Bureaucracy. OA deliberately embraces pluralism and syncretism with respect to the divine.

But if those gods are powers who are able to order the universe independently of the Celestial Emperor, then the whole premise of the Celestial Bureaucracy is mistaken. Which is to say, the setting takes on the same cynical tone as Planescape.

 

[pemerton]

... 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!"

This post expresses exactly what it is that I find strange about fans and "canon".

There is a strange sort of assertion - "give the middle finger to the fans" - which implies that commercial entities have duties to provide stories that some fans of some past stories will like. I find this strange because I have no idea where this duty is supposed to come from. No one thinks that (say) J K Rowling has a duty to write any particular novel about any particular character just because, in the past, she wrote some novels about a magic school that some people enjoyed. So why are the publishers/creators/owneres of the Transformers, Star Wars, Marvel Comics, the Forgotten Realms regarded differently?

But as well as this assertion that something is owed, there is also a kind of other-regard or attachment that seems equally unwarranted. Why does the decision taken by someone else about what story to tell about Transformers (or X-Men, or Eladrin, or . . .) matter? Adding one more mediocre film to the list of thousands of such films over the past century or so isn't going to do anyone any harm.

If you don't like a movie, then don't see it. Of all the movies that you haven't seen, or that you saw and didn't like, why does this movie count as one that "gave you the middle finger"?

And all the above to one side, no one is going to pay $150 million on a movie that appeals only, or even primarily, to fans of a 1980s line of toys.

 

[ArchfiendBobbie]

Gary Gygax gets to decide what's core in the game he created

Unless Ouija boards have started to actually work, Gary Gygax doesn't have anything to say about DnD. He's dead.

 

[Corwin]

...And don't even get me started with the travesty that was Highlander 2! In fact, if anyone asks, I still deny its very existence!

 

[I'm A Banana]

Except that "elf" has mechanics attached to it, thus making it both lore and mechanics. "Drow being the ancestors of modern elves" is just lore, with no mechanics attached to it. You can't ignore the Eladrin being elves without running into a lot of mechanics problems, but you can ignore the Drow being the ancestors of modern elves and not see a problem outside of some flavor text.

So, no. Not equally true unless you count game mechanics as lore.

It's about as easy to ignore one as it is to ignore the other.

 

[MechaPilot]

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?

Gygax created D&D, but it is no longer his, and it hasn't been for quite some time. Gygax has no right at all to decide what is core for others, and a quick reading of the sections where he wrote how DMs should tailor the game to their needs suggests he would find such an exercise mental onanism at best. You can give him the right to make that decision for you because of your personal reverence of and deference to him, but don't pretend that extends to the rest of us.

Or, to paraphrase you, Gygax doesn't get to decide what's core, except in your private game because you let him.