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

[Maxperson]

There are many, many monster entries in OA that talk about the role of the monsters in the Celestial Bureaucracy and in relation to the Celestial Emperor: Hu Hsein, Oni, Dragons, Shirokinukatsukami, just to mention some.

Again, you are taking that out of context. The context of every last one of those monsters has been decided by the over paragraph talking about the belief of the east in the Celestial Bureaucracy. In accordance with that belief, the following monster language lets the DM know which creatures are believed to be what in the bureau. They just don't have to keep repeating themselves about belief since they already set the context.

 

[Remathilis]

Yes, absolutely it does. Every one of your examples changes things. New ideas are introduced and relationships are changed.

Hey, remember how in Star Wars Luke and Leia were kinda having a thing? Remember how that changed after Empire when Luke discovers he's been trying to bone his sister? Not a change? Really? That relationship didn't change at all? I didn't know Star Wars and George RR Martin had that much in common.

What is missing, of course, in your "additions = change" equation is that not all change is created equal. Adding something new to the lore (Hey, there is an ice-planet called Hoth) is different than changing what we know (Vader didn't kill Luke's father, he IS Luke's father). Part of your argument has been "If we accept gnolls being demon-born, we have to accept eladrin or storm titans". Not all change is equal. Not all is wanted, nor is all change good. You've set up a nigh-impossible standard since "additions = change" and "all changes are equal", we have to either accept a completely frozen D&D stuck in 1974, or we have to accept every change as equally valid. Neither is tenable.

 

[Mercule]

But one of their selling points was/is that they all exist together and characters from Krynn can visit Oerth or important stuff happening in Planescape can effect later FR adventures.

You say that like it's a good thing. I never want to see Mordenkainen in the Realms (or Ravenloft), Elminster on Krynn, etc. I hated Vecna and Lord Soth in Ravenloft.

I can let some things slide. Month and Gruumsh exist in both Greyhawk and the Realms, but they aren't really the same entities touching both worlds. Both worlds just happen to have beings with the sane names that fill pretty much the same niche.

That's the nature of D&D canon. It's a bunch of shared names and concepts that vary in implementation from table to table, or even campaign to campaign at the same table. Your Mordenkainen didn't have to be the same as mine, even if we're both playing in Greyhawk. In some games, he's ruthlessly neutral. In others, it's a facade and he's really a good guy -- or secretly an alternate identity for Iuz. In still others, he's actually a lousy mage and just really good at BS.

When I run the Realms, Elminster is 3rd level wild sorcerer eunuch fatbeard who does the equivalent of being an internet badass. "Oh, yeah. Well. Well. Mystara slept with me. So there."



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[flametitan]

Some continuity corrections:

Darth Vader was *not* intended to be Luke's father at first (best as I can tell the name was a corruption of "Dark Invader" rather than the dutch word for father)

The original movie did imply you can live on after death ("Use the force, Luke!")

Otherwise your note on how Star Wars canon has changed are accurate. If one wants to, the rabbit hole of the expanded Universe is another great way to learn about the way the continuity changed (Pre-prequel SW and post Prequel SW are fairly different beasts when it came to the few references to the Clone Wars)

EDIT: Y'know, maybe I should look at the last page before writing a response.

 

[pemerton]

one of their selling points was/is that they all exist together and characters from Krynn can visit Oerth or important stuff happening in Planescape can effect later FR adventures.

Which is something I LOATHE about what Planescape did to D&D. Now, events occurring in a completely different setting that I don't follow, and don't care about, have impact on the lore of my game. Everything bleeds over. Soth's story continues in Ravenloft. Vecna goes all over the place. On and on and on.

I would much, much prefer settings to be distinct from each other.

This is one flashpoint for the "do you care about canon" question.

It's one thing to publish a story or an adventure in which (say) the King of Furyondy, Elminster and Tasselhoff Burrfoot get together in a pub in Sigil, to discuss the finer points of live with a Vrock and a Planetar. If people want to buy that, good luck to them!

It's another thing, though, to insist that anyone who plays a game in which GH is a distinct fantasy world from Krynn and/or FR; or in which there is no Sigil with pubs; and in which Planetars never have friendly conversations with Vrocks; is doing something wrong, or departing from the spirit and lore of the game.

The world of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe isn't the same as the world of Harry Potter, even though both involve English children getting up to magical hijinks with rather twee public school overtones. Not all fictions have to overlap.

In the early 80s Marvel and DC published an X-Men/Teen Titans crossover that featured Deathstroke and Darkseid as villains. It was a fun comic, but it doesn't mean that, forever more, we have to imagine those paradigmatic DC villains as actors in the Marvel Universe. Nor wonder why we never again see Titans Tower on the horizon of Marvel's NYC. Not all episodes featuring a given set of characters, locations etc have to be treated as part of a single coherent continuity.

Frank and Joe Hardy were 18 and 17 respectively in dozens of books that took place during school breaks. The age of the Simpson family never changes, and sometimes Springfield is a harbour town and at other times inland. Continuity and in-fiction consistency is not the only consideration when it comes to publishing fiction set in a particular world, or involving particular characters.

 

[pemerton]

What is missing, of course, in your "additions = change" equation is that not all change is created equal. Adding something new to the lore (Hey, there is an ice-planet called Hoth) is different than changing what we know (Vader didn't kill Luke's father, he IS Luke's father). Part of your argument has been "If we accept gnolls being demon-born, we have to accept eladrin or storm titans". Not all change is equal. Not all is wanted, nor is all change good. You've set up a nigh-impossible standard since "additions = change" and "all changes are equal", we have to either accept a completely frozen D&D stuck in 1974, or we have to accept every change as equally valid. Neither is tenable.

This is not an accurate account of [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION]'s view.

Hussar is not saying that all change is equal. He's saying that if you don't like stuff, explain why you don't like it. Don't treat the fact that it is a change as sufficient grounds in itself for rejecting it (given that there are many changes that you don't reject).

 

[guachi]

When it comes to a roleplaying fantasy setting as far as I'm concerned nothing that occurred in a book (War of the Lance from Dragonlance excepted) should count as canon.

It's an RPG and the canon changes should occur largely at your own table not from the pen of some fiction author.

I liked the first FR novels I read, the Moonshae Isles trilogy and the Crystal Shard trilogy. Never, not once, did I ever think any event or character in the books should be canon (unless it was an NPC introduced in a Gazetteer. Though, while I'd consider the NPC canon I'd never consider his actions canon). The books were just an idea of what could happen, what your own PCs could do, not what actually happened.

That's my biggest problem with FR canon derived from novels and why I like D&D settings with the least amount of lore from novels or lore changes from modules or edition changes.

tl;dr: The Forgotten Realms can go die in a fire fueled by all its "lore" and "canon".

 

[Hussar]

The picture has already been changed and now you want to quibble about additional changes? No one is using that picture as an example of Dinner parties in Judea circa 30 AD.

So, you agree that addition=change. Cool. We're on the same page then.

What is missing, of course, in your "additions = change" equation is that not all change is created equal. Adding something new to the lore (Hey, there is an ice-planet called Hoth) is different than changing what we know (Vader didn't kill Luke's father, he IS Luke's father). Part of your argument has been "If we accept gnolls being demon-born, we have to accept eladrin or storm titans". Not all change is equal. Not all is wanted, nor is all change good. You've set up a nigh-impossible standard since "additions = change" and "all changes are equal", we have to either accept a completely frozen D&D stuck in 1974, or we have to accept every change as equally valid. Neither is tenable.

Oh, no. Sorry, I didn't mean to imply that. Of course changes can have greater or lesser effects. Totally agree. But, if you swim back in this thread for a while, it's been pretty strongly argued that additions are not actually changes. That adding lore is not changing the lore at all. That's the point I'm arguing against.

Nor would I argue that all change is "good". But, there's the rub isn't it? If change can be good or bad, then simply the act of change isn't enough to criticize something. That X is different than Y is not sufficient grounds to reject X. Again, it comes down to personal tastes. Do you like X or Y? Ok, fair enough. But, if you tell me that Y is bad because it changes X, without any further exposition, it's just another way of saying I like X.

I have no problems with someone liking X. That's great. My problem comes when someone's preference for X means that I cannot EVER have Y, not because Y is bad or poorly written or anything like that, but, simply because it's Not X.

If we can change lore, if it is acceptable to change lore, then changes have to be judged, not by the fact that they are changes, but, rather on how interesting those changes are. "I don't like Eladrin" is a perfectly fine statement. "I don't like Eladrin and Eladrin must be removed from the game because eladrin changes the definition of High Elf" is far more problematic.

 

[Hussar]

On the notion of the OA lore.

Isn't it interesting that we can negate one settings lore ((The people in OA are factually wrong about the nature of their universe)) based on another setting's lore, but, apparently, we are not allowed to do the same in reverse. 4e, to use that example, says that people were actually mistaken about the nature of Eladrin. Here's the correct information.

But, that's completely unacceptable...

 

[Maxperson]

On the notion of the OA lore.

Isn't it interesting that we can negate one settings lore ((The people in OA are factually wrong about the nature of their universe)) based on another setting's lore, but, apparently, we are not allowed to do the same in reverse. 4e, to use that example, says that people were actually mistaken about the nature of Eladrin. Here's the correct information.

But, that's completely unacceptable...

Does it actually use language stating they were mistaken like Planescape does? If not, it's not the same.