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

[Mirtek]

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.

Why would anyone care about his own game? See, that's the great disconnect between us. I don't care about my game, my game is just unimportant. It's a mayfly where I jump off from one point in time from canon, spin my own tale for a limited time and then scrap it all and start over. I fully know that it's neither canon nor lasting.

My game has next to zero importance vs. the next FR novel still telling a continous story together with all the other FR novels that have gone before.

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.

Changes to the present/future = acceptable no matter how bad the may be vs. changes to the past = inacceptable no matter how good the are.

Changes to the present/future may affect how we view the events of the past as long as those events are not changed. Otherwise we try to build a third floor and knocking down the ground floor at the same time. And then wonder why we have a piece of rubble instead of a taller building.

Luke and Leia kissed. That's the fact. It was a romantic gesture back then. With the expanded knowledge about their relation to each other it became icky, but the very fact that they kissed was not changed.

The new tieflings may be generally despised. However they are the result from an in-lore development. The tieflings of the past are still an acknowledged thing and Asmodeus conducted an epic infernal/divine ritual to curse the whole race to turn them from their pre-4e form into their 4e form. That's different from saying "No, they don't look different they are assumed to have always looked this way. Just hencforth imagine all older pictures/descriptions of tieflings to have always depicted their current forms"

 

[pemerton]

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.

Well, I think it very clearly implies that they are mistaken.

After all, it opens its monster sectin by telling us that "Western" people (whom the book clearly regards as its audience - the entire tenor of the book assumes the audience is not East Asian) see the non-human world as lacking order and cohesion, then presents a contrasting picture of that world as an element in the Celestial Bureaucracy headed by the Celestial Emperor. And then it goes on to present a monster section full of spirits and similar beings whose place in that Celestial Bureaucracy is described with quite a degree of specificity.

I guess it's possible that the idea behind the book was that people would play a game in which all the inhabitants of the world think there is a Celestial Bureaucracy but are wrong; but I don't find that the most natural reading. Given that the book is called "Oriental Adventures" rather than "We-were-right-all-along anthropological adventures", it think the most natural way to make sense of it as a gameworld is as taking the "oriental" perspective that it describes as true within the fiction it presents.

 

[pemerton]

My game has next to zero importance vs. the next FR novel still telling a continous story together with all the other FR novels that have gone before.

The content of any novel - FR, GH, PS, DL, whatever - has no relevance for my game, or my use of or relationship to D&D lore.

They're just books.

I doubt that they really achieve a "continuous story", either. I'm sure that there are inconsistencies, or gaps that readers have to fill in. This is what happens in fiction featuring recurring characters, places etc. (Qv the above-mentioned X-Men/Teen Titans crossover.)

REH wrote two Conan stories in which Conan is captured and imprisoned by an enemy ruler aided by a wizard - The Scarlet Citadel and The Hour of the Dragon. In reading these stories, are we really meant to imagine these as elements in the life of one person (how often does Aquilonia suffer these sorcerous attacks upon itself and its king?), or are we meant to enjoy the stories each on its own terms, with its recurring elements and motifs but disregarding the ludicrous implications of it being, in any literal sense, a "continuing story"?

And that's just one author's efforts in respect of one character over a total of fewer than two dozen storiesm - nothing compared to the output of D&D lore.

Changes to the present/future = acceptable no matter how bad the may be vs. changes to the past = inacceptable no matter how good the are.

Changes to the present/future may affect how we view the events of the past as long as those events are not changed. Otherwise we try to build a third floor and knocking down the ground floor at the same time. And then wonder why we have a piece of rubble instead of a taller building.

Luke and Leia kissed. That's the fact. It was a romantic gesture back then. With the expanded knowledge about their relation to each other it became icky, but the very fact that they kissed was not changed.

But this is an arbitrarily narrow conception of "change". You're meaning something like "change in the surface description of physical events". But what about other sorts of changes - say, of theme?

The Luke and Leia kiss is changed by the later storyline - from something romantic, to somthing incestuous - which you yourself acknowledge when you say "it became icky" - what is the word becoming but a verb of change?!?

The idea that story-telling bears the same relatioship to past stories as constructing 3rd floors does to the lower floors is also an odd way of conceiving of that task. Story-telling in genre literature involves recurrant motifs, particular elements, certain tropes and themes, etc. But The Hour of the Dragon does not suffer as a story because it can't be neatly fitted into a coherent timeline with The Scarelet Citadel or The Phoenix on the Sword.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, I think it very clearly implies that they are mistaken.

After all, it opens its monster sectin by telling us that "Western" people (whom the book clearly regards as its audience - the entire tenor of the book assumes the audience is not East Asian) see the non-human world as lacking order and cohesion, then presents a contrasting picture of that world as an element in the Celestial Bureaucracy headed by the Celestial Emperor. And then it goes on to present a monster section full of spirits and similar beings whose place in that Celestial Bureaucracy is described with quite a degree of specificity.

I guess it's possible that the idea behind the book was that people would play a game in which all the inhabitants of the world think there is a Celestial Bureaucracy but are wrong; but I don't find that the most natural reading. Given that the book is called "Oriental Adventures" rather than "We-were-right-all-along anthropological adventures", it think the most natural way to make sense of it as a gameworld is as taking the "oriental" perspective that it describes as true within the fiction it presents.

I think it was intentionally worded as a belief for just that reason. So DMs could decide for themselves if it was true or not. Gygax was big on rulings over rules and allowing DMs to make that sort of decision.

 

[Jester David]

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".

As a counterpoint, there are probably a number of novel-only Dragonlance and Forgotten Realms fans who stopped reading because of changes in the world caused by the games (i.e. the Second Cataclysm, the Spellplague)

 

[Jester David]

The new tieflings may be generally despised. However they are the result from an in-lore development. The tieflings of the past are still an acknowledged thing and Asmodeus conducted an epic infernal/divine ritual to curse the whole race to turn them from their pre-4e form into their 4e form. That's different from saying "No, they don't look different they are assumed to have always looked this way. Just hencforth imagine all older pictures/descriptions of tieflings to have always depicted their current forms"

Which was, of course, the result of a novelist adding that as a plot point to her novels because she cared about canon and it changing, and wasn't planned in any way. It was a retcon justifying the change.

One of many in the novels, because the novelists seemed to appreciate the desire for lore and continuity, while the game writers at the time were more "Eff canon, let's change any pet peeves! Tieflings all loook like Tim Curry in Legend. There's a shadowfell and feywild. Kuo-toa look like savage piranha men. Having both grey and wood elves is confusing, so there's eladrin. Dragonmen! Titans are now big elemental dudes. Lamias are bug-swarm people. Yugoloths don't exist. There are no good dragons. It's a going-out-of-continuity sale. Everything canon must go!!! Wooooo!!!"

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jayoungr]

You didn't answer the question though. Which is it? Is adding a 14th character to The Last Supper changing the picture or not?

Sorry, I can't resist ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5IqJMS_Mb8I

 

[Jester David]

That's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that the writers were hired to tell stories in a particular world, and thus, kinda had to work with what they had.

If a writer wanted to be free to tell their own fantasy stories, with their own canon, then they would just write their own stories.

You can write a space opera, or you can write a Star Wars(tm) story. And if The Powers That Be change the Star Wars universe, then you just deal with it.*

*The Avalanche has begun, it is too late for the pebbles to vote; and far too late for the Expanded Universe to fight back.

Some writers like working in a shared universe because they don't have to create everything themselves. They can just do research. Much like how authors who prefer to write exclusively in the real world, pick existing cities rather than making their own.

But just writing in a shared world doesn't mean you want to explain changes into continuity or give an in-world backstory to changes in the game system. That's extra work and takes words away from the plot.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*