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

[Hussar]

So a DM can never just have everyone come together and run a "default" game... not sure that's the best way to go if you want it easily accessible and to foster ease of play.

What is a "default" game? Which default? If a DM is running home-brew, he's going to have his own lore for that game, right? If he's running Forgotten Realms, then he would use the lore for a Forgotten Realms game. Or whatever setting.

Considering that's how we have all run D&D for the past 40 years, I'm not really convinced that having lore being presented with an unreliable narrator is very much of a hurdle.

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I do have an honest question for those that really care about canon. Ok, it's been pretty established that changing elves in FR is a bad thing for you. Ok, I'll buy that. You care about continuity and that is breaking the continuity. Fair enough.

So, why does 5e get the pass then? I mean, 5e radically changes all sorts of things in your game. Paladins have gone from always LG and always human to any race and any alignment. There are now flying barbarians in your FR game. Every single wizard in D&D has lost the ability to summon monsters. Every one. Wizards can no longer summon monsters. Surely that counts as a subtractive change no? They used to have that ability and now they don't. You now have monks with spells. FR has a pretty lengthy monastic tradition and none of them could ever drop burning hands before.

Why are these changes acceptable? If continuity of canon is very important to you, in and of itself, and, as [MENTION=40810]Mirtek[/MENTION] claims, changes, regardless of whether you like them or not, are bad, why is this perfectly fine?

 

[Jester David]

Many people around the world read fiction. I think the number whose main interest in the fiction is how the events of story A will be carried over into story B is a distinct minority, even among readers of genre fiction. For many, the interest is in the drama, thematic significance, sheer excitement, etc of the events in story A.

When I start a new campaign it is typically in a new world. I currently have four (maybe five?) campaigns running, each in a different world (default 4e, Dark Sun, GH, Marvel - the fifth, which is currently a one-off but may get returned to at some stage, is generic AD&D).

What is the point of the stories? The same as the point of any story - they are (hopefully) fun, dramatic and worth participating in. (My view is that the participation element in RPGing makes stories acceptable which, as a mere reader, would be too crappy to bother with.)

Fictions - especially RPG-created fictions - are aesthetic events. They are experienced. That's where their value lies.

So you don't care. That's not the campaign you want to play.
Okay, fine.
But don't take continuity away from me.

 

[Remathilis]

Personally, I really wish D&D would emulate this style. Nothing is carved in stone. There can be multiple, contradictory bits of lore and let the DM's pick and choose which one works. I would LOVE this approach to the game. Just like you have OA's backstory contradicting mainstream D&D. Fantastic.

Best of both worlds IMO. You get the baseline shared experience while at the same time, getting none of the shackles.

There is a problem with this scenario; you effectively make every product incompatible. If product A is a Monster Manual that says gnolls are demonic spawn barely more sentient than hyenas and module B has you dealing with tribes of druidic hunter gnolls, you have to chose which one you are going to follow. If one module has involves a plot to steal Orcus's want from him, but another module has him as a dead deity floating in the Astral, you can't run both those modules back to back. A sourcebook that assumes gnomes are reclusive fey spirits doesn't work with with the gnomish inventor subclass. You get a version of D&D that is disjointed, segmented, and ultimately competes with itself. (I mean, why would I by Demihumans of the Realms if my game is set on Krynn and 99% of it is incompatible?)

I think its a pretty good thing that I can run Tyranny of Dragons in one game and Storm King's Thunder in another and don't have to worry about one contradicting the other.

 

[Remathilis]

So, why does 5e get the pass then? I mean, 5e radically changes all sorts of things in your game. Paladins have gone from always LG and always human to any race and any alignment. There are now flying barbarians in your FR game. Every single wizard in D&D has lost the ability to summon monsters. Every one. Wizards can no longer summon monsters. Surely that counts as a subtractive change no? They used to have that ability and now they don't. You now have monks with spells. FR has a pretty lengthy monastic tradition and none of them could ever drop burning hands before.

So here's my rationale

So paladin's have gone away from being LG, but Darrian, MY paladin, is still able to be LG. They didn't take away LG as an option, they added more options. Same with monks using burning hands; just because I never met a monk that did before 5e doesn't change the fact the monks I met before are still monks. Adding an option that wasn't there before barely registers because if it did, we'd be stuck in that static, 1974 box set D&D again.

Removing summoning is trickier. I wasn't worried at first because, I assumed, new spells would come out to fill those gaps. (To be fair, I think few imagined a 2 AP + Supplement D&D schedule). Yeah, its rough that my wizard can no longer summon a celestial dire badger (or that a CDB is even a thing anymore) and I think summons were one of the few things they punted on in 5e. So fair on that, removing an option is rougher than adding one.

Now, why eladrin keep getting in people's craws is because you have people like me who have a beloved high-elf PC and they are told "your character is completely different now." He's a fey being who lives in the fairie realm. His eyes are solid orbs of color. He can teleport by sheer will. His race is called eladrin and he's distantly related to elves. Those kind of retcons hit hard because you are literally changing my PC's identity. Even giving him a cantrip, while a new ability he never had before, is big, at least he's still called an elf, and looks like an elf, and lives in a forest on the prime world, and calls himself an elf. It didn't change his whole racial identity.

 

[Shasarak]

There are multple ways to look at this.

One is from the commercial perspective - the job of WotC's team is to write stuff that WotC can sell as a commercial publisher. Morality doesn't really factor into that; nor such moral notions as "selfishness". WotC certainly doesn't owe duties to those who have purchased its products in the past. (Other than standard commercial duties like replacing products that weren't printed or bound properly.)

Another is from the fan perspective - but in that case, I'm just as much a fan as you are. I want good story elements just as much as you do. The fact that my criteria for a good story element are not the same as yours doesn't make me selfish in what I want, and you selfless. (This point has been reiterated by [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] in this thread - why is it selfish for him to want one non-Planescape supplement to be published? rather than selfish of all the Planescape fans not to allow him even that?)

A third perspective combines the previous two: the budgest of commerical producers of genre stories are finite. If WotC publishes X, it is not going to publish Y as well. If WotC only focuses on existing canon and continuity, those of us who want something else won't get it. Why are our consumption and aesthetic preferences (which become oddly intertwined in this eara of commercialised artistic creation) less significant than yours?

I think the main reason your consumption and aesthetic preferences are less significant is that there are less people with your consumption and aesthetic preferences. No corporation is going to make the same product for less people and therefore less money because they have a duty to their shareholders. New Coke is the most famous example but 4e Forgotten Realms would rank highly as well.

 

[pemerton]

it's a gigantic strawman to imply that anyone in this thread has propped up continuity and canon as the "pinnacle of writing excellence"

I was responding to [MENTION=37579]Jester David[/MENTION]'s posts which stated (post 1450) that "Continuity and canon is a tool. And if if you can't figure out how to use the tool then you're a handyman using a screwdriver to pound in nails. If you're a writer and can't think of stories to tell without changing history then you suck as a writer and should find a new career." And which also stated (post 1471) that "Without continuity, stories lack any and all consequence."

Two movies I really like are Casablanca and To Have and Have Not. The second is, in some respects, a remake of the first. Although both are set during the WWII, when watching one, one doesn't envisage that the action of the other is taking place more-or-less simultaneously. They're distinct fictions. That doesn't make them any less valuable. What makes them good movies is independent of the consequences they have for any later storytelling.

Well his Conan stories/brand has enjoyed nowhere near the success or recognition that say someone like Tolkien (who very much has continuity as a part of his writing (since ) has

JRRT's continuity is not what makes his books good. And in some places the continuity is obviously strained: the Hobbit had to be twisted and tortured to become a prelude to LotR; Elrond is obviously very different in personality between the two books; and the reason there is continuity between Appendix B and the Silmarillion is because Christopher Tolkien edited the latter to bring it into conformity with the former. (Some of this is discussed in Unfinished Tales. Presumalby, also, in The History of Middle Earth but I've not read those books.)

But you don't have to poke LotR very hard for it to break. For instance, hobbits have cheese, and hence presumably milk. Where do they get their milk from?

They wear woolen clothes. Where do they get their wool from?

Hobbits are about the size of children, and I can tell you from experience children aren't big or strong enough to work with sheep. Hobbits herding cows would be a sight to see! (And, very sensibly, JRRT sidesteps the whole thing. In that respect he's more interested in writing a good story than in building a world.)

When were the stories last in print?

I bought my copies around 10 years ago. I don't know if those editions are still in print. The stories themselves are all on Project Gutenberg as far as I know.

 

[pemerton]

I think the main reason your consumption and aesthetic preferences are less significant is that there are less people with your consumption and aesthetic preferences.

So you don't care. That's not the campaign you want to play.
Okay, fine.
But don't take continuity away from me.

Which of these posts am I meant to believe? Shasarak is telling me that I can't have compelling story elements that depart from established canon because there is no market for them; while Jester David is worried that I am going to take continuity away from him. (How? Presumably by generating sufficient demand for WotC to publish stuff I want rather than stuff he wants.)

I'll let WotC figure out the commercial aspect of things. But I'll reiterate again my rejection of Jester David's moralised language: if WotC publishes what I want rather than what you want, that is not me "taking something away from you", anymore than WotC publishing more PS nonsense is you "taking something away from me". Those sorts of moral and proprietary notions have no application in this context

 

[Imaro]

What is a "default" game?

A game run with the assumptions that are in the books... as an example in default 4e Paladins are any alignment, while in default 2e they are Lawful Good...

Which default?

Is there usually more than one default?? Also... see above.

If a DM is running home-brew, he's going to have his own lore for that game, right? If he's running Forgotten Realms, then he would use the lore for a Forgotten Realms game. Or whatever setting.

And if the DM doesn't have the time, experience, etc to home-brew and doesn't have a pre-made campaign setting (seeing as how most groups only ever buy the core rulebooks I think it's silly to assume either of these instances apply to a new DM... or even most DM's)...

Considering that's how we have all run D&D for the past 40 years...

Have we? I know quite a few people who have used the lore to run everything from Beer and Pretzel games to traditional campaigns. But I've noticed your arguments tend to assume everyone plays like you did. Another mistake.

... I'm not really convinced that having lore being presented with an unreliable narrator is very much of a hurdle.

Of course not, but then again you assume we've all played one of two ways for the past 40 years... I on the other hand don't think that's necessarily true... unless of course you consider the default lore in the corebooks to be a campaign setting or homebrew....

 

[pemerton]

why eladrin keep getting in people's craws is because you have people like me who have a beloved high-elf PC and they are told "your character is completely different now."

This is the bit I don't get. Publication of a new piece of fiction is not a direction to someone else (such as a D&D player) about how to deal with some past piece of fiction (such as an established player character).

So I'm puzzled that it gets interpreted that way.

 

[Shasarak]

But you don't have to poke LotR very hard for it to break. For instance, hobbits have cheese, and hence presumably milk. Where do they get their milk from?

They wear woolen clothes. Where do they get their wool from?

Hobbits are about the size of children, and I can tell you from experience children aren't big or strong enough to work with sheep. Hobbits herding cows would be a sight to see! (And, very sensibly, JRRT sidesteps the whole thing. In that respect he's more interested in writing a good story than in building a world.)

Why cant Hobbits get their wool and milk from Goats? They seem about the right size for Hobbits.

And of course that is if we ignore the possibility of Hobbits trading with other more Human sized people.