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

[Shasarak]

If you literally clone someone, they're not the same individual. They're just based on the same thing.
And after six years of doing they're own thing and going in their own direction, they're not really even that similar.

I dont think I would agree with that. Six years of doing their own thing does not turn a cloned Sheep into a Dog for example. Six years of Pathfinder compared to six years of 3.5 still looks like the same breed of animal as compared to say six years of 2e compared to six years of 4e.

 

[Tony Vargas]

3e changed the basic mechanics of the game. Everything became d20 + ability score + modifiers. It was a very big shift.

That's not a change, just a consolidation. The d20 had always been the most prevalent resolution mechanic, 3e just took it and made it consistent. A step forward, certainly, but not a radical one.

There were a few continuity changes in the mix though. Eladrin being the big one. Primordials. The Dawn War.

The Eladrin thing had two sides to it. One was the Cosmology issues - there were no longer alignment-based planes each with their own species of Outsider. The other was the naming of elven sub-races. The original Eladrin were more or less defunct along with the grid they were filling, the name was re-cycled for the High Elf (and ultimately sun elf &c), and Elves became wood-elves. (Drow stayed Drow, more or less.) Doesn't seem like a huge continuity issue. Not so much what was there, as how it was modeled.

Now, the rest of the Cosmology was interesting. Sure, they're obviously different in presentation, but there are also similarities in kind, and a lot of the differences could be viewed as seeing the same beyond-human-conception things through different filters. (The way Planars and 'clueless primes' saw things differently in Planescape, for instance, though without the assumption that one was definitively right and the other merely ignorant.)

Or it could be taken as being in different epochs.

The original elemental planes, for instance, were a source of elementals and not much else. You couldn't actually visit them. A world having that relationship to and that conception of the Elemental Chaos isn't much a stretch. Similarly, the Shadowfell is just a less inhospitable, more developed Plane of Shadow.

And by the same token, the Astral Sea isn't /that/ different from the Astral Plane, it could just be a way of looking at the same ineffable metaphysical layer of existence that connects up the realms of various deities.
For that matter (the different epochs concept), the Lattice of Heaven could have /been/ the Great Wheel - or the Great Wheel could be what's finally re-built in it's place. Or both (making time cyclical). Or the Great Wheel could be the way a prime-material moral philosopher organized the Divine Dominions in a definitive treatise (or the way Sigil's inhabitants choose to). It's not like you could ever actually /see/ the great wheel, nor travel along it from plane to plane as if they were literally adjacent in three-dimensional space.

 

[pemerton]

Canon doesn't spring fully formed from a book like Venus from Zeus.

The canonical view is that it was Athena, not Venus (nor Aphrodite) who sprang forth fully-formed from Zeus.

 

[Shasarak]

The canonical view is that it was Athena, not Venus (nor Aphrodite) who sprang forth fully-formed from Zeus.

Now you care about Canon! =;0)

 

[pemerton]

Because you might be able to tell my comment was heavily sarcastic.

No, I couldn't tell. There were no obvious sarcasm markers.

There was no change made because there was nothing to change. No relationship was transformed into a sibling relationship.

I and [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] am not asserting that the relationship changed. We're asserting that the story changed - see further below.

In the case of Luke and Leia's sibling relationship being revealed, or Holmes's hypothetical sock pattern being commented upon, there was no change in the relationship or sock pattern made upon the revelation.

Star Wars presents the relationship between Luke and Leia as romantic and not taboo. It's a farm-boy-hero-gets-the-princess story - a combination of fairy tale and pulp.

The authorial decision to write a sequel that makes them sibilings is an authorial decision to change the significance of their relationship in the prior story.

A parallel in the Holmes case: Watson comment extensively on Holmes's eccentricities. Yet (to the best of my recollection) never remarks that Holmes goes about his laboratory (where they first met) in barefeet. Hence, a subsequent authorial decision that Holmes never wears shoes or socks in the laboratory would be to change the tone of the story and the thrust of Watson's character and narration: for instance, it would make Watson's narration far less reliable (eg What other idiosyncracies has he not mentioned?)

Someone might write a story in which Holmes is also Jack the Ripper (heck, for all I know, they already have - I can't be the only one to have had the thought), and that might be an interesting conceit, but no one could assert that that is mere addition to the Conan Doyle canon, rather than a change to it!

 

[Saint_Ridley]

No, I couldn't tell. There were no obvious sarcasm markers.

I thought the idea that not knowing something meant it didn't exist was a pretty solid one.

I and @Hussar am not asserting that the relationship changed. We're asserting that the story changed - see further below.

Star Wars presents the relationship between Luke and Leia as romantic and not taboo. It's a farm-boy-hero-gets-the-princess story - a combination of fairy tale and pulp.

The authorial decision to write a sequel that makes them sibilings is an authorial decision to change the significance of their relationship in the prior story.

The story and significance are not one and the same. The significance, which rests in the head of the viewer, did change. The story did not. Everything that happened in the first movie still happened, exactly the same. We just know more now to put it in a larger context now that we've seen the second. The change isn't to the story, but the amount of information you have with which to properly judge it.

What I'm saying is the change was inside you all along.

 

[Maxperson]

I can't say I agree with that. If I port Forgotten Realms over to the Savage Worlds system, I wouldn't say I'm playing D&D.

What I think we're trying to get at here is:
(D&D mechanics) x (not D&D setting) = Not D&D.
(not D&D mechanics) x (D&D setting) = Not D&D.
(D&D mechanics) x (D&D setting) = D&D.

I think that ties into my (and others) earlier point that while it's hard to specify what IS "D&D", it's pretty easy to identify what it "not D&D".

I can agree with that.

 

[Maxperson]

You don't refute my point by putting forward a different, more generic example!

I mean, from hearing someone say "Let's go get the orcs!" you can't tell what system they're playing either - but that's why I didn't choose that as my example!

Following [MENTION=205]TwoSix[/MENTION]'s lead, I pointed to particular D&D idioms - fireball with d6s of damage, trolls that are vulnerable to fire, d20 to attack followed by a damage die, etc - as markers of the resemblance between D&D and (say) PF or 13th Age.

First, power attack and cleave are D&D idioms, which is why I picked them and not orcs

Second, fireball is not unique to D&D. I know that Rolemaster had those spells back in the day.

Between the barest of rules, and the richest of lore, there is what [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] has called the "gestalt" or what I've called the "idiom". It's a real thing, and D&D and PF have it in common; whereas BW, RQ, RM, T&T, DQ, and the other games I've mentioned all set out to repduiate it in some fashion or other.

I mean, what do you think Paizo were referring to when they put out a big poster for Pathfinder with the words "3.5 Thrives"?

D&D and Pathfinder are very close. Not so much with other D20 games.

 

[Shasarak]

Someone might write a story in which Holmes is also Jack the Ripper (heck, for all I know, they already have - I can't be the only one to have had the thought), and that might be an interesting conceit, but no one could assert that that is mere addition to the Conan Doyle canon, rather than a change to it!

There was quite an interesting Holmes story where it appeared that he was Jack the Ripper but spoilers

Spoiler

he was actually killing people infected and taken over by an alien creature in the process of tracking it

.

Edit: Ok so the spoilers dont seem to be working.

 

[Maxperson]

Sure, but that's just a difference in trade dress and presentation, which has happened in every single edition of branded D&D. I can tell apart 1e, 2e, 3e, 4e, and 5e just as easily from PF purely by the book aesthetic. And every campaign setting has unique characters and icons.

Actually, this whole canon thing would be much less divisive if people simply viewed edition changes as reboots. Then 3e has its own canon, as does 4e, as does 5e. The only thing that mucks it up is (surprise!) Forgotten Realms, because it attempts to maintain continuity of timeline through edition reboots.

Speaking for myself, I do view each setting as independent with regard to canon......to an extent. So long as it resembles what came before it, I'm good. I don't need or expect it to be exact.