D&D General Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, and Canon: Stare Decisis in D&D

[Werthead]

As for the canon topic, I've always wondered, when talking about canon in the context of D&D (or any fictional franchise), and people mentions "this is/is not canon": is "canon for what?". Because canon is only useful when you trying to "study" something ("I'm reading this series of novels; is this novel relevant/canon to my reading order, or can I skip it?"), or when you're doing a professional or semi-professional research on something (like, writing an article for a wiki).

When you are worldbuilding, canon become less useful. The only use for canon in this context (for me, at least) is when you want to be as faithful to the source material and, as someone mentioned before, for some settings it may be impossible to be really faithful to canon (good luck trying to be faithful to canon in the Forgotten Realms). And as soon as your players interact with the game world, you've already deviated from canon.

I see canon more as a tool for understanding/researching something than a holy scripture.

Canon, worldbuilding and lore is a hot topic in fandom generally but seems to be very important at the moment because of the general feeling that many adaptations have been made which try to instantly change the source material for what some feel is no apparent reason (whilst others may disagree and feel those reasons are important).

There are positive/neutral connotations from this, that worldbuilding adds depth and richness to the world that aids in the suspension of disbelief, that it can provide convincing backstory for your story that makes it make more sense, and it creates a sense of coherence to the setting that makes expanding it easier as everyone knows what the ground rules are. It is also a fun intellectual pursuit (Tolkien noting that he enjoyed creating lore for the sake of it, sometimes to the detriment of getting the actual stories finished).

There is also the enjoyment that neurodivergent fans get out of science fiction and fantasy, and continuity errors and mistakes and things not making sense can be considerably more annoying/upsetting for them than for other fans who are perhaps more interested in the story at hand and not every detail.

There are also negative connotations from it, that canon mastery and expertise, especially built up over decades, can be used as a blunt tool to gatekeep fandoms and prevent newcomers from coming on board with different, fresher perspectives that can keep a franchise ticking over and evolving.

I would say that canon/lore is palpably different for TTRPGing than for books (where it is seen as hugely important) and TV shows and movies (which it often exists superficially and can be changed or retconned if it allows for a more spectacular setpiece). I believe in every TTRPG campaign, even in established settings, it's much better understood that the GM is in charge, and even if it's an established world it's still the DM's version of that world. It feels like this did need to be pointed out in almost every Forgotten Realms sourcebook at one point, presumably to counter the issue of players who'd read every Drizzt book rocking up to argue pedantry with DMs who perhaps only had a single FR setting book.

In the case of Greyhawk (circling back on topic!) it's going to be an interesting situation if they are simply picking a year and deleting everything that happened after that point, as that's not typically been done in settings before (Dragonlance is at least flirting with it as well, though, and the new Weis/Hickman trilogy seems to be teeing up a lore explanation for it). At least with GH they have at least some cover in that the amount of post-Greyhawk Wars material is, whilst not nonexistent, not vast in amount and they can probably justify taking it in a new direction (although veterans of Living Greyhawk campaigns might feel aggrieved). Despite frequent requests to do so, I can't see WotC simply deleting the Spellplague from Forgotten Realms and everything that's come since (including the movie and Baldur's Gate III, not to mention all of the 5E adventure paths) in the same way.

 

[tetrasodium]

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In the case of Greyhawk (circling back on topic!) it's going to be an interesting situation if they are simply picking a year and deleting everything that happened after that point, as that's not typically been done in settings before (Dragonlance is at least flirting with it as well, though, and the new Weis/Hickman trilogy seems to be teeing up a lore explanation for it). At least with GH they have at least some cover in that the amount of post-Greyhawk Wars material is, whilst not nonexistent, not vast in amount and they can probably justify taking it in a new direction (although veterans of Living Greyhawk campaigns might feel aggrieved). Despite frequent requests to do so, I can't see WotC simply deleting the Spellplague from Forgotten Realms and everything that's come since (including the movie and Baldur's Gate III, not to mention all of the 5E adventure paths) in the same way.

I've only been kinda sorta half following the thread & was never a big enouigh greyhawk lore buff to notice, is there any indications that they are giving us an eberron style 998yk pre-campaign baseline for greyhawk along those lines?

 

[JEB]

Despite frequent requests to do so, I can't see WotC simply deleting the Spellplague from Forgotten Realms and everything that's come since (including the movie and Baldur's Gate III, not to mention all of the 5E adventure paths) in the same way.

I admit I'm pretty surprised they didn't use the Vecna adventure to reboot the Realms and other settings for the 2024 era, much as they already had Ravenloft and Spelljammer and Dragonlance and Planescape (albeit in progressively smaller degrees). Though I guess we also haven't yet seen any future plans for the Realms, past the new core rulebooks.

(Point of order, though - the (last-seen) official stance is that movies and video games are different "expressions" of D&D and therefore have their own canon. So the movie and BG III have their own canon that wouldn't be affected by an RPG setting reboot.)

 

[haakon1]

For instance, the only Greyhawk book I have is the Living Gazetteer, and I don't know much about earlier books, as I don't have them. For me, my canon Greyhawk is limited to the Living Gazetteer.

Because Greyhawk has been out of print yet played so long, fan and 3rd party contributions are an important part of many Greyhawk campaigns.

For example, for many people, Melkot, though fanmade, is canon because it’s on the Anna Meyers maps. Which are also fan made, but super popular - possibly more widely accepted than anything since the Gold Box.

 

[haakon1]

At least with GH they have at least some cover in that the amount of post-Greyhawk Wars material is, whilst not nonexistent, not vast in amount and they can probably justify taking it in a new direction (although veterans of Living Greyhawk campaigns might feel aggrieved).

I don’t think anyone in Greyhawk fandom rejects the 576 CY Gold Box setting. It may be the past or the present, but it was true at the time, at least from its in-character author’s POV.

Greyhawk Wars is where the fandom splits, so rolling back before that board game makes sense.

I’m a fan of the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, but I am happy for it to be “one possible future” from a current 576.

 

[Werthead]

I admit I'm pretty surprised they didn't use the Vecna adventure to reboot the Realms and other settings for the 2024 era, much as they already had Ravenloft and Spelljammer and Dragonlance and Planescape (albeit in progressively smaller degrees). Though I guess we also haven't yet seen any future plans for the Realms, past the new core rulebooks.

(Point of order, though - the (last-seen) official stance is that movies and video games are different "expressions" of D&D and therefore have their own canon. So the movie and BG III have their own canon that wouldn't be affected by an RPG setting reboot.)

They had the opportunity to reboot the Realms in 2014 but I gather than Salvatore and Greenwood decided that, whilst they hated the Spellplague, undoing it meant decanonising some six years' worth of novels (including their own!) and rolling back a whole ton of lore developments. So whilst it was tempting to do a reset to the "classic" Realms timeframe, they ultimately decided that it was too disrespectful to the dozens of writers who'd done their best to make the Spellplague work. So they undid the effects of the Spellplague, reset the geography not just to 3E but all the way back to 2E (since they low-key disliked those changes as well) and rebooted the pantheon but kept the advancing of the timeline intact.

Since all of the 5E adventures, many of them very well-selling for TTRPG adventures, take place in the 1480s/1490s DR timeframe, plus the movie, plus the few 5E-era novels, plus all the comics and then BG3, the chances of them resetting the timeline were always slim. Plus resetting the timeline would mean you'd still have to explain why dragonborn are around (they arrived on Toril in the Spellplague), why tieflings are so much more common than back in the day etc.

The other settings are all relatively much more obscure, so they can do more what they want with them. Plus they had already experimented this with 4E Dark Sun, which IIRC booted out the late 2E changes and reverted to the classic setting.

The idea that the different media tie-ins are in their own canon might be what they say to avoid problems, but they also contradict themselves: the film had novel tie-ins and also established that the cartoon series characters are canonically in the Realms, which both the comics and the new core rulebooks seem to be following up on. BG3 is apparently the canonical continuation of the events in Descent to Avernus, and reportedly is now crossing over with a novel prequel next year (though still not 100% confirmed I believe).

 

[Zeromaru X]

I've only been kinda sorta half following the thread & was never a big enouigh greyhawk lore buff to notice, is there any indications that they are giving us an eberron style 998yk pre-campaign baseline for greyhawk along those lines?

Plus they had already experimented this with 4E Dark Sun, which IIRC booted out the late 2E changes and reverted to the classic setting.

4e Dark Sun is an interesting case, because while it is true that they rebooted the setting to its starting point, ignoring the metaplot of late 2e, they didn't ignored all of it. They included stuff like Dregoth and the dray (that were adapted to be dragonborn), and stuff like that.

And I think that would be also a great way to deal with Greyhawk. Reseting it to an ideal point, but maintaining some of the interesting developments of the late products.

 

[JEB]

The idea that the different media tie-ins are in their own canon might be what they say to avoid problems, but they also contradict themselves: the film had novel tie-ins and also established that the cartoon series characters are canonically in the Realms, which both the comics and the new core rulebooks seem to be following up on. BG3 is apparently the canonical continuation of the events in Descent to Avernus, and reportedly is now crossing over with a novel prequel next year (though still not 100% confirmed I believe).

Eh, that's not really a contradiction. The argument would be that the film novel tie-ins are also their own canon, one that includes the film itself, but not necessarily vice versa. And the version of the cartoon characters in the film would be a version for that canon, different from the one in the original cartoon, the recent IDW comic, and the ones we see in tabletop products, etc.

As for BG III vs. Descent Into Avernus, I think I've heard they don't neatly match up, which would be consistent with them not being the same canon... though OTOH, as massively popular as BG III is, I would be shocked if they didn't reference it in later tabletop products. (Perhaps only as Easter eggs, though, like the 80s cartoon cast or the Dragonlance heroes.)

 

[JEB]

And I think that would be also a great way to deal with Greyhawk. Reseting it to an ideal point, but maintaining some of the interesting developments of the late products.

This is pretty much what they did with 5e Planescape, FWIW. Though I'd expect 2024 5e Greyhawk to be vastly less detailed than that...

 

[Parmandur]

Eh, that's not really a contradiction. The argument would be that the film novel tie-ins are also their own canon, one that includes the film itself, but not necessarily vice versa. And the version of the cartoon characters in the film would be a version for that canon, different from the one in the original cartoon, the recent IDW comic, and the ones we see in tabletop products, etc.

As for BG III vs. Descent Into Avernus, I think I've heard they don't neatly match up, which would be consistent with them not being the same canon... though OTOH, as massively popular as BG III is, I would be shocked if they didn't reference it in later tabletop products. (Perhaps only as Easter eggs, though, like they the 80s cartoon cast or the Dragonlance heroes.)

I mean, just because WotC doesn't hold their partners to any canon beyond the Core books, doesn't mean someone like, for example, Lawrence Schick isn't allowed to go above and beyond. They are managing expectations of consistency, not forbidding it.