Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dungeonosophy" data-source="post: 5862425" data-attributes="member: 6688049">In the original 1983 Greyhawk boxed set, we learn that:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">The Advanced Dungeons & Dragons game is an English translation of an actual Oerthian proto-RPG that was invented by Pluffet Smedger the Elder as a scholarly tool to help students understand historical events.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">And the Greyhawk sourcebooks are translations of actual Oerthian texts written by the Savant Sage some 400 years before Smedger.</li> </ul>The implication is that the TSR editors acquired Smedger's books via inter-dimensional portal, and translated them from Oerth Common into English. In Living Greyhawk Journal #4, we learn that all the texts we know as D&D Greyhawk rpg books, exist in secret vaults within a special Zagig Yragerne section of the Great Library of the City of Greyhawk. This "in-story frame within a frame" is further detailed in the article <a href="http://www.canonfire.com/cfhtml/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=372" target="_blank">"Greyhawk Meta-Text Onomastics"</a> by tzelios. I propose that for 5e:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That D&D Next be considered an English translation of the 5th iteration of the proto-RPG designed by Smedger the Elder.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That all D&D books have an in-story counterpart in all worlds that are relevant to those texts. All generic/core 5e rulebooks exist as in-story texts in all published D&D Worlds. Either Smedger's proto-RPG passed to other worlds in the same way as Bibgy's spells, or there is a different equivalent to Smedger in each D&D world. But setting-specific books (such as the 5e Forgotten Realms setting books or novels) only exist in that World (the FR books exist in Toril and were written by various in-story Faerunian personalities, and actually exist in Candlekeep library).</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That all credited D&D authors/designers/artists have an alter-ego in each D&D world they contribute to.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That the implication be that all D&D books are translations from the various D&D Common Tongues (or other D&D languages) into our Real World English.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That all these texts were acquired by TSR/WotC employees via the Plane of Shadow, and that the original untranslated books exist in a secret vault in Renton, Washington.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">That once the 5e "in-story frame-within-a-frame" is reestablished, that the entire TSR/WotC rpg oeuvre be retconned into this, so that all rulebooks exist as Smedgerian proto-rpg rulebooks, and all setting-books (and other fluff) exists as scrolls and tomes written by in-world alter-egos.</li> </ul>This "fictive frame" is similar to how JRR Tolkien implies that he translated the Middle-earth stories into English from the Red Book of Westmarch which was written by Bilbo, Frodo, and Sam several thousand years before the Common Era, with the <a href="https://sites.google.com/site/endorenya/" target="_blank">Shire located in the same place on the Earth where England now lies</a>. Unlike the Middle-earth stories, the D&D Worlds aren't set on our Earth*. So, these texts must've arrived via the Plane of Shadow. *The exception are those few D&D stories which are set on Earth, such as Masque of the Red Death, or which visit the Earth, such the "Wizards Three" articles, along with the Earth-based d20 Modern campaign models. All these would be considered to be various depictions or timelines of a "<a href="https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/d-d-earth" target="_blank">D&D Earth</a>". The Smedgerian proto-RPG (including its d20 Modern iteration) also exists in D&D Earth.</blockquote>

Verification