D&D General Is "official" lore important to you?

[Blue]

If I'm running Eberron, we have the Last War, and the history of the warforged, and the Dragonmarks and their Houses. I can run Eberron without Dragonmarked Houses just fine - but if I don't tell my players that and they are expecting them things will feel wonky and off.

So shared lore is important. It's both a shorthand between DM and players, but also a foundation that everyone is building on. Changing it can happen, but needs to be communicated.

One of the reasons I actively dislike FR - there's too much lore. I played a lot of it back in AD&D days, and the players that read every novel would know more about the world than I, and it was correct because the DM also did. There could be a plot going on and I would miss clues due to not knowing about how Sammaster fit into the Cult of the Dragon. Or of course now where I have lots of FR knowledge, some of which is years out of date because they've advanced the timeline, but other parts are still true which is even more confusing.

 

[cmad1977]

Not in the slightest. Canon is for fodder.

 

[Theo R Cwithin]

Voted "No, never."
Lore is certainly inspirational, and great for yoinking ideas, but I can't retain it all and don't care about canon beyond what determines the rules. And lore can be flat out irritating when playing a lore-rich setting but someone else at the table becomes a self-appointed lore-lawyer. Ugh.

 

[Umbran]

Sort of. I mean, if a game gives me canon I like, I'm gonna use it.

And if I am explicitly setting a game in a particular world and time, my players can expect that the canon of that place and time is going to largely hold - if I am running a superhero game in Marvel Universe 1980s New York City, there are things the players can count on.

 

[DammitVictor]

Not normally, because I don't normally use published settings-- even in my own Spelljammer, I replace the "setting" with homebrew-- and I really only use published games the way my namesake used cemetaries.

But I gotta admit, a lot of the weird little changes to AD&D monsters/races that were made in 3.X and then reverted in 4e bug me. Tiefling Charisma penalty, reversing Githzerai INT and WIS, turning the Gith races and half the Dark Sun races into "psionic" races... really vex me.

When I run Marvel Heroic Roleplaying, I always run on an eXiles setup where the primary purpose of canon is to encourage the players to be wrong about things (on accident) and the player characters to be wrong about things on purpose.

 

[atanakar]

I home-brew D&D since 1982. I never use official setting lore.

But if I play another rpg with an official setting, like Coriolis, since I bought it for that reason, I will definitely try to stick to canon, but will add a bit of spice here and there to make it my own.

 

[Shiroiken]

As someone who runs Gygaxian Greyhawk, I obviously don't give a damn about canon. I tried, not only with D&D, but with other RPGs, to keep as close to canon as possible. It was a nightmare, and super stressful, because if you didn't keep up with all the lore, a player might throw you for a loop. Worse, a player might have read the source material you're using for your campaign, then know where you're going and plan for it (had a DM run the shadovar right when the novels came out, but one player had also read them).

Freeing myself from canon was the greatest thing I ever did as a GM. The canon is what I say it is, not some author who doesn't share my vision (nor I theirs). This has caused some issues with players who only know modern stuff, so I've tried real hard to clarify lore with my players as much as possible.

 

[billd91]

It depends.
Lore gives you a place to start and provides a degree of continuity from one game to another and a sense of shared experience.
Chief Nosnra is throwing a party in G1 - different groups will deal with that differently, but it gives us a common frame of reference. In published settings, Greyhawk and Waterdeep are both substantial cities and serve as good base points for PCs to collect. Each campaign setting has a variety of well-known NPCs that can interact with PCs and give them things to do based on their goals. The Temple of Elemental Evil was once put down (but not permanently) but set up the published adventure. Storm giants are a bit different from their other giant brethren in that they tend to be good-aligned so not all giants are fodder for fights. Drow are evil elves driven under the surface who worship a demon spider goddess and have a matriarchal society making themselves an excellent source of mastermindish enemies.
Change those in significant ways and you have very different experiences despite dealing with things that are nominally the same.

 

[Stormonu]

Use some, throw away other bits.

Though I do remember (kiddingly) getting after my son last night when he wanted to add a duodecahedron modron monster (“Primus does not approve of your blasphemy!”)

<EDIT> And I must admit that a lot of the 4E cosmology rearrangement and Dawn War restructing ruffled my feathers badly.

 

[Laurefindel]

I voted « yes, always »

An official turn of events and background info is essential to a setting IMO. It is a huge part of what defines the setting and set it appart from other campaign settings.

However, I feel the underlying question, while not specifically spelled that way, is whether it is important (or not) to use that official content and if so, in what proportion. There, I would say that no official content should be taken as sacrosanct canon. The devs and authors themselves acknowledge that.

But still, the official info is important, if only to know what you think needs changing. No matter how much you alter a campaign setting, you need to start from something. That something is always important and relevant. It's one thing to mine a setting for inspiration, it's another to affirm playing in the said setting.