D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

Parmandur · Jul 21, 2021

JEB said:
I think this should probably be its own discussion thread, especially after this bombshell for canon fans:

Well, they will be putting out a detailed blog post in a bit, which will probably explain this more clearly.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 21, 2021

Mirtek said:
Thing is that we can, but we just have different tastes. For us that's a good thing, because we want to see those implications pop up in offical products. It brings us joy to read about that in offical novels (sadly no more) and splatbooks

That's fine with me, as long as you don't try to tell me that I'm wrong for preferring not to see such things in the offical material, or try to pretend that there is no difference between the two.

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
This is an interesting idea, but I don't think it really tracks with how the planes are generally treated in the books.

For instance, in Eberron's plane of Stories, Thelanis, there are an infinite number of potentially infinite "layers". Those layers are understood to be part of Thelanis, and thus ontologically secondary or....subservient (isn't the right word but hopefully it gets the point across) to the Plane of Thelanis.

In dnd as I've ever seen presented in actual published material, when a place is inside of another place, it is considered part of that place, and thus....exisentially less than the place which contains it? Like, surely you wouldn't argue with the statement that the planet of Oerth is, within the fiction of DnD, less than the Prime Material Plane in total? Right? It's part of it, and thus the plane is more than the planet, right?

So, if Eberron goes from being alongside the cosmology of the Greyhawk setting to being a "bubble" or "locked sphere" contained within the ethereal plane which is one plane of many within the "5e multiverse" of the Greyhawk (unless I've got my origins wrong on the great wheel) game/story setting. So, rather than being a universe which is only "inside" the "4e style multiverse" and in all ways equal to and in most ways separate from other universes within that multiverse, it is now merely a part of another universe. Hell, it doesn't even exist as like....a bubble on the outside of the great wheel or somesuch useful visualization, or to view it another way as it's own infinite plane alongside the others, it is a sub-plane within a larger plane.

The issue of things like elves still being the creations of Corellon is a bigger problem, but since it stems from the larger cosmological problem, it's hard to consistently discuss without going back to the cosmological problem.

think of it like a bag of holding. A bag of holding is roughly 3 cubic feet, but inside it is 64 cubic feet. If you look at it like this, the cosmology of Eberron, or Athas, or DL could be larger than the Great Wheel!

It seems you are making assumptions of why things don't work, but maybe should look for possibilities why they do instead?

doctorbadwolf · Jul 21, 2021

JEB said:
I think this should probably be its own discussion thread, especially after this bombshell for canon fans:

To be fair, canon is an abyss.

That doesn't mean that the actual published work isn't worthy of discussion and open to criticism, but yeah as far as actually playing the game, canon mostly has a direct impact in terms of what will be published in the future and what new players will expect from a game. So, future versions of the elf could, for instance, be mechanically different due to the past lives lore from mtof. If someone really really strongly dislikes that lore, that would suck for the, so it has an impact.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 21, 2021

dave2008 said:
think of it like a bag of holding. A bag of holding is roughly 3 cubic feet, but inside it is 64 cubic feet. If you look at it like this, the cosmology of Eberron, or Athas, or DL could be larger than the Great Wheel!

It seems you are making assumptions of why things don't work, but maybe should look for possibilities why they do instead?

Why should I do that in a discussion of whether the changes to lore are good? At my own table, as I've said many times, I don't care about canon. The books are mostly there to help me build things more quickly and easily and to help direct improv when that is useful.

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

Parmandur said:
Copied for the sake of discussion:

...While speaking to media last week ahead of its D&D Live event, lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford discussed the "canon" of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly when it comes to popular novel series such as the Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman or the Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore.

"For many years, we in the Dungeons & Dragons RPG studio have considered things like D&D novels, D&D video games, D&D comic books, as wonderful expressions of D&D storytelling and D&D lore, but they are not canonical for the D&D roleplaying game," Crawford said. "Part of that is we don’t want DMs to feel that in order to run the game, they need to read a certain set of novels. We want you to read them for the joy of reading them, but not as homework."

Crawford elaborated with an example from his own childhood, using the Dragonlance novels as an example. "I started playing D&D as a kid and I ran the original Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance adventure module, which actually came out before the novels did," Crawford said. "For me, Dragonlance has always been a wonderful D&D war story where every DM gets to play through their own version of that war story. And then the novels are one way where that story plays out. That’s how we view all D&D novels." Crawford also noted that they would dive more into the idea of D&D canonicity in a future developer blog post in the coming months.

While the idea that the foundational novels that helped to build worlds such as Krynn or Faerun might not exist within "official" canon, Crawford said that this decision ultimately brings the focus to the story that the Dungeon Master and the players want to tell when playing Dungeons & Dragons. "When it comes to the RPG, what’s important is each DM’s story and the story they create with their players," Crawford said. "The moment you are at the game table, it’s no longer "our” Dragonlance or "our" Forgotten Realms, it’s your Forgotten Realms, it’s your Dragonlance. You’re now telling your stories in those settings. You’re not bound to the stories in the novels, as wonderful as they might be. We hope you take as much inspiration from them as it gives you joy to do so. The same goes for D&D video games or for D&D comics."

As for what is considered canon in the D&D RPG, Crawford provided a very simple answer. "If you’re looking for what’s official in the D&D roleplaying game, it’s what appears in the products for the roleplaying game," Crawford said. "Basically, our stance is that if it has not appeared in a book since 2014 [the year that Dungeons & Dragons' Fifth Edition core rulebooks came out], we don’t consider it canonical for the games."

Well that pretty much matches up with my viewpoint (not exactly, but close). I don't think this will make @doctorbadwolf, @QuentinGeorge, and others you like their canon happy though.

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
Why should I do that in a discussion of whether the changes to lore are good? At my own table, as I've said many times, I don't care about canon. The books are mostly there to help me build things more quickly and easily and to help direct improv when that is useful.

Sorry, I don't understand what we are discussing anymore. I think I will move on. I was just trying to be helpful.

Hexmage-EN · Jul 21, 2021

I'm amused by the idea that the many, many Forgotten Realms are not canon. I'm now curious what a version of the setting stripped of any details derived from the novels would look like.

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2021

Hexmage-EN said:
3.5 had the Great Wheel as the cosmology of Greyhawk. Eberron had it's own cosmology, Ghostwalk had it's own cosmology, and the Forgotten Realms was connected to at least three separate Astral Planes with unique sets of planes and pantheons (Faerunian, Zakharan, and Maztican) as well as a spirit realm coterminous with Kara-Tur.

That last one in particular is hard to reconcile with the Great Wheel's single Astral Plane and constant set of planes.

None of that changes by putting them int0 the Great Wheel that the DMG says people can ignore. They still all have their own cosmologies isolated from the Wheel.

JEB · Jul 21, 2021

Hexmage-EN said:
I'm amused by the idea that the many, many Forgotten Realms are not canon. I'm now curious what a version of the setting stripped of any details derived from the novels would look like.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Forgotten Realms is quietly exempt from this in practice. I think it's more likely they're talking about Dragonlance... and justifying a setting reboot that ignores the novels (especially the new novels that they butted heads with Weis and Hickman over).