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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Neonchameleon" data-source="post: 6390722" data-attributes="member: 87792">D&D  has, however, outside 2e and 3.5 not been a game that was about lore.   The original reason for just about all the lore in D&D was, to quote  Mike Mornard, "We made up some <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> we thought would be fun."  The only  two editions of D&D that have drifted away from this before 5e have  been 2e and 3.5.  The rest?  oD&D, B/X, 1E, BECMI, RC, 3.0, and  4e?  None of them tried to pickle their lore, freeze dry it, mummify it,  then store it in amber.  2e was literally producing five books per month.  D&D  has always been a game that had a story emerge from the group.  2e in  particular was when the game told you what that story should be.   Complete with scripted events and events in which the PCs followed the  canon NPCs around and watched them do all the cool stuff.Alternatively Tieflings being an entire race of special  snowflakes who are orphans but all have the same experience might be  something that other people consider loaded with irony.  If you want to  be an anomaly that doesn't understand the forces that produced you play a genuine anomaly.   Not Anomaly #96,284 in the same way as all the other Tieflings - that  merely undercuts the theme you wish to draw out.  If you want to be  someone who doesn't know where they come from, play a Thri-keen in a  setting that isn't Athas.  Play a Dragonborn in a setting without them.   Play a Shardmind in ... just about any setting.  Something that isn't  even in the PHB - or even something you made up.  After all, you are  storytelling as a group.  You aren't simply playing through the stories  imagined by the game designersThe core of  this "disrespect" is people thinking that everything must cater to  them.  And also that catering to them means pickling the settings and  the themes, then fossilizing them in amber.  What you are asking for is  the Star Wars Extended Universe.Star Wars (episodes  4-6) are a great story.  A triumph of hope, and things changing, and  bringing down The Evil Empire.  The Star Wars Extended Universe of  course mirrors those themes.  Most of the stories are stories about  hope, about things changing, and of a plucky band of underdogs  overthrowing a corrupt dominant power.  This means that the Star Wars EU  is a complete crapsack world.  Because to reproduce that theme there  needs to be an even bigger Evil Empire to overthrow next time.  Instead  of being about hope and change, the Star Wars EU is therefore about a  crapsack universe that's turtles all the way down.  And overthrowing one  evil empire is nothing more than peeling an onion, layer by layer, to  look for the seeds.  It always still looks like a peeled onion until you get rid of it.Neither  does any other edition of D&D.  WotC aren't sending ninjas round to  steal your old Monstrous Manual.  The Nentir Vale is not Sigil is not  Athas is not the Realms is not Eberron is not Greyhawk is not Mystara.My  two favourite published D&D settings are Eberron and the Nentir  Vale.  I'm not remotely upset when the dinosaur riding halflings of  Eberron don't appear in the Nentir Vale.  Indeed if they were to do so  I'd consider it would have made the Nentir Vale cookie-cutter,  derivative, and boring.  Because we've already done that.  My  prototype Warforged who found himself on the streets of Sharn with no  papers, and the only thing he remembered being escaping from Merrix  d'Cannith's creation forge (he doesn't even know the name) doesn't  suddenly become invalid if the creation of Warforged is no longer  prohibited and secret, but instead Warforged are created by individual  sorcerers in their back rooms.What you see as "being more  careful" I see as ruthlessly suppressing almost all the sparks of  creativity and of joy within the setting.And  once more I say that "builds on the lore without contradicting it" is  something I read as a request for more cookie cutter lore and less  creativity.  Lore is setting-specific.  I don't want Bael Turath in  Planescape.  It doesn't fit.  Give me <a href="http://www.denofgeek.com/tv/doctor-who/21143/doctor-who-a-celebration-of-continuity-errors" target="_blank">continuity, not canon</a>.  The main effect of canon is <a href="http://www.paulcornell.com/2007/02/canonicity-in-doctor-who/" target="_blank">setting fans at each others' throats</a>.Honoring the experiences would be little call-backs.  The way that New  Who has Clara teaching at Coal Hill School (and for that matter Ace and  Seven going there).  Not Changing Anything is going waaaay beyond that.And  as I've said, there are no ninjas going to your house to take away your  old books.  If you want to use the old lore and ignore the new one do so.   But complaining that new authors are arrogant enough to have their own  take on things is merely complaining that new authors  are arrogant  enough to produce anything at all.  The only way they could be following  through with what you are asking for is to not produce any material at  all.And asking them not to produce anything for D&D because  you liked some of the old stuff is far more arrogant and egotistical  than anything that is being done.Then STOP DOING THAT.   There is more than one possible take on Tieflings.  But you are  declaring that the 4e ones are anathema because they don't follow the  section on Tieflings that makes no sense with them being a race.The  basis of D&D, according to Mike Mornard (who was in both Gygax'  original group and Arneson's) is "We made up some <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> we thought would  be cool."Why do you want the D&D writers to stop writing  what they think would be cool in favour of some fossilised version of  D&D that isn't allowed to make things up and have their own takes. Which  is why the 2E MM with defined tribal organisations and ecologies for  cookie cutter worlds is the worst MM ever, but I digress.Can we cancel 5e then?  (And 4e and 3.5 and 3.0).  Every time someone  produces a game it is about what the game designer considers important. And by your complaints about there being a new take on Tieflings you are consuming the Monstrous Manual far more passively than I consume X-men.And it is anathema  for the very idea of storytelling to fossilise the story in such a way  that nothing can be changed.  They aren't removing your old books.  They are writing new ones.You  are a consumer every bit as much as everyone who watches the X-men and  then talks about them.  You are consuming the lore produced by Gygax, by  Zeb Cook, by Jonathan Tweet, by Monte Cook, by James Wyatt, and by many  more.  And unlike the average fan-fic writer you can't even be bothered  to write a fix-fic and move on.The very second you talk about  the game's historical lore as if it's something sacrosanct you are a  consumer and you have lost all rights to look down on other people for  being such.Which is about how I feel about the 2e MM.  It absolutely is up to the designers to choose the thematic elements that make it into their design.  If they don't do so then they are not designers.  It is up to you to  then try to decide how to use those elements and any other elements you  care to name.  If you don't like them don't use them.</blockquote>

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