D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."

[Shasarak]

In my world Dwarves are fairly racist against most other races. This would never be converted into a solid mechanical Rule, where I roll for racism.

You would only need to roll if the outcome is uncertain, right? If your Dwarves are racist against Elves then why would you need to roll when the Elves come to Dwarftown. You already know what is going to happen.

IMO, while all rules should fall under "Lore" not all lore should be a rule. This of course leads to the obvious result of Lore first, everything else last.

Sometimes you can get particularly awkward situations of trying to fit a mechanical "solution" into the Lore like trying to make all Forgotten Realms Gold Elves into Eladrin so starting with the Story first helps to avoid those situations.

 

[Lanliss]

You would only need to roll if the outcome is uncertain, right? If your Dwarves are racist against Elves then why would you need to roll when the Elves come to Dwarftown. You already know what is going to happen.



Sometimes you can get particularly awkward situations of trying to fit a mechanical "solution" into the Lore like trying to make all Forgotten Realms Gold Elves into Eladrin so starting with the Story first helps to avoid those situations.

I suppose I should have been slightly more clear. By "fairly" I meant that they are reliably racist, similar to Elves in most worlds (think they are superior, but not Dwarf supremacist/burn all the elves racist). As a result, there is always a chance that a given dwarf might react unfavorably. Instead of rolling this, I would simply decide whether I had had enough racist Dwarves show up lately.

 

[Remathilis]

So like an idiot, I dipped into the last few pages of the Setting Canon thread, which seems to have long since gone off the rails, slipped the tracks, careened into the wilderness, and barrel-rolled two or three times before catching on fire and exploding. That said, though, something startling came up in recent posts that was so alien to my experience that I had to make sure I was reading it right: The idea that if gameworld "lore" (specifically of monsters in the discussion in question, but presumably exapndable to all other aspects) isn't utterly consistent, it's useless, and that if you allow exceptions for some aspect of it you might as well throw the whole rulebook out, cats and dogs living together, &c., &c.

In short, I was flabbergasted to find a subset of my fellow hobbyists who want setting lore to be another kind of rule.

Which, dude, I am not about to declare BadWrongFun on however you choose to relate to your gaming materials, but that seems to me like a setup for heartbreak. And I confess I don't understand the absolutism behind it. It feels like a misreading of the intent of that content - asking that a piece of the game does something it wasn't intended to.

To me, "lore" seems like it's meant to be more of a starting point than an end. It's a general understanding of how things are in the setting - or, at most, default assumptions that may or may not be valuable to your own version of the gameworld. Even as "canon," it's a way of saying "This is what's known to be true, except when it isn't." If it's done well, it should suggest things that could happen in the course of play, but not dictate them. Adhering to or ignoring the lore ought to depend on what's going to make a more interesting play experience.*

Expecting lore to operate as if it were another set of rules feels like mistaking (to use a couple of loaded and decidedly imperfect terms) fluff for crunch. Tipping the hat to the late Sir Pterry, the Lore is not the Law, even if your ideolect pronounces them the same way.

Or at least that's how I see it. If you disagree with me, I'd love to hear what experiences inform your different expectations, and what you feel it serves to treat that part of the game that way. I'd also be interested to learn what compromises, if any, you'd be willing to make as part of a table that views lore in a, well, fluffier way than you do. I don't know that I'll ever really grok this way of thinking, but I'd at least like to get a sense of how it looks from the perspective of someone whose default settings are so different from mine.

*Words deliberately chosen because some of you out in forumland seem to be allergic to the word story, but that's what we're talking about here.

The problem with this (and in general, the problem going on in the Lore thread) is that the topic is forced into all-or-nothing. The binary choice is that either the lore should be ALWAYS enforced or the lore needs to be omitted, vague, or multiple choice. Its a strawman constructed to create the impression that canonical lore is bad and should be omitted from the game.

 

[ProgBard]

The problem with this (and in general, the problem going on in the Lore thread) is that the topic is forced into all-or-nothing. The binary choice is that either the lore should be ALWAYS enforced or the lore needs to be omitted, vague, or multiple choice. Its a strawman constructed to create the impression that canonical lore is bad and should be omitted from the game.

You speak much truth. There's a heckuva lot of reductio ad absurdem going on over there.

Indeed, my biggest objection to the idea of lore-as-rules is that it invites the false dichotomy that you must either accept it ALL WITHOUT EXCEPTION or THROW IT ALL AWAY.

 

[Blue]

I agree that lore isn't the same as rules. Lore is much more important then merely rules. Look, you can run the same setting in multiple different rule sets and people do all the time. (Or even in different editions of the same ruleset, some of which are quite different.)

But what makes a setting a setting? Is it Hyboria if barbarians, especially Conan, are weak and cowardly as a rule? Is it Middle Earth if the Urak Hai are treated as shades of grey where some are good and many are misunderstood or heroes in their own hearts?

The lore of a setting defines it. Which includes it's exceptions. In a world with owlbears and other remnants of ancient magical experimentation can you have a troll immune to fire but can't regenerate bludgeoning damage? Sure, because the fact that there are mysteries, oddities, and things left over from ages past are part of the lore - it doesn't break it, it reinforces it.

A friend used to watch the old "Hercules: Legendary Journeys" TV show but would always call it "Bob: Legendary Journeys". He explained that it was a fun show to watch, but it definitely wasn't Hercules. To him, calling it Hercules was a crime because Hercules meant something, and this show didn't deliver that. It didn't mean it was a bad show, it just wasn't Herc.

Same with setting. If you want to run Dark Sun but are meh on sorcerer kings and arcane desecration, Eberron but dragon marks and Houses don't interest you, of a happy shiny Barvarian for a better tomorrow, you aren't running those settings, just borrowing names from them.

 

[jmucchiello]

I read this thread with irony as my sig (once, before one of the many board implosions here) use to have a quote from a poster whose name I forget, "I never heard of a flavor lawyer." Apparently this is no longer true.

Sent from my GT-P3113 using EN World mobile app

 

[transtemporal]

This strikes me as an enormously sane and reasonable way of threading the needle - indeed, though it's not the way I would have thought to put it, it pretty accurately describes my approach as well.

Its almost too sane... lol

 

[ProgBard]

For a start it is easier to make exceptions then it is to make everything unique.

In my Spelljammer example you could have a particularly deadly Sargasso that consisted of a vacuum or even magic dead area as an exception to rule that a Knight could survive on the deck of his Spelljammer.

As opposed to, for example, a Spelljammer campaign that required completely enclosed ships and space suits to survive space like you find in Pathfinderspace or Numeneraspace.

Okay, I follow you thus far. But I think the nature of your Spelljammer example is in some ways confusing the issue because of the nature of the setting. Spelljammer lore requires certain rules-like information that tells you what consditions are like for characters who are sailing between the crystal spheres; how that universe operates isn't intuitive until you read up on its aspects and understand what its nature is. It's a case extreme enough to allow you to make your argument, IOW.

So let's pull things back down to Earth, as it were, a bit. Let's even set aside monsters, since that subject likewise seems to lead swiftly down ridiculous paths.

Flipping through the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting - a volume widely prized as a source of reliable lore - my eye lights on the entry for the town of Beregost. I see that, as of the mid-14th century DR, what was know of Beregost was that it was a large town, with a population just under three thousand; that it was governed and policed by the clergy of Lathander; and that its founder was a wizard whose tower was destroyed by rivals some three centuries before. Those are all super interesting things that have plot hooks in 'em whether they're true or not, especially if that's what the players and their characters believe and expect before they go to Beregost. What's added to the play experience by treating any or all of those possibly-facts as a "rule"?

(And tangentially but not incidentally, when you set up a choice between "make exceptions" or "make everything unique" - don't think I don't see the card you're palming there. See my previous entry this thread on false dichotomies for my thoughts on such matters.)

 

[Argyle King]

I think the lore should, to some extent, be reflected in the rules.

One of the issues I had with 4th Edition was that it was difficult to take the story seriously because of how different actual play was when compared to the story of the game.

I mean, it's a bit odd when you're fighting Orcus -a demon lord who is so vile and dangerous that he's used for the cover of the MM, and then the party manages to stomp a mudhole in him so bad that the DM feels it is reasonable to have him surrender via a mid-combat intimidation check.

 

[Greg K]

I
Same with setting. If you want to run Dark Sun but are meh on sorcerer kings and arcane desecration, Eberron but dragon marks and Houses don't interest you, of a happy shiny Barvarian for a better tomorrow, you aren't running those settings, just borrowing names from them.

At the same time, Darksun elves, dwarves, and halflings are different from the default and I have had some people state to me that these and other differences from default D&D lore, and the lack of certain standard PHB elements make Darksun not D&D. I have seen people state Al Qadim and Ravenloft are not D&D, because they too make changes from the default. To me, they are all D&D and such changes from the default lore are what make settings and the game is better for it.