Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
If something is 100% official, it IS their opinion. That's what 100% official means. It's not as if it's a third party using them or anything.
D&D 5E Whatever "lore" is, it isn't "rules."
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If something is 100% official, it IS their opinion. That's what 100% official means. It's not as if it's a third party using them or anything.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
Well, ya know...strictly speaking you're right. WoHS must get their powers from the Krynn moons. No problem there.
But let's take it another step or two.
Who or what says that all WoHS that get their powers from the moons of Krynn have to be or remain on Krynn? In other words, do these moon powers have an effective range beyond which they don't work? One has to assume not, otherwise no Dragonlance wizard could ever go off-plane and still function...a serious limitation to high level play in any DL campaign.
So, with that given, what's stopping a cabal of WoHS from somehow arriving at - and then setting up shop on - Greyhawk? They're still getting their powers from the moons of Krynn, they still function much like the same WoHS they were on Krynn (though maybe with some different spells they've learned since getting to GH?), they're...just...not on Krynn anymore. In fact, maybe that's a story arc for the campaign (either in play or behind the scenes) - there's this batch of wizards that just showed up and they're upsetting the magical apple cart, so to speak, with new spells and methods of casting never seen before in these parts.
And note that this is all simply adding to GH; its standing lore can otherwise remain untouched and thus by previously-established-in-this-thread definition you've got a Greyhawk game with Wizards of High Sorcery in it.
Lan-"there's always a bigger universe"-efan
I've got no idea where you get that idea from!
At a minimum, though, D&D includes playing the game that Gygax and Arneson wrote. Which means its D&D even if a GM designs his/her own dungeon, world, cosmology, etc.
By this standard, my game was a GH game in 1984, but then ceased to be one when the LGG (or whatever other book you want to use as your touchstone) was published. Which is rather odd.
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION], I am not seeing what mechanic differences you have in mind. SCAG says that Purple Dragon Knights (aka Bannerets) are ideal for Rose Knights. I don't see any reason why the mechanics that are ideal for Knights of Solamnia (published as such in the 1st ed AD&D DLA hardback) wouldn't also be excellent for Knights of Holy Shielding. In fact, my failure to see any such reason was so complete that I used the Solamnic Knight mechanics for just that purpose!
This makes no sense. Things can be unknown and yet have effects. (Eg the moon might be unknown to some aquatic elves who live in deep sea caves - but it still affects their tides.)
In any event, the comments on the heavens are written in an "in fiction" voice, ie by some scholar or other. There is no reason to take them as exhaustive. Ignorance on the part of that scholar doesn't preclude secret knowledge by others (eg wizards of the black robes).
I have no idea what you are talking about here.
Upthread you said that I was breaking GH canon by having WoHS in my game. Now you're saying that it's impossible to have WoHS in my game, because - by definition - they are defined in relation only to Krynn. The only constant here seems to be that I am doing something wrong!
In any event - when I say that "I use WoHS in my GH game", I take that to have the same sort of meaning as someone who says "I use dinosaurs in my GH game". That latter person presumably doesn't mean that the very same creatures which existed on earth tens and hundreds of millions of years ago, and were rendered extinct around 66 million years ago. What s/he means is that, in his/her GH game, there are creatures that in many practical respects are the same as earthly dinosaurs.
In the context of saying "I use WoHS in my GH game", I mean that I use a three-robed order of wizards, whose white robe members do nice stuff, whose black robe members do nasty stuff, and whose red robe monsters do nature/element manipulation stuff; who meet in conclaves based in towers, where members are inducted by way of a "test"; who have their power tied to moons, the power fluctuating with the phases of those moons; etc. To be honest I would have thought that is very clear.
The last line is an odd protest from someone who has just accused me of poor DMing!
In any event, I can report that the number of people ever confused over the course of 8 years of play in my GH game that included WoHS was zero. And in that time the number of WoHS played as PCs was (I think) 5; while the number of WoHS NPCs of any significance I can't recollect, but it would be into the dozens at least: the first such group was a party of black-robed wizards led by a woman called Ursula, working out of the Wild Coast in some sort of cooperation with the Slave Lords (after 25 years I can't remember all the details).
No one thinks it's poor DMing to call rangers "rangers" and thereby evoke Aragorn. At least as originally conceived, that was part of the point of the class. Calling dwarves "dwarves" and elves "elves", thereby evoking JRRT, is likewise pretty typical and not regarded as poor GMing. I may have had one or two players who were familiar with DL - but no one ever got confused or thought they were in a DL game! They knew it was a GH game (that was how we all described it - the give away was probably the pile of campaign books with the "Greyhawk" logo on them!). And they seemed to enjoy having WoHS as a thing in the game.
If you really think it's bad GMing to borrow evocative stuff from one setting and drop it into another setting, then I don't know what to say - I've been doing that since I first started GMing, following the advice in Moldvay Basic and Gygax's DMG; and to that extent seem to have been following in Gygax's footsteps (the Martians in the original D&D encounter tables are dropped from the John Carter stories into the original D&D worlds). It's never occurred to me that using interesting ideas to make my game more interesting and engaging was some sort of error!
Sadras
Legend
Is Vampire, Fate, Grimm, Summerland, Fantasy Heartbreakers, Westeros, Rolemaster...etc all D&D?
Does one draw a line? Is there a line?
I'm just exploring your definition.
What if I play Vampire Modern using the D&D system?
What if the campaign is set on Krynn and use the Fate system? Is it still D&D?
I feel if we don't actually have tighter definitions then D&D becomes a meaningless term or the statement I run a GH campaign = I run a Star Wars campaign = I run Dogs in the Vineyard
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Imaro
Legend
Sounds like with canon at least they they have an idea of what to expect... with your way it's [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] may I... to determine whether you beat the players about the head and ears with the Hussar's interpretation bat and tell them that their creativity is just not welcome here or accept it. Not seeing how having to spend time convincing you and still possibly being turned down is necessarily better then knowing upfront what bis and isn't acceptable.
Imaro
Legend
So you didn't consider your BW game set in Greyhawk playing D&D... right?
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
The moons are gods and Krynn has a different cosmology than Greyhawk or the other settings. It stands to reason that the Wizards of High Sorcery would be able to function anywhere within the Krynn cosmology, since that's where their gods can function. However, D&D mechanics and lore have held that gods can't function in prime planes where they have not appeared and gathered followers, so Greyhawk is right out.
Maxperson
Morkus from Orkus
No. I have never said or implied that you were doing anything wrong by using things from one setting in another. I have been saying that it breaks canon and can't be done without breaking canon. There's a difference. This thread is about canon, so I am arguing from the viewpoint of official settings and canon. The DM of course can do whatever he wants, and if you want Wizard of High Sorcery in Greyhawk, that's your prerogative. It just breaks the official Greyhawk setting to do so. I see no reason why an alternate universe Greyhawk couldn't have them.
The stats on dinosaurs in the D&D editions I have looked at indicate that they are the same as the ones that went extinct on Earth many millions of years ago. Remember, D&D worlds are basically very alternate Earths from the writings of Gygax. There's no good reason why they couldn't be the same and just not have gone extinct. Whether they are the same or not is up to you.
I didn't accuse you of poor DMing since I didn't know you kept the same name. I sort of assumed you changed the name like you did with the knights.
Rangers are not tied to setting like Wizards of High Sorcery are. We have them here on Earth for Pete's sake. The same for dwarves, elves, at least in myth, and so on. Middle Earth is just one setting that uses them. Wizards of High Sorcery and Knights of Solomnia are tied specifically to one setting.
Summerland I don't know. "Fantasy Heartbreakers" isn't a game but a description of a style of game invented by Ron Edwards - they're not D&D per se, but by definition are derived from or react against D&D. The rest, not in my view. Their mechanics are different. Their tone is different. The experience of playing them is different. Subject to one qualification . . .
In my view, yes. D&D is a system. And it's a bundle of settings, tropes, themes etc. If someone's table is covered in books with "D&D" on the cover (eg Atlases of Krynn, DL modules, etc) then the fact that they're rolling those funny +/- dice rather than polyhedrals seems to me a secondary consideration.
There are limit cases - eg I thinkthe idea of DL GURPS would be as incongruous as was ICE's Middle Earth RM - it would be likely to depart far enough from the actual tone and themes of DL that it might be DL in name only and hence not really D&D.
Whether one wants to draw a line depends on the motivation - we're not discussing natural kinds here!
From WotC's point of view - and their commercial motivation - they naturally want to draw the line one sort of way (that rewards "brand affiliation" that manifests through purchasing and/or contributing to networks that contain purcahsers).
From my point of view, WotC's commercial/brand strategy is an object of curiosity but not something that particularly motivates me (my livelihood isn't riding on it) - mostly when I think of something as D&D (eg because someone describes it that way) I think of mechanics and I think of fiction (various settings, monsters etc). If there's not much of either then calling it D&D may not convey much useful information. If there's lots of both then it's probably D&D in an unequivocal fashion. If there's lots of one but not much of the other then it may be D&D for some purposes but not others.
To give a practical example that relates to edition-variations: I know Night's Dark Terror pretty well. Whenever it comes up on these boards, [MENTION=29398]Lanefan[/MENTION] summons me into the conversation. But I ran it in 4e, not B/X. And I changed bits of the module - eg I replaced the module's ancient culture with minotaurs, because that fitted in with some 4e stuff I wanted to use; and the final, plateau encounter area was very different at my table from the published module.
Was that a "genuine" NDT campaign? By [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s standards, I would think not. But if someone wants advice on how to handle the encounter with the bandits on the river; or how to enrich the details of Threshold (one of the module's towns); or what might some good "side quests" look like, if they wanted to dilute the focus of the module a bit; or how to handle the story elements if you scale it up for higher level PCs; then I think I've got some useful advice to offer. And in that context, what would be the point of denying that I've run NDT? Of insisting that I've only run some alternative or adapted version?
So your Fate group playing a game set in Krynn: if I wanted advice on how to make DL characters really sing, and what sorts of motivations they've found to work in play so that I can get something going like (say) the Tanis-Kitiara-Laurana triangle, then I would think they have something to offer. On the other hand, if I want advice on the best way to handle moon phases in 5e, maybe they dont' have so much to contribute. Again, asking whether or not it's a real D&D game doesn't seem to have much value to me.
If I tell you someone;s artwork gives me a post-impressionist vibe, am I including the possibility of hints of cubism, or leaving cubism out? It might be a bit hard to know until we get further into the conversation, in so far as the relationship of continuity/disjuncture between impressionism and cubism is contestable and contested; but that doesn't mean that the language is useless. You can be pretty confident that the work they're doing isn't going to look much like Titian.
If I say my game is a GH game, you can be pretty sure it doesn't involve Dogs policing sin-laden towns (unless I'm doing a Murlynd special - the paladin of Boot Hill). But if you're not going to count it as "playing in GH" unless every bit of published canon is adhered to, how many GH games do you think are out there? And what bit of RPGing experience or community are you trying to communicate with, and about, by framing the use of a setting in such narrow terms?
The post of [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION]'s that I replied to upthread said that "Canon should be the starting point for any discussion of lore". Why? If someone wants to talk about how they're using gnolls in their game, I want to hear how they're using gnolls in their game! Whether they're following Volo's, adapting Volo's, ignoring Volo's - that seems pretty immaterial to me except perhaps as a footnote, or perhaps a useful way of signposting what they're doing in some shorthand fashion.
As I said in my reply, D&D began as a game about making stuff up: worlds, characters, monsters, the events that occur to them, the places where those events happen, the tools (spells, magic items) that are used in undertaking those events. This an idea of lore and canon as being in the service of that creative purpose, and not ends in themselves.
And any suggestion that someone who takes that view has no principled basis for meaningfully classifying one game as D&D and another as (by way of contrast) DitV, is just silly. Back when that view was the (almost unrivalled) norm - say, the first decade from 1974 to when campaign setting really started to become mainstream, the DL modules were coming out, etc - people could still distinguish between different genres of RPGing, different mechanical systems, etc.
I don't think of it as D&D, no. But I think of it as a GH game.
But that doesn't follow merely from what I said; it's an independent judgement. I said, At a minimum D&D includes playing the game that Gyagx and Arneson wrote. That doesn't mean I think that D&D entails , or has as a necesary condition, playing the game that Gygax and Arneson wrote; but it does mean that I think if you're playing the game that Gygax and Arneson wrote, then that is a sufficient condition for playing D&D.
I made the point because it seemed to me that [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION], by insisting that all discussion must begin from "canon" - which, in practice, seems to mean FR + "the multiverse" but not a multiverse that includes peoples homebrews - seemed to be implying that playing the game that Gygax and Arneson wrote, by making your own stuff up and picking and choosing as seems like fun, is not a paradigm instance of playing D&D.
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