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

[Lanefan]

But that can't be any point of significant difference, can it?

If I ask (say) [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] to join my FR game, and Waterdeep is blown up, what difference does it make to Remathilis whether I as GM blew it up off-screen or whether the players blew it up in some previous escapades? If the absence of Waterdeep is enough to make it misleading to describe my game as a FR game, then that seems to be the end of the matter, regardless of who was responsible for the authorship.

While not Remathilis, I'll try answering this: it matters in the difference between saying "Welcome to FR, and here's what my players have done to it so far" and "Welcome to FR, here's what I did to it before we started". If the mess has been made by the players then at least the founding assumptions about FR were all true when the campaign started.

And for my own part, I wouldn't care either way.

Most tinkering with established settings is pretty easy to communicate, though. And that's true even if your changes are kinda gonzo. I can imagine sending a message to a prospective group that ran something like, "Hey, guys, we're going to be playing in Greyhawk with the following changes to canon: The Duchy of Geoff is run by werewolves; Wee Jas has been replaced by the Great Old One Nyarlathotep; and I'm swapping in Freeport for the Sea Barons. Everything else will be more or less as the most recent setting books have it, with any other minor differences worked out as we get to them. If any of that messes up a character concept you were married to, send me a note and maybe we can work something out."

But what do you do if you want to use these elements as plot secrets? Geoff, for example, looks just like Geoff; it's up to the players to discover during the run of play that it's in fact being run by werewolves (and maybe has been for ages).

And it's funny that you'd use the example of Nyalarthotep replacing another deity, as the campaign I'm playing in right now seems to have run into exactly this problem - Nyalarthotep has replaced a deity.

And in my own game a significant Elvish deity has been - if not replaced, then certainly bumped aside. This didn't become known until relatively recently; up till then anyone playing a Cleric to this deity was in fact getting their spells from elsewhere. There's no way in hell I'd ever put this in a pre-game summary!

Lan-"that which is dead shall never die, until I get around to killing it"-efan

 

[ProgBard]

But what do you do if you want to use these elements as plot secrets? Geoff, for example, looks just like Geoff; it's up to the players to discover during the run of play that it's in fact being run by werewolves (and maybe has been for ages).

And it's funny that you'd use the example of Nyalarthotep replacing another deity, as the campaign I'm playing in right now seems to have run into exactly this problem - Nyalarthotep has replaced a deity.

And in my own game a significant Elvish deity has been - if not replaced, then certainly bumped aside. This didn't become known until relatively recently; up till then anyone playing a Cleric to this deity was in fact getting their spells from elsewhere. There's no way in hell I'd ever put this in a pre-game summary!

That's a good point - my examples assumed the changes were more or less "public" knowledge (and therefore would change the way the players would look at the setting).

If they were secrets that were set up as later plot-significant reveals, I wouldn't broadcast them early either. And they wouln't need to be, because on the surface the wolrd still looks like the canonical version.

Which also means that players for whom such reveals retroactively spoil the setting they thought they knew would kinda be out of luck. But that's just a variation on the risk the DM always runs - that the campaign as planned has some element that's going to rub someone the wrong way. That's a known failure state of story creation, no matter what medium.

OTOH, that's another conversation it's possible to have with your players: "How much is it going to bother you if the game world goes nova?" The responses to that will at least let you read the room a bit before you get married to your world-shaking secrets, and identify in advance the player who's never going to forgive you if you f--- up Greyhawk in the course of the campaign.

 

[pemerton]

it matters in the difference between saying "Welcome to FR, and here's what my players have done to it so far" and "Welcome to FR, here's what I did to it before we started". If the mess has been made by the players then at least the founding assumptions about FR were all true when the campaign started.

And for my own part, I wouldn't care either way.

Nor would I. Why would anyone?

Gameplay is a nearly universally accepted means of altering the game world. I say "nearly" because I suppose it's possible that there are a few people out there who would play without being able to change anything. The DM changing things, though, is less accepted the more drastic those changes become.

Just to be clear: you're seriously telling me that if you join a FR campaign in which Waterdeep is blown up, it makes a difference to you whether that is GM-authored backstory or is something that happened during the course of play prior to you joining the campaign?

 

[pemerton]

I think it's safe to say that if the DMG had meant to say, "Change what you want in the official settings, but then they won't be the 'real' D&D worlds anymore," it would've come out and said so. Instead, the text goes out of its way to say, "These are your toys to play with, and you shoudln't feel constrained by the 'canonical' versions in any way." I think inferring that the point of that passage is a subtext that runs contrary to the surface meaning is ... a stretch that likely says more about the reader than the text.

This is not wildly different from the 4e Rules Compendium, which says (p 54):

The preceding sections sum up the basics of what the game assumes about the DUNGEONS & DRAGONS world. Within those general parameters, though, there’s a lot of room for the DM to fill in the details. Each published campaign setting describes a different world that adheres to some of those core assumptions, alters others, and then builds a world around them. Any DM can do the same to create a unique, personalized world.​

I've never seen a D&D rulebook that directs players that they are expected to conform to some already-published setting, or that in using an already-published setting they are expected not to change or depart from it.

It seems obvious that the point of published settings is to provide story elements for RPGers to use ("toys to play with"), not to provide a script or similar prescription to which play must conform.

If I advertise that my production of Romeo and Juliet is a painstaking as-it-would-have-been-seen-at-the-Globe recreation, but then I put it on with modern dress and pronunciation, elaborate sets, and women in the cast, that's a pretty crappy bait-and-switch.

It sounds like a flat-out lie.

But saying "Our game is set in GH" doesn't become a lie just because, in our game, the Duke of Geoff is a werewolf. It's RPGing, not karaoke!

 

[Remathilis]

But that can't be any point of significant difference, can it?

If I ask (say) [MENTION=7635]Remathilis[/MENTION] to join my FR game, and Waterdeep is blown up, what difference does it make to Remathilis whether I as GM blew it up off-screen or whether the players blew it up in some previous escapades? If the absence of Waterdeep is enough to make it misleading to describe my game as a FR game, then that seems to be the end of the matter, regardless of who was responsible for the authorship.

I believe a few other people mentioned something similar, but I'll state my own thought.

There is a difference between something changing (as a result of gameplay) and something never have been. If Waterdeep was destroyed because the PCs had an epic battle with the Tarrasque Godzilla-style, then that is fine. It is a result of gameplay, and no sourcebook survives contact with the player characters. Importantly, there WAS a Waterdeep, and it probably matched the description of it given in the SCAG before the tarrasque marched through it.

This is different than never having had a Waterdeep in the first place. Or having a Waterdeep, but making it founded and ruled by a tyrannical Dragon-King and his cultist worshipers who enforce martial law with harsh punishment. Or having it be a hamlet somewhere near the Sea of Fallen Stars because a module mentioned an NPC came from "Waterdeep" so you threw it somewhere on the map. The first is a deviation from the canon, but it still rewards knowledge of it; the player who read Death Masks can still reference Waterdeep from the novel, even if he can no longer visit it. The latter is designed to intentionally invalidate that knowledge.

 

[Maxperson]

Nor would I. Why would anyone?

Just to be clear: you're seriously telling me that if you join a FR campaign in which Waterdeep is blown up, it makes a difference to you whether that is GM-authored backstory or is something that happened during the course of play prior to you joining the campaign?

Waterdeep by itself? Probably not. However, if you then told me that you also decided Elminster was the evil druid overlord of the Dales, Cormyr was a land of halfling pirates, Evermeet was just a place where people went for meetings, and so on, I'd certainly have a problem with you claiming it was the Forgotten Realms. You keep acting like a single change is what we are talking about when we have explicitly said otherwise.

 

[ProgBard]

I've never seen a D&D rulebook that directs players that they are expected to conform to some already-published setting, or that in using an already-published setting they are expected not to change or depart from it.

It seems obvious that the point of published settings is to provide story elements for RPGers to use ("toys to play with"), not to provide a script or similar prescription to which play must conform.

Nor have I, and I'd be very surprised to come across one that did. It would feel, in a way, contrary to the spirit of D&D - so that's one sense in which I stand by the title of this thread.

(Certainly, as I mentioned upthread, if you're going to give Word of God any credence, it's "canonical" that this is what Ed Greenwood intended the Realms to be once they became a published setting. Now there's a logical trap for the Realmslore purist.)

It sounds like a flat-out lie.

But saying "Our game is set in GH" doesn't become a lie just because, in our game, the Duke of Geoff is a werewolf. It's RPGing, not karaoke!

Of course it's a lie; I was softballing that. But the lie isn't "This is a production of Romeo and Juliet"; it's a lie about the kind of R&J you were told you can expect to see.

And similarly, I would agree that werewolves in Geoff isn't a contradiction of Greyhawk as a setting. It may be too far afield from what a GH purist wants in their game, and while I think that's a little silly, I also think it's not on me to tell people they should be the audience for something when they're not.

 

[ProgBard]

You keep acting like a single change is what we are talking about when we have explicitly said otherwise.

So I have to ask - and forgive me if I missed this somewhere in the larger conversation - are you purely white-room theorycrafting here, or is this in response to actual-play difficulties you've had to deal with? Because some of the heightened emotion that's come up in this discussion has made me want to say, "Show me on the map of Faerun where the bad DM hurt you."

 

[Maxperson]

So I have to ask - and forgive me if I missed this somewhere in the larger conversation - are you purely white-room theorycrafting here, or is this in response to actual-play difficulties you've had to deal with? Because some of the heightened emotion that's come up in this discussion has made me want to say, "Show me on the map of Faerun where the bad DM hurt you."

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned that he plays with the Greyhawk map and makes up his own lore for it and plays Greyhawk. Most of the rest of us have disagreed and said things like, "If you change too much..." and "Multiple changes can..." and "If you change lots of things..." yada yada. His responses have been to ignore what is being told to him and fixate on single changes as if that's what we are talking about, and then he responds to his change. It's classic Strawman.

 

[Lanefan]

[MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] mentioned that he plays with the Greyhawk map and makes up his own lore for it and plays Greyhawk. Most of the rest of us have disagreed and said things like, "If you change too much..." and "Multiple changes can..." and "If you change lots of things..." yada yada.

Yet it's still unclear where the boundary is. What constitutes "too much" or "lots of things" to one person might be utterly irrelevant to another and even welcomed by a third who would like it changed still more.

For my own part the boundary is the map, pure and simple. If I'm using the FR map pretty much as is then as far as I'm concerned you're playing in the Realms, and I'll probably call my game Toril. If I'm using the Greyhawk map you're playing in Beory*. And so on. But if I'm using all the FR lore and canon but on a different map, it's not FR to me.

* - though I'd have to find a different name for it as someone in our crew already ran a "Beory" game.

Lan-"could a hard-core canon lawyer be referred to as the human canonball?"-efan