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

[Sadras]

Lore! What is it good for?

I don't know. Of the 20 or so players I've gamed with in recent years, 0 wouldn't be aware of the change. All of them either know Krynn, Greyhawk, or both, and the majority of them know both.

I think Max that might be indicative of the gamers you roleplay with which also explains why cannon is so important to you. Judging from @pemerton's and @TwoSix's response their players aren't as familiar with D&D lore and that plays to their advantage, perhaps, when mashing-up settings for their homebrew games.

This is what is probably causing the biggest disconnect between the lot of you and why we have a combined 230 pages on the importance of lore.

 

[pemerton]

I think Max that might be indicative of the gamers you roleplay with which also explains why cannon is so important to you. Judging from @pemerton's and @TwoSix's response their players aren't as familiar with D&D lore and that plays to their advantage, perhaps, when mashing-up settings for their homebrew games.

I'd add: I play in a group of 5 players plus me. Between us there is over 150 years of experience in playing D&D and other FRPGs.

Our group has four other members who are now overseas/interstate but who have still been known to drop in for the occasional one-shot, and all of whom were part of the WoHS GH campaign (in fact all four of them played WoHS). Adding them in would bring it to over 200 years combined experience.

In other words it's not like we're particularly new or particularly casual RPGers. I think that is at least a little bit relevant in deciding how important adherence to lore/canon is to having a "genuine" D&D experience.

 

[Maxperson]

We-ell, we don't really know that. He doesn't encounter any other scrying items that we know of, so we can't tell whether he could have used them or not. The design logic is obvious, though: if you can use one then by extension you can use 'em all.

The only other - and much less elegant - way to do it would have been to include a few more scrying devices in the magic items table and have them usable only by Rangers.

The problem is that, well, hobbits, elves and Maiar can use them to, which would indicate that anyone can use the Palantirs. Fool of a Took and all that. Nothing unique about Aragorn or rangers in this instance.

That's because Sauron was on the other end of it! Sauron however could certainly ESP the poor schlubs (e.g. Saruman, and briefly Pippin) he'd captured. What made Aragorn special was that he was able to resist this.

Sauron was only on the other end sometimes. He had to be using his when someone else used one in order to pull his shenanigans. Sauron also wasn't reading minds, but instead used them to show false images, so that the victims saw the wrong things. He wasn't putting things in their minds, but rather altering the programming of the crystal ball.

 

[Maxperson]

It seems to me that [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] thinks that reading LotR, then building the ranger class as inspired by Aragorn, is not incorporating a setting-specific element; whereas reading DL and the DLA hardback, and then adapting the WoHS from those sources to GH, is incorporating a setting-specific element.

A ranger class that makes no references at all to a setting is no more Middle Earth specific than elves, half-elves, humans, halflings, wizards and swords are. To be setting SPECIFIC, you have to make SPECIFIC references to one single setting. The ranger class makes zero SPECIFIC references to Middle Earth.

Personally I don't see where the distinction lies - eg ranger item rules "inspired by" rather than directly equating to Aragorn's seems similar to my WoHS moon rules "inspired by" but not directly equating to DL's (for instance, none of the DL moons has a cycle as long as Celene's, which is full only 4 times a year).

Specificity.

Hence my view that if crystal ball-using rangers don't make GH any less GH, an ancient Suel order of wizards whose power is tied to the cycles of the moons (including a small, rapidly orbiting black moon) doesn't either.

There you go with the False Equivalence again. Things of far different scopes are not equal. Including a knife called Rabbitslayer is not the same as switching out the Greyhawk pantheon for the Krynn pantheon.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Maxperson]

Umm .... look, I kinda understand what you're saying, there, but it also makes no sense. You literally cannot understand the OG Ranger if you don't understand the Middle Earth / Tolkien Aragorn. I mean ... really. Why does the Ranger gain that very specific 10th level ability other than the fact that it is based on the Middle Earth ranger? Seriously, go and dig up a copy of the 1e PHB. Do the class abilities make any sense as a "generic wilderness fighter" other than giving a class for people that want to play Aragorn?

I did read it. The ranger is a loose adaption of the Middle Earth ranger. That doesn't make it Middle Earth specific. For it to be Middle Earth specific, they would have had to call the ranger class, Rangers of Ithilien, Rangers of Gondor or something else that makes specific references to setting.

It should go without saying that we have the example of Deities & Demigods and Gods, Demigods, and Heroes. Or that the pantheons of various fictional campaign worlds gets regularly mixed and matched as time goes on (Vecna?).

I could play in such a game, but for me it wouldn't be Greyhawk if the world didn't have the Greyhawk gods in it. It would also be jarring and ruin my immersion to find out about it in the middle of game play.

IME, it often falls into two categories; those who view the vast number of fiction books that have been published (whether it's FR books or Gord books or whatever) as exciting ways to deepen their knowledge about a fictional world, or those who view them as well-written campaign fan-fic; just tales from a specific campaign. Personally, I fall into the second category.

I don't view the novels as canon. I'm not going to buy and read them in order to make sure I know what they said and how they affect things. I have read some, though, and if I like them enough, I'll include those events in my FR.

From a slightly-more broad perspective, my general P.O.V. is that exceptionally specific campaign worlds (those that embody a specific vision) such as DS or Eberron should be run with minimal changes, because the point of those campaigns is the distinctiveness. OTOH, FR and GH are the very definition of generic high fantasy, and are just canvasses that you can easily mix and match and alter without any big deal. YMMV.

I agree that changes are easier in Greyhawk or FR. Heck, FR even includes Gods from other pantheons like Tyr, Meilikki, Egyptian and more. The lore has pretty much built in that gods from other realms go there.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Imaro]

It's not that you're wrong; your preferences are what they are! But every campaign, to me, is its own thing; a collaborative story between the DM and the players. It's not an attempt to re-create someone else's lore.

It's not about recreating someone's lore... the lore is already there, for my group at least it's that we know the lore and have chosen to create new stories within the parameters of said lore. In other words if I answer a flyer in the LGS that says D&D Greyhawk game and I get there and the are using FATE and have replaced the gods some of the major historical events and the factions but retain the map and broad lore I am going to feel like the claim was misleading and probably not stick around to play because IMO it's neither a D&D game or a Greyhawk game.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Imaro]

But, again, why? I mean, I can understand the FATE/D&D thing (those are different systems, and why not just write, "FATE").

But think of this example.

You start with a boat. Over time, you replace parts of the boat as they age. After a certain period of time, you no longer have any original parts. Is it the same boat? At what point was it no longer the same boat?

Is this to say that as we play we will change so much about a setting it won't be the setting anymore... if so I have to say I have never played in a specific setting long enough to change the entirety of it... sure we've changed parts of it, perhaps carved out our own corner of it but to change the entire setting to the point that nothing of the original remains is something I and my group have never accomplished... Have you?

What happens if that same boat immediately burned up, and you build the same exact boat, to the same plans, using the same materials, on day one.

But we're talking about different plans and different materials...

I provide those hypotheticals not to provide answers, but to allow you to think about the issues a little.

I've thought on them before. IMO the first is highly improbable for my particular group and the second... well I don't see how it maps to what we are talking about. How can I both burn Greyhawk down on day one and recreate it exactly the same way?

Now, think about Greyhawk. I have only ever run GH campaigns based off of the 1983 set. While I am familiar with changes since then, I think they are absolutely terrible. To me, someone who is running more recent GH is running material that isn't just bad, but is actively harmful to the setting. It's totally their right and preference to do so, and I would never say, "You're not running a GH game and that's Badwrongfun," but ... man ... they really screwed up a lot of stuff.

Again this is not the same as what I am speaking to. Replacing the Greyhawk gods with the gods of Krynn for example is not the same as setting your campaign at a later date in Greyhawk's history.

Put another way- there is nothing wrong with wanting to color within the lines. But in my opinion only, that's not the way I was taught to play D&D, and that's not how I teach others. Rules, fluff, whatever. It's the starting point to my games; not the walls to keep me in. That said, if you prefer to play by the rules and lore of others, that is fine as well!

And if I want that type of freedom my group and I would run a homebrew and not claim it was Greyhawk or Dragonlance or any other official setting. I think you're mistaking my point. It's not that playing in the way you describe is wrong or that I don't do it... but if I am making up anything I want and changing anything I want I find it disingenuous to claim that I am running Greyhawk. To perhaps illustrate my point better...it would be the same way I would find it disingenuous to be told I am joining a LotR game and find myself amongst Cimmerians in Gondor while fighting off the Melnibonean's who have arrived through a trans-dimensional portal from the young Kingdoms. Sometimes allowing any and everything is just silly and incoherent.