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

[Imaro]

Bing! Bing! Bing!

See, this, this right here? THIS is what I'm talking about. You are so convinced that your personal take on canon and predilection are objective truths that anyone disagreeing with you, possibly using a different take on canon, isn't even adding anything meaningful to the discussion. That your take on canon is so obviously true, that anyone who simply disagrees with your definitions is obviously doing it wrong.

See, I look at your criteria for a "canon" game as pretty much impossible to live up to. I've never seen a DM who ran a setting who didn't change things. Adding playable races, shifting things around, emphasizing this or that idea while putting that idea on the back burner.

You've set the bar for "canon" games so high that, IMO, no one actually plays these games. It would be like expecting every movie director, upon being given the same novel to adapt to a movie, to produce exactly the same movie. It's just never, ever going to happen. Instead you get ten different versions of Dune with apparently a new one coming in a year or so (YAY!).

So asking someone for their definition of canon... is me being... "convinced that your [my] personal take on canon and predilection are objective truths [and] that anyone disagreeing with you[me], possibly using a different take on canon, isn't even adding anything meaningful to the discussion..." Go back and re-read what you quoted. If I didn't think he could add something meaningful to the conversation I wouldn't have asked for his definition. What I didn't find meaningful were the pointless potshots we were taking at each other in the previous couple of posts. Show me in this thread where I have stated my defintion of canon is an objective truth... or where I said anyone was "doing it wrong".

You know sooner or later you really need to back up these hyperbolic accusations with some substance. You point fingers, assign motive, claim posters said things and then you go quiet when asked to back up said posts. So, since you never produced a post and also never took responsibility for your last bit of accusations you threw my way... show me where I have stated any of this. One post, one quote where I claimed objective truth, told someone they're definition of canon meant they couldn't contribute meaningfully to the thread or anything else you've accused me of. If not then man up and admit you are falsey accusing me.

EDIT: As for my criteria for canon... well I've explained my use for canon, as a starting point, lingua franca, expectation setter, etc for a group... and I'm sorry that you find my bar for canon so extraordinarily high that it doesn't suit your ability to use it for your own purposes... but it suits mine just fine.

 

[Imaro]

@pemerton makes an interesting point. While settings like Forgotten Realms have massive amounts of canon to draw from, there are lots of other settings which are very bare bones.

When I first started gaming, I played Moldvay Basic/Expert. The only setting material I had was the few pages of what would much later become Mystara, in the back of the Expert rules. Other than a map and about five or six pages of material, there really wasn't any canon. Even monsters had maybe (and this is stretching it) a sentence or two of canon flavor material. Many didn't even have that much.

See, that's where my gaming experience started. Modules and AD&D. Again, AD&D had virtually no canon - monsters had a paragraph or two of material, mostly dealing with combat stuff. The idea that I could tell the players, "Hey, I'm playing a Greyhawk game, or a Known World game and the players would automatically have enough material to be able to follow setting canon was just not true. There just wasn't enough material there.

I'm about to finally start my Primeval Thule campaign in a couple of weeks. We're talking about a setting with a single setting book, half of which is monsters and new rules. Sure, there's lots of high altitude flavor there - this region has lots of barbarians, this region has lots of that kind of nasty, elves live here - but, extremely little broader material.

And, I'm telling you right now, that my Primeval Thule is going to have all sorts of goodies added to it. It's expected by the writers and frankly pretty encouraged.

I'm really wondering where this notion of canon as the end point (sorry, I can't think of a better phrasing than that) came into the hobby. When did we stop being DIY hobbyists and start becoming passive consumers waiting for WotC to roll up the plot wagon to give us ideas?

And neither of you consider these examples of a homebrew Primeval Thule or Greyhawk game? Seriously? DIY...is...homebrewing. Also I'm a little confused by your last thought here... I've done nothing but espouse the utility of canon as a jumping off point... not as an endpoint.

 

[Maxperson]

Druidic hippies fighting extraplanar threats. No Gruumsh backstory at all.

So basically WoW orcs.

 

[Maxperson]

And the two of you are experts on the expectations that were set among a group of Melb University gamers in early 1990 because . . . ? (TIme travel? Mind reading? Omniscience?)

Nah. I don't need any of those things. Human nature is quite enough. If you say you're using something that has established meaning, human nature is that people are going to expect that meaning to hold true. If you're going to change things, you should let them know.

You can't say this without also accusing me of being disrespectful. You're not just making a statement about your own habits and inclinations.

You can't even tell me what you knew then. I don't know if you were disrespectful or not. Did you set certain expectations and than change them without notice?

 

[ProgBard]

A jillion posts in, and it's only now beginning to occur to me what might be causing some of the disconnect here. So, a quick informal "poll" - please embed your answer whenever you next post, all of you:

Are you coming at this discussion from a basis of mostly home play with people you know, or
Are you coming at this discussion from a basis of mostly public/FLGS/convention play or play with people you don't know well, or
Are you coming at this discussion from a basis of mostly AL play?

I mostly run a home game (the one I've discussed a couple of times in this thread, where I play a bit fast and loose with the FR lore).

I also sometimes DM at my FLGS. I've also used FR as the setting there, and hewed pretty close to canon as described in the SCAG (though I did throw in a few things of my own invention, as one inevitably does).

If I were to run a game at the FLGS in another published setting (as I hope to), my approach would depend on what's out there for it. I probably wouldn't muck around with the core assumptions of the setting (so that published materials could still be useful to the players), but I'd definitely target blank spaces on the map and start filling them in with glee and abandon.

(I also probably wouldn't go with another WotC setting, simply because they do tend to accumulate the sorts of expectations and assumptions that have made parts of this thread rough going; I'd use something like the Lost Lands, or Midgard, or Freeport.)

 

[pemerton]

Nah. I don't need any of those things. Human nature is quite enough. If you say you're using something that has established meaning, human nature is that people are going to expect that meaning to hold true. If you're going to change things, you should let them know.

But adding a moon, or an order of wizards, isn't changing anything!

By your lights, adding a wizard's guild to the City of GH, pre the boxed set, would be a change, because there was no such thing established as existing until the CoGH boxed set was published.

You are projecting expectations that are part of your gaming milieu onto everyone else without (apparently) even noticing that it's projection! ("It's just human nature" that everyone's expectations are the same as yours and your friends.)

And neither of you consider these examples of a homebrew Primeval Thule or Greyhawk game? Seriously? DIY...is...homebrewing.

That's ignoring the point. What does it even mean to run a "canon" GH game in the era of the folio, the boxed set and the City of GH boxed set? Am I just not allowed to have the PCs go to the Great Kingdom, because if they do I'll have to make everything up (and perhaps borrow stuff from some other setting in the process)?

The reason these settings are "DIY" is because they don't contain sufficient "canon" to be otherwise. (Hence the contrast I have repeatedly drawn between GH c 1990 and Krynn/DL c 1990 - the latter was already canon-errific by that time period.)

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] - I'm seeing something of a contradiction in your points, so, maybe you can clear things up.

You have argued that additions to lore isn't change. That so long as the new stuff doesn't contradict the old stuff, there's no change. Ok, fair enough. You gave the example of replacing the Emperor and Co with Vulcans. We'd all agree this is a change. You are contradicting existing canon and adding something else. Fair enough.

But, here's the problem. You admit that Pemerton is not actually changing anything to Greyhawk by adding WoHS and a third moon. No lore is being contradicted. Therefore, by your definition, he has not changed the setting. He has not changed lore. Addition is not change, by your definition.

Yet, somehow, despite the fact that by your definition he has made no changes, he no longer can claim that his Greyhawk is canon. It is now a home-brew Greyhawk. But, how can that be since he hasn't, by your definition, changed the setting?

You can't have it both ways. Either addition is not change and Pemerton is playing a canon kosher GH game, or addition IS change and most of your other arguments (5e isn't changing lore, it's simply adding) go out the window.

So, which is it? Is Pemerton playing a canon kosher GH game or not?

 

[Hussar]

/snip

EDIT: As for my criteria for canon... well I've explained my use for canon, as a starting point, lingua franca, expectation setter, etc for a group... and I'm sorry that you find my bar for canon so extraordinarily high that it doesn't suit your ability to use it for your own purposes... but it suits mine just fine.

Of that I have absolutely no doubt.

 

[Shasarak]

Now, honest question here. Are you running a Greyhawk game? Do you feel that you've made a poor Gaming decision to allow Warforged? Would you feel that "Poor GMing Decision" is a fair criticism of your game?

If I come along and tell you, no, you're not really playing in Greyhawk, is that perfectly fine? You've made changes to the setting which break the setting, so, while you can claim that you're playing in Greyhawk, I'm going to stand here and tell you you are wrong and that you are playing in an Alt-Greyhawk universe that isn't the "real" Greyhawk. And that's perfectly fine? You would have no issues at all with those criticisms? Would you feel that those criticisms are perfectly justified?

Do you feel that you have mislead your players by presenting your game in a false manner? After all, according to [MENTION=48965]Imaro[/MENTION] and [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] you are no longer running a "true" GH game, and so, you've broken the social contract. The players can no longer reliably know what is true or not true in their understanding of Greyhawk.

Now, all that being said, do you feel like this line of questioning is adding to your understanding of the game? Do you feel that my telling you that you aren't really running Greyhawk is "just discussion"? Is this adding to anyone's understanding? What do you think would be the positive results of me telling you that you aren't running a "real" Greyhawk game?

I dont run this Greyhawk game, I just run roughshod over it.

And of course this particular DM has been running games in this version of GH probably for as long as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] has, so there are things in game which previous PCs have done to the setting.

So no I would not say this game is canon GH but it still has all the regular cities and NPCs that you may expect to see in a GH game.

 

[Shasarak]

I'm really wondering where this notion of canon as the end point (sorry, I can't think of a better phrasing than that) came into the hobby. When did we stop being DIY hobbyists and start becoming passive consumers waiting for WotC to roll up the plot wagon to give us ideas?

It probably happened when we no longer had to sit around the campfire making up our own stories.

If it makes you feel any better it did take Gary a few years to glom onto the fact that people liked someone else to roll up the plot wagon.