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

[Aldarc]

I just don't really get what is the matter. It is not as if anything I do when I DM ever influences the campaigns we have in other settings at my gaming table.

Then what, in your estimation, do you think perhaps is the problem that Hussar is experiencing when it comes to Planescape?

 

[lowkey13]

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[Maxperson]

Well, the point of contention is illustrated in this quote. I think one side would argue that the setting will always be your original setting.

Hrm. I meant the original setting picked. So if you are picking Greyhawk and that is the setting, it will eventually cease to be Greyhawk if you keep changing things. Of course if it's YOUR setting, and not Greyhawk, it will not cease to be yours if you fiddle with it.

It's your original setting, using Greyhawk as a starting point. That's all. Whether you use some, or most, of Greyhawk, we aren't running ur-Greyhawk (the Gygax campaign), we are simply appropriating some materials from it for our own original setting. Regardless of how much published material we are appropriating.

It depends on how it's presented to the players. If it's presented as, "I'm using Greyhawk for the base of my setting, but there will be changes.", then it's always going to be that setting. However, if it's presented as, "I'm using the Greyhawk setting.", then expectations are going to be set that everything that exists in the Greyhawk setting will be present, and expectations will be set that they aren't playing Dragonlance or any other setting, in whole or in part, that isn't Greyhawk.

 

[lowkey13]

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[Aldarc]

Wizards of High Sorcery were created for Dragonlance and Dragonlance only. Read the books and setting. As for the name, changing the name would make it better, but only little bit better.

Perhaps I missed it amongst the back-and-forth, but have you asked how his implementation of the Wizards of High Sorcery was different? If the D&D ranger's use of a palantir can "inspired by Tolkien" but different, why can't an organization called the Wizards of High Sorcery in Greyhawk be of a similar inspirational persuasion? Obviously if one were in Greyhawk then presumably the Wizards of High Sorcery would not draw upon the same set of deities of magic. Perhaps either you or [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION] would be kind enough to point me where he describes how he integrated, changed, utilized the Wizards of High Sorcery in this case study campaign. If he has not, then it would certainly be interesting to here more about the changes he made to the Wizards of High Sorcery for his campaign.

That's just to show that something is a mix no matter how small one side is. As for whether it's Greyhawk or not, I've consistently said the same thing over and over and over. One small change won't do it, but you have to be careful with multiple small changes and with major changes. At some point the setting will cease to be your original setting to the players if you keep pushing it. That line will vary from player to player, but pretty much everyone will have that line somewhere.

You should check out "Everything is a remix" on YouTube. The problem, however, appears to be one of terminology. When you declare something is a "Greyhawk + Dragonlance" campaign, there is no sense for degree or scale. Is this a 50/50 split? 60/40? 75/25? 90/10? 99/1? Or vice versa? All of these are mixes. Each gradient would come with its own unique taste in regards to what sort of setting it is. In terms of aesthetic and taste, 10000000 Greyhawk + 1 Dragonlance would still taste overwhelmingly like Greyhawk and would likely be identified as such, perhaps as if one were attempting to identify a wine by taste. And that 10000000 Greyhawk + 1 Dragonlance will taste strongly different than say 10000000 Dragonlance + 1 Greyhawk. Sure, a palate as discerning as yours could catch the hints of Dragonlance flavor, but there is no deceit that you are tasting a finely made Greyhawk setting because the quality comes through in the experience. But declaring it a mix with a carte blanche value judgment - particularly one that comes with an added judgment of deceit! - serves no real practical purpose. We could take [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s Greyhawk campaign or [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION]'s Forgotten Realms campaign. When looking at it, they have each remixed the setting to their own purposes to varying degrees. If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it's probably a duck. And when I look at their campaigns, from what I have heard thus far, then I suspect that most people would know which setting they were playing in.

Be more specific. Are we discussing [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]'s stated campaign, or something different?

Presumably pemerton's stated campaign.

 

[billd91]

But, why is time considered valid? If the 4e archons, for example, had come first, then everyone's arguements in this thread would flip. 4e archons would be the "true" archons and the earlier edition ones would be bad changes. In other words, the criteria has absolutely nothing to do with the ideas themselves, but rather, which one came first. The quality of the idea doesn't matter. It could be great, it could be terrible, but, since it came first, it cannot be changed.

How can that be justified as a valid criticism? Yup, the Great Wheel came first. Absolutely. No one is arguing that it didn't. Does that automatically make it superior to the Astral Sea? Why?

Now, you can certainly dislike the Astral Sea (and I'm just picking one example, feel free to choose your own). And you can make all sorts of arguments about why it is a bad idea - it cheapens the ideas of distinct planes, it makes the planes less interesting, I just don't like it. Fair enough. But, saying the Astral Sea is bad because it comes after the Great Wheel doesn't seem like a particularly convincing argument.

For the most part, the Astral Sea is an aesthetic change. It performs the same basic function - enabling creatures to travel from one domain/plane/world to another. It's just using a different metaphor to give it atmosphere.

But, ultimately, priority does matter because once it's out there, it almost certainly in use somewhere. More popular items will obviously be used more often than less popular ones, but it's reasonable to expect that someone was using the archons as they appeared when they debuted in 2e and as they were in 3e. Their nature had been defined in the general setting. Utterly redefine what an archon is with a later edition and you add another way to break backward compatibility. If the new conception is so stellar that everybody embraces it, then the publisher can probably skate by (such as with the compatibility breaks between 2e and 3e mechanics thanks to 3e's overwhelming popularity). But, as we can see in these endless arguments (even with the 3e launch, we ended up with enough critics to drive dragonsfoot), that's rarely or the case.

 

[billd91]

Wizards of High Sorcery were created for Dragonlance and Dragonlance only. Read the books and setting. As for the name, changing the name would make it better, but only little bit better.

That's an overly strong statement. It was created for Dragonlance, yes. Dragonlance was the only setting considered when it was created? Probably. But saying it was created for Dragonlance only makes it sound like they put "Do not cross" police tape all around it, prohibiting using it in any other campaign, and I find that highly unlikely. They may not have considered its use anywhere else in particular, but Hickman and Weiss were certainly aware of RPGer cobbling their ideas together from a diversity of sources. TSR may never have considered adding it to Greyhawk. I may think it a poor fit even for a subset of wizards and a worse one for the whole setting's wizards. But that means jack squat about how anybody else should feel about it.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

...the gods reach through the wall, pick up the dead, and annihilate them trying to pull them back through.

What? It sounded good to me.



Yet in every other version and setting of D&D plus vast amounts of other games - not to mention literature and general public perception - orcs are there as little more than cannon fodder (well, canon fodder in this thread) to be killed. Thus, on seeing them in an Eberron game my first reaction would probably be to roll initiative - entirely due to the overarching orc lore so fully established everywhere else.

Change the name to something else, however, and I'm more than cool with it; and they can certainly be described as "orcs with these differences" because in this case starting with the word 'orcs' saves using a few hundred other words.

Lan-"if it walks like an orc, talks like an orc and smells like an orc it's gonna die like an orc"-efan

The DM would almost certainly have told you that most "monstrous" races aren't kill on site in Eberron before the campaign started.

They aren't different orcs, it's just a different setting, which means most stuff is somewhat different.

 

[Hussar]

For the most part, the Astral Sea is an aesthetic change. It performs the same basic function - enabling creatures to travel from one domain/plane/world to another. It's just using a different metaphor to give it atmosphere.

But, ultimately, priority does matter because once it's out there, it almost certainly in use somewhere. More popular items will obviously be used more often than less popular ones, but it's reasonable to expect that someone was using the archons as they appeared when they debuted in 2e and as they were in 3e. Their nature had been defined in the general setting. Utterly redefine what an archon is with a later edition and you add another way to break backward compatibility. If the new conception is so stellar that everybody embraces it, then the publisher can probably skate by (such as with the compatibility breaks between 2e and 3e mechanics thanks to 3e's overwhelming popularity). But, as we can see in these endless arguments (even with the 3e launch, we ended up with enough critics to drive dragonsfoot), that's rarely or the case.

But, that's the point I've been making all the way along. It's only priority because of personal preference. You said it yourself, if the new idea is good enough, then it skates by - as evidenced by 3e and now 5e.

Why is backwards compatibility such a major issue? We've had lots of evidence that most campaigns don't last more than a year or two. Yes, there are outliers that last much longer, but, they are outliers. If campaigns only have a half life of a couple of years, then changes should be pretty easy to incorporate. And, if someone wants the earlier stuff, they can still do so - just convert the earlier stuff to the new ruleset, same as we've always done.

What I don't get is this idea that change is the criteria for judging material. It really isn't. It's all about personal preference. No one ever steps up and says, "Well, I really like the new paladins, but, they're different, so, we should go back to the old paladins". The only thing prioritizing earlier material does is set people up as gate keepers for protecting their personal favorites.

Which is why it's so difficult to actually get any new ideas into the game. Someone, somewhere, will always love something in the game. So, any change has to jump that person or group's hurdles before it can be brought in, regardless of the actual quality of the change.

I mean, we're seeing it in microcosm with [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] vs [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] has zero problems with any change so long as it has the official stamp of approval from either TSR or WotC, but, sees even fairly relatively minor changes to the setting as a deal breaker if they don't have that seal of approval. And that's how every change to the game plays out. Whether it's things like Warlords, or Damage on a Miss, or planar makeups or whatever.

People almost universally conflate personal taste with quality "I like it, therefore it's good. I don't like it, therefore it's bad."

 

[Maxperson]

But more importantly, your campaign, your alternate Greyhawk, will necessarily deviate at some point from someone else's Greyhawk. Maybe it's in a big way (you kill Lolth). Maybe it's a small way (you acccidentally burn down a tavern mentioned in a sourcebook). But it will change. And your Greyhawk will be different than someone else's, in details either large or small.

For most games, there will be deviations from canon. However, for most of those games the deviations are going to be relatively minor.

The problem is that you have assigned to yourself the ability to be the arbiter of what is, and isn't, Greyhawk. While you seem to disclaim that responsibility by stating that different people will draw different lines, by stating that @pemerton isn't running a "Greyhawk" campaign due to what is, in effect, a small rule change ... well, that isn't really cool.

That isn't why I said that, though. @pemerton said he kept the maps and modern things the same, but changed all the history of Greyhawk. You'd have a grand duchy of Geoff with the duke mentioned in lore, but how he got there would be very different from the lore of Greyhawk. He said he changed the vast majority of the lore, which makes the game some alternate universe Greyhawk. I'm not saying he isn't playing Greyhawk. I'm saying he isn't playing Greyhawk as presented in canon. You even say basically the same things below.

It's still Greyhawk. Well, your Greyhawk. Not Gygax's.