Canon: Definition and Role

Recently we’ve been buzzing on Candlekeep about “Things that 4e taught me about Faerun.” It starts out entertaining and leads quickly into a sarcastic analysis of how 4e has freed us to reject canon. Someone observed that in a shared setting, “everyone has to keep the greater picture in mind and follow some common rules.” A snarky observation immediately formed in my own mind, because that’s how it works. I chose not to post my reply on Candlekeep because in addition to being too lengthy it’s really my take on what canon should be and the role it should perform in a setting, and how WotC has been failing miserably in its duty as publisher of the Realms. Instead, I’m posting my (somewhat edited for the removal of context) reply here in case I want to reinterpret or develop it at some point. You should feel free to comment as well.

The first brief part of my reply, which I did post on Candlekeep, is that I agree with the observation quoted above, but WotC obviously disagrees… if they had even the slightest sense of a greater picture or a shred of respect for the concept of a shared setting, the changes made to the Realms in 4e would not have happened.

I’ll pick up there, and get around to the role of canon in short order.


RSEs are a problem.

Ignoring the argument against RSEs in general for a minute, they’re a problem even on a superficial level.

If the goal was increasing the playability of the setting, RSEs like the Spellplague would include omens (both in-game foreshadowing for PCs to see/hear and out-of-game warnings for DMs and players) and aftermath (meaning development of the setting which builds on the event, in addition to the unrelated stuff that was already planned). Additions would be made to the setting without taking anything away.

Contrast this idea with the handling of the Time of Troubles. No leadup, and no aftermath. No in-game development around the event at all, just a big boom plopped into everybody’s campaigns and the unfathomable assumption that life in-game will revert to normalcy immediately upon the event’s conclusion. The TOT added nothing to the Realms except Kelemvor, a new Mystra, magic-dead/wild zones, and Cyric. Each of these additions was potentially interesting but with the exception of Cyric none of them were developed in subsequent products. Overbalancing the additions to the game, the TOT removed several gods, killed off an entire class of NPCs, and warped the relations between historically friendly churches in unproductive ways (everyone suddenly hates Helm). Bane and assassins were later added back in, when someone apparently realized that they shouldn’t have been removed in the first place. I dig back in time for that example, instead of staying with the Spellplague, because it was the precedent and it should be evident that the Spellplague was 100x bigger/worse in every regard.

The TOT, the Spellplague, the return of Shade… these ideas each came from one person, who either had creative control over the setting or got the approval of someone with creative control, and those became the new directions for Realms development going forward. The ideas spawned during these feverdreams are not always bad; I’m cautiously optimistic about Mike Mearls’ plans for D&D Next — I’m reserving judgment about the 5e changes in the Realms until more info is available, but D&D itself looks playable. But most of the dramatic changes within the Realms have been, if we were able to trace them back to their source, one person yanking the Realms into an unstable orbit. That yank got approved by a lunatic who happened to be sitting in the driver’s seat of Realms development at WotC. That individual exhibited 100% enthusiasm and 0% foresight, consideration, respect, or planning, and once they injected themselves into the idea there was no stopping them. From that point forward, it’s the heart of the brand: designers and authors can either jump on the bandwagon or be removed from the team.

The Spellplague can be distilled down to a yank: kill Mystra off. Of course there is a bigger picture here; the overall motivation for the Spellplague was to justify/support the new edition of the ruleset. The rulebooks are changing, and a bunch of NPC stat blocks have to be rewritten, but it’s gonna be hard to justify charging 40 bucks for a book of revised stat blocks, plus there’s a desire to sell a lot more than just one book, so this creates a “need” to rewrite the Realms. And Mystra wasn’t the only power to be killed off, but the others were probably afterthoughts which came into the picture as (1) a justification for Mystra’s removal took shape and (2) someone decided which deities were going to be included in the 4e pantheon. The physical destruction wrought in the Realms can be attributed to the dissolution of the Weave which was “necessary” due to Mystra’s removal. Now, with the transition of 4e to 5e, we’re finally hearing “No wait, that’s going to mess everything up; bring her back.” No undoing of the Spellplague, because retcons are bad, right? We just need Mystra back, and we’ll move forward from here. My question is why couldn’t someone have said “Uh, no… that’s a very bad and unjustifiable idea” during the brainstorming of the Spellplague? There are several places in the design process where this statement would have been advisable. The only available conclusion is that there was no brainstorming. The decision was made by one person, and that was that.

Some of my campaign ideas are pretty drastic… I chose to develop the sarrukh awakening plotline (dropped at the end of 3e) through a logical progression where serpents retake (at least) the continent which includes Faerûn. Of course, the PCs (multiple generations of them) have to find, rally, and unite allies over the course of time, first resisting the invasion in Mulhorand, later throwing off reptilian domination in another place, and eventually assaulting a sarrukh stronghold, and through their victory finally galvanizing a whole continent/world of people who’ve known only slavery for a thousand years to rise up and claim their freedom. The sarrukh reshape mountain ranges and alter the climate to facilitate the spread of their armies, and at the end of the story Faerun looks different. Jungles and forests cover much more of the land, oceans have expanded, and rivers and swamps are all over the place. Offstage, various overlooked and believed-dormant powers including Ulutiu and Leira play key roles in protecting certain regions of the world and thus ensuring the survival of the human and demihuman races while others, like Gruumsh and Yondalla, send avatars to take a direct hand in defending their peoples. In the limelight, the PCs have the opportunity to negotiate and attempt to preserve difficult alliances between the humanoid races and various creatures including drow, phaerimm, giants, and dragons, and future PCs may try to maintain those alliances instead of reverting to enmity. Compared to the Old Grey Box, that’s absolute crazytalk.

The key consideration which can allow my campaign, and every other DM’s campaign, to potentially be interesting to others, is that we’re not writing canon. You might think my ideas are absolutely idiotic, and that’s fine. We can each be as crazy as we want, and we can all cherrypick ideas from each other if we want to, because our visions of the Realms don’t have to affect anyone else’s. For that matter, each campaign that each of us runs is different. My sarrukh campaign is going to be pretty dramatic… but I also want to run an Al-Qadim campaign which will probably progress in a much tamer direction.

Canon (told you I’d get here) is both permanent and universal. It’s how the Realms is presented to new players, and it provides the foundation for all of our campaigns.

And that’s why it needs to be consistent, solid, respectful to the past development of the setting, and laden with ridiculous amounts of awesome stories and bazillions of loose ends and available plot hooks. It needs to be stable. Few/no RSEs, a line of sourcebooks (for dice-and-character-sheets gaming) that gives a paused-timeline snapshot of the entire setting, another line of sourcebooks that presents optional past/future material in sufficient detail that campaigns can be set in alternative times, and novels and adventures that span all of the above. Because it’s supposed to be a foundation. It’s not supposed to be a bomb detonation zone. And it’s not supposed to dictate the future to anyone… it’s supposed to create possibilities, not destroy them.

If fundamental events in the canon must be rejected by a large number of DMs in order to modify the setting sufficiently to make it enjoyable, then the canon is screwed up. This is what changed in 4e, for me at least. I enjoyed the Old Grey Box. I enjoyed the massive proliferation of lore that came with 2e. Outside of the map and the changing of many/all population figures, I enjoyed most of what I read in 3e. 4e was basically a truckload of bricks dumped on everything. I’m not saying anything about the quality of the 4e writing… I’ve only looked at maybe 0.05% of it. I’m saying it destroyed what came before. 4e rewrote the Realms, into something different which fraudulently used the same label. Regardless of the quality of the writing, the changes were fundamentally wrongheaded.

The canon Realms needs to be treated with Ed Greenwood’s approach, not WotC’s approach. Ed’s philosophy of design, stated clearly somewhere but I don’t have the quote, is to create at least three loose ends for every one you tie up. WotC’s philosophy is summed up by taking unique and different things and making them conform to an arbitrary norm. They turned the God-Kings of Mulhorand into standard gods and had them leave the Realms after 6000 years or so of residence. They kill off uniquely Realmsian deities in each conflict and leave generic deities taken from other pantheons in place. Ed has dozens of different ways spellcasters can utilize and interact with magic in the Realms. WotC has two, and they’re taken directly from the PH.

I’m not saying “all hail Ed.” I’m saying “all hail creativity and diversity and lore.” I’m saying that in the past WotC has been failing, with increasing frequency and amplitude, since acquiring TSR. Which was an utterly bizarre decision in the first place; why they didn’t stick with M:TG and focus on CCGs I’ll probably never understand.

I’m disgusted with WotC’s apparent philosophy through 4e, and as much as I love role-playing and D&D in particular and the Realms above all, I wouldn’t be able to make eye contact with myself in a mirror if I were writing for WotC. All due respect to those who love the Realms and still manage to stomach dealing with WotC… including and especially Ed himself. My own principles (and unapologetic passion) wouldn’t let me do it; I’d be calling stupid Stupid, every minute of every day.

That’s why I’m looking forward to 5e… because it sounds like someone with a few active brain cells is stepping up and acknowledging (though not entirely to my satisfaction) that they’ve gone off-course and some corrections need to be made.

Hallelujah!

Chimotoge

This information is intended for use with the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game.


At a Glance

A settlement on the island of Shinkoku.


Sources

Maps

Disclaimer

Wizards of the Coast, Dungeons & Dragons, D&D, Forgotten Realms, and their logos are trademarks of Wizards of the Coast LLC in the United States and other countries. This blog is not affiliated with, endorsed, sponsored, or specifically approved by Wizards of the Coast LLC.