To Hell with Lore

One of my players, doing the Lord's work

Among the D&D community, there seems to be a schism of sorts between those who view the system as a generic ruleset that can be applied to any setting and story, and those who view it as a combined system and setting with its own lore tied to a multiverse of worlds where the same rules apply. For the most part, the OSR community lean heavily toward the former, emphasizing the modularity and customizability of their settings and doing new things with the same rules, while recent releases by Wizards of the Coast seem to favor the second approach. This has led to many new players coming to campaigns with the expectation that everything is going to work like Forgotten Realms, if they don't expect Forgotten Realms in the first place.

I think that's a shame. As someone with a keen interest in worldbuilding, I prefer to see games as a medium to tell stories with some semblance of structure. The tabletop RPG, to me, is really just a game of pretend where we have rules to ensure that everyone has fun, and that no one can suddenly declare that they have a super omega god-slayer sword that kills everything in one hit. The rules aren't supposed to be a literal interpretation of how the laws of physics work in-universe (unless you want them to be, which can lead to some interesting settings, but that shouldn't be the assumption).

The Lunar Lands, while I always intended to use it for gaming, is really a setting first, and an excuse for games second. I don't presuppose that the cosmology works the same as Planescape, or that everyone goes around in-universe talking about spell slots and rings of mind-shielding - those are best served as game abstractions of something that's more mysterious and unknowable in the setting. There certainly aren't magical spaceships. Don't get me wrong, I do love a good beholder or mimic, and they've shown up in my games aplenty, but I prefer to approach D&D lore as a buffet platter to take what you want and leave what you don't, and to create your own stuff to fill in the gaps.

In my campaigns, I allow people to do things that the Player's Handbook or the Monster Manual don't say if I feel like they sound cool and make sense - I've had one very interesting encounter that involved my players throwing rice at a vampire, successfully compelling him to stop attacking them in order to count the grains. I love that - it rewards people for creative thinking and knowledge of folkloric traditions, which anyone who knows me knows I can't get enough of. So what if the Monster Manual doesn't say vampires do that? I'm here to have fun, not to metagame and argue over what the rules say. I've run my setting in multiple different systems, and that doesn't stop with different editions of D&D - for a while in between the releases of 3.5e and 5e, I was using Dungeon World as my system of choice, and, as I discussed on a previous post, I adopted its death mechanics into the lore of my setting, even when I went on to 5e.

Kevin Feige, you ruined everything

I've theorized that the success of the Marvel Cinematic Universe plays a part in this. With the concept of a consistent interconnected setting across multiple film franchises proving a smash hit, everyone and their mother is trying to cash in and make a cinematic universe of their own. With talk of a D&D movie languishing in development hell, I have no doubts that Wizards is trying to get their cut of that sweet, sweet cinematic universe box office. They already treat their products the way Marvel would their movies, with a metaplot that weaves through their published modules, books, and comics - all they need is a movie to tie it all together.

The problem is, in a medium as open-ended and player-driven as a tabletop RPG, it just doesn't work. Since you can only focus on the exploits of canon characters in the lore, and only they can influence future canonical materials, if you're running everything by the book the PCs become background characters in what's supposed to be their own story. What if your players killed an NPC in one module who plays an important role in a future publication? Well, then, your campaign didn't count, sorry. If you think I'm exaggerating, this is actually a potential scenario with 5e's handling of Mordenkainen - and I have my own feelings on that, but that's something for another day.

Perhaps this is changing. The release of Monsters of the Multiverse emphasizes the different settings that can be utilized in a D&D game, and includes tools for DMs to tailor monsters and races for different worlds. And we're seeing Dragonlance receive official support, when it's always been the setting that wasn't afraid to challenge preset assumptions and do its own thing (no orcs, no divine casters, kender instead of halflings, etc.) But for me, I've always preferred to go off on my own way, and I don't let any suits tell me what I can and can't do. That's the way it should be.