They've been mashing Magic: the Gathering lore into D&D lore recently, because All Franchises Must Unite Beneath A Single Brand Banner For Maximum Demographic Integration.

@Eternallord66 They only are in the sense of the plane shift articles, the Ravnica book and a silverbordered card

Sword of Dungeons and Dragons

@BESW Profit, I think, is the Hasbro motive.

Actually, thinking about it, there's also Bag of Holding one of the rulings for which mentions the Astral Plane

@Eternallord66 What WoTC has done for 5th edition is established a bunch of public play (Adventurer's League) adventures that began in the Forgotten Realms. This leads to a certain truth to the assumption that the Forgotten Realms is the default setting, when that is probably an oversimplification.

But it is a useful assumption to make in a practical sense: anything offically published can be used in Forgotten Realms, unless the DM says otherwise. That's a very workable aproach to the supplements that have come out.

It's also a workable approach in answer to your question: anything in the PHB, Sword Coast Adventurer's Guide, Xanathar's Guide to Everything, and Volo's Guide to Monsters can be used in an FR setting unless the DM says otherwise See page 6 of the PHB for the DM's final call on that. (Using my Kenku/Tiefling ban as an example)

(Tangent) Well, I'm not sure what more I can do to improve my SO question. As always, because I don't know the answer, I don't know how to phrase the question. :(

@KorvinStarmast Thank you that was very helpful. why do you ban tiefling and kenku?

hey there @KorvinStarmast

For my information how do I access these chats without someone giving me a link?

Click the Stack icon in the upper right corner of the main page, click Chat in the drop-down menu, and search for the General Chat room in the list of rooms.

@BESW When it comes to integrating the different sources of lore into a semi-cohesive story, what do you think makes some approaches work better/worse than others?

Hey all, apologies - I read that one of the things that can be asked about is regarding tools/resources but didn't realise that didn't include the shopping for such items. Here was recommended to ask: Does anyone know if there are UK Sources for items like these:

@MikeQ For PoL specifically, or for other iterations of D&D that handle lore integration differently?

You seemed to indicate that PoL succeeded in ways that the others did not

Yes, PoL uniquely did not try to be authoritative.

Most D&D lore is presented as an omniscient narrator describing what is true. PoL presented competing, contradictory perspectives on purpose and made no attempt to resolve those contradictions.

@BESW Thanks

@BESW Uniquely? I'm surprised that style is not used more often. There's so much conflicting material.

Trying to unify it all would require a silly amount of work and detail... but on the other hand, these are nerds we're talking about

@MikeQ Yup, the material conflicts but all the other resources I've ever seen tried to ignore that or reconcile it, rather than lean into it and pull a Whitman.

on a micro-scale, my gf's maps for her scenarios are a bit like that. Draw it 'about right, sort of' (looking nice!) Write "Not to exact Scale" across the corner, and say "It was made by an explorer, years ago. He might not have it all right". Then when she draws another map that doesn't line up ... so what? :)

It's like how Star Trek and Star Wars expanded universe material keeps trying to make everything fit together and failing miserably, while Doctor Who EU material is like "hahahahah no it's cool we're just doing whatever's fun."

@BESW The whole idea of "Canon" in Dr Who strikes me as amusing :)

I wish more franchises took the DW approach to continuity.

Honestly I would love it if Trek started approaching it that way

Instead of " and now for another show that's totally before Kirk ever got into the Academy"

Or alternatively,... Another Kirk

DW has a good excuse, now immortalised int he catchphrase "wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey". Other franchises would have to invent their own excuse

(Fantasy can always go with "A Wizard did it")

I mean

Trek has established the existence of alternate universes

That's the thing--the notion that one needs an excuse is a false framework.

If the only obstacle to making a new trek story unconnected to other trek stories is the lack of an excuse they have it already

It pre-supposes that the default is expecting decades of multi-creator work to mesh together perfectly and that a justification is needed for that to not be the case.

@BESW Yes I was gonna get to that

I will say though,... Trek in particular has spent a lot of time training it's fanbase to expect continuity

We don't need divergent timelines or soft reboots or alternate realities, we can just make fun stories inspired by shared material.

And or attracting people who already do

That being said I would love just "here's a stand alone trek series

There are a non-trivial amount of fans (of most genres) that are significantly invested in the continuity of a setting.

I still need to finish DS 9 first though

(That seems a long-way-round way of saying "Geeks gonna Geek")

Yeah and trek isn't the only thing that caters to that either

Just pointing out the fact that it has for a while

@BlackSpike I'm saying that needs to be challenged, and it's not always been true. Our stories suffer from it.

@trogdor Isn't Orville stand alone? (Haven't watched much yet)

Orville is not Star Trek.

@BlackSpike it's not Trek though

Like, it's definitely gunning for Trek like

@Eternallord66 Just leave a tab open. Forever.

=)

No argument there, but it's not like, Actually Star Trek

Ah, ok. I assumed it was Trek. My bad

It wants you to think it is for sure

@BESW lol

@BESW That took me an embarassingly long time before I lolfigsled.

And I'm also not trying to say you can't enjoy it as an alternative or supplement to Trek either

It's just not technically under that particular umbrella

"Canon" in fandom is, frankly, a function of copyright extensions lending power to a company to prevent a creative work from ever becoming cultural property.

Had me fooled :) I thik it might be slightly improved it it was Trek .. change nothing else.

@BESW I do like, say, that Worf and O'Brian show up and become major characters in DS9, but otherwise I agree

@trogdor Crossover potential would be increased in a cultural space that isn't curated by company profits.

Heck I even think both of them are given more to work with than they ever were in Next Generation (both the actors and the characters)

@BESW tis Fair enough

(For example, the recent drama over whether Sony is willing to give Disney even more money to use Spider-Man... wouldn't be an issue if Disney hadn't successfully changed copyright laws to grant corporations rather than people indefinite rights to intellectual property, because Spider-Man would've entered the public domain at the beginning of this year and then everybody could make Spider-Man movies.)

@BESW Copyright lasts far too long (Effectively indefinitely, if Disney get their way, which they usually do) :(

Indeed.

Yeah

And that's absolutely required for the fandom obsession with continuity to function.

It's total BS

Public domain material actively resists coherent universal continuity, and that's good.

Nobody's trying to reconcile the Cumberbatch Sherlock with the Rathbone and Frewer versions.

I agree with the basic principle of Copyright ... a limited-term monopoly to allow a Creator to benefit from their creation, without others just ripping it off. But Disney (and others) have pushed it too far

They're all enjoyable (or not) on their own merits and we can delight in seeing the connections between them without needing to reconcile the differences.

@BESW thank God too

XD

Though I think people would have accepted that as a reboot

Or something

Not to say that would be ok though

It would still be a godawful mess

@BlackSpike The concept is acceptable, within its own cultural context, but it's got a LOT of problems--starting with the idea that only individuals create or control intellectual property, which is making it almost impossible for many Indigenous groups to retain the rights to their communally-owned intellectual properties without compromising their own values.

@BESW Oh, I'm sure there are a lot of issues with it.

Not something I know -a lot- about

It's a fraught issue that Western solutions tend to treat as if there's going to be one all-encompassing universal rule for everybody and everything.

But as a Creator (sort of ...), I like the idea of being able to Publish without copy-cats (or at least a copy-cat must put some creative effort into hiding their copying :D )

(Although a lot of the hobby-projects I do at the moment are entirely derivative works!)