I think if you want to be the exception to the rule, it has to come from somewhere more than your backstory. Otherwise, why involve the canon at all, or other players for that matter.
For me, as an inexperienced D&D-er, I find the canon extremely important when trying to develop my character concepts, either to lean into or play against. My characters would probably seem bland and cliche to more experienced players who have been there, done that, and want to try something different. My own view is that, if roleplay and creating a realistic character is important to you, then you’re probably better off sticking off closer to the lore and race or class norms if you don’t know the world well, but that it doesn’t follow that the game rules should therefore outright forbid someone with more imagination and/or experience than me from developing a more unusual but still realistic character, or someone who doesn’t care about realism (and is in a like-minded group where they’re not playing a single player game) creating a wacky character for shits and giggles.
And when it comes to the lore, I do find the changes and events in the world help inspire some of my characters’ stories, even though I agree with your earlier point that much also stays the same. For example, a few of the characters I’ve either played EA with or am toying with for the full release are as follows:
- A drow Oath of Ancients paladin of Eilistraee, who was inspired to swear their oath on seeing her dance after her return from death during the Second Sundering.
- A Lolth-sworn drow ranger whose lover defected to Vhaerun after his Second Sundering return and was painfully executed as a result, whose experience has left him with an unconscious but burning contempt for women and especially Lolth’s priestesses, and a new relish for hunting down those his matriarch sets him after … which recently has included those who have left for a secretive new cult.
- A shield dwarf barbarian who is resentful and resistant to what she sees as increasing acceptance and integration of at least some goblins, for whom she still harbours an abiding ancestral hatred.
- A tiefling Oath of Devotion paladin who is increasingly concerned that what his order sees as duty is actually propping up an unjust status quo in which those like him are suffering greater and greater prejudice.
- A deep gnome rogue whose curiosity, dreams of glory, and fascination with ruins and exploration was inspired by tales her grandmother told her of Blingdenstone, destroyed by drow a hundred years before.
- An elven cleric of Bhaal who was young in the Time of Troubles and sees his recent return, even as a quasi-deity, as an opportunity for power and bloodshed.
I wouldn’t have been able to come up with these characters that I, at least, feel connect to the world without access to the lore. But
I’m sure that those who know the lore better can and will come up with better stories that both use and subvert that lore in interesting ways. But even if those characters are way more unusual than anything I could reasonably come up with, they still need that lore to provide context and, I’d argue, actually a much deeper understanding of that lore to make work.
