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View Full Version : How much do you give a flip about your setting's canon?



AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:11 PM
I see this come up in relation to Star Wars a lot, but this isn't just a Star Wars question. Any work that has a strongly based history and you are running the game through an era whose outcome was already defined... how much do you care?

My general opinion is that whatever makes for a good story is what stays. I'll grab the most major points and use them as history/background - I mean, when I first start a game in a new setting, if I'm interested, I can spend a week or two just reading up information about them so I can find little subtleties to adopt.

But once the game is on, it's on. Major canon details I may have forgotten to include (if I am the DM) no longer matter unless a player built something around them. I will try and throw in references to the way the world is outside of the players, but if they do something that sufficiently tosses the world off-track, the world will react accordingly. I mean, to me that's sort of the major point of playing tabletop instead of an MMO or a CRPG.

Typewriter
2009-07-28, 01:14 PM
They mean a lot in my campaigns because every campaign takes place in the same world, and is directly spawned from something that happened in the previous campaign. Things get jacked up sometimes, because a lot goes on and I don't have a great memory, but players like to find the remains of a dragon and remember the last campaign(which occured 25 years earlier).

If I was going to put my players in eberron or some other well established world though? No....I'll use it as a guideline, but screw it's history. It's all about fun for the players, and unless everyone is really attached to something(or based a character around something) then theres no need.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:18 PM
They mean a lot in my campaigns because every campaign takes place in the same world, and is directly spawned from something that happened in the previous campaign. Things get jacked up sometimes, because a lot goes on and I don't have a great memory, but players like to find the remains of a dragon and remember the last campaign(which occured 25 years earlier).

If I was going to put my players in eberron or some other well established world though? No....I'll use it as a guideline, but screw it's history. It's all about fun for the players, and unless everyone is really attached to something(or based a character around something) then theres no need.

Well, I really mean when dealing with eras that are supposed to have pre-defined outcomes and characters and stuff. I've heard this complaint in regards to Forgotten Realms games set back a few. Eberron doesn't really have this issue because of how very "Choose Your Own Module" it's built - I like it that way, not because of fear of running into canon, but it sort of provides lots of your own adventure hooks while also giving you easy ways to deal with them if you don't want to include them.

Kylarra
2009-07-28, 01:19 PM
I usually explicitly state that we're playing in an AU at that point, or make the focus of the game on the characters, rather than shaking the world.

valadil
2009-07-28, 01:27 PM
It depends on the game for me.

I usually treat D&D canon as scenery. It's nice if I can use it, but I'll push it out of the way without a second thought if it doesn't go with my game.

My last campaign was set in the middle of GRRM's A Clash of Kings. I paid way more attention to the world than usual. I reread the books before starting the game. And I didn't just use the setting, I put the game in the middle of existing events and hoped that the players wouldn't disrupt things too much. Fitting everything in without mucking up the world was an interesting challenge. I knew going into the game that I understood the world a lot more than my players did. Westeros is the only setting I'd feel comfortable using for this type of game.

My very first campaign was the only one where I did my own setting. It was a terrible mistake. I had some cool ideas for the world. Some of them made it into writing, but most stayed in my head. Some of that writing made its way to the players and some of them even read it. But in the process of going from my head to the players heads, most of the information was never passed on. And my world had a lot less definition than FR or Eberron to begin with. In the end the players didn't have much world to work with and that was detrimental to the game. For this reason I don't advise worldbuilding for smaller games. The exception where I do advise it is for a long term game or for a series of games that will build up the history of the world.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:31 PM
I suppose part of it is that my intent with every single campaign is that it will get to high levels - I don't intend to run short games. As PCs become more and more powerful, to me it just seems difficult and in fact often depressing to make it so nothing they do has any permanent impact in the world - especially to a subscriber of the Butterfly Effect like me. Though that could make for an interesting game where the futility of effort against fate was the theme, as long as the players knew ahead of time they were going to be ultimately railroaded.

Nerd-o-rama
2009-07-28, 01:32 PM
Zilch. Nada. Zip. I'll change what I want to change to make the game more fun, and players can do whatever they like, albeit with consequences I deem fitting.

Kylarra
2009-07-28, 01:33 PM
I suppose part of it is that my intent with every single campaign is that it will get to high levels - I don't intend to run short games. As PCs become more and more powerful, to me it just seems difficult and in fact often depressing to make it so nothing they do has any permanent impact in the world - especially to a subscriber of the Butterfly Effect like me. Though that could make for an interesting game where the futility of effort against fate was the theme, as long as the players knew ahead of time they were going to be ultimately railroaded.Most of my campaigns don't last that long, unfortunately, so I don't have to plan for how they'll affect the world as whole.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:35 PM
Most of my campaigns don't last that long, unfortunately, so I don't have to plan for how they'll affect the world as whole.

Oh, I'm not planning. I mean, I plan sessions, I'll plan for characters, but my plans are always ultimately dependent on what they decide they want to do. I try to make the world stay on course, but I like it when the players find some way to throw the entire thing off of its rails and take initiative to do something. Essentially...


Zilch. Nada. Zip. I'll change what I want to change to make the game more fun, and players can do whatever they like, albeit with consequences I deem fitting.

That.

Kylarra
2009-07-28, 01:38 PM
Oh, I'm not planning. I mean, I plan sessions, I'll plan for characters, but my plans are always ultimately dependent on what they decide they want to do. I try to make the world stay on course, but I like it when the players find some way to throw the entire thing off of its rails and take initiative to do something. If I played with a canon setting (which I don't ever), the people I mainly play with would deliberately go out of their way to break canon, so it's a moot issue regardless. Either I end up railroading them beyond belief or I might as well just call it an AU to begin with. :smalltongue:

bosssmiley
2009-07-28, 01:40 PM
Official settings: about 7/10
I can't reasonably sell people on "We'll be playing this setting" then change around everything they know and are comfortable with. If I pitch, say, WFRP players expect (and deserve) Warhammer World.

Homebrew settings: what's canon?
I'm asspulling and re-writing stuff constantly as new shineyness appeals.
Landmarks generally won't change during a campaign without good in-game reason. But from campaign-to-campaign in the same setting I tend to go with M. John Harrison's take on Viriconium: every group of characters sees different aspects/facets of the world. Same locales; different lighting.

Doc Roc
2009-07-28, 01:44 PM
Not much unless it's planescape, in which case I doublethink my way into caring and not caring. There's parts of planescape that you have to let be canon, basically, or the entire system crunches down around you.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 01:51 PM
If I played with a canon setting (which I don't ever), the people I mainly play with would deliberately go out of their way to break canon, so it's a moot issue regardless. Either I end up railroading them beyond belief or I might as well just call it an AU to begin with. :smalltongue:

For me, there's a fun in seeing a familiar situation turned upside down and knowing I didn't make it that way, but my players did. I don't know what it is.

Kylarra
2009-07-28, 01:52 PM
For me, there's a fun in seeing a familiar situation turned upside down and knowing I didn't make it that way, but my players did. I don't know what it is.Disaster Voyeurism (http://xkcd.org/611/).

Yora
2009-07-28, 01:54 PM
I am my settings canon!

And I can retcon it as I like. ^^

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 02:01 PM
Disaster Voyeurism (http://xkcd.org/611/).

Nah, not even a disaster. I mean, I as a DM get some pride (strangely) going "yeah, well, my PCs became grand masters and-"

Oh dear.

I just realized. I'm acting like a mother about my players' fictional characters.

Kylarra
2009-07-28, 02:02 PM
Nah, not even a disaster. I mean, I as a DM get some pride (strangely) going "yeah, well, my PCs became grand masters and-"

Oh dear.

I just realized. I'm acting like a mother about my players' fictional characters.Maybe it's time for an intervention.

PLUN
2009-07-28, 02:09 PM
Depends.

Dark Heresy puts a lot of effort into making the crazy grimdark setting of 40K looks like a bearable place people could exist in and portrays the genuine difficulties of running a 'tyranny' that big, which is oh so exploitable for games and characters. So I respect it's core setting, because I really like what they've done with the place. Calixis Sector can go hang though - it's just not for me.

Greyhawk? Well, about as much as the 3rd Ed books do, so none. I reckon if I got a really GOOD game of Greyhawk i'd be into it, but all it's stuff, wizards and gods are to me and I wager a lot of people are the rather bland defaults.

Star Wars? Well a bit of canon never hurt, eating cold beans in the ruins of Echo Base is a bonding experience, but most GMs I meet stick to 'occasional cool stuff from the films', and that's a good place to be for me.

TheCountAlucard
2009-07-28, 04:27 PM
Back when I played in a Star Wars game, the GM kept it mostly canon, save for where the PCs interfered - for instance, the party saved the life of Aayla Secura... much to my character's consternation...

Zen Master
2009-07-28, 04:31 PM
I find the question more complex than that.

I don't really give a damn about what I change initially. But once agreed upon - or, as I'm the GM and often know parts of the world the players have only ever heard of, or read about ooc in books they should keep their noses out of - once I've decided, I stick with it.

The world can't change once you've pressed 'play' right?

AslanCross
2009-07-28, 04:33 PM
My group has played both Forgotten Realms and Eberron.

FR: The broad strokes are interesting trivia and good background (Time of Troubles, etc) but the setting's history is so muddled and complex and the interaction between nations so minor that it's mostly just background. It's like the regions pretend the others don't exist. If you read Grand History of the Realms---urgh, it's like someone rolled on a complex percentile chart. Practically no continuity between events. It was also fairly frustrating how even prebuilt adventures expected you to be following canon events and every edition had to move the calendar forward.

"So in this adventure, you're going against the Zhentarim..."
"Uh...isn't Scyllua Darkhope dead?"
"...she is?"
"Yeah, adventurers killed her in Shadowdale: Scouring of the Land."
"..."

In other words, canon found itself largely ignored and the several dozen detailed NPCs in Cormyr alone also got ignored.

Eberron: The setting's interactions between power groups is more realistic; most groups interact with intensity based on distance. The humanoid nations have a very long intertwined history, which makes quite a bit of sense. The NPCs are mostly background and rarely directly interfere with events, so we can cut them out of the story altogether while keep some key flavor pieces.
In my current run of Red Hand of Doom, even if it's set in Breland, majority of the Brelish army is in the western region (we're in the remote eastern region close to the Mournland) such that King Boranel's direct intervention in the area is not expected---neither is the intervention of any other nation, since the Last War just ended and mass military movements are bound to cause violent reactions. The only canon NPC the PCs have met so far is Jaela Daran (she sent the de-facto party leader, the dwarf crusader, to Breland).
The rest? They're too busy running countries. Don't expect them to help.

It's easy enough to tie in the pertinent points and cut out what's irrelevant. We don't need to know what's happening in an ocean away in Communist China Riedra, or in Argonnessen (at least until the PCs fail to stop the Red Hand).

Xallace
2009-07-28, 04:40 PM
I usually DM a homebrew world, so canon is whatever I say it is.

Although I'll admit I've been toying with the idea of making a game in the world of MegaMan Legends here on the PbP forum; if that were to go through, I'd keep the ruins, the diggers, the islands, the airships, the pirates, and the reaverbots, all the elements that make the world, well, the world. But that said, to Ba'ator with the established plot line and characters!

I just don't think it would be fun to play through the pre-existing plot, or live in the shadow of the already-hero.

Jerthanis
2009-07-28, 05:15 PM
I tend to run games at Omega Year of an established setting. I don't run a Star Wars game that starts at the beginning of A New Hope and runs through the duration of the movies, I run the PCs as members of the group that topple the Emperor's Statue on Coruscant, then look around at the rubble and say, "What's next?" I did run a Knights of the Old Republic game set just before and during the events of Kotor 2 once, where Jedi Padawans were searching through a galaxy where 99% of the Jedi Masters were exterminated, trying to find a teacher to complete their training. They were going to take out a separate, but unrelated-to-the-Exile galaxy damning threat... then Finals season hit and the game imploded. Anyway, during THAT game, the only canonical data we had was "Miraluka is destroyed, and Darth Nihilus is out there, find a Jedi Master." If they went to planets featured in Kotor 2, they'd find they "just missed" the Exile and his band, and the Jedi Master was nowhere to be found.

Anyway, I really like setting-shaking conflicts, and so I tend to play fast and loose with canon when I'm interacting with it, but I also know to plan a campaign around a time period where there's room to insert a setting-shaking conflict. You never know what the future will bring, so having games which take place, "Tomorrow" are the best, in my mind. This is why I want to run a Spirit of the Century game set in 2028 instead of the default 1922-1930ish.

Jalor
2009-07-28, 05:26 PM
My 4e D&D games do not use 4e canon. As far as I'm concerned, no fluff was ever written for 4e. There is no "Feywild", and there are still numerous Outer Planes. Mystra is unharmed, and magic has always worked the way it does. Eladrins and Devas have celestial ancestry, just like how Tieflings have fiendish ancestry. It's the Plane of Shadow, not the Shadowfell. Succubi are demons. The "Elemental Chaos" is Limbo and the Inner Planes.

I also specify whether a game takes place before or after the Faction War, in case that ever comes up.

AstralFire
2009-07-28, 05:28 PM
Interestingly, the Feywild is the first major plane ever that's actually interested me. Though you seem to run FR and it doesn't really fit there.

erikun
2009-07-28, 07:17 PM
Well in game, the setting takes a back seat to players. If a player wants to play an unusual character that doesn't fit into the established canon of the world, then I feel (as a DM) that I should work with the players to help bring their characters to life. After all, telling someone "No, you can't have a Paladin of the Dead Lord, why not a nice Cleric of Pelor?" feels like I'm squashing their creativity, and asking them to play generic character #4357 to fit into 'my' setting. After all, while some characters simply don't fit into the settings, it is supposed to be the DM and the characters' setting.

Also, I don't want to say "You can't kill Drizzt, he's still alive in the next edition." If they want to kill Drizzt, the should be free to try (and possibly succeed) reguardless of what canon says.

On the other hand, outside the game, I prefer to stick with canon as well as possible. The easiest reason is that everyone is familiar with what's in the book, and what they've done before. If the book says there's a coup happening in Waterdeep, then they'll expect there to be a coup (or a recently finished one) when they head to Waterdeep. If they smashed someone in the head with a Staff of Power and blew up Waterdeep last time they were there, though, they should expect the crater to still be there - and probably no coup happening.

woodenbandman
2009-07-28, 08:24 PM
I usually DM a homebrew world, so canon is whatever I say it is.

Although I'll admit I've been toying with the idea of making a game in the world of MegaMan Legends here on the PbP forum; if that were to go through, I'd keep the ruins, the diggers, the islands, the airships, the pirates, and the reaverbots, all the elements that make the world, well, the world. But that said, to Ba'ator with the established plot line and characters!

I just don't think it would be fun to play through the pre-existing plot, or live in the shadow of the already-hero.

I love you forever.

I generally play homebrew worlds. I have a weird mental block which causes me to dislike established settings because of the large amount of general ******** directed at obvious author inserts (Not looking at anyone in particular), and at the same time, I hate homebrewing.

mistformsquirrl
2009-07-28, 09:42 PM
To me, nothing is sacred in canon.

There's a lot of reasons for this, but ultimately it's because while canonicity is very important when writing fiction such as a novel... it can become a burden when trying to game in that universe.

Sometimes there's a race a player *really* wants to play; but isn't usually present in the setting... unless it's particularly out there (and I do mean OUT THERE); I'll probably try to find a way to incorporate it.

Other times there's a race (Gungans for example) that yes, they're important to the plot technically; but they drive me so freaking insane that I hate them <x,x> so unless a player is adamant about playing one; I'll usually remove/replace them and alter the plot as necessary.

And of course there's times when a key canon character is killed/altered because it makes for a much more interesting story for the PCs. ("What if Luke Skywalker were turned to the Dark Side during the infamous "I am your father..." scene? How does this change the entire timeline? What does this mean for the PCs and their importance?)

Social rules are also something I fiddle with as well; depending entirely on if I feel they enhance or detract from the setting. WH40k for instance has a fair amount of bizarro sexism... despite the fact that it's a universe where humanity has to hang together or die utterly. Racism among humans is apparently utterly vanquished; but gender roles can be enforced in utterly mind-boggling ways <x.x> Thus it's one thing I happily cut out/alter.

On the other hand I doubt I'd touch rules for samurai etiquette in a setting where those are important (though alteration of gender rules is almost a guarantee).

Those are usually the biggest changes. Smaller stuff, like unusual technology or magic, are much easier to work into most settings with a little handwavium.

All of the above said; I tend to actually stick pretty close to canon where possible - I'm willing to alter anything; but I always do so with a purpose.

Another way to put it would be "I'll put space-capable sentient rodents with ninja skills into any setting... but only because in the context of my game, they need to exist."

I even do that in my homebrew worlds <X_X> (I simply admit that, while I like my setting; sometimes it has to change to accommodate other people if we're going to have fun together.)

One thing I generally *won't* mess with however, is what I'd call the "fundemental laws" of the universe.

Stuff like - the nature of the force; Warhammer's Chaos gods; Werewolf's impending apocolypse; Mage's method of working magic... usually these are the things that attract me to a given universe to start with - and thus I have little reason to want to muck with them! <@_@> (Note that though I generally don't mess with them, that doesn't mean I haven't or won't - it's just much rarer and is usually done only because someone gave me a particularly good reason to do so.)

Renegade Paladin
2009-07-28, 09:55 PM
Well, for Star Wars it's a big galaxy. There's plenty to do in any era without going anywhere near the established canon. For other worlds, my group's Forgotten Realms campaigns follow on each other and/or take place in-game simultaneously in different parts of Faerun, and as for the established canon, the other DM and I have explicitly diverged the timeline just before Mystra's assassination and the Spellplague.