Why don't 3.5 Dm's want to warp and twist established settings?

[gooddragon1]

Like run Menzoberranzan and have all the drow be edgy good guys (more likely girls, matriarchy, but the point is still there)? 3.5 has the mechanical flexibility to make it work...

Strahd trying to modify Vampires to be twilight vampires and good aligned?

Stuff like that? Just to shake things up?

[Mystic Muse]

Like run Menzoberranzan and have all the drow be edgy good guys (more likely girls, matriarchy, but the point is still there)? 3.5 has the mechanical flexibility to make it work...

Strahd trying to modify Vampires to be twilight vampires and good aligned?

Stuff like that? Just to shake things up?

Because most people don't want to play in a mockery of an established setting? They either want to play that setting, or not.

Also, most of the time, partaking in something where the only point is being hateful and disrespectful gets old.

But also, why warp another character, say Strahd in your example, when you can just make a new one instead? Are you really going to go out of your way to find a table's worth of people who

A. Dislike canon Strahd
B. Like Twilight vampires specifically
C. Want a version of Strahd that wants to make vampires into Twilight vampires?

[Maat Mons]

I think people who enjoy parody would more likely make one giant parody setting that pokes fun at basically every fantasy thing ever, not construct separate parodies for each fantasy setting.

[gooddragon1]

I don't mean for the point to be hateful or disrespectful, more like extreme satire or warping a setting.

A little like the future sight set in magic the gathering where events swapped for a certain catfolk...

Maybe mockery might be giving the wrong impression. I'll try warp.

[Crake]

I think things like that, kinda like a twilight zone episode of an established setting where everything is just a little off, or certain things are inverted, isn't necessarily something that DMs stray away from, but I think that such a thing would be much better explored as either a) a short adventure or one-off, or b) as a parallel to the existing setting, in a short burst, like, the players step through a mirror and into a strange, slightly altered version of the world they know. Trying to actually build a full-on setting in this manner to me passes the intersection of "too much effort" and "not really mine". As someone else already noted, why would I put so much effort into making a parody of a setting, which then isn't even mine? I would much rather build my own world from scratch.

tl;dr: I imagine DMs do this sort of thing quite often, as side stories/one-shots, rather than full-blown campaign settings that they run whole adventure paths in.

[inuyasha]

I've done that a little bit, mostly by adding a few new realms and darklords to Ravenloft.

I think the biggest twist though was swapping out the Vistani entirely for mist-wandering centaurs with a very nomadic, mystical culture. Lots of diviners and witches for instance. I thought that was a bit more interesting, and my players loved it.

[Eldan]

I wouldn't do that that directly. The main advantage to running an established setting, for me, is that I don't have to explain the setting to the players as much as when I write it myself, they can just go read the book. It saves a lot of time. The more I change, the more I lose that advantage.

That said, I run a lot of stuff like Planescape, Ravenloft, Unknown Armies, where a certain degree of screwing with the player's expectations is normal. So I've done similar things, but usually with an in-setting explanation for why things weren't as expected. Mind control, fairy curses, paralell dimensions, the shadow/spirit world, that kind of thing.

[Heliomance]

Like run Menzoberranzan and have all the drow be edgy good guys (more likely girls, matriarchy, but the point is still there)?

...but all drow are already Chaotic Good rebels yearning to throw off the reputation of their evil kin (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0044.html).

That's hardly an original twist

[AnimeTheCat]

From a DM standpoint, I don't do this because the world would be VASTLY different if those characters had those specific characteristics. The flavor of the setting and characters wouldn't be the same and would basically be, at that point, a homebrew setting that is distinct and different from its source material. At that point, I would rather just make my own setting and have it set up the way I want it with interactions and stories the way I want them that paint the best image possible.

From a player standpoint, I would not enjoy playing in either setting you've described unless it was presented specifically in that way from the beginning, and at that point I still might not just due to the fact that it sounds so.... boring really. I would much rather there be big cosmic twists that are more intriguing and thought out than "Strahd isn't really a bad guy" escpecially when all the lore surrounding Strahd is "He's one twisted, sadistic, sick M*********er". From a player standpoint, I would be more satisified and interested in playing in a game where there's an offspring of Strahd that is trying to rise to overwhelm and beat back his/her progenetor and has grown to great power already, forcing Strahd and Ravenloft in general into a bit of magical chaos, thus making the already unpredictable and dire realm moreso. With that, you keep the core material, but you add a never ending number of twists that can culminate into a final twist that may end up being something along the lines of the offspring really being a schism of sorts that was all the goodness in Strahd that finally managed to free itself, or that Strahd himself intentionally released in an attempt to destroy any last bit of goodness he had. Heck, you could even have it be so that in the end there are essentially two Strahds because the good can't exist without the bad, and vice versa, resulting in the cosmos balancing both entities out and resulting in two very messed up, very powerful vampire overlords locked in perpetual war within Ravenloft because both are attempting to exert their dominance over the realm.

I dunno... I just think are are far better ways to "Warp" settings that don't include overused memes, worn out ideas, and silly character changes that make no sense and don't have radiating effects.

[Psyren]

Some reasons:

1) It's iconoclastic / potentially disrespectful to the setting as stated above.

2) It's impractical / counterproductive - diverge too far and then any future splats and modules are useless. Presumably you're using a setting in the first place so you don't have to take the time to come up with all that.

3) Lots of us just like settings as written.

4) Most settings have plenty of mystery / gray to play in without upending the stuff that is established. For example, where Incarnum comes from or what the Test of the Starstone entails are entirely up to you.

[Telonius]

DMs are lazy. If I'm using an established setting, it's because I don't want to do the heavy-lifting of world-building. Warping a setting like that takes a significant amount of thought-work.

DMs are prideful. If I want it done right, I'll do it myself. If I'm going to put that much work in, I'd rather make my own setting than mess with somebody else's.

DMs are pressed for time. I don't want to have a session bog down with a discussion of how the current thing differs from the established canon.

[Calthropstu]

That sounds like something a group of teenage girls might like.

But the role players I play with would boot me from the table for even suggesting this, and I would personally agree.

Changing established setting is fine. Turning established settings into gay fanfics? Not so much.

[johnbragg]

Like run Menzoberranzan and have all the drow be edgy good guys (more likely girls, matriarchy, but the point is still there)? 3.5 has the mechanical flexibility to make it work...

Strahd trying to modify Vampires to be twilight vampires and good aligned?

Stuff like that? Just to shake things up?

Other posters have given good answers. If people want to play Ravenloft, they probably want to play Ravenloft. If they don't like Ravenloft, they'll play something else. There's no sense coming up with characters and the DM redoing the worldbuilding to say "Look how different we are!" That gets old really fast, and you're better off playing generic kitchen-sink fantasy murderhoboing.

The only way I could really see it working is with something like Pelor, the Burning Hate. Swap out for Strahd is really not-so-bad, or "the drow are misunderstood", or "the real Elminster is dead" or whatever. And even then, it only works if it's secret from the players at the start, and they piece together the secret through gameplay.

[Telonius]

One time I did do a bit of mild warping was in a setting of my own - for Garl Glittergold and Kurtulmak. One of the source books (can't remember which) had a side reference that some stories put Asmodeus there when Garl tried to bring down the mines. I took the idea and ran with it. Asmodeus was there on purpose, knowing that Garl would try something. The whole thing was a setup meant to keep the Kobolds in the Lawful Evil column and driving a wedge between them and the Gnomes. The thing is, none of those characters are particularly tied to any specific setting. (Greyhawk, yeah, but that's about as generic a setting as you get). That let me play around with the personalities without changing all that much of the universal setup. And technically, it was already in the lore; so it's not so much a change as a reinterpretation.

[Godskook]

Why don't 3.5 Dm's want to warp and twist established settings?

Short answer: Why would they? You don't make any case for why this would be in any way attractive beyond "it's different", and that's simply not nearly valuable enough to justify the use of a setting.

Established official settings have several benefits specific to them, first being a strong established lore that covers many important questions a DM might have. Another being that integrating players familiar with the official setting is much easier than almost any other setting, simply because the player is already familiar with the Lore tools a player is supposed to have.

Established DM settings, otoh, provide a "local" feel, with many ex-PCs dotting the landscape that can be called forth as interesting plot-points in later campaigns. They're also easier to customize as the DM is not beholden to some canonical source for why monsters behave one way or another.

Whole-cloth new settings ensure players are working in unfamiliar ground while satisfying the need for something different.


Like run Menzoberranzan and have all the drow be edgy good guys (more likely girls, matriarchy, but the point is still there)? 3.5 has the mechanical flexibility to make it work...

Strahd trying to modify Vampires to be twilight vampires and good aligned?

Stuff like that? Just to shake things up?

Because this is just bad design. For a setting to seem real, NPC choices need to make sense, and taking a pre-existing setting and toggling some singular meta-feature like alignment while maintaining all the first-order appearances of the original will *NOT*. You'll spend hours upon hours just trying to figure out -why- your new campaign setting should make sense(and making various changes to accommodate it), or worse, you won't, and it'll just suck.

Worse, and the more serious condemnation, if you instead explore the similar related concept of "how do I justify an edgy good guy Drow in Menzaberranzan?" or "how do I get good vampires in Strahd?" within the rules of those settings, you'll find far more compelling character concepts to work with.

[weckar]

I'm going to be the odd duck and say: I do this all the time.

Whenever we start a campaign I make it very clear that everything known about a setting should be taken as myth and hearsay until confirmed in-game. Whether that means tweaks to history or whole societies changing radically differs from game to game.

Now, I never do this to deliberately parody or ruin an existing setting or character. I just feel that the world should suit the story and not the other way around.

Often I do partly get around this by setting my games far before or after the canon timeline, but sometimes that's not a luxury one has.

[johnbragg]

I'm going to be the odd duck and say: I do this all the time.

Whenever we start a campaign I make it very clear that everything known about a setting should be taken as myth and hearsay until confirmed in-game. Whether that means tweaks to history or whole societies changing radically differs from game to game.

Now, I never do this to deliberately parody or ruin an existing setting or character. I just feel that the world should suit the story and not the other way around.

Often I do partly get around this by setting my games far before or after the canon timeline, but sometimes that's not a luxury one has.

Then that's really not the same thing at all. So maybe your Iuz is secretly a reincarnation of Vecna or whatever, and the Council of Eight never formed. It's "Grayeagle", where it's Greyhawk except for what you want to change around, so be warned that metagaming based on your 40 years of Greyhawk sourcebooks is not reliable.

It's not taking a setting and reversing the premise of the setting. It's not "Dragonlance, except that the dragons and draconians were all secretly gods of undeath creating conflict so they could harvest souls"

[RNightstalker]

When you use an established setting, there's a common body of knowledge (for those that do know) and then you have to go into what's staying the same and what is being changed...it's just a big headache. Settings exist to take a lot of the legwork out of being a DM.

[weckar]

It's not taking a setting and reversing the premise of the setting. It's not "Dragonlance, except that the dragons and draconians were all secretly gods of undeath creating conflict so they could harvest souls"I mean, true, but it can be (real life example): "You missed Strahd by about 200 years and now the final reincarnation of Tatiana is in charge. And here's an actual method to destroy darklords even though you really shouldn't use it."

It warps the setting effectively beyond recognition while still being the same setting. And warping settings, I thought, was what this thread was about.

[AnimeTheCat]

I mean, true, but it can be (real life example): "You missed Strahd by about 200 years and now the final reincarnation of Tatiana is in charge. And here's an actual method to destroy darklords even though you really shouldn't use it."

It warps the setting effectively beyond recognition while still being the same setting. And warping settings, I thought, was what this thread was about.

I feel that's not quite the same though... to warp the setting you have to alter it to, essentially, a mockery of itself. Advancing the timeline of the setting to your personal headcanon isn't the same I feel. Then again, the definition to be used as what "warping a campaign" means was never discussed.

[gooddragon1]

I feel that's not quite the same though... to warp the setting you have to alter it to, essentially, a mockery of itself. Advancing the timeline of the setting to your personal headcanon isn't the same I feel. Then again, the definition to be used as what "warping a campaign" means was never discussed.

It's hard to define it. I'm thinking at least one radical change to a fundamental part of the setting. Though other interpretations also count.

I just like experimenting with strange ideas... :x

[Honest Tiefling]

You get all of the work of having to tweak and work out the details of a new setting, but maintain the baggage of the old. People are going to come into the game with assumptions, and are going to need a pack of info on what to expect and what their characters know. So you get the worst of both worlds.

And when you offer people a pizza, they'll expect a pizza. They aren't going to accept something with mayonnaise and peas on it, no matter how good it is, because that is just not what people expect when they think of pizza. And people who don't like pizza aren't going to be interested. So you are turning off people who don't care for the parent setting, and those who really like the setting. And with well known settings, that isn't going to leave you with a whole lot of selection.

Personally, I think stealing the bits you like from a setting, tweaking them and then giving them a fresh paint job is easier, because even a simple name change can help remind players that this is something a wee bit different. Players are usually plotting the doom of multiple people, beings, organizations and planes of existence all at the same time, best to give them a few mental nudges to ease them into the game when you can.

[Tvtyrant]

Yeah I would never run an established setting precisely to avoid having to fight player's preconceptions of how things "should" work. If I want to run an established setting I change all the names and file off the numbers so it doesn't feel the same and so pique people.

For instance if I wanted to run Netheril the Wizards would probably become Ethergaunts and change the names. That alone would feel sufficiently different to keep my players from noticing.

[the_david]

Honestly, if I'd run Ravenloft Strahd would be a Kyton. (Pathfinder version.) By now, players should be familiar with the fact that Strahd is a vampire. The original module was using the shock value that the vampire was also a wizard. That's hard to do if everybody knows who Strahd is, so changing details like that should work really well, except for that one player who's metagaming.
I'd also rename the region Zarovich, but that's just because Strahd is the count... of Zarovich.

Sparkly vampires is going to far. The chaotic good Drow bit is funny, but it wouldn't work in a real game.

[rel]

I can't speak for other people but for me the answer is I haven't gotten there yet.

I've definitely done this sort of thing in other systems most notably world of darkness. But with D&D So far, all the games I've run have been homebrew.

I've done some idle brainstorming about how I would change a few of the published settings were I ever to run a game with them but that is the limit of my thinking on the subject.


I think the main reason for this is that I've always seen a split between system and setting in D&D.
Since I'm always homebrewing, I haven't looked at any of the published settings in great detail so I've never gotten the inspiration to start tinkering with them.

[Lord Vukodlak]

You get all of the work of having to tweak and work out the details of a new setting, but maintain the baggage of the old. People are going to come into the game with assumptions, and are going to need a pack of info on what to expect and what their characters know. So you get the worst of both worlds.
This the point of running an established setting is familiarity and to save on work.

If you're going to do a twist in an established campaign setting it should more subtle, significant and most importantly SECRET. Here's an idea I had for Eberron. Now the Lore says the Lycanthropic Inquisition(Or the Purge) began after something in the curse of lycanthropy changed, Formerly peaceful lycanthropes began to become blood thirsty, where once only natural born could pass on the curse, affected lycanthropes gained the same ability. Now here's the secret, the twist. The history books have the order wrong. The purge came first and acted largely in secret it nearly succeeded in exterminating the natural born lycanthropes. So a group of lycanthrope druids came together and cast a ritual to enhance the powers of the curse and try and preserve their kind.

But its a twist I'll never use because I prefer my own homebrew setting and after twelve or thirteen years my players probably know it better then The Forgotten Realms or any other official setting.

[NichG]

How is it that no one has mentioned Pelor the Burning Hate? DMs do this kind of thing all of the time, as do players, as do setting materials themselves. The idea of establishing an expectation and then thwarting it is a pretty standard method all over the place. The drow, for example, started as 'they're just evil', so then what came next was 'that's boring, what if we make a good drow and have some conflict there?' and then finally 'what if there's an entire society of good drow, with good-aligned deities, and this sort of weird relationship to the main set that have been distorted by Lolth?' So the setting, in its evolution, ended up warping and twisting the premises of the initial formulation. Same with Planescape twisting the original fiends, and so on.

Which is just another way of saying that the way people think about things evolves over time, and stuff that was evocative or cool at one point in time gave way to different things as the surrounding context changed and people got used to - and eventually bored with - the old tropes.

[johnbragg]

It's hard to define it. I'm thinking at least one radical change to a fundamental part of the setting. Though other interpretations also count.

I just like experimenting with strange ideas... :x

So, depending on what you mean, there are two answers.

1. DMs *do* this, fairly frequently. Taking a well established setting, adding one well-thought out twist so that there are some surprises for the players. (Pelor the Burning Hate, Iuz is Vecna, Strahd is a Kyton, it's 200 years after Strahd, etc).

2. Because flipping the scenario of a setting is a joke that will wear thin very quickly. Sparkly vampires in Ravenloft, a city full of well-meaning emo drow carving sun-runes in the walls when no one is looking.


How is it that no one has mentioned Pelor the Burning Hate?


....The only way I could really see it working is with something like Pelor, the Burning Hate. Swap out for Strahd is really not-so-bad, or "the drow are misunderstood", or "the real Elminster is dead" or whatever. And even then, it only works if it's secret from the players at the start, and they piece together the secret through gameplay.

[Burley]

I "warped" a Wizard of Oz setting into a complex political setting based on human imperialism and magical recession. I think the setting went over well.

DMs do this kinda thing all the time. I'm sorry you don't get to see it.

[Âmesang]

I'm lazy, and most of my fellow players are barely familiar with the settings anyway so the last thing I'd want to do is throw a curveball at 'em. Honestly I'm thinking the next game I run will be set on Ærth from Gary Gygax's Dangerous Journeys roleplaying game, since it's a magical version of medieval Earth (well, with a few other, significant changes).

With that said, I had made attempts at linking the FORGOTTEN REALMS® with the WORLD OF GREYHAWK® via WG7: Castle Greyhawk (seriously) and some notes in DRAGON Magazine #241 — the idea being that after Netheril's fall (–339 DR/–1,124 CY) Lord Shadow sent handpicked agents across the planes in search of powerful magic they could use to rebuild their empire and one agent, "Zol Darklock," found his way to the Suel Imperium of Oerth… only to be imprisoned by the Suel Power Mage, Xodast (151 DR/–634 CY), who's "Bringer of Doom" was used as a focus for the Invoked Devastation against the Baklunish two centuries later.

[NichG]

The only way I could really see it working is with something like Pelor, the Burning Hate.

Whoops, I stand corrected!

[weckar]

So, I just finished a session and I think I may have just jumped this particular shark.

We were playing the Ravenloft +200 years game I mentioned earlier, and the players accidentally found Strahd's skull (I forgot it was there).

I panicked.

He now has Murray's personality, apparently. (Monkey Island)

He is now also the party pet.

Strahd is the party pet.

Look at that shark go!!

[King of Nowhere]

I don't like playing with esablushed settings in the first place. It just feels wrong to take someone else's world and use as mine. akin to wearing someone else's underwear. If I had to play one, I would do it for lazyness or for having the players already informed. In all cases, changing the setting undermines the purpose.

Doing it for parody... well, I don't see much point. I twisted or parodied many archetypes, but settings? nope.

I'd just like to add my 2 copper pieces in that parodies do not necessarily get stale soon. Some of my best pieces of worldbuilding started as parodies, and then they gained depth as I explored them. Or they just became commonly accepted parts of the setting.

For example, I wanted to set up a quest in the lower planes, but I found the common descriptions of them plenty clichès. I decided I wanted to fill the place with cute fluffy bunnies. Cute fluffy bunnies spitting fire and lightning and with an improved bite attack for 1d20 damage, but nonetheless so cute you needed a will save to hurt them. Later on I added the hellhounds: chihuahuas whose constant barking is so annoying, it drains your mental stats. And there are killer cucumbers, assassin zucchini, and the malevolent homicidal pineapple, a 30-ft-tall pineapple plant that swings its giant pinepple like a flail. And then it explodes on impact. And then the seeds it sprays start growing under your skin, ripping you from the inside.
Of course it wasn't meant to be taken seriously. half of that is a reference to in-party jokes or internet jokes.

a few sessions and a few encounters later, the players are talkking of evading the malevolent homicidal pineapple while orienteering in the fields of assassin zucchini and killing those damn chihuahuas without consuming too many resources, and nobody is neither smirking, nor complaining about those trite parodies. Because those monsters and setting had consistent stats and consistent rules, and once you twist your mind enough to acccept all the premises, it actually makes a certain sense. So it works.

Although it's right that a parody won't remain a parody for long. It will either get stale or it will get its own specificity. the order of the stick is also an excellent example of something that started a parody and evolved into something else.

[gooddragon1]

So, I just finished a session and I think I may have just jumped this particular shark.

We were playing the Ravenloft +200 years game I mentioned earlier, and the players accidentally found Strahd's skull (I forgot it was there).

I panicked.

He now has Murray's personality, apparently. (Monkey Island)

He is now also the party pet.

Strahd is the party pet.

Look at that shark go!!

You forget... you can always jump higher. The sky's the limit... and that limit is subjective depending on what you define as the sky. And then there are other planes of existence... :smalltongue:

[BWR]

Gonna have to agree with most responders here: I play established settings because I like them, and turning them into stupid parodies is not fun, is immersion breaking and pointless. Most settings have, as has been pointed out, plenty of gray areas on the maps where you can add stuff without having to alter existing material.

This is not to say that I am against altering settings, sometimes radically. E.g. Rokugan is a setting that often sees non-canon variants pop up in home games. Part of the reason, I suspect, is that it is lore heavy but focused on a very small piece of the world, and it is often fun to see how the history and culture would be different if certain changes were made. Most of it is because while much of the appeal was how Rokugan was a living setting with a constantly advancing timeline where players could influence the story, many of the events and choices made were bloody stupid and the game is better without them (or at least have such events radically changed).

The major difference is that in one case you want to make changes to facilitate the type of game you want to play and type of stories to tell, while the other is basically low-brow 'lulz' which are better handled in other ways.