A somewhat specific and unusual request

[ti'esar]

So lately I've mulling over what appears to be a phenomenon in which it seems that campaigns using existing campaign settings rarely seem to involve the sort of drastic change to the world that can occur in homebrew settings. It's occurred to me that before I try to organize my thoughts about this any further, I should make sure that it's an actual thing and not just a product of the particular campaigns I've personally read about. So this is an open request for links to writeups of any campaigns in a published setting where this sort of change - preferably, but not necessarily, driven by PCs - did occur, as well as any stories you personally might have about this sort of thing. The more spectacular or dramatic, the better.

[NichG]

I ran a Planescape campaign where the PCs freed the gods - all of them, everywhere - from being constrained by or dependent on the belief of their worshippers. As collateral damage, because of the specific way they did it, they also deified every being in the multiverse and caused reality to become completely and consciously malleable to every and all individuals. That was pretty significant I'd say, and it also was pretty much the end of me running that particular Planescape continuity.

I should say though, every campaign I've run since then has been homebrew settings where the PCs have made large-scale changes to things. So it might have been an indication of a change in my own GMing style more than anything else.

[HammeredWharf]

Come to think of it, most of the campaigns I've been in involved radical change in established settings. For example, in my last campaign the players blew up a large chunk of the world and killed a god.

I suppose it depends on how much you "respect" the setting's history. Especially in D&D, many of them have canon timelines, like the 3e -> 4e Faerun, so some people who are fans of various setting-defining books dislike messing with them.

[lytokk]

In an Eberron campaign I played in, we fulfilled the often talked about prophecy, killed the entire pantheon, and replaced them with the real gods. This pretty much went against everything established in the setting, but we had some fun with it.

[erikun]

The only established campaign books that I've played through are Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and Mysteries of the Moonsea, along with being somewhat familiar with Pathfinder's Reign of Winter.

Of those, Return to the ToEE (Greyhawk) didn't really seem connected to anything else in the setting, and so didn't have much impact on it overall. Mysteries of the Moonsea (Forgotten Realms) did include the destruction of several big cities on the line, so that change happened if you failed... although I don't know if any of the NPCs present there were known from anywhere else. Reign of Winter (Pathfinder) had you running around on your own, and while it does involve fighting an important NPC in the nation of Irrisen, I'm not sure how much changes.

Overall? The adventure books I've seen seem to have no problem fighting important NPCs or changing areas, although some simply don't take place in an important area or involve an important NPC. Then again, I've only looked at a few of them, so my experience may be limited.

[ti'esar]

The only established campaign books that I've played through are Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil and Mysteries of the Moonsea, along with being somewhat familiar with Pathfinder's Reign of Winter.

Of those, Return to the ToEE (Greyhawk) didn't really seem connected to anything else in the setting, and so didn't have much impact on it overall. Mysteries of the Moonsea (Forgotten Realms) did include the destruction of several big cities on the line, so that change happened if you failed... although I don't know if any of the NPCs present there were known from anywhere else. Reign of Winter (Pathfinder) had you running around on your own, and while it does involve fighting an important NPC in the nation of Irrisen, I'm not sure how much changes.

Overall? The adventure books I've seen seem to have no problem fighting important NPCs or changing areas, although some simply don't take place in an important area or involve an important NPC. Then again, I've only looked at a few of them, so my experience may be limited.

I'm not talking about published adventures - those pretty much have to stick within certain bounds. But what's been interesting me, as someone who prefers world-altering campaigns myself (although I'm also almost exclusively homebrew-setting), is that from what I've seen online, people playing in established settings with campaigns they made up themselves also tend to stick within those bounds. The point of this thread is to see how many counter-examples (like NichG and lytokk) there are so I can tell whether this is actually a real thing or not.

[HammeredWharf]

One thing that could prevent all the pantheon-slaying shenanigans mentioned in this topic is that most D&D campaigns never reach lvl 20. Lvl 10-ish PCs don't really get to alter the universe in a major way, barring Plot Power.

[BWR]

How drastic are we talking about? Mere changes from canon or changing things so they hardly resemble the original? And does avoiding drastic canon changes count? (Like ignoring the Warth of the Immortals for Mystara, or the Time of Troubles/Sundering/Spellplague for Forgotten Realms)
We played a very long Dragonlance campaign which started out much the same as the War of the Lance without the canon heroes, then did a lot of other stuff. There were changes to how the dragonarmies worked, how gone the gods were since the Cataclysm (there were a few priests about all the way), no Green Gemstoneman, a new set of artifacts, mixiing in Taladas, different NPCs, etc.

I'm sort of running an L5R game set about 1190, where several canon events didn't happen (because they were stupid), including all the new Minor Clans that canonically sprung up since the Second Day of Thunder, no Englihtenment period, no Destroyer War, no Spider winning all over the place, no Heaven's Net, no Satsu-sock puppet, no omniscience for the Empress, and the PCs destroyed one of the major evil artifacts of the setting, got their own clan by redeeming the dead Boar clan, and got 3 Crane daimyo killed.
We're wrapping up another L5R campaign, set in the Gozoku era, where the PCs could easily have changed the course of history by backing another heir to the throne than the canon one.
And in a very alt.u. L5R game the empire had disintegrated to squabbling clans centuries before the 2DT, and my character eventually put his descendants on the throne.

But I think the reason most people don't change too much in established settings because you like the existing thing and don't want to ruin it.

[NichG]

I just realized that the way this topic is phrased means there's going to be a lot of selection bias going on which will make it hard to actually evaluate the question of whether world-altering events are more common in Homebrew settings. So me giving the one example of a canonical setting with world-altering events in my experience needs to be given along with the number of times in which it has not in fact happened. So here's the raw numbers to help even up the analysis:

My own campaign breakdown:

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Canonical settings:

- 5 Planescape (1 of which had a major shakeup, 2 of which had a minor shakeup that could have been major - a god of death died in one, and the other involved rewriting the history of the githzerai, 2 of which had no real changes to the setting). The campaigns without world-altering events were both earlier in my gaming career.

Homebrew settings (6 campaigns);

- Tales of the Maw, Gilded Flasks, A Few Dead Men, Elseportrait, and Memoir all involved world-altering events (5)

- The 6th, Ortien (a 2ed D&D dungeon-crawl campaign) did not.

And out of campaigns that others have run:

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Canonical games:

- L5R: 1 campaign. Involved high-end setting elements and things like that, but no real changes to the setting.

- 7th Sea: 2 campaigns, one definitely involved major changes to the setting, the second aborted halfway through so its inconclusive

- World of Darkness: 1 campaign. (this probably shouldn't as canonical as the GM did a LOT of homebrewing and changing things around, but ostensibly it took place in the 'Earth' of World of Darkness). Major changes to the setting from player actions, to the tune of resurrecting all of the Neverborn, creating new races of supernaturals, etc, etc.

- Slayers d20/Planescape crossover: Scripted major changes to the Slayers setting, no major changes to the Planescape setting.

Homebrew games:

- Omega Point (modified D&D): Major changes to the setting.
- Guilo (club campaign, D&D): No major changes to the setting
- Nameless 1ed D&D campaign: No major changes to the setting, but also no well-defined setting to speak of (we rolled for new terrain hexes and such out of the book)
- BESM: No real changes to the setting

So to summarize, out of all games I've run/played in: ~40-50% of canonical games had players enacting major changes (uncertainty due to incomplete campaigns, whether 'scripted changes' count, etc), and 60% of homebrew games had players enacting major changes.

[hymer]

We had a GM who had the emperor of the Empire in WFRP assassinated. The player who knew the setting well could hardly believe it and looked a bit stunned, so I suppose it was a fairly major thing.

[GrayGriffin]

One of the PTU games I'm in is close to wrapping up, but our GM says that this setting has been used before, and will still be used in future. And yes, there have been lots of changes. For a long time now, the Viridian Forest has been seen as a place of death and doom. However, our characters are now gathering the resources to fight the evil spirit in control of it, and potentially defeat it. Not to mention that several legendaries and ancient artifacts have surfaced. Also, in somewhat more minor but still game-changing terms, thanks to my character and her miracle-creating ability, there is now a well-structured brick tunnel leading from somewhere in the Viridian Forest to Pewter City.

[Aedilred]

We had a GM who had the emperor of the Empire in WFRP assassinated. The player who knew the setting well could hardly believe it and looked a bit stunned, so I suppose it was a fairly major thing.

There was an officially published campaign where that happened. That's not necessarily the campaign you were playing, mind, and the campaign in question was later retconned with extreme prejudice, but there is a precedent.

[ti'esar]

How drastic are we talking about? Mere changes from canon or changing things so they hardly resemble the original? And does avoiding drastic canon changes count? (Like ignoring the Warth of the Immortals for Mystara, or the Time of Troubles/Sundering/Spellplague for Forgotten Realms)

Just ignoring drastic canon changes wouldn't count, but having the characters prevent them or alter their outcomes would. Changing the background before the campaign actually began also wouldn't count, at least not on its own.

To reiterate: the basic idea I'm trying to determine the truth of here is this: in my experience reading people's online campaign journals/diaries/whatever you want to call them, it seems like most DMs - in contrast to my personal gaming style - seem to not have drastic changes to the status quo happen in established settings, even though (unlike with actual published canon material) there's no real reason to prevent them. I'm looking for any evidence to disprove that this is A Thing That Happens before I start to trying to figure out why it happens.

(By the way, in addition to personal stories I'd also appreciate links to any archives I can browse).

[GrayGriffin]

Well, our campaign is still approaching the climax, so I probably won't post up the chat archive until it does reach that point. However, you can find the PBP half of the campaign world here. The threads that make the most reference to potential changes in the world are Deino What Lurks in The High Seas and Journey to the Unknown in Johto.

[hymer]

There was an officially published campaign where [the emperor was murdered]. That's not necessarily the campaign you were playing, mind, and the campaign in question was later retconned with extreme prejudice, but there is a precedent.

I'm pretty sure it was his own campaign. It involved (among many things) a riverboat mystery, shooting a dragon with a cannon, stopping a war with Bretonia (this was the most direct effect of the emperor's death), and establishing our own fief near the border to Kislev (with a memorable GM ban on us executing halflings because they were so small).

[chainer1216]

Well, my PCs accidentally gave the lord of blades a working creation forge and a way to activate it, all before the treaty of thronehold was signed. That'll be pretty dang significant.

Other than that there was a long running Star Wars KotOR game where I personally killed Revan while he was still technically a jedi, that was a pretty big shock to the group/GM. Though he later on thanked me for making the game more interesting.

[Aedilred]

I'm pretty sure it was his own campaign. It involved (among many things) a riverboat mystery, shooting a dragon with a cannon, stopping a war with Bretonia (this was the most direct effect of the emperor's death), and establishing our own fief near the border to Kislev (with a memorable GM ban on us executing halflings because they were so small).

Hmm... that does actually sound a bit like the campaign in question. Although not entirely; either it's a huge coincidence or he took some inspiration from The Enemy Within (which is all well and good, especially since other than the finale it's a kickass campaign).

[hymer]

@ Aedilred: It's possible, but the whole thing was more like a bunch of short, barely connected story arcs. That's what I failed to give the impression of with the disjointed list of things. There was barely any chaos-stuff, which I presume The Enemy Within would be rife with.

[Urpriest]

I feel like it depends. There are some settings and games that assume the opposite, where most games end up overturning some aspect of the setting. Pretty much every Exalted game I've heard described does something to radically change the setting's status quo, because that's the scale on which the game is built.

Eberron is somewhere in between. I feel like any game in which the PCs get to high level in Eberron inherently changes the setting because the setting otherwise lacks active, high-level adventurer-types.

That said, I feel like other settings (Greyhawk and FR outside of published campaigns, Pathfinder) are less conducive to this sort of thing, and I can't think of a lot of examples of setting-screw in those.