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| #1ZardnaarDec 12, 2014 15:17:35 | As the title says do you ignore canon in a setting? I'm not talking about picking a date and then changing things but rewriting the major plotlines or ignoring them together?
I sometimes do it but try and keep any changes somewhat plausible. I have more or less done 3 big ones over the years.
1. Forgotten Realms. I ignore the Spell plague and Sundering totally. The next Realms game I start will be set in 1375 and pick up where 3.5 left off. Still boycotting FR novels although I read them form the library 0n occasion but the quality is gone.
2. Darksun. Darksun was a cool world kind of ruined by TSR metaplot which also happened to Krynn and the Realms with the Spellplague. I either use the 1st boxed set and go from there or in one case I advanced the timeline 1000 years and focused the campaign on restoring the world kind of picking up where the the 2nd boxed set was hinting at.
3. Star Wars. Recently they have declared the Star Wars Exanded Universe to be non canon- Star Wars Legends. 30 odd years of novels and comics gone out the window. I am starting a Star Wars Sage Edition game tomorrow and I am setting it 25 years after the Battle of Yavin but are ignoring the Yuuzhan Vong invasion storyline and having the Heroes of Yavin killed off. The big bads are going to be the Sith not the Dark Lords of the Sith but the original Sith race returning empowered by the dark side and they have a Star Forge or 3 (borrowed this idea from the Unknown Regions Book for SWSE).
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| #2ElfcrusherDec 12, 2014 15:25:54 | Check out the debates on this topic on The One Ring forums. If there's a fanbase that is deadly serious about it's canon, it's Tolkien fans.
Just don't admit you liked the movies. |
| #3DMPortilloDec 13, 2014 0:25:27 | P { margin-bottom: 0.21cm; } I do indeed ignore canon, I take the approach what is canon for me? I find if I'm going through a dry spell creativly It helps to use an exsisting plot and ignore and modify it to my own need. |
| #4MechaPilotDec 12, 2014 15:40:09 | Whether something is canon or not carries absolutely no weight for me. Either I like it, which means I'll probably keep it, or I don't, which means I'll definitely ignore/change it. |
| #5AaronOfBarbariaDec 12, 2014 15:43:22 | In some ways I do ignore canon of published settings.
Typically it is by reducing the level of presented NPCs to something I find more reasonable (i.e. Drizzt Do'Urden is a 10th level ranger when I run the Forgotten Realms, Mordenkainen is only 14th level wizard when I run Greyhawk, the "famous warrior king" is probably only 6th level, and anybody anywhere that is higher than 3rd level is regarded as being completely exceptional).
From time to time, I decide to ignore metaplot where it exists as well... usually just because I don't care to search through book after book looking for just what it was that happened that made X change to Y.
For the most part, though, my days of ignoring canon are over - I run in my own setting now, and I don't go about ignoring myself and my players. |
| #6cowleymenDec 12, 2014 15:44:50 | Every Table is going to have slightly different canon, espically if they regularly play in the same setting. Your group should have the chance to influnce things in the world, espically if you run long enough games to get into double digit levels, or start at higher levels. I think 5e has been and will continue to do a good job of letting DM's know to use what they need to use. Even campaign settins are not all or nothing rule sets.
but speaking of Star Wars. Disney just decided to just wipe 30 years of approved Expanded Universe material, and is going to fill stuff back up with things like that Star Wars Rebels show? they go games like the Knights of the Old Rebuplic . |
| #7EmerikolDec 12, 2014 15:47:51 | I don't use published settings because of all the associated baggage. |
| #8ImaculataDec 12, 2014 16:09:33 | Since I create my own setting, yes I completely ignore official canon. I do not read any of the books, nor do I care much for settings such as Eberon. I will also often ignore lore for particular monsters, and make up my own, if it fits the narrative. I'll exclude entire races of which I feel they do not fit the setting, and are terribly boring, such as elves and Drow (which are simply a variant of elves).
But within my own setting, I highly respect canon. Since my campaign takes place in a world that has been used in a variety of other campaigns, and even on an online RP forum, everything that happened in those campaigns, and on that forum, is all taken into consideration. |
| #9ZardnaarDec 12, 2014 17:11:38 |
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| #10MecheonDec 12, 2014 17:21:15 | I ignore any canon I don't want. Course I use my own world mostly, or either Ebberon or 13th Age's ones
Also, you know the Dark Sun bit was bad when the first thing WotC do when they do a big Dark Sun push is "Right, all this stuff? Never happened. Let's go back to when it was actually interesting" |
| #11tubadancrossDec 12, 2014 17:22:57 | I'd say I ignore canon, but I'm not sure I can say that as I know so little about canon. I am running a game in Faerun because that's what HOTDQ says it is, but I have just started playing D&D in early 2013. I think learning more about canon might be nice, but the be-all end-all is whether or not what happens is fun or not, so canon in a published setting is low priority. |
| #12DiffanDec 12, 2014 18:27:31 | I view a Campiagn Setting and the Canon within like a buffet. It's there to use at my leisure and to pick and choose what I want to occur in my version of the game/setting. NO ONE runs a perfect Canon Forgotten Realms game (even Ed Greenwood) that adheres to every single nuiance of the setting. The moment you start an adventure there you're instantly going against canon.
Things I completely ignore in the Forgotten Realms: • The death / Return of Eilistaraee and Vhaerun. The Drow pantheon is the same as it's always been. • Lantan isn't destoryed but an underwater refuge for the people of that land that have successfully mixed arcane magic and technology to live in such a hostile area. Basically Realms-based BioShock. • Tyr is still dead in my games and probably will NEVER come back. • Mystra is and always has been True Neutral - Unaligned and has a plethora of Chosen that range from evil to lawful good throughout the Realms.
To name a few
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| #13ankiyavonDec 12, 2014 18:38:35 |
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| #14EmerikolDec 12, 2014 19:07:32 | Well within my own campaign setting, I would stick strictly to canon. My love of campaign creation though is such that I don't tend to run the same setting over and over. Not to say I would not reuse it ever and I did it more often when I was younger. |
| #15GnarlDec 12, 2014 19:12:19 | Yes and no I guess. It's kind of silly to buy a campaign setting if you're not going to use it. So I use a lot of the lore I paid for but I also feel free to change whatever I want and ignore whatever a novel said happened.
I tend to kill popular NPCs though. There's nothing that irritates me more than one of my players knocking at Blackstaff's door to have tea with him... |
| #16EmerikolDec 12, 2014 19:28:10 | Gnarl I believe campaign settings are great reads. I enjoy reading them even if I never use them. Though of course like you I probably use something at some time or another. I just don't go into it assuming I'd need to to get value. I enjoy reading a campaign setting as much as I would a novel. I've bought dozens of them over the years (especially during the d20/OGL era) and I'm sure there are some I where I haven't used anything.
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| #17dafrcaDec 12, 2014 19:32:15 |
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| #18CCSDec 12, 2014 20:24:24 | Yes, I ignore cannon in these games all the time. Because it'll NEVER match up with what's going on in play at my table. It cant. We'll either simply be ahead of the official scribes (I'm not going to backtrack/recon our action to match what the company evrntually provides), lagging behind as we/I've missed something over the years (or just chosen not to read another sh**** novel), dislike something (I'm 100% anti-Ravenloft as a setting), etc. So I don't worry about it. That said, I'm perfectly willing to use bits I like. As for Star Wars..... Cannon for me has always been "did I see it in Episodes 1-6?" If yes, then it's cannon. If no? Then (game wise) I'll pick & choose the bits I like. |
| #19ElfcrusherDec 12, 2014 21:53:11 | I have to admit the misspelling of canon makes for some entertaining reading if you imagine they meant "cannon". |
| (Reply to #4)Azzy1974 |
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| #21rampantDec 13, 2014 0:58:53 | I tend to use it as a jumping off point and assume things will get steadily more divergent as time goes along, or that the players will get impatient and turn to arson requiring me to make up new locations they haven't burned down yet.
Of course that's a general trend, there are some aspects I prefer to twist and tweak a bit. I like to play around with the 'savage humanoids' a lot. Once had the PCs stuble onto a city state of minotaurs in togas, wearing brooms on their head, and eating gyros. The look on their faces when the market goers started screaming "EEEEEEK AN ELF! CALL THE GAURD! CALL THE ARMY! CALL ANIMAL CONTROL! IT'S GONNA BITE US AND GIVE US RABIES! ALL OUR FUR WILL FALL OUT AND OUR HORNS WILL FALL OFF!" keeps me warm when those players are critting my boss monsters. |
| #22ImaculataDec 13, 2014 2:36:15 |
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| #23sleypyDec 13, 2014 4:59:29 | I don't use publish settings, but I will take chucks of a published setting and add it to a campaign. My current campaign is use tweaked versions of the gods I found interesting in grey hawk, forgotten realms and points of lights. I use the settings material as a source to pull ideas and get inspiration. I might use canon for the afore mentioned reason, but I would never use it as actual canon. |
| (Reply to #41)AaronOfBarbaria |
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| #43ankiyavonDec 15, 2014 15:05:52 |
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| (Reply to #43)AaronOfBarbaria |
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| #45MecheonDec 16, 2014 0:55:25 |
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| (Reply to #40)Samrin |
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| #47ChrisCarlsonDec 16, 2014 8:43:28 |
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| (Reply to #47)Samrin | r |
| #49Huntsman57Dec 16, 2014 8:59:13 | I generally don't ignore canon, though my primary setting is FR and I'm only aware of the events that have transpired during 4E in a rather general sense so I may do so unintentionally at times.
Of course, high level PCs performing acts with significant impacts on the region or even the whole world will almost unavoidably rewrite what is known about the setting to some extent in your own campaign. |
| #50ChrisCarlsonDec 16, 2014 9:14:30 |
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| #51SamrinDec 16, 2014 9:18:09 | I figured the sarcasm was obvious |
| (Reply to #44)Azzy1974 |
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| #53MechaPilotDec 16, 2014 18:11:14 |
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| #54MecheonDec 16, 2014 23:05:47 |
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| #55ankiyavonDec 16, 2014 23:13:26 |
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| #56ZardnaarDec 17, 2014 0:30:25 | Zelda never really caught on here or Nintendo in general. It was Sega and then PLaystation then Xbox360. |
| #57JohnLynchDec 17, 2014 0:39:07 | If it hasn't been established at the table and changing it would not affect anything that's happened in the campaign(s) then it's fair game for changing. Even if it has been established, it could be contradicted if it was important enough. Then again, I run homebrew so it's nowhere near as much of an issue because the player's are discovering the world as the game unfolds.
I'm a big Dark Sun fan. I'd love to run a game in it one day. But I'm not a fan of either the TSR or even the WotC version. There's core aspects of Dark Sun in those games that I love, but there was a lot of stuff in them that I just don't enjoy (my reading of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting had the sorcerer kings portrayed as moustache twirling villains, I hate that templars aren't divine casters and are instead defilers). It's a lot easier for me if I take the things I like (illiterate society, elite nobles above the law, sorcerer kings ruling their kingdoms with an iron fist, magic feared by commoners) and put them into a new world. I can even throw in easter eggs to the rest of the setting and help in developing the history of that world and reveal more of the "history-plot" to the players across multiple campaigns.
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| #58MechaPilotDec 17, 2014 21:21:30 |
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| #59MechaPilotDec 17, 2014 21:24:33 |
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| #60hunterian7Dec 17, 2014 22:08:44 | I ignore cannon all the time. |
| (Reply to #60)Azzy1974 |
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| #62Mr.DurrikenDec 18, 2014 10:03:08 | Though I will liberally ignore canon to the point of complete setting refluff/rewrite, I general make use of maps from published settings. I too lazy to try and make my own maps and the published ones are usually so well done. This tends to tie me to place names, but one less thing, eh? TjD |
| (Reply to #61)The_White_Sorcerer |
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