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Post by Deleted on Mar 3, 2012 9:29:43 GMT -8
So I was having a discussion with a buddy of mine relating to the canon of a certain popular sci fi movie series. I am afte rall a geek. Thing is this topic started peculating in my mind and resulted in the little article below on my thoughts related to using canon in an RPG. Hopefully people find it interesting.
In any type of fiction canon is the official or "true" history behind the story. Formed from all the little facts and details that make up a living breathing world, its these details that give any story, be it a book, movie, or RPG, depth and immersion. However canon is also often the starting point for all kinds of arguments. In fact in the realm of RPGs it has started as many wars as religion, to some it almost is one.
In gaming canon is a tricky beat, after all its an interactive experience and the players aren't there to be told a story, but to write their own. Established setting like D&D's Forgotten Realms, or my personal favorite Dark Sun, tend to have decades of canon already built up which give the world tons of history and depth, but also make it hard for the new characters of your players to make their mark in the world. This is especially true if one decides to play in a setting like Star Wars where the big heroes have already been immortalized in multiple medias and thus will always overshadow the players.
Now one could always just create a homebrew world, crafting it specifically to make the players heroes in. Let's face it though, we all love getting to play in a world we know with the chance of meeting the characters we love. And how many of you wouldn't kill to get a chance to be the guy who flew in and fired the shot that destroyed the Death Star? So how do you work around the canon hand cuffs and make this work?
One route is to use the "official" canon as merely a backdrop, it tells one story of how things went, one path that might have been taken. Then set the players on a similar but winding path that sometimes crosses but is more often parallel to the "official" events. Imagine a Star Wars game where the party is playing a group of rebel spies collecting all that Intel that Luke and the gang used to take down the Empire. Alot of video games use this method to pull the player into a known setting while still experiencing a new story.
Another method, and my personal favorite, is to use the established canon only up to the point where my story starts. In my Dark Sun game for instance the thousands of years of history up to the moment my party stepped into the gladiatorial arena did happen, at that moment however we took a left turn from official canon. I still touch on things from the novels and the DM and player guides, but the official canon is nothing more than a guide and a history to give depth as my party forges ahead. In fact I actually started my story before the official novels are set. This allows me to build a new canon based on how my party react to the world. NPC's live or die based on their actions rather than if they survived in the books. At the end of the campaign the world of Athas will have been shaped not by some author I have never met but by a group of my best friends.
There are plenty of other methods you can use, relying on varying levels of canon. Some might use official modules, which being based on canon cover that aspect, and more often than not are also very railroady so the players are given very limited opportunities to alter the story. I'm not a fan of this style, but it works from some. Others might simply ditch canon completely and just use the world as a setting while ignoring the official characters and events. I have used this method as well on a few occasions and it works well if you just want the feel of a setting and don't care about anything else.
The important thing to always remember is that it's your game and it really doesn't matter how the story played out in the books. You and your players have the power to pick and choose what canon you want to use for your game. All or none, choose what you like and then build your own story, and in many ways your own world, on the bones of the old one.
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Post by jazzisblues on Mar 3, 2012 9:54:53 GMT -8
Very good thoughts and ideas Tentagil.
I use canon almost exclusively as backdrop and setting around the story we're telling in the game. I don't revisit stories because those stories have already been told and don't need to be told again.
I ran my game for years in the Forgotten Realms and very rarely would any character meet a character from canon whether it be from the official material or the many novels. I did use them as flavor and to help me be consistent in how I presented things.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by uselesstriviaman on Mar 3, 2012 10:06:38 GMT -8
I did the exact same thing with my campaign world, tentagil. My own version of the Forgotten Realms was based entirely on the canon world, up until a specific branching point, at which time things went WAAAYYY different. Like, world-changing-cataclysm different. I have used both home-brewed and official adventures, tailoring them to fit into my own world. I'm considering the possibility of starting from scratch somewhere down the line, but haven't come up with enough satisfactory fluff yet. I suppose I should work on that...
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Mar 4, 2012 7:32:58 GMT -8
My favorite method is to set the game in an era of the canon world that there isn't much written about. Pretty much any fictional world will have some eras which are better documented than others. By setting the game in a less-documented era, I can still use the rules of the world (with some extrapolations to adapt to the different era), but don't have to worry about messing with canon characters and events
For example, my first play-by-email game was set at Hogwarts...in the 1920s. Only a couple of canon characters even appeared in the game.
If I were ever going to play Star Wars, I'd do something in the Old Republic era, probably before the KOTOR games.
If I were ever going to do Middle-Earth, I'd either work with the time period between The Hobbit and LOTR, as the new game The One Ring does, or I'd pick something like the time of the Last Alliance, which has only broad events sketched in. (But I doubt I'll ever game in Middle-Earth because I think I feel too strongly about how things should happen in that world and I'd have to handpick players who see more or less eye-to-eye with me on that.)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 4, 2012 9:06:57 GMT -8
The few times I've run games set in established universes I've generally taken the approach of using cannon as a backdrop and its only officially cannon if explicitly mentioned during the course of the game. Until its mentioned it can and will change if the game requires it. It helps that most of my games don't tend to focus upon high leveled heroics where the fate of the world / galaxy / universe is in the balance so I rarely find my games overlap with the established big plot of the setting.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Apr 17, 2012 16:11:47 GMT -8
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Apr 18, 2012 1:23:20 GMT -8
I will throw my two cents into this topic because I get the idea some people equate tabletop storytelling with railroading and I would like to disabuse the notion so I can stop pussy footing around with nomenclature. [For more on that, check out Michael's blog post: morrisonmp.wordpress.com/2012/04/16/story-and-game ] I do not use anyone else's canon for my games. I shape a world and present information to players as it comes to them/their characters. Because of this, there can be no (initial) separation between player and character knowledge in my games. NPCs are the main source of in-game knowledge and GM-to-player chat is a way to keep the two-way communication open and the story ideas fresh rather than resort to other people's published accounts. This method goes back to Gary Gygax’s advice from AD&D 1e to start everyone (in a new game) at level one. It promotes player engrossment/immersion. My game of Star Wars would not have a Luke, Lea, Solo, Boba Fett, a Millennium Falcon or a Darth Vader mythology. I see this knowledge as irrelevant to PCs. It’s like a cut scene in a video game: cool to watch but hardly interactive and not part of my tabletop. It’s the GM taking the spotlight. I would touch on the named villains, Hutt, Vader, etc., because of their reputations and celebrity, but not on their personal story or heroic counterparts. I would not enjoy players in the shadow of a canon. I would improvise that stuff up. Players who play a role-playing game to be a published character in their favourite book, like playing The James Bond from the encyclopedia, or even jumping into a Kugelmass Episode [ www.woodyallen.art.pl/eng/artykul_eng_03.php ] where everything is explored would be disappointed and totally lost. That role-playing does not appeal to me. It’s acting. It’s railroading the GM – another player – something not much discussed. It’s pretending the published author is the player’s personal ghostwriter. Such a character wouldn’t exist in my game: neither player nor PC. (That’s not to say Joe Player, PC Hero!, could not have a Luke Skywalker-type campaign in my Star Wars but he cannot count on the scripted railroad of Tatooine to Yavin IV to Hoth to Endor because “that’s canon, man!”) Also villains in my shared fantasy may be “villains” (or not) for different reasons than those stated in a published canon. Maybe The Rebellion /is/ the Big Bad and the Jedi are a power hungry secret society cabal for example. Someone coming into my game expecting to play light and goodness under the tutelage of a "Yoda" might be real surprised to find this little duplicitous green skin is the villain speaking with forked tongue! My players need to be aware going in that the world is my creation with player input. If "PC-Luke" is best friends of "NPC-Biggs" and learns they're small cogs working for the wrong side, it could lead to an interesting game if Biggs just shrugs or if he is a "cult-like believer." And he is whatever the player wants him to be to create the most dramatic dilemma. Don’t count on Biggs as hero sidekick. Cyberpunk 2020 offers itself as a natural example not to play game canon. My game will use Netrunning rules, the corporate dystopia and the anti-hero theme but without some funny drug war leading to an implausible stock market crash. It’s not 2020 but more like always a decade into the future. No one has heard of Case, probably a suicide in a cardboard box at street level, but there are rumours about a Dixie Flatline and Mintermute chatter type stuff, but only the Net hipsters would even know about this not Solos. (I.e. it does not exists unless I, the GM, take the Netrunner player aside and say, here is a list of rumours, holy grails and known facts on the Net.) I do the same thing in my D&D game. I use the 1983 Greyhawk Map and the geo-political stats but that’s it. I started to publish a Wiki about my world, which I will return to authoring online once my Internet is settled. So, basically, canon is anathema to me. It’s another aid to imagination that doesn’t abet the imagination but, rather, the lack of it. Like rules that are misguidedly created to help role-play but hinder it by driving the focus onto rules. It communicates a lack of communication at the table by progressing the tabletop experience beyond the initial need to communicate and find a shared language/imagination together. Also, I do not want to replay someone else’s game, book or movie. I want to create “our own story.” That’s my two cents contributed in this post, to the industry as a whole and within my group of tabletop players.
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Post by daeglan on Apr 19, 2012 8:04:36 GMT -8
Choose an event have it happen differently and have your game start after that. now you won't be a slave to canon.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 19, 2012 10:57:31 GMT -8
I can only reiterate that canon is useful as backdrop information sort of the swirl going on around the island the characters are on, but never the twain (canon and our story) shall meet.
Cheers,
JiB
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Apr 19, 2012 15:45:13 GMT -8
Choose an event have it happen differently and have your game start after that. now you won't be a slave to canon. That's a popular solution, but that article at Critical Hits illustrates one of the pitfalls when the author talks about how annoyed he gets at the idea of making Hoth a tropical world. Obviously, the GM doesn't want to be a slave to players who can't handle the slightest deviation from source material, but you don't want to change the game world so much that it doesn't feel like the source setting any more, either.
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Post by daeglan on Apr 20, 2012 8:13:59 GMT -8
I said event. not whole planet or region. EVENT. IE Han Solo goes around the other side of the tree and does not step on the twig and does take the scout out quietly. everything from that point forward happens differently now.
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Post by jazzisblues on Apr 20, 2012 11:28:51 GMT -8
I said event. not whole planet or region. EVENT. IE Han Solo goes around the other side of the tree and does not step on the twig and does take the scout out quietly. everything from that point forward happens differently now. Before I even start I want it clearly understood that I'm not saying one or the other is wrong I'm simply voicing what my concern with doing what you describe would be. Consider the butterfly effect. What if Han did step around the other side of the tree and didn't step on that twig and didn't alert the trooper and took him out and they went on their way? What happens next. Well for starters they maybe don't have the speeder bike chase through the forest which means that among other things several speeder bike troopers are not killed, but more significantly Leia doesn't end up with the Ewoks. Maybe that's ok maybe there are other ways to accomplish those things but if they don't happen what is the impact on the story? Maybe nothing, but maybe it changes huge things as it spreads out through the story. Again not saying it's wrong just that this is the concern I would have. Cheers, JiB
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Post by tappy on Apr 20, 2012 11:44:41 GMT -8
I agree with Creative Cowboy.
If I run a starwars game, there will be no luke, leia, or anything else like that.
Also, I like mystery better than I than Canon. for example, Exalted is designed to have a canon storyline that is openended, but though the years, they have answered far too many questions. I might have the scarlet empress actually be Gaia (which would explain why dragon-blooded that are closely related to her are more powerful), or that deathlords are the remains of third circle souls of the neverborn. these things are certainly not canon, but they can make the game more fun for me, because I can be more creative, and more fun for the players, because they don't know the answers, and needs to figure them out.
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Post by kaitoujuliet on Apr 20, 2012 13:39:25 GMT -8
I said event. not whole planet or region. EVENT. IE Han Solo goes around the other side of the tree and does not step on the twig and does take the scout out quietly. everything from that point forward happens differently now. An event can still change the entire feel of the game-world, depending on which one you choose. Han Solo doesn't step on the twig and the Emperor gets taken down in a slightly different way is one thing. Han Solo doesn't step on the twig and the Emperor goes on to rule for another thousand years is another. Or for another example: Anakin Skywalker doesn't turn to the Dark Side, so now there's no Darth Vader and the Emperor finds a different apprentice? BIG change, which I could imagine being deal-breaking for some people, stemming from one thing going differently. What if Han did step around the other side of the tree and didn't step on that twig and didn't alert the trooper and took him out and they went on their way? What happens next. Well for starters they maybe don't have the speeder bike chase through the forest which means that among other things several speeder bike troopers are not killed, but more significantly Leia doesn't end up with the Ewoks. Maybe that's ok maybe there are other ways to accomplish those things but if they don't happen what is the impact on the story? Maybe nothing, but maybe it changes huge things as it spreads out through the story. I suspect that's what Daeglan would call a best-case scenario. Wide open for PC action, but with the rest of the universe intact. Don't get me wrong--I do get the benefits of this technique. I just don't think it's the only way to handle canon or that it's the right approach for every group.
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Post by CreativeCowboy on Apr 21, 2012 1:10:03 GMT -8
Thanks for the recognition Tappy. I recon canon would feel like handcuffs to us both.
RPGs offer one (of many) unique experience no other game (any genre/type) can, which is immediately understood: the multiverse.
Canon, to a large extend in my mind, negates the tabletop benefit of that unique experience. I also believe that all these canon settings TSR put out in the very late 80's led to the decline of our hobby by attracting a kind of role-playing by rote, a proxy role-playing, that had not been seen back in the days when no one gave a second thought about a randomly rolled up dungeon.
In those days, Fantasy stories were fashionable to write also. So, aside from the TSR settings, the few touchstones to fantasy became many and, I posit, a kind of culture framing took place along the lines of popular settings.
How to explain RPGs to the uninitiated usually leads us back to those archetypical touchstones. Back in the day, there were fewer touchstones and fewer fans of them.
What's Star Frontiers? It's like a radio play of Blade Runner. Oh! I want to play Rick Deckard!
This is the way a board gamer approaches RPGs. It's the way someone playing Monopoly would say: I want to play the dog. But with one difference: no one complains in a board game "the dog never did that!"
What's your D&D setting? It's like Lord of the Rings. Oh! I want to play Denethor!
Or worse yet: I thought we were playing Middle Earth Role Playing! Didn't you read/watch LotR?! Or its variation: This is D&D not MERP! Or: This is Dragon Lance not Greyhawk.
So the GM (and other players) becoming slaves to setting removes one of the greatest creative ideas I ever came across from role-playing: the multiverse. Settings, by the very nature of being published "authorized" canon, create a creativity stifling monoverse.
That's why, to me, they're anathema. Gary Gygax himself never thought to publish the Greyhawk World, and when he did eventually he left it all vague.
The problem to attract new players... is two fold: attracting them with basic explanations like the game is an improvised radio play with dice; and keeping the new players when the old ones argue about canon repeatedly at the game table. The game seems very much less "improvised" to the new player from that point forward and he or she may feel very much more out of his or her depth. New players get a taste of being an outsider at the game table when their part of the multiverse is not included within a shared fantasy. And I have yet to meet a new player with a bunch of canon baggage.
Noobs let me enjoy creating our shared fantasy; creating our own unique game world canon experience. This is why, heuristically, I prefer to game with noobs.
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