A thread I just read about Mordenkainen in the FR, plus memories of an active thread from before the recent site crash, prompted me to ask:
Do you care about canon in RPG setting?
When I talk about running a GH game, or an Oriental Adventures game; or when I say that I am running a module; what I mean is that I am using some maps, some characters, some tropes and themes, taken from the setting or module.
But I don't pay much attention to the "canon" of the setting or module. I've run OA using homedrawn maps and the Kara-Tur boxed set. I'm currently running a GH game, using Burning Wheel mechanics, and I move between my old folio maps and 2nd ed and 3E era ones - whichever happens to be at the top of my folder - without worrying too much about it.
What makes this game a GH one is the basic geography and history (Hardby is a city ruled by a magic-using Gynarch, across the Wooly Bay from the Bright Desert, which is populated by Suel tribesmen). Not the minutiae of canon: the details of the setting I make up as needed for play or determined during the course of play.
I approach my 4e games - one using the default cosmology (but the "world map" is the map from the inside of the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror) and one in Dark Sun - the same way. Follow basic outlines, and use published material where it seems useful, but otherwise without too much concern for what is "canon" in the setting.
How do you use setting material? Is canon important to you?
Do you care about canon in RPG setting?
When I talk about running a GH game, or an Oriental Adventures game; or when I say that I am running a module; what I mean is that I am using some maps, some characters, some tropes and themes, taken from the setting or module.
But I don't pay much attention to the "canon" of the setting or module. I've run OA using homedrawn maps and the Kara-Tur boxed set. I'm currently running a GH game, using Burning Wheel mechanics, and I move between my old folio maps and 2nd ed and 3E era ones - whichever happens to be at the top of my folder - without worrying too much about it.
What makes this game a GH one is the basic geography and history (Hardby is a city ruled by a magic-using Gynarch, across the Wooly Bay from the Bright Desert, which is populated by Suel tribesmen). Not the minutiae of canon: the details of the setting I make up as needed for play or determined during the course of play.
I approach my 4e games - one using the default cosmology (but the "world map" is the map from the inside of the old B/X module Night's Dark Terror) and one in Dark Sun - the same way. Follow basic outlines, and use published material where it seems useful, but otherwise without too much concern for what is "canon" in the setting.
How do you use setting material? Is canon important to you?