The road yet taken; old timers: what is your White Whale setting?

[Jd Smith1]

For me it's Star Wars.

I only played WEG's Star Wars RPG, a couple of times, when it first came out, but thought the game was really cool. The setting is fantastic, and like many others, I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies (all of them).

But I don't read extended universe novels, etc. and have always been concerned about my ability to run a Star Wars game, where it's quite likely the other players will know the universe better than me. Then you run into issues associated with running games based on well-known intellectual properties (e.g., Middle Earth), and it's just too much.

So Star Wars remains my Moby Dick, and likely will always be so.

I looked into SW recently, and decided against running it for that exact same reason.

 

[R_J_K75]

For me it's Star Wars.

I only played WEG's Star Wars RPG, a couple of times, when it first came out, but thought the game was really cool. The setting is fantastic, and like many others, I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies (all of them).

But I don't read extended universe novels, etc. and have always been concerned about my ability to run a Star Wars game, where it's quite likely the other players will know the universe better than me. Then you run into issues associated with running games based on well-known intellectual properties (e.g., Middle Earth), and it's just too much.

So Star Wars remains my Moby Dick, and likely will always be so.

I ran WEG, WotC and Saga for about 4-5 shorter-ish campaigns. They were fun and pretty successful but I always had to put alot of extra thought into adventures so they stood out from the movies enough to be original but not so much that they were unrecognizable as SW. Most of my players had only watched the first 3, and then next 3 movies at that time and I read alot of EU novels and supplements so it took alot of exposition at times to describe things or get a point across.

 

[Pawndream]

Yeah. That's what fears me the most about it. I think it would be a lot of work to make it feel right, avoid canon-missteps, etc. Too daunting.

 

[dragoner]

For the longest time I wanted to run a hard sf game with realistic star maps and all that. Then I did, latest map which it makes me feel good that Winchell Chung of Atomic Rockets fame called "Excellent! Professionally done!"

This will probably be for my next game, 1st was M-Space, right now I'm running Classic Traveller, and for the 3rd iteration maybe a system of my own design mixing Gamma World and Classic Traveller for PC mechanics; gotta love polyhedrals.

The storyline from this one is that a spacecraft travels 1000 years to the future through a wormhole, from the old game, sort of post-apocalyptic; or at least post-war fall.

“The truth about the world, he said, is that anything is possible. Had you not seen it all from birth and thereby bled it of its strangeness it would appear to you for what it is, a hat trick in a medicine show, a fevered dream, a trance bepopulate with chimeras having neither analogue nor precedent, an itinerant carnival, a migratory tentshow whose ultimate destination after many a pitch in many a mudded field is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning." -Blood Meridian

 

[aramis erak]

So, long-term GMs: what is the setting you've always wanted to run a campaign in, but for which you've never got the right inspiration/group/motivation/system/etc?

Non-humorous Albedo campaign.
Robotech campaign that's more than just combat.

 

[aramis erak]

Yeah. That's what fears me the most about it. I think it would be a lot of work to make it feel right, avoid canon-missteps, etc. Too daunting.

Star Wars does quite well - just lay out at start that your head-cannon is just the RPG books you own and the movies and shows you have watched. Most Star Wars fans cope with it pretty well... and it's not like the SWEU is self-consistent.

Trek fans tend to be tighter... but still, it's worth doing with an up front "here's my canon" warning.

 

[R_J_K75]

... but still, it's worth doing with an up front "here's my canon" warning.

When we played it was after EPIII but before EPIV mostly, and then a campaign or two after EPVI, so it was kinda open canon wise. I read the New Jedi Order books and the WotC sourcebook of the same name were both really good. Thats the series where the The Yuuzhan Vong invade.

 

[Eltab]

For me it's Star Wars.

I only played WEG's Star Wars RPG, a couple of times, when it first came out, but thought the game was really cool. The setting is fantastic, and like many others, I am a big fan of the Star Wars movies (all of them).

But I don't read extended universe novels, etc. and have always been concerned about my ability to run a Star Wars game, where it's quite likely the other players will know the universe better than me. Then you run into issues associated with running games based on well-known intellectual properties (e.g., Middle Earth), and it's just too much.

So Star Wars remains my Moby Dick, and likely will always be so.

+1 to the "canon" idea expressed above.

"This game will be set at X point in the timeline. The movies up to that point are a thing and have happened / are happening. I (the DM) haven't read any of the novels."
Novel plots didn't / don't happen, and their characters are just normal people doing normal things. If you've got an idea from a novel that you think is cool, tell me about the book and I'll read it. Maybe (but maybe not, fair warning) I will work it into the game.

 

[R_J_K75]

+1 to the "canon" idea expressed above.

"This game will be set at X point in the timeline. The movies up to that point are a thing and have happened / are happening. I (the DM) haven't read any of the novels."
Novel plots didn't / don't happen, and their characters are just normal people doing normal things. If you've got an idea from a novel that you think is cool, tell me about the book and I'll read it. Maybe (but maybe not, fair warning) I will work it into the game.

I used to play with a friend in a Forgotten Realms campaign that we were both DMing for the two of us and a few other players. Because we both read quite a few of the novels it got a little confusing and we both sometimes butted heads as to what was and wasnt canon in the campaign. But that was our own fault for not figuring that out from the start.

 

[MNblockhead]

But I don't read extended universe novels, etc. and have always been concerned about my ability to run a Star Wars game, where it's quite likely the other players will know the universe better than me. Then you run into issues associated with running games based on well-known intellectual properties (e.g., Middle Earth), and it's just too much.

The answer to that is usually that "I am running a game inspired by [famous show/book series], but it is not, and does not pretend to be canon."

The problem is that the sell is usually that you are running Star Wars, Middle Earth, Forgotten Realms, etc. and you want to attract other fans of the property. It is difficult to walk the line between making it feel like you are living and adventuring in a beloved setting on the one hand, but not being overly constrained by it on the other.

With something like Forgotten Realms, I really don't have an issue because I have read none of the novels, never played in FR in any earlier edition, never played any of the video games set in the FR, and the 5e adventure modules and SCAG are my only really exposure. So if I run Dragon Heist, Descent into Avernus, Storm Kinds Thunder, etc. I really have only bothered to prep the book, which I may customize. I simply am not running a Forgotton Realms campaign. More like a home brew campaign that generously borrows from the FR. So it is easy to deal with uber fans. "Who? Drizzt? Is that a verb for applying sauce to a dish? Never heard of him. Not in my campaign. Sorry." Good news is that you can play a dual-wielding drow ranger with a big cat companion and I won't roll my eyes at you.

The only time I've run into this issue was with The Expanse. I'm a big fan of the TV show, though I have not read the novels. I also like the game, both the crunch and the fluff. But I really felt constrained by canon (as well as by some of the science for space travel) and I only ran one session. It was...okay. But the book is mostly for reading and collecting.