A setting with no canon

[Ry]

I've heard people get into arguments over what's canon and what's not, and something cool just occured to me.

To back up for a sec: I'm working on an open, systemless fantasy setting with some other people. We're doing this with snippets of text from the voices of various characters of the setting, but even the fictional author of the text is a character. There's not going to be any "canon", really, because everything comes from someone's perspective, and they could be wrong.

I just thought that was cool. Has anybody else done this?

 

[Tonguez]

I once did this as part of a homebrew.
All the race write-ups were presented as excerpts from the 'Royal Encyclopedia' with different contributors (who were either PCs or NPCs), the Religion write-ups were Quotes from 'Holy Scripture' and Monster write ups took the form of a Medieval Bestiary, other setting details usually began with a quote (although it went into a more traditional format from this)

It was fun and allowed for speculation, tangents and tidbits of folklore to be peppered in amongst the facts but still treated mostly as canon

 

[Baron Opal]

Sort of. I find if there is no "objective truth" at all the setting becomes mushy and lacks "realism". However, once I pin down "what is" I can write something from various perspectives with their various predjudices and distortions.

I've only witten something like that once for a RQ game. It was fun having the players find three documents about a quest written from the Lunar, Orlanthi and God Forgotten POV.

 

[Teflon Billy]

Heh, I misread the title of this thread as "A Setting with no Conan"

My first thought was "Pass"

Carry on.

 

[ejja_1]

I've heard people get into arguments over what's canon and what's not, and something cool just occured to me.

To back up for a sec: I'm working on an open, systemless fantasy setting with some other people. We're doing this with snippets of text from the voices of various characters of the setting, but even the fictional author of the text is a character. There's not going to be any "canon", really, because everything comes from someone's perspective, and they could be wrong.

I just thought that was cool. Has anybody else done this?

I feel stupid asking this but hey Ive felt stupid lots of times before and it hasn't stopped me from proving those feelings are correct...
Uh yeah...
What is canon?

 

[dystmesis]

Cannon

Which of these would you rather have in your setting?

or

you decide

 

[Ry]

What is canon?

Stuff that's taken to be the objective truth of the setting - so if I write something in my setting like: "The Material Plane is coextensive with the Ethereal." and I'm writing it as Ryan Stoughton, author, then I'm saying taht if you play in this setting you're playing in a setting that has an Ethereal plane that's coextensive with something called the Material.

If instead of saying that myself, I write in the voice of a scholar in the setting, I could say this:

"The Material Plane is coextensive with the Ethereal." - signed Zamphiorus the Wicked

That's a very different thing. In theory I'm saying that someone, somewhere signs their name Zamphorious the Wicked, but the bit about the Material Plane is now take-it or leave it. Zamphorious could be wrong, he could be lying, and so on.

Does that help?

 

[ejja_1]

Stuff that's taken to be the objective truth of the setting - so if I write something in my setting like: "The Material Plane is coextensive with the Ethereal." and I'm writing it as Ryan Stoughton, author, then I'm saying taht if you play in this setting you're playing in a setting that has an Ethereal plane that's coextensive with something called the Material.

If instead of saying that myself, I write in the voice of a scholar in the setting, I could say this:

"The Material Plane is coextensive with the Ethereal." - signed Zamphiorus the Wicked

That's a very different thing. In theory I'm saying that someone, somewhere signs their name Zamphorious the Wicked, but the bit about the Material Plane is now take-it or leave it. Zamphorious could be wrong, he could be lying, and so on.

Does that help?

Yes thank you.
The information given the players is mostly from in game characters or sources within the game itself in my campaigns. It is up to them to verify wether the information is fact or ficiton. If they ask me directly I will answer simple questions that they can perceive using their five senses. Ie The sky is blue, water is wet and apples taste like apples.
By the way I like your examples name and may steal it for a future NPC.

 

[Dykstrav]

The old World of Darkness setting took this approach in alot of its sourcebooks, which were mostly fluff. For example, the revised clanbooks took the format of a brief introductory story of someone's embrace, then the rest was the sire's instruction/dialogue to the new vampire.

Except for crunchy rules stuff, the "truth" of matters depended very much on the eye of the beholder. For example, most vampires considered Caine to be the first vampire and counted their descent from him. The Followers of Set (an Egyptian-based clan) thought of Caine as little more than a campfire story that older vampires told to keep the younger ones in line. They measured their lineage from Set and considered Caine to be anecdotal at best, if they even believed that he had ever existed at all. From a player's point of view, this was cool because nobody had seen either Caine nor Set in many thousands of years, so there's no way to "prove" anything in the context of the setting.

 

[Ranger REG]

Which of these would you rather have in your setting?

or

you decide

In a fantasy setting, no gunpowder.

If I want gunpowder, I'd play d20 Modern.