Forgotten Realms: Do players care about canon?

[JoeGKushner]

We really need a book that captures some of these odd yet funny books that any role player can go buy. Some of these stories are timeless classic.s

 

[devilbat]

For the most part, I follow canon in my ongoing Waterdeep campaign. My players could care a less if I do or don't, as long as they are entertained. That being said, I wouldn't let canon get in the way of a good plotline.

 

[werk]

It would require my players no know the canon better than me, which hasn't happened yet...same with planescape. I try to keep it close to canon, but no one notices.

I have had one player challenge me when, early in the campaign, they attacked a hobgoblin cleric of Xvim. The player said afterwards that hobgob probably should have been a cleric of Bane, since Xvim was dead/became Bane. I said that the death of Godson is the same year as the campaign, and not only would his character not know that Xvim was gone, but the cleric himself may not know, do to the way everything went down.

I steer clear of global politics/celebrities. My party will never run into Elminster or DrowRanger unless they hunt them down on purpose, which they would never do because I didn't tell their characters that they exist.

 

[gogo_jerrick]

I say you do want you want, but let the players know ahead of time. I'm currently running a FR/dragon world game. I told the players that most of the standard gods were dead, the current gods were no higher than a DR 3 (except for the one true god), that silverymoonhad been destroyed, and that drow were still evil, but a little bit more accepted. They had no problems and it even created tension and suspence when the party's evil kobold necromancer stumbled upon a battalion of celestials led by Heironeous With a gold dragon's body(kinda centaur style). They weren't like"OMG, u said that they were dead, u can't do this!" They got the hell outta dodge, traveled to daggerdale and burnt down one of his temples! It's fun and exciting to make changes. If you have that player who worries about canon than sit down with him and ask him what he wants outta his character.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

I run a FR game, but only loosely adhere to canon. The locations and histories are mostly the same, but some of the magic is different, the gods are less directly invovled, the famous names are mostly just old legends and so on. While the Time of Troubles happened, no one really knows what it was. Tilverton still exists, the City of Shade doesn't, there's no such thing as Spellfire, etc.

I feel I've removed those things that bug me most about the Realms (uber-NPC celebrities, world-shattering events once per year) and have allowed the players to have a greater impact on the setting as a whole. My players don't seem to mind the changes.

 

[Nightfall]

I guess I'm in the minority then, cause the experiences I've had, many players keep asking "Why is Orcus still alive?! Why is Damara a hellhole? What?! Why did you put Santucary in this dive?!"

It's this kind of stuff that made me switch over to Scarred Lands.

 

[StupidSmurf]

I've been running an FR campaign for years. I follow canon, but I tend to downplay the idiotic aspects. I guess that it helps that I avoid sweeping, civilization-affecting situations or Great Crises, and instead just focus on a region and what's going on THERE.

But, for instance, the Silver Marches recently incorporated itself into a kingdom. OK, cool. So, instead of Silverymoon being an independent city that's part of an alliance, it's actually now part of a full-blown kingdom. OK, I can work with that.

But all of this hoo-hah about, for instance, widespread famine because weather patterns got affected because of the Great Glacier melting or somesuch...nuh uh. I don't buy it. If someone wants to put real life issues into a campaign storyline, that's their prerogative, but I don't have to use it. Especially one in a setting that has no less than a half-dozen nature-oriented gods who could help restore such a cataclysmic imbalance relatively quickly.

As for the Time of Troubles, I really think TSR had carnal relations with the canine on that one. But ok, fine...I put it in, but just had it affect my players only minimally. They never came upon a dead magic or wild magic zone, for example.

I guess it's also fortunate that I have a pack of D&D fans, as opposed to a pack of exclusively Forgotten Realms fans.

 

[sniffles]

Interestingly enough, the whole Time of Troubles thing has either fallen into four camps in my experience. None of them really effecting game play.

1. It's cannon and helped transition the game between 1st and 2nd edition.

2. It's cannon but a lot of things happened that weren't covered and are still slowly being unveiled allowing the GM to add his own touches (kinda like that 2nd ed module where the characters rescue one of the gods)

3. The setting is before the Time of Troubles.

4. Time of Troubles? What time of troubles?

The first two are what we're using for one of our FR campaigns, sort of. The GM used the Time of Troubles to transition our old campaign from 2nd ed. to 3.5, but we're not sticking too closely to canon for everything in our current game. For example, we've created our own deity and city for our new campaign, and one of the PCs from the old campaign has become a deity himself so the GM has added two gods to the FR pantheon.

I'd say that sticking with canon depends on the players. If you've got players who read the source books and bring up points all the time if you diverge from the source, then not sticking to canon will probably bring trouble for you. If the players don't own the books or don't care to read them then it doesn't matter, obviously. Or you could have players like me; I've read the source books but I don't care if my GM doesn't stick to the published material.

 

[Nightfall]

It wasn't so much the Time of Troubles just the outpouring of NOVEL after NOVEL that eventually killed the cannonality for me. Along with the fact everyone either a) wanted to be a new god or b) the next Driz'zt.

 

[Numion]

I can only speak for my players, and they've never shown any interest in what's canon and what's not. For example, I dropped Return to Temple of Elemental Evil somewhere near the dales with the associated towns and villages .. I don't think it even registered.

What's the difference between a home-brew that is revealed to the players as they play and a shared setting that players can study before they play?

The difference between homebrew and FR in our games has been that FR is already written and ready for use Maybe my players are just lazy, but the campaign setting has always been a bit of a backdrop and nothing major in defining the characters.