Forgotten Realms: Do players care about canon?

[possum]

Even though I barely play D&D, I often find myself pondering this very question.

I'm primarily a Star Wars d20 gamer, and the sheer wealth of canon material out there can be mind-boggling at times. Several hundred novels that mesh together almost perfectly, hundreds of games and comics and the like.

My policy on canon in an established gaming universe is this:

1: All the events that happened in the Expanded Universe before the game's beginning actually happened. If you need help with getting your backgrounds to mesh properly, I will help you (Just recently, I had to point people in the direction of all of the attacks on Luke's Jedi Praxeum; from Desann and Fyyar to the Shadow Academy.)

2: All events that will happen (For example certain events in the New Jedi Order period) in the universe that the PCs have no direct control over will happen. The Myrkr Strike Team will face the same results in my game as they did in Star By Star if the PCs are not present.

3: If the PCs have direct control over an event (OMG, the PCs just accidentally shot Vergere. It was an accident, right?) canon can and usually will go right out the window.

It's kind of strict...

 

[Saime]

So when GMing the Forgotten Realms, do the players demand everything be canon?

No. My players care more about fun than canon.

 

[edbonny]

Canon Continuity = Happy Fan (for me)

This evil version of the game sounds like fun... sounds like Star Trek's mirror universe... or perhaps some new campaign setting called "Remembered Realms"

Why do I flinch when folk mess with continuity? You often end up with:

> Evil becomes good. Good becomes evil. Turn the world on its head so it becomes a cliche.
> Angelic balrogs with white fluffy wings wielding gentle whips of cotton candy making
> Eberolling Right Along - A peace-frought world where everybody gets along happily. The Peaceforged are a race of freewilled marionettes (no strings) who long to be human. Cyre is an amusement park with free admission.
> Oceans on Athas (Dark Sun)
> RainbowEagle (formerly Grayhawk)
... you get the idea
Like I said, it can be fun (but few can do it smartly enough to satisfy my standards).

 

[Nightfall]

And as you switched over to the Scarred Lands, were any of the players interested enough to buy all the books and fiction and question you on those things and if so, did you quit the Scarred Lands and move onto another campaign?

No because they all knew I was in charge! It might be straw man to you, but SL to me was far more open and encompassing than FR had become. And yeah being your own NPC with only SLIGHT modifications makes it all worth while.

*thanks Ni for his assistance* My FR gaming was well before my SL gaming and came probably right before Dead Gods and 2nd edition revised.

 

[wingsandsword]

In my experience, my PC's have enjoyed canon to a certain degree. It creates the shared world and by the players knowing canon, it saves time and DM overhead if there doesn't need to be a lot of exposition to explain what Thay is, or what the Time of Troubles was, or who The Symbul is. When I say "I'm running a Forgotten Realms" game, they expect certain things and in a certain shape and form.

Little details of canon? The exact location of an inn from an old Dragon article or some esoteric quote from Ed Greenwood years ago? Nope, they don't really know or care about that. They want a game which fits their mental image of the Realms, which isn't so detailed that it's about hunting little esoterica of canon.

Current events? My PC's generally don't read the current FR novels, so exactly what's going on with the War of the Spider Queen or the latest events from the Shadovar really are whatever I want them to be, and I take those events (as I understand them to be happening) as loose inspirations for my campaign.