How do you deal with canon fanatics?

[Nightfall]

V,

Bane wasn't "wussy". Just he appeared to be acting very non-LE. More like CE at times.

 

[Kahuna Burger]

Since I haven't run a canon setting outside of GURPS Discworld, I haven't had the oppertunity to encounter these canon fanatics you speak of... But I can see why a sane, non fanatical person might prefer to run by canon if you are running a large published setting.

One of the disadvantages of homebrewed worlds is that in addition to discovering the world, players are often "discovering" the area their characters have supposedly lived their entire lives in. In a canon setting, you have the comfort of (if you choose to) actually knowing where your character is from, picking a location that works well with your character concept, even showing other PCs around your home town. Making characters in the STAP or an Eberron game held advantages to me over a pure homebrew in that I didn't have to ask the DM "is there a place where X Y and Z hold true?" because I could see from the setting materials that there it was, or close enough for me to work around. (the DM probably liked that method better as well.)

There is a certain level of comfort in a canon setting that your DM won't suddenly tell you that no one in his world drinks ale but baby eaters and by ordering it you have doomed your party to outcast status - and if you wanted to know this about your hometown bar you should have invested in Knowledge Local.

The advantage of a homebrew setting, of course is that you might get a chance to roleplay in a different sort of world and do things with your characters not possible in a canon setting. That can be cool too and you know that's what you're aiming for in a homebrew.

But when the DM says "I'm running FR, but it's my FR, not the canon FR" a cynical player might get the feeling that he's in for a worst of both worlds expereince. There is the potential for a "Mwa HA! In my FR everyone in this city hates elves, though you being an elf raised within a days ride of the place have never heard this!" without the hope of a truely non standard world.

 

[Mark]

Tel people you are running a homebrew that is a kitbash of a lot of SL stuff and more. If they like SL, they might be happy enough to get what you give without too much fuss since they cannot expect it all. Try to get as many new (to gaming) players as possible, as they rarely have any of the preconceptions you run into otherwise.

 

[Nightfall]

Mark,

Unless they've played God of War, World of Warcraft or some other "This isn't a video game folks!" folk.

 

[jdrakeh]

Worst Possible Scenario

I think we're talking about different kinds of changes, here.

My aforementioned FR 2e campaign, for example, was very much FR 2e as it appeared in the core box set -- it wasn't, however, much past that. Specifically, at the time, TSR had an annoying habit of deeming all the events in FR novels (i.e., non-RPG material) to be canon. Not using the events of those novels caused me some issues, specifically because two players were compulsive collectors of the novels and other material that I didn't have access to at the time.

Now, I really don't think that it's too far out of line for a GM to ignore certain material deemed canon by a publisher as long as they make it clear that this will be the case ahead of actual play. Saying that if somebody doesn't own and/or use every sourcebook for a specific setting, then they have no business using that setting as the basis for their weekly game is, I think, both horribly unfair and unreasonable.

"Oh, you only own the Star Wars Saga core book? Sorry. You aren't qualified to run a Star Wars game. Get back to me when you sell your house, quit your job, and have owned or read every one of the thousands of Star Wars reference books and novels ever printed!"

That's a bit exaggerated -- but only a tiny bit. The two players in the aforementioned FR 2e camapign actually argued that if I wasn't following and incorportating the events of every FR novel into the campaign at my dining room table, then I wasn't running a real Forgotten Realms campaign. And that is totally mad.

Likewise, if a given setting is ostensibly a boundless universe (e.g., the Star Trek universe), I don't think that it's too out of line for a GM to add to existing canon, so long as they let the players know ahead of time that this will be happening.

"What do you mean you've created a new alien race! Dude! If Gene didn't write it, then you can't use it in your game! That's not Star Trek!

That is the kind of thing that I'm talking about, not your worst case "The GM totally rewrites the whole setting to be something totally different" scenario. Sure, I'd be pissed if the GM said "We'll be playing Shadowrun!" and then actually wanted to act out erotic "Dear Penthouse" sequences while getting drunk (for the record, I've actually had this happen to me). I would not, however, throw the kind of tantrum that I've outlined above if the GM said "We'll be playing Shadowrun, but without the Dunkelzahn for President metaplot!".

I guess I can see how somebody who is heavily invested in a given setting's canon continuity would be genuinely upset if somebody decided to tinker with that reality, though I also think that anybody who is that emotionally invested in the continuity of a given setting needs to be reacquainted with real life.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Fire them

Out of

A canon.



Or, my favorite method. "Okay, then. You DM."

 

[Nonlethal Force]

I know this isn't really going to be helpful ... but homebrew all the way, baby!

Personally, I've never been interested in running a campaign in someone else's world. But, there are obviously a ton of people out there who are interested in it, so I'm not invalidating your question.

Perhaps you could say that you are running a homebrew, but actually use the stuff you want? That way you could add what you want but still use what you like. The problem with this is that redoing names will be your biggest chore.

 

[jdrakeh]

(Bane never 'died' in my FR. Seems like I wasn't the only one who thought Xvim was a wussy).

Well, having learned my lesson in the past, my FR timeline now stops with the build up to the Time of Troubles. It never happened and, subsequently, none of the fallout ever took place. It's all canon up until that point -- and as the GM, I choose what books I buy to use in my games (because I'm the one paying for them), so I've chosen to ignore all canon after that point as amassing it isn't worth the expenditure (Let's see. . . I can buy a car or I can collect every bit of FR canon ever published. Hmmm. . . tough choices!). The only real non-canon bit of continuity up until that point is that Eleminster has gone missing (indefinitely).

 

[Particle_Man]

That's the ideal solution, though as I mention elsewhere, I have a very time-consuming day job and several other responsibilities more important than gaming. This being the case, I simply do not have the time to design my own settings from scratch anymore.

Another thought: Find an obscure published setting, one your players are unlikely to have heard of, and are unlikely to get themselves. Then you have something you can use, *and modify*, and they won't say boo because they won't know the canon.

Note this only works if they don't go out and buy every book every published in that new obscure setting in order to learn its canon. How fanatical are your players at doing that sort of thing?

 

[jdrakeh]

How fanatical are your players at doing that sort of thing?

Well, currently, I don't have a play group due to schedule issues -- though, luckily (or not, depending upon how you look at it), most of the folks whom I've played with over the last two years are content to buy the PHB (or single core book, if playing a game other than D&D) and let me, as the GM worry about purchasing all of the setting material.