How do you deal with canon fanatics?

[Deekin]

or just run Eberron

Cannon in Eberron is what you make it.

 

[Kaodi]

I'm a big Eberron fan, and the idea that the setting is what you make of it, but I think there is a point where I might decide to opt out of a game. I'm not big on the kind of mentality behind the " Let's destroy Sharn! " phenomenon. I could handle a lot of changes, but they need to contain a minimum of schlock.

 

[SavageRobby]

I'm going to address these out of order.

Which is why this thread exists. . . I need to find a productive way to diffuse such a "This way only!" mentality at my table. Admittedly, such mentality is hardly limited to setting conventions, though that's where I've personally encountered it most often (again, specifically in FR 2e and oWoD circles of fandom).

My solution to that is to set it in a different time period than exists for canon. "Sure, that was what it was like .... 100 years ago. But we're 100 years in the future, and things have changed."

I advanced the timeline in my Scarred Lands game and just wrecked some of written setting. But we had a blast anyways.

I am reconsidering but, to be frank, if I'm going to run up against a large number of people who want to judge/criticize and/or attribute motives for wanting to explore themes other than "kill things and take stuff" generica (really, the only motive is "I think it would be neat!"), it just won't work and that's all there is to it.

I think that a less-established setting (eg., Murchad's Legacy, the Middle Realms) may be a better way to go, as I won't have to worry about setting purists being pushy or offensive if I decide to deviate from written material (simply because there is no canon standard for many things in such settings).

I read a little bit in the Scarred Lands thread previously. We had a 2 year campaign in the Scarred Lands that explored a number of non "kill things and stake stuff" themes. I think the Scarred Lands is actually an incredible setting for that. You can look at any number of murky social topics. Here are a sample:

Calastia: Is social security and order worth the loss of some individual freedoms?
Gods vs. Titans: Is history simply written by the winners? Have the Gods destroyed the natural order? (I had a global warming theme going in the background.)
Order of the Morning Sky: Lawful good, or lawful fascists?
Hedrad vs Mithril: Law and order vs. truth and justice, also, Why do Paladins let poor folks starve?

There are a lot of good topics in the Scarred Lands. More, I think than in other settings. If you've got canon freaks, advance the timeline a little bit, free yourself up. What would happen if Virduk died and Geleeda took over Calastia? Maybe Anteas recruits the characters. What if Yugman is secretly a servant of the Titans and Dar'Tan is actually a servant of the Gods? Or, vice versa, and the Titans must return to the Lands to restore the balance.

 

[Faraer]

First off, I find it hugely ironic when people start talking about "canon" with respect to FR, since the setting's own creator has repeatedly stressed that details of the setting stress myth, rumor, and folklore over actual fact. Elminster could be a 29th-level wizard who learned at the feet of Arkhon "the Old" 500 years ago; he could be a godling who has lived through over a thousand years of Netherese arcanus and Elven high magic. He could just be a smart-@$$ sage. That's the whole point!

Bears repeating.

Greenwood saying that FR is really 'this way' despite the fact the the entire body of products portrays it 'that way' . . .

Up until 3E, most of the magazine articles and sourcebooks explicitly used unreliable narrators for just the reason ruleslawyer mentions. That's in large part what Elminster, and later Volo, were for. The original Campaign Set, for instance, stresses throughout that the DM should change things to suit her campaign.

"On my word as a sage nothing within these pages is false, but not all of it may prove to be true."

Wizards nixed the unreliable narrators, but they're implicitly still there, and there's nothing in any Realms source that says or suggests 'You must run your campaigns accurate to every detail' or anything like that.

That's all well and good but it supposes sane, rational, people -- not the canon fanatics who I specifically mention for the purposes of this thread

I doubt a misguided admiration of 'canon' is the only disruptive mentality such people would have.

 

[Treebore]

I suspect that this is a problem many GMs of many game systems have run into at one time or another:

GM: "I'd like to run a game in the Setting X, though I think I'm going to add a city here and introduce some social themes there, and. . ."

Canon Fan: "NO! If you're not using it EXACTLY AS WRITTEN, you're using it WRONG!"

That sounds pretty extreme, I assure you, though I've seen it happen more times than I'd care to recount. I received a similar response when asking certain questions about the Scarred Lands recently (much to my chagrin) and I'm starting to think that buying into the setting full tilt was a mistake if "Why would you ever change it? It's perfect as written!" is going to be a commonplace response to exercising creativity.

This drove me crazy in FR 2e and I don't see it sitting well with me anytime soon.

So, my question is, how do you deal with players who get overly excited when you, as the GM (or DM, if you prefer) add to or otherwise alter material for a given setting? In the past, I've simply explained to people that canon in the context of a RPG isn't binding (otherwise, it would be defeating the primary allure of RPGs) and that if they think is should be, then they really need to find another game to play in, because they'll hate mine.

It has come to my attention that, while effective, blunt honesty won't win me any admiration. This being the case, I'm examining better, more effective, ways to address the issue when/if it arises during actual play. So. . . how have you dealt with this issue in your own game and/or game groups?

I tell them,
"You obviously are not aware of the "Multi verse Theory". There are many different versions of "reality" across the multiverses. You have read of one reality. I am going to game master a very different reality for that setting. For simplicities sake I call it "My reality"."

 

[jdrakeh]

Bears repeating.Up until 3E, most of the magazine articles and sourcebooks explicitly used unreliable narrators for just the reason ruleslawyer mentions. . .

Again, I think that's a bit of a cop out. For example, there was an entire series of adventures and novels specifically detailing the Time of Troubles, while its outcome was reflected in changes to the core rules as well as subsequent setting material. Now, I hate the Time of Troubles, but anybody arguing that it didn't really happen in the official continuity as dozens of sourcebooks presented it (without variation, I might add) is being pretty disingenuous.

I think it's much more honest to say "The official continuity is crap and I'm not using it!" rather than "The official continuity didn't really happen like all of these hundreds of sourcebooks and rules present it!"

The "unreliable narrators" excuse is just that. . . an excuse used to justify inconsitencies in the setting material that resulted due to TSR's then rampant use of freelancers working in a vaccuum. Other than the word of Ed Greenwood, there's absolutely no imperical eveidence to support the "unreliable narrators" claim, especially when TSR itself was very vocal about the events of novels being part of the official continuity, not the misremembered ramblings of some senile, old, sage.

I could never sell the "unreliable narrator" angle to anybody but the most devout TSR apologist (not quite the same thing as a FR canon fanatic), and attempting to do so resulted in worse situations at the table than canon fanaticism

 

[jdrakeh]

I really like the approach Exalted has taken. The core book and all suppliments are all set at the same moment, five years after the Scarlet Empress disappeared. The big challenges of the setting - the impending Realm civil war, the invading Deathlords, the return of the Solar Exalted - these are all left for the PCs to deal with. They have never (and from what they said will never) release sourcebooks that answer these. There have been a couple of 'what if' adventures, but it is clear that these are not part of the canon and are not included in future products. White Wolf in general has abandoned the whole huge metaplot idea from what I can tell.

Yeah, HarnWorld does the "frozen in time" bit, too. This is absolutely a fabulous defense against canon lawyering

 

[jdrakeh]

I don't suppose that most sane people would so strongly object to deviations from canon, either. I would consider that reaction to be a symptom of larger underlying problems that would manifest themselves in other, perhaps game-destroying ways later on.

Well, you may actually have a point there, as some experiences with the Star Wars RPG in the distant past recall. I was a player at that particular time, though the resident Canon Nazi was always causing problems for the GM in general, not necessarily in regard to canon.

 

[Faraer]

I think it's much more honest to say "The official continuity is crap and I'm not using it!" rather than "The official continuity didn't really happen like all of these hundreds of sourcebooks and rules present it!"

Of course there's an official continuity, which tries to be consistent with itself, just like every other setting. Otherwise publishing the Realms would be impossible. There's just no demand, insinuation, or anything like that, that your campaign should follow it.

The "unreliable narrators" excuse is just that. . . an excuse used to justify inconsitencies in the setting material that resulted due to TSR's then rampant use of freelancers working in a vaccuum.

I think you're very mistaken; this mode of writing is central to the spirit of the Realms, and the Elminster quote above is one of my favourites in all of Realmslore and D&D. How can it be an excuse of TSR when it began years before TSR bought rights to the Realms and before any freelancer inconsistencies had appeared?

 

[jdrakeh]

Just to take a dissenting point here, but, there is a point where, if you are changing large swaths of setting canon, it could be said that you aren't really playing in that setting anymore. Where that point is, I don't know, but, I can honestly say that if a DM said, "Hey, I'm running a Scarred Lands campaign" and then changed nearly every detail other than the maps, I'd be a bit surprised to say the least.

Well, where the Scarred Lands was concerned, this wasn't the situation. I wanted to insert a socialist city state into the setting. That's it. I didn't want to rewrite or remove anything that was already part of the setting. This intention was immediately met with incredulous disbelief (wanting to know why I would ever want to do such a thing in fantasy, let alone the Scarred Lands) and suggestions that such a structured government wouldn't function in the Scarred Lands (despite the fact that Calastia is just as structured, if not moreso, than a socialist city state would have to be).