Must a campaign world change?

[Barastrondo]

No, it doesn't have to. Exalted managed to be quite a success, and it clearly emphasized that the official game time would always be "Year 0", or if you prefer, "Year 1 YCKAACTW" (Your Characters Kicking Ass And Changing The World). More of the history and more setting details were related with new supplements, but the timeline, not so much advanced.

So either way is probably viable, though you're best off having a plan for each approach and then sticking with that plan.

 

[wingsandsword]

I hate huge world-changing metaplot.

The Chaos War happens, and Krynn becomes a world without gods (again) and magic (mostly). Krynn has been through so many cataclymic events in such a short amount of time that the entire Crystal Sphere needs a sign on it saying "Welcome to Krynn. The Gods are currently: IN", changing it as needed.

Spellplague and the Forgotten Realms becomes some twisted post-apocalyptic version of itself. (Since I started playing Realms in 2e, the Time of Troubles has always been backstory to me, so I can't count it in my experience, and events like the Dawn Cataclysm and Karsus's Folly always happened in the distant past of the setting, the return of the City of Shade was big, but it was cool as a way to bring the Netherese into the modern era)

In Old World of Darkness, the Reckoning destroyed all the Wraiths, and made it so that Mages essentially couldn't planar travel anymore without it being incredibly dangerous because of a magical barrier formed from the shattered souls of all the Wraiths. I think it was a way to force Mage plots to be more Earth centric instead of walking around alternate realities so much , and get rid of Wraiths in the process, but it seemed very heavy-handed (and surprise, surprise, new rulebooks for the aftermath, and whole new product line for the Hunters that appear after the dust settles).

I like a little metaplot, the idea that adventures come out set a year or two after adventures that happened before and build on what happened, or that sourcebooks reference recent events and create a slowly progressing series of "current events" that don't radically change the world, but instead detail what is happening. It gives the sense of the world being "alive" like a real world and not a static snapshot of a world.

It's only a big problem when it becomes these huge events which completely change the tone of a setting or invalidate huge chunks of materials, which practically speaking seem like just a way to sell more novels and sourcebooks.

 

[delericho]

I agree that there are different interests for the gamer and for the publisher. But even if you just focus on gamers, there are different preferences.

It's not even just as simple as that, because even an individual's tastes may change with time. I used to be a big fan of the Vampire: the Masquerade metaplot as it was being unfolded, but have since come to prefer games without (and, in fact, now find the original VtM all but unplayable due to the significance of canon).

(The very worst use of metaplot I ever saw was the original Dark Sun, in which TSR gave us a very interesting setting in outline, and then in the very first adventure (and novel) dramatically altered the setting, and expected that everyone from then on would be using the changes! (A move made even more annoying by the fact that TSR's own "Campaign Sourcebook and Catacomb Guide" had warned against a DM doing exactly that, and explained why it was a really bad idea in some detail.))

 

[Bluenose]

It doesn't have to. But it has to be apparent that it could, and in the past has. Personally I liked the way it was done in Mystara - a series of books describing the world at a particular point (the Gazeteers) and a seperate series outlining a years worth of events (the Almanacs). But I also like Glorantha, where the various published books from each edition describe the state of the world at a particular point in time, and don't attempt to advance the timeline. And I also like Pendragon, where part of the point is the advancement of time, the rise and fall of Arthur's kingdom, and the importance of family and inheritance. As long as it's done well, I don't think which approach you use matters too much.

 

[Ariosto]

I agree that a unifying moment in time, a common reference point, is a more convenient basis.

I seem to recall that Swords and Glory -- a new game -- was officially set a bit in "the future" of what had been presented in Empire of the Petal Throne. Maybe it gave the official story of what became of Baron Ald's "weapon without answer". I don't know whether Gardasiyal continued that, or whether GOO's Tekumel: EPT is set after however many novels were published in the interim.

I have no interest in doing the homework to duplicate the "canonical" course of events in Prof. Barker's campaign. The fun for me is not in looking up which contender for the Petal Throne will win, or that there shall be a civil war with such and such outcomes.

The fun for me is in actually playing the game to determine what happens! The fun is in creating the "future history"!

Is that not what Barker, and Gygax, and Greenwood, and Arneson, and Hargrave, and other "big shot" referees were up to in the first place over so many years? From whom were they taking dictation?

 

[Dausuul]

I hate metaplot and want it to die. I approve of 4E's model; three setting books, maybe a couple of adventures and some DDM sculpts, and that's it. If you absolutely have to keep selling new setting product, then do it with stand-alone adventures or adventure elements that can be inserted anywhere and don't assume the existence of the others.

I especially hate the Grand World-Changing Cataclysm. This is something endemic to settings with tie-in novels; fantasy writers are accustomed to writing on the Tolkien plan, wherein the events of the novel have drastic repercussions on the world. It works great in an original novel series, but in an RPG setting it almost always destroys whatever made the setting appealing to begin with; and when a setting becomes a franchise and multiple series are written there, you end up with a parade of GWCCs that makes you wonder how the entire world is not suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Dragonlance is the poster child for GWCC mania, but Forgotten Realms is starting to catch up. Dark Sun's GWCC hit so fast we barely had time to see the original setting; I'm very glad they're rebooting it for 4E. I have the impression Eberron managed to avoid any GWCCs aside from the one that forms the basis of the setting (the Last War), but I could be wrong--I never got into Eberron much.

(My views may have been shaped by the fact that I came of age in the 2E era, when TSR had just discovered that D&D novels outsold D&D itself by a huge margin. So they churned out a parade of innovative, imaginative, fascinating settings, and then proceeded to trash them all via novel-driven metaplot. It was not pretty.)

 

[Ariosto]

The one-way nature of the communication is a problem.

I can coordinate with other referees in a dialog that takes into account what everyone has done. A corporate line just goes its merry way regardless of what actually happens in my campaign or yours.

 

[Philosopher]

I approve of 4E's model; three setting books, maybe a couple of adventures and some DDM sculpts, and that's it.

Sounds like a nice model, but it's not quite how it's working out. The Forgotten Realms got a huge shakeup in its initial 4e presentation. And now they're planning on releasing a sourcebook next year set in Neverwinter (which, I understand, was destroyed at some point).

 

[thedungeondelver]

I should point out that regardless, I despise "living" campaigns.

"Well, Bob in Seattle's group offed Iuz and took out the Ghost Tower of Inverness, be sure to update your campaign notes..."

Bleah.

 

[Stormonu]

When it comes to published campaign worlds, I like a world to give me a starting point and plot points I can use to build campaigns around events to come (Dragonlance's War of the Lance, for example).

I don't like being forced to add changes to the campaign that haven't occurred in my own campaign - like the Time of Troubles and Spellplague for the Realms...The Greyhawk Wars for Greyhawk and even the changes that occurred to Dark Sun.

Of course, that means I too despise living campaigns. Perhaps the one that annoys me the most is L5R's Rokugan; I started my game back before the Scorpion Coup presented in the 1E rules, and I haven't incorporated any of the updates since that time.

On the other hand, I don't mind adventures that include minor or major changes, as long as they don't force the campaign setting to change and assume you've run it (i.e., reprint the core campaign with the changes invoked as standard).