D&D 5E New D&D Survey, with some in-depth setting questions

[J.Quondam]

I love Star Wars, but DMing a Star Wars game for a bunch of series fans is a daunting prospect compared to "here's a thing I made up, let me tell you how it is."

Yeah, running a game in an established world with fans is a pain. I'll say I'm going to run a Star Wars-esque game or something. And then make a big show of painfully vaporizing the first player to correct my usage of droid serial numbers.
That usually clears up any misunderstandings.

 

[Bolares]

I love Star Wars, but DMing a Star Wars game for a bunch of series fans is a daunting prospect compared to "here's a thing I made up, let me tell you how it is."

That's exactly it! At least for star wars edge of the empire gave me more freedom to play in a space less explored (until Mandalorian), and helped change the focus from the skywalker saga.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

No disagreement here, because you are right, and certainly that is an extreme case! But, playing in a world that doesn't have that sort of built in investment or structure (like Greyhawk, or the Forgotten Realms for people who never got into the fiction, but if anyone is into Drizz'tthen the issues persist) circumvents that entirely, as the story us freely the DM and players to mold.

I love Star Wars, but DMing a Star Wars game for a bunch of series fans is a daunting prospect compared to "here's a thing I made up, let me tell you how it is."

Like I said, I think I'm just not going to get it. I've run games in Middle Earth, Dragonlance, and the Star Wars Galaxy, and never had any problems.

In Dragonlance I've played in a game that put the PCs into the War of The Lance, and we ended up as dragon riders. We saved the world, and the DM indicated indirectly but strongly that at least 2 other world threatening things were happening during the war as well, not even counting the so-called Heroes of The Lance. We fought 2 different Dragon Overlords, and stopped Takhisis from creating a line of half-dragons with her own blood in them as a "if this war fails the world will burn for it" contingency.

In Middle Earth, we helped Gandalf destroy the Necromancer in one game, and in another the players played Dwarves who stopped the nations of the West from being overrun on a whole other front (an event referenced in the Lord of The Rings), and another had much lower stakes and was set in the default time period of the The One Ring game.

In Star Wars we played in every possible era over the years, in core worlds and outer rim and unknown regions, as part of the Rebel Alliance, Jedi, Republics new and old, and in sectors and with organizations we made up.

 

[Bolares]

Like I said, I think I'm just not going to get it. I've run games in Middle Earth, Dragonlance, and the Star Wars Galaxy, and never had any problems.

In Dragonlance I've played in a game that put the PCs into the War of The Lance, and we ended up as dragon riders. We saved the world, and the DM indicated indirectly but strongly that at least 2 other world threatening things were happening during the war as well, not even counting the so-called Heroes of The Lance. We fought 2 different Dragon Overlords, and stopped Takhisis from creating a line of half-dragons with her own blood in them as a "if this war fails the world will burn for it" contingency.

In Middle Earth, we helped Gandalf destroy the Necromancer in one game, and in another the players played Dwarves who stopped the nations of the West from being overrun on a whole other front (an event referenced in the Lord of The Rings), and another had much lower stakes and was set in the default time period of the The One Ring game.

In Star Wars we played in every possible era over the years, in core worlds and outer rim and unknown regions, as part of the Rebel Alliance, Jedi, Republics new and old, and in sectors and with organizations we made up.

I wish this would fly with my players...

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Every single one of them read the war of the lance. If I say, lets play Dragonlance, their expectations go right to that.

This is specifically the thing I don't get. I guess we've just always established pretty easily that we aren't going to retell someone else's story?

 

[J.Quondam]

This is specifically the thing I don't get. I guess we've just always established pretty easily that we aren't going to retell someone else's story?

I think it really depends on the specific players. Some people are totally cool with mucking around in (and mucking up!) their favorite established world/s. But others can be so vested in the setting, for whatever reason, that they can't abide the idea of changing it in any substantive way.

Basically some gamers can't/won't reset their own expectations to match the needs of the game. And since it only really takes one unbending canon-devotee to transform a campaign into a headache, it can be better to just avoid the that setting, and stick to something that every player is more willing to adapt themselves to.

This is all fine, because people are people, right? It's just a thing that's blindsided me before, because I hadn't considered "strong devotion to canon" as something to seriously examine on the pre-game checklist. For me, it's just become another element of establishing expectations for a game.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I mean...that is genuinely how weird the criticism you're throwing out seems to me. Your characters don't ever have to meet book characters. The events of the world don't have to follow canon. The world is big and full of dangers and people who need saving from them. Just...don't tell a story that is super closely tied to the novel story, where the novel protags can loom over the PCs. Like, it's literally just a choice you can make.

Because the world is already home to someone else's story. And that "someone else" is more well-known/popular in the real world than any of the characters in the campaign will ever be. When people think of Hogwarts, they think of Harry Potter killing Voldemort. When they think of Dragonlance, they think of the War of the Lance. When they think of Star Wars, they think of Luke blowing up the Death Star and redeeming Vader.

If the story has already been told, I don't see the need to tell it again but with new characters. If there's a new story in the world, it's still going to be overshadowed by the story that got the world popular in the first place.

That's my problem with doing stories in existing universe like this. There are exceptions, I would love to run an Exandria campaign some time, or use the Mistborn Adventure Game to run an adventure on Scadriel, but in general, neither I nor my players are interested in doing a Dragonlance/Star Wars/Harry Potter campaign because of them being overshadowed by the original heroes, even if that doesn't happen in-game.

 

[Bolares]

thanks @J.Quondam and @AcererakTriple6 for being more eloquent than me in explaining my point of view.

 

[guachi]

Response from me on the "how much have you spent in the past 6 months". Exactly zero dollars on official or licensed products but $1100 on 3rd party stuff, all from Kickstarter. WotC just isn't making product I'm interested in. Even extending out to 1 year it'd be zero. Though I have bought a few things on DMs Guild, that doesn't appear to be a choice.

Also love that EN World is still an option for how you follow D&D news.

 

[guachi]

Probably reflects the feedback they got: Mystara and Birthright fans made elaborate and detailed cases for their world, while Dragonlance fans leaned on their love of the novels when making their cases in prior surveys, I suppose?

I resemble that Mystara remark. Multiple paragraphs. I was almost embarrassed I wrote so much but since I know WotC actually reads this stuff I kept typing. It'll never be published but at least I tried.