How faithful do you stick to the lore of premade settings?

[Brander]

Only in broad strokes.

More details here:

Headcanons about your favorite settings

Even Ripley didn't do a great job because she didn't do much of a presentation that warned them. To be fair, though, they kept blowing her off when she tried to tell them about the xenomorphs. That was one thing that I though was a bit unrealistic. Actual marines (space or otherwise) would...

www.rpgpub.com

I tend to apply my headcanon to anything I run, but I will add in ideas I steal from the players, so it can change a bit.

 

[Cross Planes]

This is something I've struggled with for years but these days I follow what is best for the players.

 

[Torque2100]

I pretty much always tinker with the reality in one way or another. I will take smaller ideas into the text and extrapolate them. For settings based on other media, I usually create a tangent timeline and find a way to take the Canon heroes out of the equation so that the PCs don't have to worry about being upstaged.

My player characters are the heroes.

 

[thebigh]

Yeah, and I think it goes without saying that if the canon contradicts itself or is otherwise inconsistent, I pick the alternative I like best.

 

[AsenRG]

Yeah, and I think it goes without saying that if the canon contradicts itself or is otherwise inconsistent, I pick the alternative I like best.

Of course, I usually do likewise...when I don't make my own, that is!

Amusingly, I've noticed that for one of my favourite settings (Real World 1.0) I almost always pick the option that I like less. So I've got a setting full of conspiracy theories that are true...though I suspect that some of my players would try to lynch me if I had some of the most outlandish ones (like the Flat Earth) be true without warning them in advance that it's a fantasy setting!

 

[Torque2100]

One example of a setting I will tinker with: Astonishing Swordsmen and Sorcerers of Hyperborea. I like, many many ideas in Hyperborea. I love the idea of a bunch of Dimensionally displaced barbarians from different time periods on an alien world. I love the nods to Vance, Lieber, Moorcock, Lovecraft and Howard. I love a setting that's not just another Tolkien rehash.

However, there are a couple of things about the setting that rub me the wrong way.

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

I am aware that the answer is essentially "A Wizard Did It" and I find that unsatisfying.

If I run Hyperborea, I'll probably move the setting to the polar region of an earth-sized rocky moon orbiting a Gas Giant which orbits a Red Giant star.

 

[chuckdee]

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

Magic

 

[Chris Brady]

I house-rule everything. Settings, sadly, are no different.

 

[Ravenswing]

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

I am aware that the answer is essentially "A Wizard Did It" and I find that unsatisfying.

Well ... to paraphrase another current thread, it's a freaking floating island in space, and your question is why the water's still salty?

On the very rare occasions where a player's asked a similar physics-related question regarding my setting, I tend to fall back on "How would you go about finding out?"

 

[Lofgeornost]

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

I am aware that the answer is essentially "A Wizard Did It" and I find that unsatisfying.

For Flat Earths I guess I prefer the Tanith Lee approach--'outside' the ring of ocean that surrounds the land there is a 'region' of Chaos. I put 'outside' and 'region' in scare-quotes because it's not really clear if space, as such, exists there. There is a boundary between the sea and chaos which is difficult for objects to pass through, but not impossible.

As for gravity, etc., my personal response in fantasy settings is simply to throw modern physics, chemistry, biology, etc. out the window. So there is no 'gravity' in the sense of a Newtonian force of attraction, simply a strong tendency of things to seek their natural place. For heavy material items this is normally down (on a Flat Earth). The atmosphere is where it is because that is its natural place as well, though in addition it is kept in by the overarching dome of sky. And so on.

Really, though, you could just turn the setting of Hyperborea into an island on Earth with relatively little effect on 99% of what goes on in the game.

 

[Telok]

When you run games in a pre-existing setting, like Warhammer, Greyhawk, Golarion, or Middle-earth, how "faithful" are you to the lore of that setting?

Is the setting getting me a real life blow job? If not then it gets taken out behind the shed and shot in the head. If it looks exceptional I might skin it or save some bones to use in another project.

 

[ffilz]

For Flat Earths I guess I prefer the Tanith Lee approach--'outside' the ring of ocean that surrounds the land there is a 'region' of Chaos. I put 'outside' and 'region' in scare-quotes because it's not really clear if space, as such, exists there. There is a boundary between the sea and chaos which is difficult for objects to pass through, but not impossible.

As for gravity, etc., my personal response in fantasy settings is simply to throw modern physics, chemistry, biology, etc. out the window. So there is no 'gravity' in the sense of a Newtonian force of attraction, simply a strong tendency of things to seek their natural place. For heavy material items this is normally down (on a Flat Earth). The atmosphere is where it is because that is its natural place as well, though in addition it is kept in by the overarching dome of sky. And so on.

Really, though, you could just turn the setting of Hyperborea into an island on Earth with relatively little effect on 99% of what goes on in the game.

I run Glorantha, therefore I run a "flat earth" setting... Since I'm NOT into all the deep setting wonkery, I really don't treat the setting as dramatically different than any other setting. My PCs aren't going to explore enough of the setting to really know if it's flat or not, my Glorantha does have horizons. I don't actually go into which of the fucking tall mountains would be visible from where. Heck I'm not sure I totally buy into the whole "all disease is caused by spirits" thing. But then I rarely use disease outside of anything mechanically noted for monsters or in adventure locations. I just don't let that shit bother me.

One reason I take this attitude is that if you play the game of chasing implications of various magic and fantastical elements of a setting, something is going to break before long. So I don't deep dive with implications and enjoy the elements of the setting that come up in play with a healthy dose of "that's the way it works here" when necessary to get around some implication that bites me on the ass despite my willful ignorance...

 

[AsenRG]

I run Glorantha, therefore I run a "flat earth" setting... Since I'm NOT into all the deep setting wonkery, I really don't treat the setting as dramatically different than any other setting. My PCs aren't going to explore enough of the setting to really know if it's flat or not, my Glorantha does have horizons. I don't actually go into which of the fucking tall mountains would be visible from where. Heck I'm not sure I totally buy into the whole "all disease is caused by spirits" thing. But then I rarely use disease outside of anything mechanically noted for monsters or in adventure locations. I just don't let that shit bother me.

One reason I take this attitude is that if you play the game of chasing implications of various magic and fantastical elements of a setting, something is going to break before long. So I don't deep dive with implications and enjoy the elements of the setting that come up in play with a healthy dose of "that's the way it works here" when necessary to get around some implication that bites me on the ass despite my willful ignorance...

And that's a fine approach IMB. You don't find it fun, don't bother with it!

In other approaches, you explore the consequences of the Glorantha's or Creation's flateartedness - and that'd be part of the fun, too...

As long as nobody expects to have a horizon at the latter tables and you don't get any players wanting to use the lack of horizon on your table, we'd all be fine...and our Gloranthas would continue proudly bearing the same name, while being subtly different!
That's part of the fun with different GMs, I've found.

And if we do have such a clash, it's time to talk it out like adults.

You do what you find fun, and on other tables, the definition might well differ.

 

[The Mad Hatter]

I nearly always change things in premade settings.

My Vampire: The Masquerade is mix of the various Vampire games I have. Clans are 15 in number and selected from the clans/bloodlines from 20th Anniversary book. I use the Covenants from Requiem instead of Sects. My vampires can also be out during the day, but they lose access to their disciplines.

In Eberron, I change some races. Half-elves are not a race, so are replaced by aasimar. Gnomes get replaced by goblins. Mephlings from the 3e Planar Handbook replaces halflings. Drow are also not elves, but actually aranea. I also change dragons to be actually unique creatures, more akin to dragons from the Iron Kingdoms setting.

 

[ffilz]

And that's a fine approach IMB. You don't find it fun, don't bother with it!

In other approaches, you explore the consequences of the Glorantha's or Creation's flateartedness - and that'd be part of the fun, too...

As long as nobody expects to have a horizon at the latter tables and you don't get any players wanting to use the lack of horizon on your table, we'd all be fine...and our Gloranthas would continue proudly bearing the same name, while being subtly different!
That's part of the fun with different GMs, I've found.

And if we do have such a clash, it's time to talk it out like adults.

You do what you find fun, and on other tables, the definition might well differ.

Absolutely. Heck, someday I might even play Glorantha at someone else's table. Actually I did start playing a play by post but the play style was so different from what I enjoy I bailed out quickly.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

The term canon always gets on my nerves as well, especially given the sheer amount of retconning that goes on in fiction these days. When people say "Uhm actually that's no longer canon" I just think "You know all of this shit is made up right?"

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that some people don't. I was just browsing the WFRP subreddit, and there was an in depth discussion as to whether or not some place name on a map in the rulebook was derived from the Dwarfs' language.

 

[Caesar Slaad]

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

I kinda get this. TBH, it’s one of my biggest stumbling blocks with running Starfinder. I can accept that magic can do some things in lieu of technology, but like technology, it’s not automatic. Magic can justify som things, but there still needs to be a self-consistent reason.

 

[Ravenswing]

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that some people don't. I was just browsing the WFRP subreddit, and there was an in depth discussion as to whether or not some place name on a map in the rulebook was derived from the Dwarfs' language.

Never mind when it gets silly. I've an anecdote. When Rich Meyer, Walter Hunt and myself were working up the Cardolan book for MERP, my particular gig was national/regional infrastructure -- names, geography, flora+fauna, institutions, etc. What little information Tolkien put out about the coastal lands of southeastern Eriador was that there were sparse populations of common men around. So we took to calling them "Barbarous Fisher Folk" -- or BFF -- as a joke. And I never parsed out a term for them that I liked better, so I just wound up calling them "Beffraen."

Not only did the name stick, but it survived MERP. It's found its way into other published works. It shows up on fansites. To my vast amusement, I've read people trying to puzzle out the etymology of the term. (Having just received an Irish-English dictionary from a friend, the non-JRRT placenames I invented for southern Cardolan -- like "Saralainn" -- were bastardized pseudo-Celtic.)

I can only imagine that similar cockamamie inventions stud many a RPG work.

 

[Simon Hogwood]

You know, I'm beginning to suspect that some people don't. I was just browsing the WFRP subreddit, and there was an in depth discussion as to whether or not some place name on a map in the rulebook was derived from the Dwarfs' language.

Maybe it's not to everybody's taste, but I think that there's a deep appeal to settings that it's possible to have this kind of argument about. And sure, sometimes it doesn't all fit together quite exactly, especially when it's the product of multiple writing teams over decades rather than one obsessive artist's lifework (hi, Professor JRRT), but smoothing over those rough corners is part of the fun. Which makes it all the more infuriating when modern additions to the setting make stupid mistakes for stupid reasons like, "oh, it's just a silly fantasy for kids, why do you care if it's garbage?"

Now, for game settings in particular you do have to be a little more flexible, and I tend towards conglomerate mashup settings anyway. But if I was going to run a game strictly in a lore-heavy setting, I would run it as faithfully as possible given the actions of the players. As has been said, why else would you use such a setting if not to draw on the lore?

 

[BedrockBrendan]

When you run games in a pre-existing setting, like Warhammer, Greyhawk, Golarion, or Middle-earth, how "faithful" are you to the lore of that setting? Do you play it strict and purist? Do you play it fast and loose and not worry too much about your game's "accuracy"? Do you change things or add your own material, carefully or liberally?

It really depends for me. I also find purist can be a little in the eye of the beholder because as the lore expands some people see including all the lore up to that point as pure, whereas some see the initial material released as pure. I would say when I do run a setting as written, I tend to cleave to the first release and treat all that came later as optional.

 

[Alai]

But if I was going to run a game strictly in a lore-heavy setting, I would run it as faithfully as possible given the actions of the players. As has been said, why else would you use such a setting if not to draw on the lore?

Because the poison, as they say, is in the dose! I think it's legit to pre-configure a setting to one's own tastes too, just so long as one isn't playing bait-and-switch with it. So for example you give people a "where Tolkien got it wrong" Powerpoint presentation beforehand. Anyone awake at the end can play. Those medically revivable we can argue the toss over. Or it's a hidden plot twist reveal, but one you think will carry the room.

Never mind when it gets silly. I've an anecdote. When Rich Meyer, Walter Hunt and myself were working up the Cardolan book for MERP, my particular gig was national/regional infrastructure -- names, geography, flora+fauna, institutions, etc. What little information Tolkien put out about the coastal lands of southeastern Eriador was that there were sparse populations of common men around. So we took to calling them "Barbarous Fisher Folk" -- or BFF -- as a joke. And I never parsed out a term for them that I liked better, so I just wound up calling them "Beffraen."

Gonna be Beffeffraen in my headcanon from now on! (Never having actually played either MERP or any ME-set game, this is one of the most hypothetical examples of such.) More of an unparsing than a parsing task though. </GiantNerd>

Not only did the name stick, but it survived MERP. It's found its way into other published works. It shows up on fansites. To my vast amusement, I've read people trying to puzzle out the etymology of the term. (Having just received an Irish-English dictionary from a friend, the non-JRRT placenames I invented for southern Cardolan -- like "Saralainn" -- were bastardized pseudo-Celtic.)

Well, one of Tolkien's own languages is bastardised pseudo-Celtic too, so in theory that one might be as close as a p/q consonant shift away!

The reverse-etymology thing may not be entirely misspent effort. After all, you might have accidentally subcreated something that makes perfect sense in the created world -- or can be extrapolated to make sense. And if not, at least there's going to be some confused scholar someplace puzzling over it, or a popular-but-wildly-wrong in-world folk etymology to explain it...

I can only imagine that similar cockamamie inventions stud many a RPG work.

And cockamamier besides! Glorantha is notorious on the on hand for over-serious setting lore-dorks, and for having many things originate in cheesy references and stoner humour. Things named after people in the RW. Characters in different fictional universes. Real or affected mishearings. Talking of which setting...

In other approaches, you explore the consequences of the Glorantha's or Creation's flateartedness - and that'd be part of the fun, too...

As long as nobody expects to have a horizon at the latter tables and you don't get any players wanting to use the lack of horizon on your table, we'd all be fine...and our Gloranthas would continue proudly bearing the same name, while being subtly different!

Apparently not even all the Chaosium owners/C-suite/top team agree on the "horizon" thing. Or didn't, maybe Jeff has since had them all confined in his former Stasi reeducation centre, deep under Friedrichshain until they now do... For my money, it has a visual horizon, not definitively wedded to any particular how or why. Conspicuously flat-as-a-pancake is a bit too Ringworld -- or indeed, Discworld -- for my tastes. The RW bronze age wasn't replete with conspiracy theorists certain there was no horizon, and that people seeing one needed trepanation, stat, until they didn't.

I'm not a big fan of the "floating island in Space" concept. Maybe it's my fascination with Hard Sci-Fi but I keep asking questions like "What is keeping the atmosphere from escaping?" "How are the oceans constantly flowing off the edge? What force is acting upon them to make them do that if there's no gravity?" and "How have the oceans not run dry yet? For that matter, why are they salty?"

Generally they're not "in space". Or at least, not in our space, or anything especially resembling it. More likely it's floating -- or <other applicable verb>ing -- in an infinite ocean, or a sea of chaos, or a metaphysical void, or... check local mythology for availability.

Also there's the Tolkien "the world made round" trick, where it flips from one to the other. But only when it was funn-- eh, mythologically appropriate in cosmogenic terms. "Keep screwing around with this 'physics' lark and see what happens, O Mortals!!"

On the very rare occasions where a player's asked a similar physics-related question regarding my setting, I tend to fall back on "How would you go about finding out?"

This. Also the thread-winner -- if the judges weren't crooked, etc -- on almost all metaphysical debates. And not necessarily just the fictional-settings ones...

 

[AsenRG]

Apparently not even all the Chaosium owners/C-suite/top team agree on the "horizon" thing. Or didn't, maybe Jeff has since had them all confined in his former Stasi reeducation centre, deep under Friedrichshain until they now do... For my money, it has a visual horizon, not definitively wedded to any particular how or why. Conspicuously flat-as-a-pancake is a bit too Ringworld -- or indeed, Discworld -- for my tastes. The RW bronze age wasn't replete with conspiracy theorists certain there was no horizon, and that people seeing one needed trepanation, stat, until they didn't.

Well, I can't speak to Glorantha, but there was no horizon in some Exalted campaigns where I've played, and there was one in an Exalted campaign under a different GM.
I asked about it, actually. "Why is there a horizon in your Exalted?"
"It feels wrong having a game in the West without it. Probably some spirits at work, if you insist...oh, and you don't have Far-Seeing Charms".
"True, that."
And then we continued playing!

 

[Alai]

"[...]Probably some spirits at work, if you insist...[...]"

A spirit/daimon/deity/demiurge did it. Works every time!

"[...]oh, and you don't have Far-Seeing Charms".

And if you did, then you're using the Subjective World to make measurements about the supposedly objective one. It's like watching a sports broadcast from someplace especially exotic. "We apologise that the local producer keeps cutting to the cleavage of a member of the crowd, we don't have control of the feed."

And for some worlds, travelling long distances itself puts you in the metaphysical.

 

[Rogerdee]

I rarely do.
But that is because in most cases there is just too much of it to remember.
As a result I tend to use what I want, and discard anything else.

 

[JAMUMU]

My feelings on the subject of the matter at hand, Marty:

 

[Godfather Punk]

How faithful?
To give an example, I once set a group of high level Stormbringer characters (through some multiverse chaos) loose on Middle Earth.

In Eberron, I skipped some of the meta. there is only so much detail I and my players can handle.

 

[Ravenswing]

The reverse-etymology thing may not be entirely misspent effort. After all, you might have accidentally subcreated something that makes perfect sense in the created world -- or can be extrapolated to make sense. And if not, at least there's going to be some confused scholar someplace puzzling over it, or a popular-but-wildly-wrong in-world folk etymology to explain it ...

Well ... look. Something that occasionally drives me buggy is the tendency of fandom to insist on coming up with a purportedly sound rationale for everything, no matter how impossible it is.

One of the best examples I've seen was on the old Waves In The Black forum, the quasi-official forum for the Serenity RPG. There was a thread trying to parse out how the astrography of the Firefly 'Verse was possible. (Joss Whedon's own response to the question was, and I quote, "Science makes my head hurt.") Now it doesn't take an astrophysicist to figure out that it's about as stark raving impossible as it's possible to get ... but even though the thread featured an astrophysicist from JPL certifying the same, it went hundreds of posts from idiots who got a C- in the one college science course they dared to take who just could not wrap their heads around that. Who tried to come up with something, anything, to explain the inexplicable, and who just flat out refused to swallow the rationale of "A creator who admitted to knowing nothing about science thought it would be cool to come up with a system involving dozens of habitable "moons" scattered all over the interstellar landscape, Just Because."

And it's the same thing here. I wager I could pop onto certain forums and sites, state that these names were things I invented the better part of forty years ago (and a dozen years after JRRT's death), that Tolkien had nothing to do with them, nor do they show up in any of the monumental cataloguing that his son published, nor do they appear at all in print before 1986. Doesn't matter. Some cementheads would dive down their rabbit holes all the same.

This. Also the thread-winner -- if the judges weren't crooked, etc -- on almost all metaphysical debates. And not necessarily just the fictional-settings ones...

Heh, well ... my direct meaning there was simple: there aren't many PCs out there who are experts in physics OR philosophy. A player could ask, "Bob, that's just some shit you made up for the hell of it, right?" and if I was in a particularly affable mood that day, I might admit it. A character asking how come the water was still salty, nuh-uh.

But when all is said and done, there ought to be mysteries out there. I'm quite comfortable with there being inexplicable things.

 

[AsenRG]

A spirit/daimon/deity/demiurge did it. Works every time!

Not really. But we seldom had any need for it!
And I get it, she associated sea with horizon. So it just felt "wrong" to her to not have one when we're in the Sea Direction...verisimilitude=/=realism, you know?

And if you did, then you're using the Subjective World to make measurements about the supposedly objective one. It's like watching a sports broadcast from someplace especially exotic. "We apologise that the local producer keeps cutting to the cleavage of a member of the crowd, we don't have control of the feed."

And for some worlds, travelling long distances itself puts you in the metaphysical.

Actually, no, I'd be using magic to find out...how far I can see before my sight is blocked by ships, sea monsters, islands, mountains and/or reefs able to support enough vegetation to contribute to blocking my sight. Though going on a mountain might have augmented that range.
That is, of course, the rational behind the Creation-Slaying Oblivion Kick Combo!

 

[SmallbutVicious]

Maybe it's not to everybody's taste, but I think that there's a deep appeal to settings that it's possible to have this kind of argument about. And sure, sometimes it doesn't all fit together quite exactly, especially when it's the product of multiple writing teams over decades rather than one obsessive artist's lifework (hi, Professor JRRT), but smoothing over those rough corners is part of the fun. Which makes it all the more infuriating when modern additions to the setting make stupid mistakes for stupid reasons like, "oh, it's just a silly fantasy for kids, why do you care if it's garbage?"

Now, for game settings in particular you do have to be a little more flexible, and I tend towards conglomerate mashup settings anyway. But if I was going to run a game strictly in a lore-heavy setting, I would run it as faithfully as possible given the actions of the players. As has been said, why else would you use such a setting if not to draw on the lore?

I've got no issue with people looking at a fictional map and thinking "hmm, maybe that place there gets its name from the Dwarvish word for iron because it used to be a major iron-trading route".

But, if you're a GM using this map, the relevant question is "do I want this to be true?" There seems instead to be a tendency online of people asking instead if it's actually true. Or worse, asking for permission. That's what baffles me. I had to unsubscribe from subreddits in disgust over people asking about the "correct" colours to paint their space marines. It's meant to be a creative endeavour!

There's some anecdote about when GW were soliciting submissions for the first Warhammer novels. Someone pointed out that the character Genevieve was not consistent with how vampires were supposed to work in Warhammer. Bryan Ansell just told them that, in this case, they had to change how vampires worked in Warhammer.

 

[Acmegamer]

It occurs to me that, even with fictional settings I really like, I will sometimes alter some specific elements that seem silly or rub me the wrong way. Some cases in point:

• In A Princess of Mars, Burroughs posited that, because assassination was so rife on Mars, houses were built on barber-chair-like pillars and ascended into the sky at night. I've always found the image ludicrous, and it makes no sense anyway, given that Barsoom has lots of aircraft. So I just edit that element out. Burroughs himself seems largely to have forgotten it in later stories anyway.
• I've recently read through De Camp's stories set in the Pusadian era (his version of Hyboria, if you like) and am wondering about using it in an RPG. But one of the main cities of the setting is named Sederado. I know that my players would immediately start calling it 'Silverado' and asking where Danny Glover and Kevin Kline are. So I'd need to change that name.

 

[Acmegamer]

Honestly, lore is there to help you sell the immersion of the campaign you are running. It's a tool to be used as you need, when you need it. I personally like to be consistent in my use of lore and don't want to confuse players but I sure hell am not going to allow some lore lawyers to over run my game with on going nitpicking and interruptions if I were running an established IP. If I were running a campaign during the War of the Ring and had decided that Frodo was captured by Saruman's orcs and that Saruman now had the One Ring and had become the new Dark Lord, then that's what I'd do. If players weren't happy with that and were expecting me to run Middle Earth exactly as Tolkien wrote it, I'd tell them to seek the door.

While I appreciate a knowledgeable player of an established IP's lore, there is a point where it can be disruptive. In much the same way that a player who is good with mechanics can be an asset to a game if done in moderation and as needed to keep the game flow going. Otherwise they drift into rules lawyering and disrupting the game flow. There just really is no place for it and I have no patience for it in any game I run or even play in. Unfortunately as been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, it is a known issue in our hobby.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I run Glorantha, therefore I run a "flat earth" setting... Since I'm NOT into all the deep setting wonkery, I really don't treat the setting as dramatically different than any other setting. My PCs aren't going to explore enough of the setting to really know if it's flat or not, my Glorantha does have horizons. I don't actually go into which of the fucking tall mountains would be visible from where...

Re Flat Earth settings, I guess that Moorcock's Young Kingdoms (Elric's world) was treated as a flat earth for some time, but in the latest book (Citadel of Forgotten Myths) we find out it is 'egg-shaped' with an upper and lower section. From the crossing from one side to another described early in the book, I'd say that it seems to be shaped like a biconvex lens more than an egg.

That seems to me an interesting compromise between a flat and spherical world, since the curve of the faces allows for a horizon and similar effects that we expect, without being an actual sphere.

While I appreciate a knowledgeable player of an established IP's lore, there is a point where it can be disruptive. In much the same way that a player who is good with mechanics can be an asset to a game if done in moderation and as needed to keep the game flow going. Otherwise they drift into rules lawyering and disrupting the game flow. There just really is no place for it and I have no patience for it in any game I run or even play in. Unfortunately as been repeatedly pointed out in this thread, it is a known issue in our hobby.

Yeah, that's very true. As often in gaming, a lot depends on the personalities of the people involved.

 

[SmallbutVicious]

This is one of you trying to piss me off isn't it? There's no way this shit pops up organically.



I should just stop browsing Reddit.

 

[Nakana]

I never have, and most likely never will play in a strict designated setting created by others. Almost everything I run takes place in the world I created in different places and at different periods of time.

I do pull cinematic vibe from what I like and incorporate it into my world.

Because of the way I do this, “my world” has this neat ever-changing history and evolution happening to it. I don’t “retcon” what actually happened, but new discoveries lead to realizing that what we “thought” we knew, turned out to be wrong. It works and my long term players like seeing how it affects the world I/we built.

 

[E-Rocker]

Nakana , has your world all happened in the same rpg system?

 

[Nakana]

Nope! Lol

As for rules systems, we’ve played D&D 4th, D20 Modern, BRP, CoC (and probably some others) and are about to start play testing the 2d6 system I’m creating — all in the same world.

 

[Teotwawki]

In our games, canon is created each session at the table.

We've been playing the same T2k campaign now for 7ish years and there has still never been a definite chronology of the apocalyptic events. Because no one on the ground was involved in the decisions that made it happen. It just happened. The only indisputable truth involved is: good luck, you're on your own.

For something like CoC/DG, any concepts players bring to the table are just as likely to be rumors and false beliefs as valid reality in the game-world. Such information, like exploratory and scientific discovery, evolves as time progresses. In a real world example, it wasn't until about 10 years after the fact that I had any comprehensive idea of what took place during a 4 -year military siege I was personally part of. And comprehensive "factual" information about it 25 years it ended is still not agreeably definitive, even about the simplest minor events. So how could there logically be a definitive timeline of an obscure-to-top-secret organization that investigates indefinable things?

Canon is what happens at the table.

 

[yosemitemike]

I generally pick a starting point for the series. Stuff before that generally follows established canon. After that point, it's up for grabs. Maybe I use the canon stuff and maybe not.

The reason why canon doesn't matter that much in TTRPGs isn't because "it's fiction, so who cares?" It's because we're not professional writers or filmmakers hired to produce official material for an established IP. We're just playing a game for fun at our own tables and might not even know the lore that well to begin with.

The main reason why I don't worry too much about sticking to canon is that my game is, by nature, not canonical in the first place. It is, essentially, fanfic. The post Dominion War game I developed was my take on it. The characters were all non-canonical as was the ship, the whole situation and all of the events. The odds that it would line up with whatever came after were about zero anyway. It didn't like up with Picard at all for example. Nothing I do at the table is canon or ever will be.

 

[AsenRG]

I never have, and most likely never will play in a strict designated setting created by others.

...well, you might give it a try nonetheless!

 

[Nakana]

...well, you might give it a try nonetheless!

I’ve seriously considered it before, but I’ll explain why I, as a GM don’t:

I think Glorantha is a fascinating world. I enjoy reading about it. But, it is SO fleshed out, that if I were to run a game “in Glorantha”, I would start asking myself ‘what would Greg Stanford do?’ rather than what I would do. If I deviate too much, I run the risk of players claiming “but that’s not Glorantha!” and I would agree with them.

Some of the most epic moments my group has had while gaming came from spontaneous inspiration in the moment. I wouldn’t feel like I have that liberty if I’m playing in Glorantha, or the Forgotten Realms, etc. I’d have to fit to the world rather than the other way around, and I don’t really like that.

Instead, I take the vibe or features I really like from other settings and integrate them into my world: Elan.