How do you handle running campaigns in established settings, Veeky Forums?

How do you handle running campaigns in established settings, Veeky Forums?

Do you allow and/or expect the players to completely rewrite that universe's history? Or do you keep your campaign isolated to prevent the possibility from arising?

Do you allow the "power levels" of established characters to fluctuate, so long as their relative power between each other is the same? Or do you strive to keep them all exactly the way they are portrayed?

Do you strictly keep to what's considered "canon"? Or do you pick and choose for your own custom version, adding in spin-off material and possibly even throwing out major established cornerstones?

Trying to keep things canon feels optimal to the players, because if things keep canon the players feel like their game could be canon, thus enriching the original setting in their mind.

If the canon is broken even once (for real), then make the world react to it majorly.

Treat it as canon, but not make it rigid. Shit can change, idgaf.

Most of the time I try to keep harder to themes and tone than actual content. It's because of this that I'd rather run "alternate but similar" settings, as opposed to the real thing.

This also allows the players to get more powerful without concerns either for me or them about overshadowing canon characters, or stepping on future plots.

Most players don't care that it's "knock-off" Star Wars so long as they get to run around as force adepts and bounty hunters in spaceships in a Fantasy setting in space with Sci-Fi elements. The ones that do are usually the kind that you don't want in your group anyway.

We played in a SW game where Luke got shot by a blaster in the face before boarding the Millenium Falcon because of an incredibly lucky roll from the stormtrooper.

On the other hand, we saved Alderaan, so that's something.

I tend to run my stories parallel to the big events in the established universe. While the players aren't necessarily going to be Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Leia on wacky adventures. But their adventures will overlap with the Canon characters. A film example would be "I ran Rogue One". Meetups and overlaps with characters,references to events that don't necessarily happen because of the PCs, but the PCs were there. If the players do meet a canon character, I go out of my way to ensure it's not a combat thing. Luke Skywalker won't be baited into "Hey, want to see who can lift the most X-wings?" and Han Solo won't fall for the "I have a gun under the table" lark. I should say I've never ran a SW game where the PCs ran into film characters, but if I were to, that's how I'd handle it. I can't think of any other RPGs that use established settings off the top of my head, is there an Elder Scrolls one? Does anyone care about Dragon Age?

This seems like the best bet, that or have the game take place in a gap not covered in the lore, eg the twenty year gap between Episode 3 and 4 or the gap between episode 6 and 7

The understanding in my group is, the history of the setting is set in stone, up until the moment the game starts, any canon after that is mutable.

>How do you handle running campaigns in established settings, Veeky Forums?
I regularly advocate for a Session Zero where we have a round table to create the characters and talk the setting before we get to roleplay properly.

While I do everything in my power to remain faithful to the canon, I make the session zero mandatory for settings I don't create, lest arguing over "famous NPC X cannot do that" in the middle of the campaign and the like ruins everybody's fun.

Keep in mind this isn't limited to objective events in the canon (i.e. Death Stars get destroyed), but also subjective character interpretations ("Noooooooooo Darth Vader would never take an apprentice! Neveeeerrr!!!").

All I'm saying is that it's better to talk it out at the beginning, than have half the group ragequit before the finale.

Now, you posted a picture from SW, should we ever play in it I'd also make a point how fucking cool is Lucas with others tweaking his setting for spin-off purposes.

I use Dimension Shit to justify changing anything we need.

I've only run one campaign that was set in a 'canon' setting, except it had altered geography and the like. What I did was have the campaign start at the exact beginning of the story and watched how my players handled it to see what changes their presence would make. My plan was to have the main story stubbornly continue upon the original path that it follows while having to alter to fit the events the PCs changed.

To be more specific, I ran a campaign set in The Void of Final Fantasy where the different multiverses had been absorbed and fused into one complex dimension. Each game's story line would not begin until the players were there to witness the events that kick things off so that they could partake in which ever events interested them the most. The players ended up starting in Mysidia from FF4 (randomly decided), which meant they kicked off the start of FF4's story line.

Pretty much the prologue where the main character is sent by his corrupt ruler to invade a peaceful nation. These events would have caused him to question his loyalties and eventually turn on his king and seek redemption, but since the PCs were there they decided to attempt to fight back the invading force themselves. They miraculously won, which ended up leaving the original protagonist blind and a prisoner of war. Meanwhile the invading army simply decided to move on with their scheduled invasions of other nations and decide to try this nation again later.

Naruto was there.

>I ran a campaign set in The Void of Final Fantasy
Gilgamesh had to be there, or I will be very disappointed in you. He's confirmed to not be alternate versions of the character in whatever game he pops up in, but literally the same character in every game, using his newfound mastery of travelling the Void to jump between universes and improve his weapon collection.

I'd use the One Ring approach.

1) Characters are separate in time (and to an extent space) from the "canonical" action.
2) You can have and probably will have a Wise mentor you, but don't expect to change his destiny. Nor to be particulary important in the scheme of things, unless regionally if you have a great Standing or something
3) I fully expect the hobbit to go utter fanboy at the sight of Bilbo, but not the dwarf to go fanboy at the sight of young Aragorn: he doesn't know shit about Eriador.

I played in a Star Wars game that began at the end of Episode II. Obi Wan was horribly burned and Anakin fucking died. We rewrote the Clone Wars pretty hard, killing Grievous like three times(They were decoys), and eventually Revan showed up from outside the galaxy with his army of Sith. Then we just kind of stopped playing because the gm was rarely a gm and couldn't hold up.

This.

Even if the campaign is technically in the same setting, find your own space to work in and focus on the themes and tone instead of adhering to specific details. It works so much better in the long run.

Canon characters can exist but should usually be offscreen or only tangentially related to events as they play out. I'm in a game in the Nanoha setting and throughout the entire thing we've probably only seen two or three canon characters, and only for a scene each, with a couple more mentioned as having done stuff offscreen by NPCs.

Try to keep it canon as much as possible. If players and GM want to explore new ground, try to make it in a place unexplored by official works but within the canon universe. Make the canon flexible in case you can't do this. An agreement before a game ever starts is nice. Say our game is set in the Dune universe; as the GM, I'll let the players know that we will be playing in an alternate version of the Dune universe, with changes from canon based upon your actions and characters. If they all agree, then we continue.

>Do you allow and/or expect the players to completely rewrite that universe's history? Or do you keep your campaign isolated to prevent the possibility from arising?

Usually depends on the kind of game. I'll allow both.

>Do you strictly keep to what's considered "canon"? Or do you pick and choose for your own custom version, adding in spin-off material and possibly even throwing out major established cornerstones?

The latter.

Using your example, in the Star Wars game I ran, Starkiller never existed but Jedi Master Rahm Kota did and was a major pain in the Empire's ass up until Vader killed him.

Generally, I try to avoid this kind of thing, I prefer to make my own settings.

Still, my reputation as the local Tolkien grognard has trapped me in one and a half campaigns (one never got off the ground), and in both of them, I went the "isolation" route, making the characters off the beaten track of the books, in stuff that would have happened but not made it into the Red Book.

>Or do you strive to keep them all exactly the way they are portrayed?


I try to keep things exactly the way they're portrayed, and build the game's encounters and guide the character creation (insofar as I'm able) to stick within those boundaries.

>Do you strictly keep to what's considered "canon"?

Yes. What's the point of playing in an established setting if you're going to rewrite it anyway?

Usually, the conventions are that, if the game is taking place during a specific story, the party's story will run parallel to the canon story. Depending on how confident you are in your storytelling, you can either allow massive divergences in the known story or rigidly force the story to continue as it originally did with, at worst, a couple alterations to keep things in line. The latter may feel cheap, though, since it may make the party feel like they have no input in the story and are simply along for the ride.

If the game takes place in a gap that the stories don't directly address, you can do whatever you want.

Players ought to be able to interact with canon characters, but it doesn't give them free reign to walk all over them.

The safest thing you can do, as suggests, is to run things in a very similar world and let the party have full influence over the events.

Either way, you shouldn't be running something in a canon setting if you cannot be expected to do justice to that setting or its stories.

I once tried to make an Ocarina of Time rewrite where Link is kill and a bunch of wanderers/mercenaries/adventurers find a Kokiri half dead outside Kokiri Forest, who ran to find help for the diseased Deku Tree.

I reworked all the major plot of the child era to be done with a common PC party in mind. The idea is that, without Link, the Triforce of Courage would split and conveniently find itself in the PCs, so no one would be the protagonist. I even let Link's house abandoned in KF and a grave besides Deku Tree.

This is my modus operandi, along with generally following the time-line in-universe unless the PCs affect it. For instance, unless the party raids Sienar Fleet Systems' R&D department, the TIE Phantom should hit the market around 3 ABY, so no, you can't buy one.