Canonical Earthdawn

[zayven]

How closely do you adhere to the "canonical" details of Earthdawn's published setting material?

This question occurred to me when I was responding to another post about the Travar book and seems relevant since FASA is jumpstarting the ED timeline. I've been running a fairly intermittent game in Travar for several years. I chose Travar as my setting because I wanted to send the players somewhere they hadn't been before and I wanted to have the freedom to build the city up as a "home base" where they could become invested in a specific locality and undertake whatever quests they wanted. To that end, I used an old map of medieval Rome, divided it into districts, and wrote up some additional backstory about the city. It's not immensely detailed, but I've probably got fifteen to twenty pages outlining locations within the city and people that the characters can interact with (most of which have their own quests).

At the time, this was easy because there wasn't much out there on Travar. There's a short write-up on the city in the old Barsaive box set and some mention of it in the Serpent River sourcebook, but nothing on the level of what exists for Throal, Vivane, or Kratas (which hadn't been released at the time I started this game). Now, however, there's going to be a whole book on this location that will no doubt contradict a lot of what I've established in my Travar. Obviously, it would be easy to just ignore the new information or simply incorporate much of what I've already done into the "new/real" Travar, but that kind of ducks the question that I want to get at.

I tend to be very setting orthodox as a GM. I don't like contradicting setting material whenever I can help it because doing so creates a butterfly effect of consequences down the road. For example, I've always disliked Prince Neden. While the storyline that killed King Varulus was great, I hated losing the old dwarf and so I just ignored that story thread at first. Eventually, though, that small omission became an "elephant in the room" in every subsequent sourcebook I purchased. At some point, I had to give in to the published setting material.

Earthdawn has been spared from this problem somewhat because the timeline has been dormant for so long. The emergence of Redbrick meant that I could safely ignore all of LRG's Barsaive at War/Barsaive in Chaos changes as an alternate, non-canonical timeline, but the restarting of the timeline raises the issue once more.

For an example of how crazy this can get, take a look at Shadowrun. First edition is set in 2050, second in 2055, third in 2060, fourth in 2070, and fifth in 2075 (I may be off a bit on the 4th and 5th edition dates, but they're in that ballpark). A LOT has changed about that setting in twenty-five years of game time, which creates a ton of problems for GMs familiar with that entire breadth. Some of those changes I like, some I don't (ex: Horizon Group: Why? Why? Why?). Ideally, I could canvas that entire timespan and construct my "perfect" Shadowrun, but it would create a LOT of work because changing one thing causes problems elsewhere. At some point, it just becomes so much easier to give up and run the game as it currently exists because you don't have to worry about whether or not you'll be able to use new releases.

So, getting back to my question, how closely does everyone else here adhere to the "canonical" setting material as it appears in published products? Do you change things that you've used in your own game to reflect new material when it becomes available?

Or am I just the sort of person that REALLY overthinks things like this?

[Kasbak]

Previously, I haven't really affected a lot of the cannonical material with the unique changes I have made. I've touched on it from time to time, just to remind my players that there is further setting out there just beyond the horizon, but neither they nor I have driven to go into it in depth.

With that said, I have a new campaign that I will be starting eventually, the idea for which has been brewing in my head for a while. With this one, I want to try and include a lot more political motivation (this will be a challenge for me, as I haven't run much for politics before), so I'll need to stick to the established material more. When I found out that 4e will be set after the war, I knew right away that I would have to put off the start until after the edition launched, because that will fit my premise so perfectly.

So from my experience so far and anticipation of ones to come, I think the need to adhere to the cannon is proportional to how political your campaign is.

[kosmit]

In my Barsaive Alachia lost her thorns because of accident involving Alamaise, characters, Leldrin and Everliving Flower. And for now it is the only (or 'only') non-canonical thing in my Campaign (maybe the Leldrin being blackmailed by Argenthiel to do what he has done is the second one).

[etherial]

As Metaplots go, I actually think Shadowrun's is the best. Most of it is completely ignorable. New technologies are introduced in new books, but the constant changes in the geocorporate landscape don't really affect the night to night lives of Shadow Runners. There's much more a sense of National Pride and connection in Earthdawn, so when kings die, invasions happen, or cities get fleshed out in books, it's a lot harder to ignore.

[Panda]

It depends heavily on the particular campaign; the story and themes that I want to explore. The broad strokes of the source material are consistent, but the details are subject to change. If there is something that I like, I incorporate it, but may very well change some of the details to suit the role it is going to play. For example, you will find some of the canonical characters in the Bartertown/Throal of my current campaign and superficially they appear mostly the same. Once you get beyond the surface, not so much.

I love the setting, but it exists to inspire me, provide some common touchstones to work with and interesting details. Beyond that, it is my group's sandbox.

[Flowswithdrek]

[Slimcreeper]

I think the players should be able to break the world. If they fail at an adventure that would leave Throal overrun with burrowing horrors, the overrun with burrowing horrors it is. If they overthrow the king and Selenda becomes queen, 'canon' will simply have to adapt.

[Mogre]

Not sure if it counts, but I like the more "traditional" style airships. Airships with oars just drive me nuts for some reason. Also... male T'skrang don't lactate. I won't go into a lot of detail with this... It's not the concept of a male in that role, but none of the art supports this and it makes little sense.

[Darth Quiris]

I'm the same way as you... if I get a official sourcebook and it says "(event) happened" than I want to play with that event happening. Sometimes I get confused by this.

Although I am not really like this with Star Wars. That's one setting I really like coming up with alternate histories for.

One other rpg that used to have a metaplot (I think) was Legend of the Five Rings from AEG. Their first 3 editions all focused on the storylines that were developed from their CCG and all their sourcebooks were written from the ever evolving CCG story and everything that happened in the card game was canon but they changed it with 4th edition when they went metaplotless. Every book now in the 4th edition game line is written from the same exact point in history and instead of having a metaplot they have a couple of sourcebooks that go into various time periods and alternate histories of their setting. One of the alternate settings in Imperial Histories 2 is even a space opera setting set in the far future of Rokugan. That one made me wonder what Earthdawn itself would be like if the setting advanced from where Barsaive is to a point where the people advanced the technology and industry to where Shadowrun is but the world's magic never waned and instead everything was from a Barsaivian history and not our own modern earth.

To me a world like that would really be similar to a world like Final Fantasy 7.

Their change from metaplot to nonmetaplot was very well received by its fans.

[Slimcreeper]

There would be less impetus to advance non-magical technology in a world where magic is accessible. So, I imagine that while a lot of the political stuff would be viable, non-magical technology would be quite retarded (meaning slowed down, you jerks). After all, people in the Theran empire are probably living lives comparable to our own.