thread: 2005-07-05 : Setting and Source Material
On 2005-07-13, Elliot Wilen wrote:
This is a bit of a shot in the dark but maybe it would help to explore the possibility of distinguishing canon & premise in various works and various genres. For example, I was personally never attracted to the idea of playing a game set in Middle Earth since the story of The Lord of the Rings dominates the setting so completely. (Although I would say that, for someone who has only read The Hobbit, Middle Earth could be quite interesting.) An old Forge Thread on Open/Closed Setting seems relevant. I'd say I feel pretty much the same about Star Wars, and about various Tolkien-derivatives concerning a "dark lord threatening free peoples".On the other hand, after reading most of the Lankhmar books (various authors, varying quality of stories) I can easily imagine Erewhon as a setting for much enjoyment. It has a canon, but there are big blank spaces, and the built-in premises are fairly open.
Would that suck, and how?
Switching gears slightly, I am also reminded of something I came across on Harnforum. For those unfamiliar, Harn as a setting has an elaborate history and geography, but all official events are frozen at a particular point in the game world. What the thread was about was figuring out how the GM can take a seemingly static situation and develop it into scenarios for game play. And what it amounted to was, examining the source material, locating interesting cleavages, hooks, or lacunae, and developing them creatively. (The discussion is in this forum, under "GM Beginners' Guide".)
