Saying No to Canon, Anybody else do it? Options

[CircuitBoyBlue]

A lot of times in discussions like the thread about "Is Shadowrun Past Its Prime?" people say that if one doesn't like some aspect of the canon game world, one should simply disregard it and move on. I, personally, have a game where we've changed so much that modern canon is almost entirely irreconciliable with us. Does anybody else out there actually disregard huge chunks of canon, or is it just us? And if so, how? Anything interesting?

For our part, we have a universe where all our games take place, and we have an understanding about a few basic things that won't change depending on who's GMing:

Russia isn't the Russia that's been revealed in some of the more recent books. We came up with some pretty detailed rules years ago that we update from time to time as we learn more and more about actual Russia.

We have our own rules for the Japanese Imperial State, though those are sorely underdeveloped. I'm not sure if they're inconsistent with canon rules, but if they are, ours probably win, because we're stubborn.

Fuchi survives, and Novatech, Cross Applied, and Wuxing don't exist. I'm not sure if there's any other newer corps, but we're really happy with the original Big 8 or 7 or whatever it is. There's an exception to this.

Aztechnologies falls in our universe around 2056 or so, and all its evil sorcerers or whatever you want to call them (in the past we've had characters run into blood magic, but none of them have really ever known what it was, other than just plain bad juju) have gone off and done their own little things, sort of like Nazis setting up shop all over the place in S. America and helping people like Pinochet learn how to torture dissidents. We're not certain this particular point will hold true in all our future campaigns, we'll have to see when we get there with our current one.

Dunklezahn will never become a citizen of the UCAS, get elected president, or get assassinated, and none of the fallout will occur (wills, astral rifts, Draco Foundation, etc). We're all adamant about this, and often like to drunkenly provoke each other into violent rages by suggesting we might run Super Tuesday sometime.

We've also made a few scattered references to things in the Middle East, though nothing well-organized, that might conflict with canon (we should probably write it down before it starts conflicting with itself--such things happen in areas we don't get to often). One time we had a short-lived mini-campaign of Israeli commandos operating on the Syrian border, but that ended up playing more like modern Israel with magic. Also, when we think real hard about it, we get the idea that the Awakening would have SERIOUS ramifications on the state of affairs in Israel, so we'll probably change that if Israel ever comes up again in our games.

Last, we're kicking around the idea that maybe Dragons and Elves WEREN'T around before the Awakening, they're just trying to pull an elaborate hoax to make everyone THINK that they were in order to gain some instant respect and nationalism for the Tirs and put everyone in awe of the dragons to make things like buying corporations or running feudal estates near Lake Louise that much easier. This might be something that most or maybe even all elves are in on, because we almost never have elves in our groups. If we don't go the hoax route, we might go another route and have immortal dwarves, because we don't see it as fair that only elves get to be immortal (yeah, we're weird enough to apply the concept of fairness to which fictional race gets to be immortal in an RPG, and then ignore Orks and Trolls because there's Orks and Trolls in our group). Also, I guess immortal dwarves are a bit more feasible because a dwarf wouldn't be as noticeable as an elf, and if you want to get stereotypical, dwarves always seem like crotchety old people, which I certainly would be if I were 12,000 years old.

[Ottergame]

Actually I just started running a game where I changed all the races into anthromorphic animals. I actually regret it, since half the charm of Shadowrun is how the races interact and the tensions and history that they involved.

[Cray74]

[Domino]

Canon is somewhere just over the hill and has hardly any effect on our games.

[Abstruse]

Hello players, this is Canon. He will be governing the plot of your games for the next three years. You will be fighting insect spirits via the Universal Brotherhood, then dealing with elven politics, fight a few Horrors (but they're not called that right now, are they?), deal with the assassination of a presidential dragon and the corporate war it spawns, then you'll be parading around the world at the whim of a Great Dragon, and finally you will be stuck in Night of the Living Dead as shedim attack. Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred nuyen.

The Abstruse One

[toturi]

Oh my god! I got to stop that Abtruse before he signs my name on a lot of checks!

And Domino? Canon's right here.

[Skeptical Clown]

"The Canon" isn't what bothers me. I try to ignore the novels since they're more terrible than good. Particularly the Dragonheart trilogy. I have Survival of the Fittest, but I doubt I'd ever be able to run it with a straight face. I didn't care for Brainscan either, so I don't know if I'll ever use it. But I basically run campaigns with the canon background.

[Phaeton]

I myself blast away the very existence of all things Horror. They bother me. Ruin the atmosphere for me. I also probably'll tweak the metaplot at my leisure if I ever run my own game.

[Synner]

Let's separate the waters here. We're talking about to distinct concepts:
"Canon" encompasses all the official material published and it's always been designed to provide a consistent and evolving common backdrop to the game. All the background, history and actors are included as well as as the metaplots.

"Metaplots" are (please note the plural) the various storylines that run throughout the published "canon" material. This distinction is subtle but important, because the metaplots are not one cohesive whole, metaplots are modular. Yes, some might have far-reaching ramifications but a little creative editing can introduce equally plausible reasons for those events without having to include the storyline you disliked. The official metaplots are there to be used only as required, its left to individual GMs to choose, drop or tailor them to their particular needs. Most people like certain metaplots over others, dropping or ignoring the ones they don't like and using the others. Don't like Deus or the Arc but love the IEs, forget the former and concentrate on the latter. Like the bugs but not the Shedim. Aztech but not the Horrors? Good for you. The great thing about these is you can edit out what you don't want and easily tweak the rest to suit your tastes and style. In fact this is an almost guaranteed necessity given the range and variety of themes and styles seen in Shadowrun metaplots, the wealth of information and major and minor metaplots currently ongoing in the Sixth World almost guarantees nobody will ever get to use them all. And every book that comes out adds further developments as the world evolves and time goes by.

Most gamers constantly tweak the metaplots they like to fit their campaign and ignore, change and/or drop the rest completely. Nothing wrong with that either. As long as everyone's on the same track and you and your players are comfortable with what's being used there's no reason not to pick and choose.

[Kagetenshi]

Circuit: why did Aztechnology collapse in your game?

~J

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I'm not entirely sure, that one was GMed by someone other than me, and my character wasn't that close to any of it. I know it had something to do with deckers, and power struggles within the corp, but little beyond that. I think the next time we have a campaign with the same GM we might get some answers, because he seemed kind of disappointed that we never figured it out.

[Guest_Crimsondude 2.0_*]

Wow. That sounds eerily familiar to a story I wrote where the characters helped save Aztechnology along similar lines.

[Dax]

One of my biggest tweaks to the Cannon/Metaplots is the fact that Aztechnology is the worlds red headed step child. They will never advance beyond second best, beacuse their entire attitude seems to piss off the rest of the world on a semi regular basis. The rest of the world then turns around, beats the crap outta them, then goes about their buisness again.

I tend to view the situation in the Tir to be very similar to the situation that was in Tzarist Russia right before it collapsed into the chaos of the Russian revolution. I just happen to view the two situations as very similar in nature.

I also gave spirits much more free will and personality. I routenly drive my players nuts with a spirit named Floyd who likes to manifest as a pink rat. Not to mention he loves to manifest on top of people's heads, which has lead to him being given the nickname "rat hat".

I also don't hesitate to do "crossovers", last time my usual D&D DM wanted to take a break from DMing, I proceeded to throw a whole hive of Insect Spirits at our party. It was hysterial to see them get annoyed at the Spirits tendency to do hit and fade-into-the -astral tactics. There was much swearing that night to be sure.

But for the most part, I tend to follow both Cannon and the Metaplots. I've spent enough money getting my hands on all the old books after all.

[Glyph]

Canon is something there as a general resource, to be used in whole or in part as you see fit. I would not recommend trying to go strictly by canon. Even if you start out with a completely canon game, events still might progress differently than the canon world does, and the game might move into areas that you need to flesh out - which might contradict the sourcebook when FanPro fleshes out that same area themselves. And you'll probably like your version better.

Me, I would try to keep it generally recognizable as Shadowrun, but tweak anything I didn't like. Don't like SURGE? Don't use it - or have it be there as the players occasionally seeing some guy with feathers getting beaten up by a mob on the trid, but not introduce it into the game beyond that. Think you could handle Tir or the JIS or Russia differently, or get rid of one of the megacorps in favor of one that you've created yourself? Go for it. If you go too far, you'll be playing a whole different fantasy/cyberpunk game - and the metaplot is part of what gives Shadowrun its distinctive flavor. But you can do a lot of tweaking and revising and still keep the overall world intact.

[The Question Man]

[Kesh]

Next time I get to run SR, it's going to be a 5 year (in-game) campaign that runs through Bug City. Canon is pretty well fixed for what goes on outside, but inside it's wide open.

[Hida Tsuzua]

While I haven't dealt with metaplots too much, I've rewrote all of the history beginning with the formation of the NAN and gradually grew. Interesting, present day really isn't that much changed when you replaced VITAS with a giant zombie infestation that impacted corporate power, SINs, the NAN, and more!

[BitBasher]

I stick with canon on all major events, I see no reason to needlessly complicate things and give myself more work.

[Kagetenshi]

Tsuzua: were the individual zombies giant, or was it just a large infestation?

~J

[Hida Tsuzua]

[Kagetenshi]

How do you explain the total change of computer operation without the Crash?

~J

[Jason Farlander]

[BitBasher]

[Jason Farlander]

Actually no... the first cyberterminals were introduced in 2026. The crash just accelerated their development. It wouldnt be too much of a stretch to say that the development happened that rapidly anyway - afterall, you dont *need* cataclysms to speed up development, they just happen to be a convenient explanation.

...odd, isnt it, that a virus *requiring* the implementation of this brand new tech appears just a few short years after its initial development. Thats certainly a coincidence and nothing more.

[BitBasher]

Woah, that really goes against all the accounts of the crash that I have read. hmmm.