Rewriting History...Sort Of...

Retooling the Realms

Over at RPG BLOG II was the post Death By Canon suggesting that it's hard to DM in the Forgotten Realms because there's frankly SO much "Canon" material out there that it's impossible to keep up - and yet, you're likely to find some player who knows more "official bits" than you do. And I get it - that's true in ANY published setting - try running MERP or Greyhawk or Star Wars or whatever, and you'll find somebody who will say, "They'd never tothat" to something you've set up, stated off the cuff, created, whatever...

So I suggested in the comments to "file the serial numbers off" - I hear this a lot on blogs and in forums, but I don't see it done in practice all that much. The simplest way to do it is to just use the map and change the names - heck, you can even keep them similar - and maybe use some of the same (though I'd avoid Waterdeep and the Dalelands and the like). Waterdeep can become Deep Port (so that I can remember what city the new name is replacing) Silverymoon can be Goldsun or something like that - Hellsgate Keep can be Watchgate Keep, etc., etc.

Gimpshop makes quick work of maps. Here's one I pulled form the 1st Ed boxed set - the Waterdeep region with quickly reworked tags. Took me about 10 minutes. Yeah, I don't know if I'd keep some of the names...

It's a pretty simple matter - go through your books and pencil in the new names (what??? deface my game books??? Bah, they're meant to be used...) and/or make a book of notes with the salient points of what Deep Port is (maybe with a note like "Deep Port is Waterdeep - see FR DM Sourcebook page XX" or whatever).

Better yet would be to do all of the above, but draw a completely new map - not HUGELY different, but different enough that players who know the Forgotten Realms inside and out from all the novels and whatever might not even guess they are in the Realms - of they might say something like, "Boy, this sure seems like Silverymoon...hmmm, Goldsun, I wonder if yon MR. DM is using Silverymoon for this town..." Or whatever. That kind of Metagaming never really bothered me - they know that it sounds like Silverymoon, but it definitely is not Silverymoon, so when the Lord Mayor (or whatever - maybe I make Goldsun a "den of scum and villainy" and it's the Pirate Lord Roberts who is running the place) says something like, "It's Thursday, strangers, and no one wears shoes on Thursday," the player can't say, "Well, that would NEVER happen in Silverymoon." Or, well, they COULD, but then you can just say, "Yes, but this isn't Silverymoon."

It's, heh, Inspired By A True Story... You know how the movies that state this have about 1% "true story" and 99% Inspired by in them. Or pick any Conan movie. Yeah, it's kind of like that. Only good - because it's yours...

Game Settings

Andreas over at The Omnipotent Eye wrote last week:

Good writing for a setting means sowing the seeds of change while describing how everything fits together, feels real and there being an imagine of normality.

He's talking about Kingdoms of Kalamar setting, which I've only glanced at, but his quick post about the descriptions found therein intrigue me - I'm going to read through it today, if all goes well.

Anyway, I cut my setting teeth on Greyhawk, like so many other people, and the Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance, and then MERP. So what I experienced was a progression of the depth of detail that is possible in setting description - Greyhawk was just so much framework - just enough detail to start, but not so much that I'd never remember it all. The Forgotten Realms (the Grey Box - First Ed, of course) wasn't much more detailed (okay, there was a bit more in some areas - by the way, Jeff Grubb has a great remembrance of putting that together here) but then the sourcebooks started coming out - Moonsheas, Waterdeep (and the North - um, what north?), etc, etc. And I scooped them up - for a while, and then I just couldn't take it any more - how could I keep up? And then MERP - well, I really only bought the stuff that I was most interested in...at first...Mordor, Moria, The Witchking supplement - and some of the smaller areas - Shelob's Lair, Goblin Gate - and then I've added a bunch more...but, again, at some point it becomes over burdensome - how much detail is too much?

When official Greyhawk adventures were published, I snapped them up (and learned quickly that anything with the byline Gygax was going to have at least some Greyhawk connection) - even into Second Ed (not Third, I dropped out of RPGs when 3e came out so I have very little idea of what was published for Greyhawk since somewhere around Greyhawk Ruins/City/Falcon/Puppeteer/From the Ashes stuff came out). I thought at the time (and still do, I'm nothing if not consistent - or stubborn...heh) that Gygax did it right - give us the framework for the world, the general state and politics, and then lots of hints and bits of info in the adventures to see where HE went with the stuff, but not so much that it couldn't be tweaked just a bit to fit into my own campaign set in Greyhawk. I'm even okay with giving more details on certain areas (City of Greyhawk, Vale of the Mage - neither does it all that WELL, but I'm okay with trying...)

Once the Forgotten Realms became this huge encyclopedia of information, I jumped ship. I just couldn't keep up - and it started to feel like there were going to be no areas left for DMs to detail on their own. Looking back now, I appreciate the effort to build a highly detailed world - and I use some of that stuff as inspiration - but I can't imagine trying to play in the Realms.

Or Middle Earth. Or Ansalon. Or, actually, Greyhawk these days... Not because of whatever has become of Greyhawk, but because, ultimately, it's not mine. And I guess, for me, that's where it's coming to.

I appreciate the settings - but as soon as you say Greyhawk or Realms or whatever, you've limited what you can do somehow (even in your own mind). So, I'll continue to putter away on the World of Daen Ral and detail what I care about and leave blank what I don't care about - and fill the sandboxes with lots of toys... And when I'm done, if nobody cares but me, well, that's okay.

So, after all that, I'm going to read Kingdoms of Kalamar and maybe steal an idea or two - but I'd never consider running a campaign there...