A recent post on the Cortex RPG boards got me thinking about a problem with role playing games based on licensed properties like Star Trek or Battlestar Galactica, or even games with “metastories” like the World of Darkness stuff by White Wolf or Jovian Chronicles by Dream Pod 9.

The main problem is the extensive story arc (in the case of TV shows with the heroes of the universe in question being defined by the show), heavy backstory or world-building elements that are useful to the GM in setting the scene, but can get in the way of the storytelling when your vision of the world doesn’t feel with the established material.  While many GMs may be comfortable with making an established universe “theirs”, you can run the risk of what I’m calling “canon-pushers” in this piece.

Canon-pushers are, in short, the fanboys that either cannot come to grips, or are overly enamored with the fictional quality of these worlds.  You’ve met them — the guy that knows the events happening in Babylon 5 to the year, month, day, and minute; the middle-aged player that knows every detail of the deckplans for Enterprise-D, and all of the iterations every created for the original NCC-1701; the girl who will argue a story point because it conflicts with episode 304 of The Next Generation, and will point out that moon X on the Rim of the ‘Verse didn’t have cities (because they weren’t shown on screen, apparently the moon is desolate except for the set piece in episode 10 of Firefly.)

The same depth of detail that makes the universe so interesting can be turned against you faster than Enterprise moving at the speed of plot.  One of the easiest ways to get around this (if you have a reasonably adult crew of gamers) is to point out when you are getting the campaign started that this is your gaming world.  For a Star Trek campaign I simply used what JJ Abrams would — it’s an alternate reality.  I gave a quick run down of what I was keeping as “canon” for the game:  certain eps of the old show, most of  The Next Generation and Deep Space 9, none of Voyager. The movies, save for the first two, were out the door.  There would be changes to the technological timeline — tech that was discovered, then never talked about, was brought in.  You weren’t allowed to rewire the spiraling quantum whatsinator into a pulsing positronic whosijigger…unless the technology was similar.  With the understanding this was a different universe, we were able to turn what was supposed to be a mini-campaign into a 5 year game.  And it was good!

I love running licenses property-based games.  It cuts down on prep time for world building and most of the players have an idea of the look of things — clothing styles, equipment, aliens, etc.  It gives me a chance to do my own take on these universes.

Our Babylon 5 campaign was the most “canon-conscious” of the games I ran, based in a far corner of the action in the series.  It worked because there was overlap with the series’ events, but it didn’t not directly impact the characters and their actions.  The Serenity/Firefly campaign was set before the series (but after the war), giving me the chance to do some adventures in the ‘Verse without having to address the series at all.  Our current Battlestar Galactica campaign has run well, as there are plenty of places for survivors to be active ont he Colonies without ever running across Helo and Boomer/Athena, and another fleet might be running about looking for a habitable world, directed by “God” to help insure the survival of Man.

The GM should never be afraid to toss the stuff that doesn’t work, and keep the stuff that does for a game universe.  I have an upcoming transhuman sci-fi campaign in the works.  I was originally going to use the Eclipse Phase setting and rules set, but on further reflection realized that there were elements of the backstory and setting that were unwieldy and didn’t work with my vision of this kind of setting.  I began fusing elements of Eclipse Phase with Jovian Chronicles — one of my favorite settings for “hard” sci-fi (too bad Silhouette is clunky as a Model A) — and Transhuman Space.  All of these settings have something in common — RPG systems that were (in my opinion) a detriment to the gaming experience.

They’re getting mixed up, shaken hard, and ported into Cortex (Margaret Weis’ system for Serenity and Battlestar Galactica) and I’m hoping a for a successful synthesis.  I’m keeping the high-order AIs getting out of hand from EP…but using the old standby of they were defending themselves from being shut down by a UN edict against smarter-than-human AI (borrowed from River of Gods.)  I kept the Fall from JC, but now it was a fight between the AI and their mechanical minions, and the posthumans and transhumans.  the Edicts of the JC cover high-order AI, but it’s hazily defined and there will be a lot of gray area in the game.  I’m keeping some of the anime flair of JC — the giant mecha (themselves intelligent), for instance.  You’ll still be able to play uplifted animals, robots, human-like androids, etc. like in EP.

Running games in established game settings can take a lot of stress off the GM in the early stages of the campaign, but you and the players should be willing to throw canon out the window when it interferes with the storytelling, or more importantly, making the world your own.