A brief
Google+ discussion of the post about “Exploding Continuity” over at Hobby Games Recce highlighted an interesting problem: what do you do when there’s so much
continuity in the licensed source media (film, television program, comic book)
it seems to prohibit roleplaying activities within the setting?
Using
popular media sources as the basis for roleplaying game settings can present a
challenge: finding a place of one’s own for original adventures using engaging
setting elements without interfering with the main plot or characters. In many
media continuities fans only glimpse a portion of the setting, with plenty of
room in which to create their own roleplaying game adventures within that
continuity and the spirit of the original intellectual property. It’s not an
easy exercise. Most fans immerse themselves in the central characters,
settings, and plots; thinking creatively beyond these becomes more difficult
when existing primary continuity sources so completely define the setting to
nearly prohibit other entertaining adventures from taking place. It helps to
shift focus from the central characters and plots and think about others
inhabiting the setting and their motivations within that universe.
Many
published roleplaying games have successfully managed this in the past -- Star Wars, Star Trek, Battlestar Galactica,
Indiana Jones, James Bond, and numerous games based on comic book licenses
-- by encouraging players to run characters very much like but not exactly the
central protagonists in the licensed media. Some consist of vast universes
unlimited by earth history or modern knowledge, such as Star Wars, Star Trek, and Doctor
Who, offering rather broad settings across which one can create and game.
A notable
failure in this category was TSR’s Indiana
Jones roleplaying game (the one in which the company supposedly trademarked
the term “Nazi” as their intellectual property…). In this game players had to
choose who ran Indiana Jones and who got stuck playing Willie Scott and Short
Round (with original character creation rules following in a supplement one
year later…a bit too late). When it acquired the license in the mid-1990s, West
End Games approached The World of Indiana
Jones roleplaying game in much the same manner as its Star Wars game: players ran heroes who engaged in similar
adventures as those seen in the films, playing characters similar to but not
exactly Indiana Jones, Marcus Brody (one of my favorites), Marion Ravenwood,
and Sallah, as well as a host of other character types inhabiting that
historical period and pulp literary genre.
Some games
actually build in roleplaying opportunities parallel to elements from films and
television shows. For instance, in the Ghostbusters
roleplaying game the players ran ghostbusters who franchised their
operation from the original team in the film, capitalizing on the film without
treading on its continuity.
“Our adventures happen just
off-screen.”
Here are three
examples of popular licensed media settings and how I managed to run adventures
or campaigns “just off-screen” from the central plot and characters:
Star
Trek: In both an early home-brew system and later published ones based
on Star Trek: The Next Generation I
ran a short campaign in which the heroes didn’t interact with the Enterprise crew but engaged in similar
investigations, patrols, and adventures during the course of their service
aboard a smaller Starfleet vessel. Trek presented many easy opportunities for
transposing characters into the universe without treading on continuity: many
ships in Starfleet, numerous flashpoints around the galaxy (I chose the Cardassian
border), lots of different character archetypes to use for both player and
gamemaster characters, and a host of sourcebooks (at the time all in print) to
mine for ideas and guides for continuity.
Star
Wars: Even before I joined West End Games as editor of The Official Star Wars Adventure Journal,
I’d run a long campaign for friends that started shortly after the Battle of
Yavin and culminated in the Battle of Endor. At campaign’s end I received
requests from two of the players that their characters go out in a blaze of
glory in the final adventure. After a mission in which the heroes rescued the
Bothan spies delivering key secret intelligence to the Rebel Alliance
(something we hear about but don’t see in the briefing scene midway through Return of the Jedi) all the heroes took
part in some aspect of the Battle of Endor…several serving as command crew
aboard a small cruiser in the Rebel Fleet and two others in their modified
light freighter running interference for the Rebel starfighters (much like the Millennium Falcon in the film).
Battlestar
Galactica: When the series premiered I jotted down some notes on key
personalities, ship-board locations, weapons, and spacecraft for my own
reference. I later created a one-shot convention adventure using the D6 Space rules when interest in the show
was at an all-time high (a common problem with officially published licensed
roleplaying games…by the time the reach publication after a long process of
development, writing, and approvals, popular interest in the license might have
already peaked and in fact started waning). Rather than Viper pilots the
players ran “second-rate” pilots culled from the fleet and charged with
training on the reconnaissance Raptor vessels. Alas, I only ran one scenario
with pre-generated characters, but it allowed players to fly a ship, explore,
blast Cylons, and generally have fun in the universe without disrupting
continuity. (It also helped that I once ran it at a convention where Bodie
Olmos, who played “Hotdog” in the series, was a guest and made an in-character
cameo appearance during the adventure’s introduction).
In creating
one’s own continuity in any setting -- but particularly established media
settings -- it helps to employ an axiom we advocated at West End Games in relation
to material developed for the Star Wars
license: “No Superlatives or Absolutes.” The Star Wars Style Guide I revised for the West End Games version of
the roleplaying game contained two paragraphs under that heading in the
“Writing in the Star Wars Universe”
chapter, and it bears repeating not only to remind setting contributors not to
limit themselves but to inspire creators that what they see in the established
setting isn’t all that exists:
Don’t make stuff the “biggest” or “best” or “worst”
or “most” anything. You can make something big and impressive and nasty by
sheer description. You may not use these absolute descriptive because somehow,
somewhere, somebody will come up with something bigger and badder….
Similarly, don’t make sweeping statements about the
nature of the Star Wars galaxy. instead of saying “All customs inspectors in
the galaxy will do this,” limit your perspective to something more local --
“Customs inspectors on this planet…” People will do things differently in
different parts of the galaxy, so you will have worlds that are wildly
different.
As a final
bit of inspiration in finding space within established media settings for one’s
own roleplaying escapades I offer one of the game-writing ideas I’ve gleaned
from author extraordinaire S. John Ross:
“Explore unexpected ideas
everywhere!”
Middle-earth
emerged in our brief Google+ discussion as being a particularly difficult
setting into which one might stage roleplaying game adventures given the
voluminous continuity and world-spanning central plot of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Tolkien created a broad world
populated with sophisticated peoples and cultures, but navigating it “just
off-screen” from the main plots and characters requires a knowledge of the
world.
Iron Crown
Enterprises made its Middle-earth Role Playing
a cornerstone of its business for years, and Decipher published a roleplaying
game concurrent with Peter Jackson’s Lord
of the Rings films (and illustrated with fantastic stills from the movies).
Both offered sourcebooks providing setting information and adventure ideas
during the Third Age of Middle-earth; further research into other non-game
source material could provide inspiration for adventures during other ages.
Though I’ve not run one-shot scenarios or campaigns in this popular setting,
I’ve considered it, and offer here two campaign ideas to explore:
Pipe-Weed to Erebor: Gathering in Lindon the heroes agree to take a
train of pack mules to deliver pipe-weed to the Dwarves of the recently liberated Lonely Mountain.
They must overcome their differences (and seek their hidden agendas), barter
for pipe-weed in the Shire, and make the treacherous passage across Eregion and
Wilderland, encountering Orcs and wargs fleeing from a terrible battle at
Erebor, and evading dark forces seeking to seize a secret one of the heroes
carries.
Outlaws of Beleriand: This campaign idea is set in the ancient First
Age of the Silmarillion. The heroes
begin as members of the houses of Elves and Men assembling for an assault on
Morgoth’s fortress in Angband to recover the Silmarils in a complex plot
involving forces from across Beleriand. Their plan goes horribly awry through
Morgoth’s intervention in the Nirnaeth Arnoediad, the Battle of Unnumbered
Tears. As part of the eastern assault on Angband led by Maedhros, the heroes
face the horror of Glaurung, Father of Dragons, plus treachery from within the
ranks of Men. Fleeing the lost battle, the characters must survive as Morgoth’s
forces overrun the land. They seek news of the few havens left within
Beleriand, forge friendships with allies, and make their way across a land
swarming with Orcs and other fell beasts. The campaign is basically a riff on
the classic Star Wars “Rebels versus
the Empire” theme, with characters seeking valuable supplies, allies, and
secret havens from which to sortie against the overwhelmingly superior enemy.
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