Canon Tricks

Now that I've discussed my feelings on canon in RPGs, I thought I'd discuss a specific case in a bit more detail: Star Wars canon. As I mentioned before, my personal Star Wars canon is the original trilogy. One thing I'd consider doing when running a Star Wars campaign is establishing beforehand that one or all three of those movies were canon, but that nothing else was.

There are an amazing amount of things you can do when you only accept what appears on the screen as canon. For example, what if I say that only Star Wars is canon? Suddenly Vader may really have killed Anakin, and Luke and Leia might not be brother and sister

One of my earliest Star Wars RPG scenarios that I created had my players as the ones that delivered the Death Star plans to Princess Leia. This was back when West End Games had the license, and the only thing we knew officially about the Bothans was that a lot of them died. That's all that the movies tell us, and even that could have been misinformation, or misdirection. After all, in a Galactic Rebellion chances are the lines of communication aren't perfect. Mon Mothma could have been wrong about all the Bothans dying, or maybe all those Bothans died as part of a distraction to allow someone else to actually deliver the information. That someone being the PCs.

Let's go back to that first idea though, that only the first movie is canon. Now, let's rewind the timeline back to the prequels. Now we can tell stories of Anakin and Ben that are wide open. Either as a PC or NPC, the players can never be sure if Anakin is going to become Vader, or if Vader is going to kill him. We can play with Ben Kenobi as well. There's an old fan theory that predates the prequels that says that Obi-Wan Kenobi was actually OB-1 Kenobi, a clone of Ben Kenobi. This suddenly puts the fate of Ben Kenobi up for grabs. Was Obi-Wan Ben, or a clone? Play the game and find out!

These are the kinds of things that you can't do if you slavishly follow canon, and I think they're incredibly interesting stories to explore.

Canon Should Be Shot From A Cannon

I love canon. Whether it's for a game, movie, book or TV show, exploring the official canon involved in the product is usually great fun. When it comes to RPGs though, I hate it.

Rather, I hate the straitjacket it often seems to create for GMs, players and even game designers. For an example, let's take something from the Dresden Files RPG. In the entry for Harry Dresden in Our World, there's a section called "A World Without Harry?" that warns that removing Harry from the Dresdenverse would surely have led to many bad thing happening. OK, if that's the only change made, then yeah, things would suck. Why would I have that be the only thing I changed?

This seems to be a problem encountered in a lot of situations where people start talking about messing with canon. In a Star Wars game, if you talk about dropping Luke you inevitably get an argument about how then the Death Star would have blown up Yavin, wiping out the Rebellion. As if you can only make that one change, and not decide to make a number of other changes as well.

When I run an RPG in a licensed setting I prefer to play fast and loose with canon. If the canon provides an easy answer to a problem, then fine, I go with it, but if it gets in the way, then it gets tossed out. This is doubly true if canon provides insider information that the characters in the game should never have access to. If I run a Battlestar Galactica game, then the person least likely to be a Cylon is Boomer, and everything else if up for grabs as well. Maybe Kobol is still inhabited when the Galactica gets there. Maybe human looking Cylons are a myth that merely serves to generate paranoia. There are so many ways that the story could have gone that it would be a shame to just repeat the one presented in the show when playing in an RPG.

This is true for other settings as well, even when there isn't as much mystery as there is in BSG. Star Wars is a good example. For me the original trilogy is the only thing that is in my personal canon, but if I'm running a Star Wars RPG, why even stick to that? Maybe Kenobi told the truth and Vader really did kill Anakin Skywalker. Maybe the person he tells it to isn't Luke Skywalker, but Luke Starkiller, a PC who then goes off on a grand adventure that ends with the destruction of the Death Star... at the hand of the PCs!

There are two impediments to disregarding canon like this: game designers and players. The lesser of the two are the game designers. Most licensed games seem to assume that you are going to stick to the canon. Rarely do they offer any sort of discussion as to how to deviate from canon, and if they do it's minimal. My discussion of the Dresden Files above is an example of this. It can be argued that if you buy a game with a license then people will want to play in that world, but this ignores the fact that most properties worth licensing offer rich settings where a single different choice could have produced a completely different, yet just as compelling, story than what was presented in the original property.

I think one of the better licensed games in this regard that I've seen lately is DC Adventures. They made one very important decision that I think makes a huge difference: they decided to present the characters as iconic representations rather than current canon. So, the Aquaman you find in the book is a clean shaven man with two normal hands in a yellow and green costume, because that's the iconic image of Aquaman. There's a sidebar discussing a couple of the more modern alternate versions if that's what you want to use, but the iconic version is the default. This makes the DC Universe as presented in the RPG into less of a straitjacket and more of a toolkit for creating the GM's own version of the DC Universe.

The bigger impediment is the players. If you have players that are knowledgeable about the canon, then they often expect it to be canon in the game. I'm willing to work with my players on this. If there are elements of canon that the players are particularly fond of and want to be in a game they play in, then I'll work with them to keep those bits in. If the players in a game of BSG really want to serve aboard the Galactica under Adama, then I'll try to structure my game to include those bits of canon, but those might be the only bits that I keep.

Even if the players want to play with a majority of the established canon that they know and love, I will still refuse to stick to it completely. It's too limiting to have to stick to the canon, and both in terms of options within the game, and in terms of how much work it can take to keep everything straight when there's a large body of canon to deal with.

Of course, there's one thing that will always be canon in any Star Wars game I run: if there's a Han Solo in the universe, then he shot first.

Distribute Your Product, Please!

One of the drawbacks of being a fan of a niche industry is that it can sometimes be hard to locate product. There are a lot of really good game designs out there that at some point in their history have been really hard to track down. When I first got Diaspora it was only available as a print-on-demand (PoD) book from Lulu.com. When podcasts were first gushing about the Alien Frontiers board game, it turned out that it was completely unavailable, having only been released as part of a kickstarter.com project.

If a product is good enough, these things tend to eventually resolve themselves. Diaspora now gets distribution through Evil Hat, and even when it was only PoD you could still get it if you were aware of it. Alien Frontiers' second printing is now sold out, but a third printing is in the works and it should be available through normal distribution channels when it comes out (it may even be out already, I haven't been following it closely since I got a copy of the second printing).

Then there are the exceptions.

The first type of exception is the "limited edition." This is where the product is advertised as having a limited run and if you don't get in on it before it's gone then you will never get it. I generally assume one of two things when this is the case: either they are lying, or the product is crap. In the first case they are going to publish it again if it sells out. Maybe they'll change the cover, but it will essentially be the same product. In the second the product is such crap that they need the extra hype to try to sell what they have before people catch on.

I don't think that all "limited edition" products fall into one of those categories, but the fact that I immediately assume that one probably does brings this particular marketing technique into question, at least as far as I'm concerned.

Then comes the second category: a traditionally published game that simply isn't distributed. The only way to get this game is through the publisher. This is a model that I am rapidly losing patience with. At least with one-source options like Lulu.com, the one source is a specialist in delivering product to customers. Whoever wrote a book on Lulu, and whatever its quality of writing, I know that if I order it I will get what I order in a timely manner, and that the physical quality of the book will be acceptable, because that's what Lulu does.

When I order from an independent publisher it's always a crapshoot. Sometimes I get what I ordered in a timely manner. Just as often I get the wrong thing, or a partial order, or I have to follow up because it's been a month and I've received no information aside from a paypal receipt informing me that my card has been charged.

It's a real hit or miss proposition, and is increasingly becoming a barrier to my desire to seek out and purchase such products. Most of these operations don't even have a single full time employee. Thus, even if the people doing order fulfillment want to do a good job, they often don't have the time to do so.

This is why more of these smaller companies should look into some form of distribution. While it takes a cut of their profits, it also eliminates some of their overhead, and makes for a more pleasant experience for their paying customers. I have not done any real research into the options, but I know that Indie Press Revolution has been expanding the number and types of products that they distribute, and I think they probably represent a viable alternative.

In addition to making things easier for a customer, it also makes things easier for those retail stores that are still willing to take a chance on the occasional obscure product. They're probably more likely to do so if they can add it to an order they are already going to make, than if they have to place a special order.

So, if you are a game company that only sells direct to consumers, please consider finding at least one more method of distribution. I ask this as one of those consumers who might just want to buy your product, but can't find it.

The Nature of Self in Science Fiction Roleplaying

This is going to be an incredibly nerdy discussion of some deep philosophical issues... as they relate to gaming. Specifically, what exactly defines a unique individual as opposed to a copy of an individual, when examining consciousness and soul.

The reason I'm thinking of this is because of a reaction one of my friends had when I described the problem I had with trans-humanism as presented in the Eclipse Phase RPG. He pointed out that the idea of moving a consciousness from one body to another in Eclipse Phase was essentially the same as reincarnation in a fantasy world, and that I had no problems with that concept.

At the time, I wasn't fully able to explain why I felt there was a difference (especially since I'd never realized the contradiction before), but I think I can now. In the typical fantasy world the existence of a soul is not a matter of theological debate, it's provable fact. Not only do people have souls, but they form the core of individuality, and when you take a soul from one body and put it into another, the "self" is obviously attached to the soul and not the body. Characters in such a world can prove this by actually communicating with, or even visiting, the afterlife.

Leaving aside my personal religious beliefs, the idea of a personal soul that forms the core of "self" is NOT a given in a science fiction setting, and even if there is a soul, there's no way of showing that it remains attached to a copied consciousness. Basically, I have the same misgivings expressed by Dr. McCoy in Star Trek when it comes to transporters. If it basically destroys the body in one location and then creates a duplicate in the other, is it really the same person? Didn't the original person actually die while a completely new, yet identical, person came into existence on the other end?

This seems especially problematical when it's possible to make more than one copy of a person. If there's a soul in that case, what happens to it? Does it multiply? Is it divided? Does it only go with one copy while any others remain "souless" (there's an idea for a sci-fi/horror story, if it hasn't already been done)?

This all assumes there's a soul. If there is no soul then it presents a different set of problems. If atheists are right, and our consciousness simply comes to an end when we die, then wouldn't a consciousness "wiped" from a body after being copied into another body simply cease to be? Isn't the copy simply a new consciousness that thinks it had those prior experiences? Has not the original "self" perished?

These are the kinds of issues that bother me about transferring consciousness when applied to science fiction instead of fantasy. I haven't even gone into some of the other tricky areas, like "backup" consciousnesses that are used when the original is lost completely (a common concept in Eclipse Phase).

I thought there might be a way around this using the concept that the body completely replaces the cells within it several times over the average person's lifetime, only that's not entirely true. A big exception is neurons, which you get when you're born, and never get replaced. If our consciousness essentially resides in those neurons, then that actually supports my misgivings rather than providing a way out from them.

So, why does this cause me problems when gaming? After all, I'm not really trying to transfer my own consciousness. The problem is that I nearly always identify somehow with the characters I play. Even if I'm playing a bad guy, I can usually link some darker part of my self to the character and magnify it in order to get that identification. I can play a character that I have no identification with, but it isn't as fun. I can't identify with characters from Eclipse Phase because one of the core concepts of the game is something that I could never accept personally. Voluntarily transferring bodies without physically transferring the brain would be equivalent to suicide in my mind.

I'm curious to know if anyone else thinks along these lines, or if I'm alone in my being uncomfortable with this concept. I'm also curious to know if anyone thinks I've missed some obvious logical alternative to the conclusions I've come to regarding all of this.

Why Eurogamers Need to Take Another Look at Wargames

A while back I learned that my old FLGS has essentially stopped selling wargames. I found this surprising since the store's weekly board gaming event has grown quite a bit in attendance since I left the area, so I assumed that there would have been more interest in wargames, rather than less.

It turns out that it was only myself and a couple of other guys who bought most of the wargames, and all of us stopped doing so for various reasons. The people attending the store's weekly board game night are more interested in eurogames, and have little or no interest in wargames. The shame is that wargame designers have been taking a lot of lessons from eurogame designers, and there are a lot of designs coming out from wargame companies that might appeal more to the eurogamer.

There are still plenty of traditional two player hex and counter wargames coming out, but there are a lot of other types of wargames being produced as well. In fact, the number one game on BoardGameGeek.com as I write this is Twilight Struggle, a wargame from GMT Games! Also in the top 25 is another GMT Game: Dominant Species.

Memoir '44 and the other games in the Commands & Colors line are also wargames, although the most well known in the series have not been published by wargame companies. Most eurogamers seem to think that these games are the exception to the rule, and in the past they would have been correct, but that's increasingly no longer the case.

Twilight Struggle is arguably the best example of a type of wargame known as "card driven". Card driven wargames rely on the play of cards to drive the game, either in addition to or in place of the more traditional roll of the dice. This allows for both more control on the part of the player and more variation in the types of things that can occur in the game. It's been a very successful mechanic and there are several good games out there that use it, many of which don't even get a second glance from most eurogamers.

Part of the problem is that they are all two player games, and many eurogamers play in groups rather than pairs. Wargame designers have only recently started putting out more games that cater to this, but there have been a few such designs in the past as well. One older design that has recently found a new home at Dan Versen Games is the Down In Flames card game. This game features WWII aerial combat and can accommodate up to six players out of the box. The publisher also sells additional decks of cards to allow for even bigger games without having to buy the whole game again. I've found that most gamers willing to give this one a try end up liking it.

More recent designs have come from Clash of Arms games. Their "War Is Hell" series of card games allow for two to four players to refight famous battles in a reasonable time frame. I haven't actually played any of them yet, but have a copy of their Fires of Midway game that uses the system, and am looking forward to giving it a try.

Another reason that many eurogamers don't give wargames a try is the length of time it takes to play the game. Eurogamers generally want a game that at most takes a couple of hours to play. Traditionally, many wargames take several hours, usually lasting over multiple sessions to complete, but most of the games I've mentioned in this post come in at 90 minutes or less. The biggest exception is Twilight Struggle which comes in at three hours, which I've found to be the outside limit for the average game night.

One area where wargames haven't caught up to eurogames yet is quality of production. Dollar for dollar, your average eurogame is going to have higher production value than your average wargame. Most wargames still have cardstock or even paper boards, and cardboard chits that you have to punch out of a sheet, leaving little dangly bits on the corners. The original printings of Twilight Struggle were like this, and it was only the most recent printing that had a mounted board and more attractive counters. Despite this, most wargames cost as much or more than their eurogame counterparts. This is largely due to economies of scale where eurogames sell many more copies than do wargames.

Even this is starting to change though, especially for those games that wargame companies think can do well with eurogamers. I already mentioned Twilight Struggle being reprinted with higher quality components, and there are other games receiving similar treatment.

All of this means that if you are interested in the more complex eurogames, you may want to take another look at some of the games being published by wargame companies.