Rewriting the world to surprise players (NON-CANON!)

[eliakon]

Another thread got me thinking.
As a GM one of my biggest pet peeves is metagaming. The classic issue is that the players have all the books and thus 'know' all the 'secrets'. Thus you have an endless problem with people who just 'happen' to know that the Sunaj are Clan Ahriehm/The White Rose are based in Madhaven/The Techcities of Japan are pre-rifts/Where and what Mindworks is/The cause of the Cataclysm/The existence of the Orbitals/Whatever.

As a GM one of my personal hobbies is to rewrite things. This has a few benefits.
The first is that it adds variety and spice to the games as the players get to be genuinely surprised at the mysteries and get to try and solve them, not just their characters.
The second is that it makes metagamers painfully obvious... when the Sunaj are not a rouge Atlantian clan it becomes pretty obvious when one player starts spouting off about them...
The third is that you can solve issues like canon conflicts, or personal setting issues (don't like how the Minion War is portrayed? Change it. The players might know but the characters wont... after all, they shouldn't know how it is supposed to be working so they can't tell the difference!)

The downside of course is that you have to do a lot of work to generate the variations.

So... On that note.
I was wondering if people would be interested in sharing some of the modifications and tweeks they have done in the past.

For my first example I present my modifications to the Sunaj
(From another post.)
I have done....things to the Sunaj that amuse me greatly
My players tend to not be nearly as amused. But I laugh and that's what counts right?
For the curious...
...I have a couple different 'versions' of what is going on that I have written up. For each game I pick one of them to be the truth. All the others become lies. (probably. Usually at least. A few times I have had more than one Sunaj....)
The stories are
1. The Sunaj are time travelers who are trying to exterminate the Atlantians...before some of them will perform a ritual that will end up sending a portion of the race back in time...where they will create the Mechanoids who are ascendant in the Sunaj timeline.
2. The Sunaj are an alien race that was offended by the TA and seek their deaths
3. The Sunaj are TA Doppelgangers from Earths Nightlands. The Cataclysm sent "Nightlantis" into a dimensional vortex from which they just escaped... and boy are they pissed. To get out they must kill an Atlantean and take their place
4. The Sunaj are Clan Skellian. The racial madness turns out to be a side effect of Monster Shaping (oops)
5. The Sunaj don't really exist. They are a plot created by the Splugorth to cover their current drive to exterminate the Atlantians and corner the market on Tattoos.
6. The Sunaj are the minions of a trapped entity of great power. To free their lord and master they are ritually sacrificing the entire Atlantian race in a ritual of war and illusion.
7. The Sunaj are "Make up something new on the spot that amuses me and run with it"
8. Oh yeah. The Sunaj are exactly like the book says.

Roll a die behind your GM screen. Smirk. Laugh evily. Then refuse to comment.

[Shamrock 'Slinger]

Sometimes, and it's just subtle stuff that might otherwise be mundane.

It helps to have the world books' fluff as background, but not common knowledge. Let the narrative be unreliable in a sense, and unless the character is a well traveled Rogue Scholar than the character has a very vague idea of what things are - if at all. In a way, the world books are for GMs to build a world and for players to fawn over. The average merc isn't going to know every detail of MercTown or Ishpeming, not even if the character has lived there 10+ years. I'm a native of my home city and still discover new things about its history. Most won't have access to written history anyways.

Metagamers are a totally different issue than that though. I think rewriting bits is a good idea for that, but at least you're writing it down so that it's consistent. It's lazy playing IMO. Having a character explore something new, even if it's old for the player is part of the experience.

[Colonel_Tetsuya]

I just un-invite the metagaming tool from my group.

It's a pretty simple solution really. Don't cheat.

[flatline]

As far as I know, we never ever played in the canon setting.

--flatline

[TeeAychEeMarchHare]

I approve.

But I'm one of those people that will rewrite anything and everything if it gets in my way. I look at 'canon' as a series of polite suggestions.

[flatline]

I look at 'canon' as a series of polite suggestions.

One of my early GMs didn't own any "rule books", but had a large collection of, in his words, "idea books".

--flatline

[Daniel Stoker]

I always used the main story as inspiration and a starting off point but never let that limit my games and warned my players that anything the read in the books could be true or not. Which worked well when they went to Mexico armed with squirt guns and found the vampires there more like the ones from Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" series.


Daniel Stoker

[eliakon]

I always used the main story as inspiration and a starting off point but never let that limit my games and warned my players that anything the read in the books could be true or not. Which worked well when they went to Mexico armed with squirt guns and found the vampires there more like the ones from Kim Newman's "Anno Dracula" series.


Daniel Stoker

Nice!
This sort of thing is what I was looking for when I started the thread...
...examples of stuff people had done to make changes.
Making a new kind of vampire is an interesting twist to pull.

[Blue_Lion]

Well probably my biggest rewriting would be linked to my tech builder guide book. I tried to create more scaling between weapon types and sizes.-Basically I restated every major peace of gear using it. Do to many large vehicles having anti missile systems players tend not to lead off with large swarms of missiles.(Side affect is they know anything can be different.)

I did have the survivors from Iron heart that fled to the great lakes and acted as pirates for a while find pre-rifts submersible mobile factories and ship yard prototype allowing them to get back in the gear making business. They can pull these factories and ship yards up to client cities on the great lakes and build the gear there. They found plans for behemoth robots that serve as walking factories and salvage yards. Allowing them to send factories to Merc town and Kingsdale.

Most players I worked with do not meta game so it was not an issue. The few times it has came up and I think they are metta gaming asking them why they did something and if they do not have a solid in game reason over rule it deals with those times fairly easy.

I also tend to run my own custom NPCs in world and meta plot, such as Crazy Hetz or the CS 3G testing(players testing possible CS upgrades). Typically what they are dealing is so removed from most cannon NPCs, it does not matter how well they know the books.

When I run known metta plots such as SoT I change some things, and have the players change outcomes. Out of the 7 times I ran SoT Tolkeen won 4 times.

[Zer0 Kay]

I've twisted so much stuff. Like
*Hagan is a hack and got the idea for the Shemarians and the Monst-Rex from D-Bees he ran into (story somewhere in the Shemarian fan created thread)
then there is Free or True Altarian
*King Arthur and a young "Myrdin d’Monchilder of Caledon son of Wydt Ymrys Ambrosius" also known as Merlin taking the throne from Arthuu and Zashaun (sp?) and that there is still a section of MI5 that was specifically waiting for signs of The Kings return. The groups heritage is of the Britains that wanted to remain in power and feared the return of the Celtic (pronounced Kelt-Ick, not Selt-Ick for you sports wackos ) King.
*The young orphan woman (in her late teens) that was "raised" by "an orthodox priest and the women of his parish" was a D-Bee, not by species but by time and dimension travel, when the priest found her she was clothed in a nightgown, covered in blood, she had no memory of where she came from or who she was... except the name Romanova. The women of the parish named her Sonya. I kept everything else from the book as far as what she knew and experienced. What no one knows is that she is the Grand Dutchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova who was saved by Grigori Rasputin, not a big deal but just a little timeline/dimensional fun for me.
*The USS Eldridge appears for a short time off of Philadelphia during my campaign.
*Oh, yeah and one of the ones I really like. The Vampire Kingdom that covers Mexico City... I forget which one, favors humans. Rather it understands that humans provide food and rather than treating them as cattle they reward them for voluntarily donating blood. They keep them safe from other vampires, they punish vampires that take advantage of humans, they give humans freedoms and even a say in running the government. So not only does the VI receive the worship energy from his vampire minions but many of the humans also worship him. The VI and as trickle down the vampires embrace the technology of the humans and use their superior intellect to advance the technology. Imagine Mexico City, all ruins washed completley away, Lake Texcoco has shrunk around the island, and the VI has his temple on the Island surrounded by an ancient looking city named Tenochtitlan, beyond the water which forms a "small" ring lake around the lake is a more modern city that is shaped as a circle with streets spoked outward centered on the temple on the island. The city is surrounded by a giant wall and over the city is a temporal shield... but that is a longer explenation so I'll just stop here.
*There is a Splycer house in the Antarctic a large mass of ice in the Antarctic is transported to Splicers while a large land mass from splicers is transported to replace it, the pieces swapping places. Splicers ends up with a lake that is the only non living source of PPE and Rifts ends up with a splicer house and a small machine outpost which is capable of manufacturing and repairing robots but can not manufacture nanobots. Splinters of the Nexus reside in the factory and are unaware of the splicer house below them because their exit tunnels are miles away. The robots and humans came two different ways. The robots the "normal" way and the humans passed through some weird dimensional membrane that was reflective and as they passed seemed to shatter and reform behind them.
*an Iki had a misfold and crashed into the icepack in the Arctic an Invid Hive somehow end up appearing on the sea floor below them. They continue on with their enmity the humans scouting out North Am find the CS at first the CS thinks they're humans from the space stations and side with them again then when the CS finds out about the Sentinels and Micronians they turn on the traitors. Oddly enough the Invid find that FoL on this Earth mutate into a form that is dangerous to them. Their Princes requests a cease fire with the UEEF and sides with them again the CS
*The UNSpacy of Macross II base Alus appeared on the dark side of the moon, A Mechanoid mother ship appeared in the great storm on Jupiter and is locked in the gravitational pull (just as a threat... will they make it out? Will they survive? Type thing).
*Nightspawn keep popping up with more regularity (mostly by walking through the mysts on the astral plane).
*BWW are sterile and asexual because the Sploogs made them that way. I've got a few NPCs that are True Born Altarian Warrior Women, they're not blind and fully capable of coupling reproduction. The sploogs did it so that they'd pass on more genes essentially copying themselves so that their obedience, dependancy on Sploog biowizardy to see and population size could be controlled. True Born can breed like rabits... not literally. They've also got some other abilities and issues that makes them a BAD thing for Sploogs to keep around.
*also what I'm working on becoming the world book for Alaska with the working title Alyeska the greatland. Unfortunately my work and family and other restrictions has made this an off and on endeavor since 2009. I've been looking for a cowriter but so far they've been able to work on it less than me, meaning I've only been able to entrust them with small parts and only received reviews so far and not much product.
*There are four other sister ships to the Ticonderoga
*An Ancient Alien Species exists that has lived on Earth since prehistoric times
*US Military had vehicles worthy of being "golden age" equipment to include transformable (Non-RT or Macross) aircraft
*Alaska wasn't destroyed the same way as the rest of the world but from a massive release of Elemental Energy initiated by the apocalypse but magnified by a war between Elemental Lords.
*The Northern Lights are a geo-synced Rift, in Norway it is the Bifrost. In AK it leads somewhere else.
*A CS unit called Legacy Stalkers hunt down mankind's lost tech
*Differentiate between rail and coil guns a player firing his railgun underwater will receive a shocking suprise
*Ion weapons have a chance to overload electrical systems
*American Natives no longer found anywhere near the submersible fortress in AK.

[FluidicAztec]

I guess I play at more of a street level. The bigger campaign stuff never had an any real effect. My players are always just trying to survive the next gig and scrap together enough creds for food. I am looking at building my first "epic" level game. I'll definitely change things up for that.