Here’s a question, how far do people like going away from cannon?
Example: Do you like when characters and story plots are as close to cannon, or are open to characters and story plots are far from cannon?
For me, I’m pretty close to cannon. But I know cannon is a mess right now, and the story plots are very much, unattached to character agency. And there’s of course, the distance between gameplay and story. Even more so as everyone tries to figure out how there’s how many people with “THE” heart. etc. So I won’t dock people for not knowing parts of cannon, or ditching some sections of cannon.
But I like everything still being in the realm of warcraft. Cross over rps are fine, just not for me.
And I guess I’m asking, because I’m having issues on how back do I have to scale some of my characters to 1. not be too marysue (it’s one of my biggest fears in rp, but I know ->) 2. drop my fanfiction stories as those events didn’t happen for other people’s characters, which could lead to a lot of confusion.
Honestly it depends mostly on which character and the current storyline. Like right now I have no toons that are really headed into the afterlife of all places. Maybe one because I can tie the Drust bits of Ardenweald back into his story from BfA where he spent most of his time in Drustvar.
But even when I don’t really participate in whatever current canon is happening, I do keep it very much in mind for the sake of keeping things grounded in the Warcraft setting.
Like going back to Drustvar and BfA, that particular character I spoke about got caught up in dealing with a cult that moved into his families old homestead. As it turned out, they were originally a group of farmers that were trying to get away from the Coven of witches and seek refuge somewhere, but the corruption of the forest ended up claiming them and driving them mad.
So while I made up a new small group of baddies instead of using the Heartsbane coven itself, the canon of the world and zone still informed how I went about it.
I find that’s actually a great way to RP a more adventure type, or in this case horror, story if the current Blizzard arc just doesn’t grab you for some reason.
However far away from the artillery piece is recommended for safety.
But in all seriousness, I try to adhere to the rules laid out by the universe proper in all things. Hence why I can get very grumbly when the story takes a sharp left or right turn.
That said, as a longtime fan of the franchise and having seen numerous retcons of said franchise, I’ve come to basically ignore the minutia details of said setting. Official Canon might state that Doomhammer engaged Anduin Lothar in an honorable duel, but Vanndrel here (Who was canonically present at Black Mountain at the time) will go to his grave swearing Lothar was cut down by treachery and it was only Turyalon wanting to spare the Horde outright genocide that the “Honorable Duel” cover story was spread.
I follow lore until there’s a grey area. There’s a lot of grey areas. So usually my rule is only if there’s something saying hard no on a headcanon. Nightborne may have lore telling us specifically their creation, but it doesn’t have much lore telling us what was happening between the shield going up and going back down. So I might be able to fill in some gaps, joke about how a certain look was popular in Suramar for a hundred years and such.
As a goblin I am contractually obligated to be as close to the cannon as possible.
But anyways I stick to the fluff (as the story in this game isn’t deep enough to earn the moniker of “lore”) as closely as possible. Building characters within the restrictions of the setting is part of the fun, and there’s an awful lot you can do in the setting regardless.
This world has so many insane possibilities that I often wonder what exactly you’d have to do to not be in-lore. Even ideas I’ve had that I thought were complete nonsense ended up being, to my surprise, completely understandable lol.
I like for characters, things, and whatnot that I RP with to be plausibly based in WoW’s universe. I’m generally not going to be into lifting something directly from another setting and plunking it in here. I also wouldn’t tend to be into inventing wholly unforeshadowed species or major landmasses and assuming they’ve existed on Azeroth all along, but Blizzard does that all the time so on a certain level I’m also kind of ambivalent.
When it comes to stories, though, I can’t say I find much joy in just replaying events that have been shown to me through cinematics and questing. Those lore events might be good backdrop or plot element for RP to spin off of, but the cool stuff is always going to be what RP characters do around, because of, or in spite of those events.
The super fuzzy line for me personally is that it’s hard for me to stay immersed in a storyline if it involves massive, widely noticeable things that should be visible in the game world, but aren’t. For instance, I’d be down for RPing about demonic infiltrators, working for various splintered factions of the former Burning Legion, trying to establish covert footholds of power on Azeroth while our champions are distracted by the Shadowlands. I’d have trouble RPing about a situation where Orgrimmar gets actively bombarded by a fleet of Legion ships for a month, because to my brain that’s something that should be super visible in-game if it’s going on. There’s a spectrum here, though, and it depends on a lot of factors.
I’m curious about this in particular:
What kind of events do you mean?
If it’s something that a lot of characters couldn’t reasonably not know about – someone usurping Stormwind’s throne, a major invasion of a capitol city, somebody totally wiping out all threats in a formerly-dangerous in-game zone, etc – then I can see why you’d be worried. But if it’s more along the lines of personal adventures, then in my opinion, there’s probably no reason to be worried. Azeroth is big.
I pretty much stay in gray areas, to be honest. If it is not specifically forbidden/impossible according to cannon then it is probably fair game. As long as something doesn’t contradict lore, and seems remotely possible and has a logical flow, I’m usually okay
Uh, one of the most common things that find conflicts are:
Cannon character events
Like how one my characters can have a run in with a cannon character, and while I can mention board things like “Oh, I served in the Greyguard.” having my character bring up how she had one lovely evening drinking and talking gossip with Mia Greymane isn’t going to fly. It’s an event that I just have to drop. And yes, I know I can just mention it, but it can create conflicts if someone else’s head canon is different.
Oc events.
My characters are closely knit. They have their little adventuring sisterhood. Now for fanfiction they do things that usually go along with the story of the expac. So things like BFA, how they tossed around the heart or fought the raid bosses etc. Once again, it can cause conflicts if someone else’s character did that thing. So I normally drop my characters doing those events for further rp. (this is mostly an issue with recent soap opera expacs)
Fanfiction events/powers/abilities
I cannot even begin to write a fanfiction that’s even 85% inline with lore/canon. So some events are change around, or there’s a part of lore I don’t know/care about to put in, and I am not going to limit my characters to their classes outside of the game. I mean my priest lived her whole life around pallys, and eventually studied dks. In fanfic, she can preform some small paladin spells, and she has attempted to test dk magics before. But I’m not going to try to rp that out in game, as I feel like that would make her too powerful. (and once again can ruin someone else’s head cannons)
Once again, in a personal fanfic, (if I wanted too) I would allow my characters to rule the world, be completely unkillable, know everyone, be the most attractive thing anyone ever seen, and so on. But even in my not even posted fanfic, I feel my character should have a reasonable lvl of power, and in rp, where I’m interacting with other people and their characters, I don’t want to push far at all. If I step to far from canon, it may lead to confusion or forcing someone to go along with my head cannon, or my worst fear is having my characters come off as marysues.
Naturally, I would prefer to be anywhere than the direct line of fire of a cannon. Preferably no-where that its destruction could harm me as well.
NOW, if this was a topic about Canon, I prefer to treat Blizzard’s story as flexible. There’s dozens of races, themes, zones, and more that anyone can explore. The Horde and Alliance has interacted with the world, shaped it, and influenced it in many ways as well. There’s threats that Blizzard’s heroes don’t just directly influence but also has existing groups and roles of militia and common life.
I typically follow the rules for RP and RP Character Creation.
Your character is not DIRECTLY responsible for any of the major or crucial events in World of Warcraft. This is both for heroes and villains.
Your character is not directly related or crucially important to any lore character, location, or event in WoW’s timeline. (Arbitrary relations such as distant, distant cousins or family are blurred lines. All depends on how your character behaves with that relationship.)
Your character’s actions cannot be imposed or followed that conflicts with WoW’s established lore and story. (IE, you killing Anduin OOCly for FTH is not canonical.)
Anything works, the sky’s the limit. The Canon is there to be your foundation to build upon. Whether your character helped in the siege of Grim Batol or was part of the siege in Antorus. As long as you do not overstep your character’s importance or the importance of their actions. You can go ham.
When it comes to interactions with lore characters/events, my rule of thumb is that anything’s fine as long as there’s a layer of, to make up a phrase, plausible anonymity.
What I mean by that is that there should always be an avenue for another RPer to be able to logically say “Oh, but I’ve never heard of that/you” without anyone feeling stupid over it. And by continuation, leave it plausible for lore characters to not have to acknowledge your character, so that other players can deal with/around that lore character, too.
Like, if I wanted to RP an Argent Crusade member who reported directly to Tirion Fordring, and met another player who also RPed the same thing, I’d want enough plausible anonymity to explain how our characters don’t already know each other (unless we agree OOCly to have our characters recognize each other, which is great, too.). I’d want to be able to say “Well, we must have been in different units” and “Well, Fordring had no reason to mention me, or maybe he forgot my name?” or so on.
