Campaing Setting - strict adeherence?

[Iczer]

never let a few pages written by a stranger derail a perfectly good idea you have for friends.

As long as you are following the feel of the campaign, then do as thou wilt.

My ATB campaign has: Mutant fungal humanoids that ride mutant hunting spiders as mounts while flinging internally brewed chemical weapons. a sewer city populated by (mostly) mutant goldfish, not one but 3 'empires of humanity', one of which has started production of proto-crazies, while another is in fact mutant pigs that think they are human due to being raised by an insane Artificial Intelligence. Wandering sanitiser robots, and a cult of crystal manipulating monks.
None of these are canon as far as the book goes, but they all seemed like good ideas at the time so they got thrown in.

I use a bottom up design process, using the character's as the primary lynchpins for world design. If I get submissions for a fantasy setting and there are no eleves in the party, I might be tempted to say they don't exist, or are things of myth and memory. I am as likely to pull setting out of my arse at character creation stage as much as anything.

And, if I should stumble across an idea that sounds cool, I'll put it in that campaign's notebook, and wait for a good time to give it a reveal.

As a result, a lot of my campaigns are put togeher in a hurry, (though I am not above throwing a stored idea out to start characters concepts rolling or to pique interest) made up on the spot and ironed flat between games.

After the bomb and heroes unlimited allow me to get away with a lot. Rifts falls over itself and has never gelled well with me. I ran a mechanoids game very successfully with the idea that the PC's had caught a virus that stopped their ageing. I used Nigthbane to launch a psychics unlimited campaign that lasted 4 years. I have had ATB style mutants in Splicers and I have never run Palladium fantasy on the actual palladium continent.

So yeah, I play fast and loose. I consider it an ongoing exercise in creativity.

Batts

[count zero]

I typically use an official campaign setting as a guideline. I pick the parts I like, ditch the parts I don't.

My thoughts exactly

Ø

[Iczer]

the first scenario has the heroes up against a cult of crazy bovine who have developed the taste for human flesh. The cows are farming humans, and the heroes have to infiltrate the bovine-operated human-flesh meat packing plant..

OMG I love this. [=swipe][/swipe]

Consider the lead Cattle mutant christened Davis.

Batts

[Beatmeclever]

I love Palladium Games settings, but I once ran a game that used Mecha from almost every book I have and divided them up between the major govenments of the world today and fought WWIII with the players. Talk about a blast!

So. No, I guess I don't always hold to the Campaign Settings.

[Syndicate]

For the mental health of all those willing to join the game, I must stick to the book.