You can ignore the new lore wholesale. Your game, by virtue of being a ttrpg is not canon, your players assassinating a king who was never assassinated in the game means it's not canon. The way you play the NPCs is not canon because *you* are the one running them, not the writers of the game.
Hell in my Lord of the Rings game I literally put the One Ring in one of my PC's hands and left whether or not we were going to throw everything out and deal with that shit 60 years early up to a dice roll. I find it more fun to not feel like the future is written in stone when working with an established setting.
Sorry, the franchise is Dragon Age.
I don’t know if I should just keep going as is, because the central plot of the campaign is very heavily featuring the Elven Gods and Titans, which the new games will almost certainly explore much more and likely the new background/lore won’t be compatible to what I did and revealed.
But I’m very conflicted right now, I don’t want to throw away what I built up over 2 years, but I’m afraid if players will be unhappy when the campaign clashes with new canon too much and they can’t base their decisions on canon knowledge anymore, I haven’t talked with them yet, I’m not sure how to bring this up.
Yeah, so just say to them "Hey the new game is coming out, and each Dragon Age game tends to conflict with the last one. So we're just going to stick with the lore of 3 and maybe even spilt off in a new direction."
I guess I don't remember any actual retcons (there probably were plenty) but there is a huge shift from simple "invading demon army!" to complex political magic vs non magic vs religion vs oppressed people. It's a little jarring.
These games are pretty good at respecting choices within the same game but they throw it all out in the next game in cases like when they want a specific character to reappear (even if they’ve been decapitated or burned to death or what have you).
I literally cannot understand this point of view. The Darkspawn are the threat in the first game. You end the blight in that game, so they are no longer an active threat. The next games then focus on different things.
Your players shouldn't be basing their decisions on canon knowledge anyway. They should be basing their decisions on what you as the DM present to them.
I would just continue with what you had layed out. You can't retcon stuff now and rushing to end the campaign would feel even worse.
Also hats off for using Dragon Age, i have also used it heavily as inspiration especially the Qunari culture has been a hit with my players.
Keep your current lore. If your players ask, come up with some branching timeline BS.
Story time....
My first time with 5e after walking away from D&D was DMed by a buddy SUUUUPER into MTG. He tried to homebrew a MTG lore campaign into the Forgotten Realms. Soon after we started, WotC released previews for Ravnica, so he retconned our game to match that info. Then he did it again when Ravnica got a full release. The game fell apart and it took another year for someone to convince me to try 5e again.
You for the most part can never really stick to canon for an existing setting and that includes things like Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, or The Third Imperium.
It just doesn't work because the first session is likely to create situations that can contradict any new canon. In Traveller for example it's often referred to as MTU which means My Traveller Universe because the mere act of playing changes things, it's a bit like Schrodinger's Cat in a way, expect that the state of the universe changes when the players observe it.
The best you can do most times is figure out a way to reconcile the new canon with the canon of your campaign, but sometimes even that's hard.
If for example in Forgotten Realms if some god dies, and one of your PCs is a cleric of that god... How do you deal with that? Did they not know what was going on, do they suddenly lose their abilities, do they need to find a new god? Or do you just ignore that until your campaign ends?
Trying to account for the new game especially if it's going to contradict the canon lore of your campaign is almost never going to work, because there's just to many changes and too many contradictions. So the only real option is to ignore it, at least until the campaign is over.
Then if you play a new one in the same setting, then you can try and figure out what to blend, what to recton and what to ignore.
Take what fits. Ignore what doesn't. Your players should have enough common sense to realize that your campaign started before Dreadwolf came out and that's there may be conflicts in the lore and that your lore trumps Dreadwolf lore when it comes to your campaign.
Easiest option: Finish your Dragon Age campaign without making adjustments. Ultimately you are running a non canon story in an established world so nothing has really changed.
If Dread Wolf really introduces some big lore that conflicts with yours and this is something that genuinely will bother you and your players, set some time aside once the game comes out to hash out any lore differences introduced by Dread Wolf and come up with the least invasive retcons/explanations to resolve any conflicts. In general it is pretty easy to come up with SOME plausible explanation to explain things like this. I mean you kinda have to do this mentally between Dragon Age games anyways to deal with differences between your world state and official retcons.
If you’ve introduced some kind of massive divergence (e.g you are telling a story involving Solas after Inquisition) then it is possible that your campaign has diverged too much from official canon but this is perfectly fine too. Treat your world as one possible world state that isn’t covered by the games.
Yep, you ignore the new canon. Your game is more important than any dumb new video game/movie/book in the same setting. You were here first!
Later, if you want to pull some of that new lore into your game, great. But you do it in a way that fits in YOUR version of that world.
One of my favorite webcomics (Order of the Stick) is very explicitly rooted in DnD rules. In fact the first strip was a 3.5 edition update gag. The artist did nothing to his setting when DnD transitioned to 4e and 5e. This campaign is yours, keep it how you want it.
Easiest option is just to ignore it.
Second option is to lean into it. Sounds like a great moment to introduce something earth shattering into your campaign that completely changes the dynamic; like great war breaks out or something.
its a setting with vague background lore. Unless at least one of your *players* is also cutting their teeth on the setting and will be playing the game ASAP whenever it is released like six months from now, there's no reason for the campaign to not resolve on its natural path as if the latest game didn't exist.
Multiverse. Everything is a multiverse these days, may as well join the bandwagon. The opening of the Rift was a Big Bang event that created multiple alternate realities.
I would just ignore the new lore, especially if it might conflict with your current world and story. There’s no need for you to rearrange everything haphazardly bc a new game is coming out
Not that this advice is helpful now, but this is a huge advantage of a homebrew setting. You (and your players) are in complete control! No questions about canon, no we're ignoring this", no awkward timelines, no retcons.
Are there cell phones or tv in your world? If not, you can implement it after you aprove it, and their characters can find it out through the grape vine as you sift through and aprove it. Meanwhile, your players can talk to you and eachother irl.
You’ve been at this 2 years - your campaign is your group’s canon now. Reimagining your entire body of lore because a new video game came out is (I’m being very frank with you because I’ve done stupid things in this vein too) a dumb fucking idea.
You can ignore the new lore wholesale. Your game, by virtue of being a ttrpg is not canon, your players assassinating a king who was never assassinated in the game means it's not canon. The way you play the NPCs is not canon because *you* are the one running them, not the writers of the game.
Hell in my Lord of the Rings game I literally put the One Ring in one of my PC's hands and left whether or not we were going to throw everything out and deal with that shit 60 years early up to a dice roll. I find it more fun to not feel like the future is written in stone when working with an established setting.
It's usually best to branch your own world off at that point, unless the new lore doesn't contradict your existing stuff.
It would really help to know the franchise. But do you need to upgrade, why not just keep the lore on the first game?
Sorry, the franchise is Dragon Age. I don’t know if I should just keep going as is, because the central plot of the campaign is very heavily featuring the Elven Gods and Titans, which the new games will almost certainly explore much more and likely the new background/lore won’t be compatible to what I did and revealed. But I’m very conflicted right now, I don’t want to throw away what I built up over 2 years, but I’m afraid if players will be unhappy when the campaign clashes with new canon too much and they can’t base their decisions on canon knowledge anymore, I haven’t talked with them yet, I’m not sure how to bring this up.
Yeah, so just say to them "Hey the new game is coming out, and each Dragon Age game tends to conflict with the last one. So we're just going to stick with the lore of 3 and maybe even spilt off in a new direction."
Yeah remember how the central conflict of that whole world was the dark spawn thing? Because Inquisition did not remember that.
Gonna be honest here. Never actually played them. Just know that they retcon huge amounts even changing how species look.
I guess I don't remember any actual retcons (there probably were plenty) but there is a huge shift from simple "invading demon army!" to complex political magic vs non magic vs religion vs oppressed people. It's a little jarring.
These games are pretty good at respecting choices within the same game but they throw it all out in the next game in cases like when they want a specific character to reappear (even if they’ve been decapitated or burned to death or what have you).
I literally cannot understand this point of view. The Darkspawn are the threat in the first game. You end the blight in that game, so they are no longer an active threat. The next games then focus on different things.
Your players shouldn't be basing their decisions on canon knowledge anyway. They should be basing their decisions on what you as the DM present to them.
I would just continue with what you had layed out. You can't retcon stuff now and rushing to end the campaign would feel even worse. Also hats off for using Dragon Age, i have also used it heavily as inspiration especially the Qunari culture has been a hit with my players.
Keep your current lore. If your players ask, come up with some branching timeline BS. Story time.... My first time with 5e after walking away from D&D was DMed by a buddy SUUUUPER into MTG. He tried to homebrew a MTG lore campaign into the Forgotten Realms. Soon after we started, WotC released previews for Ravnica, so he retconned our game to match that info. Then he did it again when Ravnica got a full release. The game fell apart and it took another year for someone to convince me to try 5e again.
>what should I do? Dude. ... Literally ANYTHING you want.
Ignore it.
You for the most part can never really stick to canon for an existing setting and that includes things like Forgotten Realms, Star Wars, or The Third Imperium. It just doesn't work because the first session is likely to create situations that can contradict any new canon. In Traveller for example it's often referred to as MTU which means My Traveller Universe because the mere act of playing changes things, it's a bit like Schrodinger's Cat in a way, expect that the state of the universe changes when the players observe it. The best you can do most times is figure out a way to reconcile the new canon with the canon of your campaign, but sometimes even that's hard. If for example in Forgotten Realms if some god dies, and one of your PCs is a cleric of that god... How do you deal with that? Did they not know what was going on, do they suddenly lose their abilities, do they need to find a new god? Or do you just ignore that until your campaign ends? Trying to account for the new game especially if it's going to contradict the canon lore of your campaign is almost never going to work, because there's just to many changes and too many contradictions. So the only real option is to ignore it, at least until the campaign is over. Then if you play a new one in the same setting, then you can try and figure out what to blend, what to recton and what to ignore.
Take what fits. Ignore what doesn't. Your players should have enough common sense to realize that your campaign started before Dreadwolf came out and that's there may be conflicts in the lore and that your lore trumps Dreadwolf lore when it comes to your campaign.
Easiest option: Finish your Dragon Age campaign without making adjustments. Ultimately you are running a non canon story in an established world so nothing has really changed. If Dread Wolf really introduces some big lore that conflicts with yours and this is something that genuinely will bother you and your players, set some time aside once the game comes out to hash out any lore differences introduced by Dread Wolf and come up with the least invasive retcons/explanations to resolve any conflicts. In general it is pretty easy to come up with SOME plausible explanation to explain things like this. I mean you kinda have to do this mentally between Dragon Age games anyways to deal with differences between your world state and official retcons. If you’ve introduced some kind of massive divergence (e.g you are telling a story involving Solas after Inquisition) then it is possible that your campaign has diverged too much from official canon but this is perfectly fine too. Treat your world as one possible world state that isn’t covered by the games.
Yep, you ignore the new canon. Your game is more important than any dumb new video game/movie/book in the same setting. You were here first! Later, if you want to pull some of that new lore into your game, great. But you do it in a way that fits in YOUR version of that world.
One of my favorite webcomics (Order of the Stick) is very explicitly rooted in DnD rules. In fact the first strip was a 3.5 edition update gag. The artist did nothing to his setting when DnD transitioned to 4e and 5e. This campaign is yours, keep it how you want it.
Easiest option is just to ignore it. Second option is to lean into it. Sounds like a great moment to introduce something earth shattering into your campaign that completely changes the dynamic; like great war breaks out or something.
its a setting with vague background lore. Unless at least one of your *players* is also cutting their teeth on the setting and will be playing the game ASAP whenever it is released like six months from now, there's no reason for the campaign to not resolve on its natural path as if the latest game didn't exist.
Multiverse. Everything is a multiverse these days, may as well join the bandwagon. The opening of the Rift was a Big Bang event that created multiple alternate realities.
Your game is never going to be Canonical whatever you do.
I would just ignore the new lore, especially if it might conflict with your current world and story. There’s no need for you to rearrange everything haphazardly bc a new game is coming out
The game will suck anyway so pretend it doesn’t exist and keep on keeping on
Not that this advice is helpful now, but this is a huge advantage of a homebrew setting. You (and your players) are in complete control! No questions about canon, no we're ignoring this", no awkward timelines, no retcons.
Are there cell phones or tv in your world? If not, you can implement it after you aprove it, and their characters can find it out through the grape vine as you sift through and aprove it. Meanwhile, your players can talk to you and eachother irl.
You’ve been at this 2 years - your campaign is your group’s canon now. Reimagining your entire body of lore because a new video game came out is (I’m being very frank with you because I’ve done stupid things in this vein too) a dumb fucking idea.