"There is no canon."
This, I feel, is the best way to deal with worldbuilding in tRPGs. Rather than fight against the given fact that people will alter your work based on the preferences and needs of their tables, you can learn to embrace it and actively make settings that do not have a canon, or at least very little canon. There are a number of ways I have seen folks embrace this idea: from sharing unfinished projects and incomplete thoughts to publishing material that deliberately leaves gaps that need to be filled in during prep or at the table.
Luka Rejec is the one I found that first called this sort of writing anti-canon, but Chris McDowall makes references to similar thoughts (and I consider Electric Bastionland to be the pinacle of this sort of anti-canon worldbuilding), and Arnold Kemp has both championed the absence of an existing canon from a very early point, and embodies anti-canon principles the most of anyone in the blogosphere, at least in my opinion, in his bric-a-brac approach to worldbuilding Centerra on his blog, as well as the other projects he has shared on there.
These members of the hobby are, I think, rightfully praised within the community, but they have some detractors. To them I would like to say the following: It is important, I feel, is to keep in mind that anti-canon worldbuilding is both inevitable and hard to do well.
Anti-canon in practice
That it is inevitable is easy to see in the vast myriad of fanfiction that we see througout history surrounding both true events and events in stories. No telling, neither historical nor fictional, can be completely exhaustive and thus it always leaves these gaps that people can fill in. Think of unknown events prior to the events of the (re)telling, unknown events that were happening alongside the event being (re)told but were deemed to insignificant to mention, unknown events that took place in a completely different place while all of this was happening, etc.
One reason that it is also hard to do well we see very well in conspiracy theories. The more events that are established, the more whatever it is you are filling a gap with needs to take into account. The amount of things that need to be true for flat-earth theory to be true is absolutely staggering. Same for antisemetic conspiracies as well as 9-11 truthers. In these cases, there aren't really any gaps where the people in question expected there to be one, or these gaps are so small that you immediately bump into so many other established facts that it becomes very hard to maintain a consistent story.
Side-note: Violating canon is for the most part not an issue though. Within a single piece of art folks tend to prefer consistency, which is why I prefer anti-canon settings in tRPGs, but as work gets adapted over multiple pieces of art, there is absolutely no need to adhere every single piece of established canon. Especially when a piece of canon, such as the amount of pigment in a person's skin or even the amount of hair on a dwarf's chin, isn't integral to a piece of art.
Another reason anti-canon might fail in tRPGs specifically, is for the complete opposite reason, namely a lack of information about the events surrounding the gap in question. For example, Wizards of the Coast leaving an adventure site blanc in their introductory module Dragon of Icespire Peak for the GM to populate themselves with '10 orcs' is an example of anti-canon that is unhelpful at best, and game ruining at worst. It simply doesn't tell you enough about the location or the orcs at this location to do anything interesting with them.
For anti-canon to work well, we do not only need gaps that are relatively easy to fill, i.e. without too many surrounding events that make it hard to impossible to do so consistently, we also need enough of a reference point to know what to fill them with. There needs to be something present that isn't actually currently occupying the gap, but that does give us a strong indication of what sort of stuff could occupy it. And I, foolishly, think I can make this distinction more clear by once again referencing a bunch of dead, French philosophers.
Actuality and Virtuality
I've talked about these two concepts on the blog before, when talking about time in tRPGs. Briefly put, Henri Bergson used the concepts of 'actual' and 'vritual' to explain his understanding of time. The past is something that clearly isn't actual anymore. Currently, the second world war isn't taking place. However, it is clear that the second world war still affects the world. It isn't actual, but it is still very real.
Using reality in this way is hard though. In the same way that anglo-saxon philosophers can get headaches thinking about truths about fictional characters ('Bilbo Baggins is a Hobbit'), thinking about the lasting effects of the past while still meaningfully distinguishing it from the present is a philosophical challenge. Thus, Bergson coined the unfortunate term 'virtual'. This doesn't have anything to do with computers (hence why the term is an unfortunate choice), instead it refers to 'all things that are real, but aren't currently actual'.
Suitcase from Quentin Tarantino's Pulp Fiction
Bergson seems to have been mostly interested in applying this term to the past. Bergson enthusiast Gilles Deleuze however, saw the potential of the 'virtual-actual' pair in a broader context. For Deleuze it isn't only the past that is virtual, it is also the possible futures, both past and present in how they affect the world. And in art it is also what is suggested by a piece of art that falls into the virtual. An obvious example from movies is anything that is off screen. Think the contents of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. More generally, it is everything that is referenced intertextually, like the Odyssey in Joyce's Ulysses, as well as the future possibilities a work seems to suggest to whomever is looking at it. The inspiration you might get from reading, hearing or seeing something interesting is already virtually present within whatever it is that is giving you that inspiration.
In short, everything that a piece of art suggests but doesn't actually show falls under the virtual. It is real, in a sense, but it isn't actualised until someone starts filling in those gaps. And, by virtue of being virtual, there is never only one answer to how that gap should be filled. Though some gaps leave very little room for interpretation, as long as the answer isn't directly given people might still differ in how they fill in those gaps.
Anti-canon as virtual worldbuilding
Personally, my favourite tRPG materials are, what I would unhelpfully describe as 'evocative': It has a clear style, a defined vision, it paints a strong image. This makes it easier to fill in the gaps that you might encounter at the table, because remember: no telling can be completely exhaustive; it is simply impossible to give all the information that could possibly be relevant, if that is even desireable.
What these tRPG materials have in common, is that they have enough stuff actually written down to give a strong sense of what sets this material apart, projecting from it a rich virtual line that one can follow to come to conclusions about what isn't said that, though unique between different tables, will feel consistent with the stuff that is provided in these materials.
Electric Bastionland does this by having strong statements about the 'canonical' parts of the setting, which allow you to draw meaningful conclusions about how the world works: If Bastion is 'the only city that matters', this means I have to put everything city related in Bastion. If the Underground 'connects everything', then I can put a connection to the Underground wherever I might logically expect one, and even where I might not expect one.
Ultraviolet Grasslands does this by offering conflicting rumours about places, peoples and histories, rather than definitive answers. The psychic link between Polybodies is rumoured to be 'flawless and perfect' but also that it is broken by alcohol. Also, Luka's art helps communicate the setting as well, giving us more pieces to work with when filling in gaps in his worlds.
Kemp does it by never finishing anything and contradicting established stuff later down the line. His projects are always a work in progress and this inevitably leaves blanks, but they are also so incredibly flavourful and well defined that it allows you to extrapolate other truths from it. Kemp is also a master of leaving things off screen. Just having an evocative name, such as 'the Brass Coast' combined with a single line like 'Salvage divers selling more warped brass machinery, pulled up from the Brass Coast.' sends my mind racing.
All these creators, whether intentional or not, have mastered the art of virtual or anti-canon worldbuilding: they actualise enough evocative material to allow for a rich virtuality to emerge, which others in turn can actualise at their respective tables.
A case for more of the above
I've said before that to me tRPGs are an inherently DIY hobby. Even in the most exhaustive system relies on players recognizing which situations call for which mechanics. Even the most scripted encounters have to deal with players or dice doing unexpected things. Even the most fleshed out setting will leave gaps that might need to be filled.
Personally, I've long ago prefered to embrance this aspect of the hobby. However, DIY does not mean 'figure it out yourself no matter what', nor should it mean that. The hobby can be both accessible and DIY as long as we provide people with the tools they need to actually do it themselves. Electric Bastionland is what I consider the gold standard when it comes to DIY material, but at no point does the book leave you without tips and tricks to help you make your own stuff.
As we cannot escape the fact that the hobby will always be at least in part DIY, we might as well fascilitate this kind of play.
For systems this means generality over granularity. The more granular a system, the harder it is to modify, add to and understand. Just compare cars with and without computers. Even a computer scientist would have to agree that cars were a lot more transparant to the average person before computers became such a big part of how they operate.
For adventure modules this means short bits of clearly stated information about obstacles, goals, factions/NPCs and locations. The easier it is to understand the relations between different parts of the module and what makes each part unique, the easier it is to add to and change things as this would make sense during play.
For settings, remember that the more you add, the harder it is to fill gaps, but if you don't have enough to start with it will be impossible to fill those gaps easily and consistent with the setting. I'm not saying this is easy to do, and moreover it is highly personal. You cannot please everyone, so find out what makes filling these gaps easier for you and build from there.
God is dead: An example
For me, creating an evocative setting requires three things. To show what I mean, I'll make a micro setting based on Nietzsche's frase 'God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him.' as I am currently reading Nietzsche and thus this is the best I can come up with on the fly:
- Provide actionable information which hints at a lot of the world. Instead of detailing how God is Dead and how we are the ones who have killed him, we could have a faction whose goal it is to ressurect the dead God to end the decadency of mankind. That way I do not only have an understanding of the world (or at least, how this faction sees the world), but I also have a piece of actionable information (I know what the faction wants, how it will act, and if players learn this information they can use it to their advantage).
Stunning abandoned church in Gary Indiana - Communicated themes and events through as many aspects of the world as possible. So rather than having only one faction, I might add a rivaling faction that denies that the gods have died, and instead have sentenced us to damnation after mankind lost the war. Their goal it is to get the population to repent for mankind's hubris and they do not fear death for they are already dead. We might see them on encounter lists rebuilding burned down churches, punishing 'criminals', or self-flagulating in order to repent.
As a contrast to these factions that are clearly unhappy about the current state of affairs, I could add a faction whose goal it is to protect humanity's freedom and safegaurd its population against new tyrannies now that it has been liberated from the yolk of the oppresive God. We might put their strongholds on all over every map, have them recruit members in local towns with zealous speeches to sustain the perpetual war against tyranny, or put those who they deem too powerful a ruler to death in order to safegaurd the freedom of the people.
We can put the 'remains' of God on loot tables, the weapons that killed him enshrined in the tombs of those credited with killing him, and add rumours of wizards that aim to take the empty seat of the lord as they attempt to ascend to Godhood. - Do not place one truth above another. That way, the setting will be different depending on what makes it into the game. This way you create a nice major gap 'who is right?' while providing a whole lot of texture and detail that the table can use to infer the answer to that question. Is God dead? Is his death our fault? Is his death to be celebrated or lamented? The answer to these will vary, depending on what aspects of the setting have made it onto any given table. I really like that, as the answer to that question isn't really relevant until it becomes relevant at the table anyway. By itself, it isn't actionable.
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