If I can continue to divert the topic: George Lucas not only updated his mythology and storyline as time went by, he also updated the history of the making of the films. IIRC, Joseph Campbell went from “a guy GL heard of once” to “patron saint” in a few short years. Also, episodes I-III went from “a vague background idea” to “always been planned out”.

Next on Fox: “When Geeks Get Rich”.

My wife and I picked them up when they first came out, and spent several blissful hours enjoying the movies we remembered. There are good things about the re-releases (like Bespin having windows), but IMO they’re outnumbered by unecessary or just plain bad changes.

I’d forgotten that not only does Han shoot first in the original (as it should be!), Han shoots — Greedo doesn’t even get a blast off. If memory serves, there are three versions of that scene: the original (han shoots, Greedo doesn’t), Greedo shoots first and lastly, they both shoot simultaneously. The latter two are just weak, of course.

The artist gets an idea in their head, and gets the feel and tactileness of that in their mind. They put it on paper and try to capture that, but end up going to extremes in trying to reach the idea in their head. They put the project into a nearly unreachable place that might fit the original concept, but is rough hewn and hard to accomplish. (Monster Chewie, female luke, george lucas the jedi.) From there the concept gets shaved down and made more palpable. Monster Chewie becomes a more friendly yet fierce sidekick. Luke changes gender and fills a more archetypical role. Obi-wan becomes the jedi master. The edges that don’t fit get shaved off. What you are left with is in many ways fundamentally different than the original concept, but it is something that works and fits the project much better.

Anyone who creates is always left with something lesser than their initial imagining, but that is part of the creative process and it makes a lot of sense to apply this to Game Mastering. I think you have to leave room in your game campaign/concept to completely change it based on the situations that crop up in play. If something isn’t working, shave and mold it until it fits. That will have to be done subtly, and in a way that doesn’t offend the players ceiling view (it’s not really a fourth wall, but if things change in the world the players will still get that fourth wall breaking shock) and lets the story continue on unscathed.

Also, I firmly beleive that Episode IV was written without any intention of the story behind V and VI. There’s enough discontinuity between those three, and the prequels only worsened it.[/rant]

I can imagine sitting with my daughter (she’s 18 months) at some point in the future and watching I-VI straight through. I’ll have to explain all the misinformation Ben gives Luke in ANH and all the sexual tension and tongue-dancing between Luke and Leia in ANH and ESB.

To be honest, I’m surprised Lucas didn’t redub Sir Alec Guiness with Ewan MacGregor and redo the dialogue between Ben and Luke. Heck, I’m surprised the Special Edition of ANH didn’t edit out the discussion between Luke and Han about Leia and ESB didn’t edit out the infamous kiss.

Hmm, that sounded like a rant

P.S. Han shot first!

To my mind, this bug-eyed lemur-beast fits Chewie’s role in the movies a lot less than the actual movie version — he looks kind of creepy and kind of dumb, much like some of the one-off bounty hunters (in fact, he’d make a perfect bounty hunter as-is).

And if Lucas kept the concept version, I can’t see how the story would have emerged in quite the same way. Chewie just couldn’t be the same fierce, lovable sidekick that he became in the films, and that would change the character of the story.

Like VV said, what I’m driving at is that movie-Chewie was a better fit than concept-Chewie would have been. The trick on the GMing side is recognizing mis-fits like that before they hit the table — although I absolutely agree that you have more latitude to make changes in a home game than with a movie, novel or any other published product. That’s definitely a good thing.

There is one caveat, though. For a personal campaign setting, it’s more acceptable to make the changes you want as time goes on. For a published and marketed setting that is sold as a product, you’ll have much less forgiveness. The customers will want consistency, and while some changes will be accepted and loved, others might generate strong, aggressive resentment. The worst part is that the fans won’t even agree on which parts they like or dislike.

I for one agree. There is an old engineer’s saying that says “Be ready to sacrifice your children.” It means that while you love your ideas like they are your children, you must be ready to drop them if the final product as a whole doesn’t work. To me that is also true for GMing projects.