I don't agree that intent is the crux of what a setting is about, or for. An artwork clearly can have significance, and generate consequences and implications and also, thereby, restraints and restrictions (qv [MENTION=6787503]Hriston[/MENTION]'s comments about Aragorn and the violence of Gondorian soldiers), that it's author didn't fully recognise or understand, and hence cannot be said to have intended.
Yes, but you can't say that some element of the work fails to be authentic if it doesn't fit that interpretation comfortably. WWII is written all over LotR regardless of what JRRT intended, but that doesn't mean you can say that the scene with Tom Bombadil is "non-canon" or "against the setting's expectations" just because it doesn't fit snugly into that interpretation and in some ways contradicts it.
Suppose you were to come across the definitive document (say, a private diary or letter to a close confidant) in which Weis and Hickman say that the various apparent redemption arcs in the Chronicles series - eg the return to reverence of the true gods, and the recovery of the true meaning of the Code and Measure of the Knights of Solamnia - were not intended as such, but rather were included just as convenient plot devices. I don't think that would change my view of what the story is about - it would just make me think that the story's authors lacked insight into what they were creating.
After all, if authorial intention solved all these issues of point/theme/tone/etc, then the only critical debates would be about evidence of authors' intentions. But they're not - because critics take works to have their own life and significance.
All it would mean is that a maltheistic character is consistent with the original vision for the setting, and that playing a game about restoring the gods is one possible way to play it, but not the way it was necessarily
made to be played.
So, in that case,the character might be inconsistent with someone's favored interpretation of the setting, but it isn't inconsistent with
the setting, and the stories the setting was designed to tell. When someone says "let's play a Dragonlance game!" it can be reasonably inferred that they DON'T mean "let's play a game with the assumptions that the authors didn't intend in place!" unless otherwise stated.
Again, this is no comment on the quality of any of that. If a game with those unintended assumptions is better than one without, you can use 'em, but it's clearly not Dragonlance "as intended" (it might be better!), and you should be clear about that up-front. If a game without those uninteded assumptions is more the group's speed, then they shouldn't need to specify that they're playing Dragonlace as intended - that should be a safe default assumption to make when someone says "Dragonlance," and it shouldn't be a surprise when someone makes a character consistent with that who is not necessarily consistent with the unintended meaning of the setting. The
are consistent with the
intended meaning of the work, and no one mentioned that you'd be doing anything different than that.