If it's not art - if it's a mere commercial production - then why does it merit respect? Why does it need "curation"?
Those sound like attitudes that make the most sense when directed towards something that exhibits/possesses aesthetic value - ie a piece of art.
This tells us something about you. But it doesn't necessarily tell us about what is good in RPG publishing, or in the commercialisation of story elements by a RPG publisher.
For instance, if a RPG publisher has identified that some particular aspect of the game as published to date is an obstacle to, rather than a facilitator of, the play of their game (eg as WotC did with race/class limits), then that creates a reason for change. Which in that particular case also produces significant changes to lore, as all these dwarf wizards, gnome bards etc start popping up where hitherto they were absent.
In Gygax's MM orcs hated elves above all other races. (As per LotR.) [MENTION=2067]I'm A Banana[/MENTION], though, called out an orcish hatred of dwarves as canonical: maybe he was influenced by 2nd ed, which says that orcs "have a historic enmity against elves and dwarves; many tribes will kill these demihumans on sight." (But preserves the older hobgoblin law, that they "hate elves and always attack them first.") That's a change, made presumably to differentiate orcs from hobgoblins and/or support a wider range of dramatic encounters involving orcs and/or to reduce the likelihood that playing an elf will mean that all the GM's monsters pick on you.
I've never heard anyone complain about that change. I don't think making that change violated any important principle of writing story material for RPGs, or even any of the more specific principles that govern writing Monster Manuals for D&D.
I don't dislike canon. It doesn't bother me. Nor does it have much inherent appeal to me. What I like is compelling story elements - where by "compelling" I mean "something I want to use in my own RPGing".
To offer an example: the Yawning Portal announcement thread prompted me to go back and re-read my copy of Castle Amber, which I last ran around 16 years ago but never finished. I've started making notes in anticipation of perhaps getting a chance to run it again - and in the course of doing that am taking out all the reference to Glantri, which seem like a distraction to me and dilute the Amber family's connection to Averoigne. Castle Amber I find rather compelling, despite its evident absurdities; Glantri, on the other hand, not at all, and especially not as a component of Castle Amber.
I'll name a few:
*The original MotP: the incorporation of all the gods in DDG, plus all the creatures in the MMs, makes the Outer Planes inane rather than compelling. Nirvana, in particular - later Mechanus - becomes just silly as a home for Shang-Ti. Likewise the "earthbergs" of Gladsheim as homes for the Norse gods (especially the idea that Muspelheim is an upside-down earthberg).
*GH products that take seriously the idea that the Scarlet Brotherhood are Suel renegades are another. That just dilutes and distracts from the inherent interest of the Scarlet Brotherhood as a hierarchy of thieves, assassins and monks under the Father of Obedience, by requiring that stuff to be tied into ancient Suel culture. It dilutes the secret martial arts plateau trope, and it makes the ancient empire trope carried by the Suel pick up stupid backage. All the Suel and the Scarlet Brotherhood have going for them is that they are workings out of these pulp tropes, so once you dilute them you just get less compelling stuff.
*The inclusion of a cult of Chauntea in module OA7 - which introduces needless and distracting FR-isms into an otherwise very good module that, more than any other OA module except perhaps OA3, actually makes tropes around the Celestial Bureaucracy, immortality, peachling children, etc central to play.
I think you're misunderstanding me, or underestimating me, or both.
I can read the posts. I can draw inferences from what is said. I'm inviting posters, though, to actually articulate the value that is moving them to care about canon. [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION] has done this not too far upthread. But some other posters seem to shy away from it: eg they feel like they need to advance instrumental reasons (eg "players will get confused if canon changes") when it seems transparently clear that their concern is not instrumental; or they try and defend blanket claims about the importance of adherence to canon, yet in doing so put forward examples where canon has changed rather markedly (eg what, if anything, differentiates D&D orcs from JRRT's, or D&D orcs from D&D hobgoblins).
I think some notion of "integrity of a body of work" is probably in the right neighbourhood for a number of posters other than just [MENTION=94143]Shasarak[/MENTION], but the criteria by which integrity is judged could probably bear more elaboration. For instance, what sorts of trade-offs between thematic integrity and "factual" integrity are permissible (eg can we get rid of earthbergs to get something that is more fitting to the themes of Norse mythology - ie foster thematic integrity - even though that means reworking our descriptions of Gladsheim - ie sacrificing "factual" integrity).
