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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6496587" data-attributes="member: 42582">I am not sure how you envisage this being commercially viable. (Perhaps you are being ironic and I missed the irony?)From my point of view this all just begs the question. Why is it unprofessional or disrepepctful to depart from canon?Departing from canon doesn't undermine artistic/literary integrity. So it is not unprofessional or disrespectful in that sense.Departing from canon doesn't undermine commercial viability, as best I can tell. Indeed, there is an argument that departure from canon is a necessary condition of commercial longevity, because otherwise the barrier to entry for new readers/gamers becomes too high. (This is an ongoing issue for the big superhero comic franchises.) So it is not unprofessional in this sense either.If the purpose of published RPG products was to maintain a perfectly consistent imaginary world, then departures from canon would be unprofessional, and perhaps disrespectful, but I don't see that that is the purpose of published RPG products, any more than it is the purpose of published novels or other creative work. (The author of a Guide to Middle Earth should strive to be consistent with the material that Tolkien published. But Tolkien is under no such obligation. If he thinks retconning the Hobbit will make LotR a better story, that is his prerogative.)When I buy RPG products, I am looking for interesting material to use in my game. When I buy RPG products branded with a particular gameworld, I am looking for stuff that fits into that gameworld from the point of view of theme, flavour and general features. Precise consistency with every prior published product - most of which neither I nor the majority of other purchasers will have engaged with - is simply not a big deal for me. If it happens that there is some minor contradiction of some other piece of backstory that has been relevant in my game, I will make the required adjustments.If I'm a minority - or, to turn it around, if the principal market for purchasers of Forgotten Realms gaming products are people who aren't interested in gaming with it at all, but rather want it to serve as a type of atlas or tour guide to an imaginary world - then I think the D&D community has bigger issues than occasional departures from canon.(And the same is true for the novel line, too. A viable series of commercially-published novels, like TV shows or movies, has to have a bigger market than the hardcore crowd who will notice and be upset by occasional departures from canon.)</blockquote>

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