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Message: <blockquote data-quote="aramis erak" data-source="post: 6496663" data-attributes="member: 6779310">A little mnemonic to remember which spelling of canon/cannon is which: One N you argue, Two N's you shoot.And back to the real discussion...Canon: literally, a list. Originally, a list of what is approved. Origin is in the early councils of the Catholic/Orthodox churches. The first canons are the lists of rules from the councils, and the list of what books are allowed for services. The bible is the classic example of a closed public canon... but, depending upon which authority you ask, you get a different list.Some terms: An open canon can be added to. A closed canon has a fixed set of sources. A corpus is the entire collected works.A public canon is one where what is canon is declared by the authority publicly; a private canon is only released on a need to know.The corpus of the realms has gotten to the point where no one can keep it all straight. Happens with most multi-author fictional settings.The solution for an authorial point of view is to establish a subset of the corpus that is a declared canon, and in fiction writing, that canon is usually private, shared only between the line manager, the editors, and often also the authors. In other cases (Star Wars; Star Trek through about 1998; Babylon 5; Firefly) the canon is public - the authority publicly disseminates a list;  "this list is what's canon"... and anyone working in that setting now is expected to only consider that material canon. Sometimes the canon is open; the other authors can add to it.In the case of Star Trek, Canon has been (last I heard) reverted to just the footage, excluding the animated. Star Wars has such a diverse writing environment that they established multiple levels of canonicity. So, for comics, all the prior comics are canon...The Realms, however, has thousands of authors... from a GM standpoint, it's a neither closed nor open, but in between. It's got a large corpus, a private canon, and that canon is known to be open to the writers. The fact that the canon isn't public is a problem for some (Sailor Moon is one, I suspect) - the GM never knows if canon is or is not being changed by what they get. For others, it's a blessing. I don't know exactly what's canon, so I feel free to grab from the various wikis. I also feel free to disregard elements that I can't make work.On the other hand, that the corpus is large, and the canon is open and private means that, no matter how good I am, I'm going to annoy someone because I got something "wrong." Which is part of why I don't like published settings without a known canon.So, in running it, it's best to decide what is YOUR realms canon. Then stick with that. Ignore the rest of the corpus, just like most christians ignore 3 & 4 Maccabees. If you don't mention it, most won't miss it.</blockquote>

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