Canon isn't realistic...

[DreadPirateMurphy]

I was reading dmccoy1693's apology to WotC, and while it is very classy to publicly admit error, it made me think about this whole concept of "canon."

People argue about it for all sorts of fictional universes, whether they be RPG settings (Forgotten Realms), video games (Fallout), movies (Star Wars), books (Harry Potter) or TV shows (Dr. Who). Now, I'm happy that we have such a wealth of sci-fi and fantasy, and that there is so much of it that brings so much enjoyment and has enough depth for such a thing as canonical "history" to even exist. I also totally get the fixation on little details that adds a degree of truthiness, so to speak.

What struck me as funny is that there really isn't a real-world version of "canon." Everybody sees things subjectively, so there usually isn't one version of any major event. History is based upon after-the-fact accounts and surviving evidence, and respected and capable historians get into disagreements about the details. Even news of what's happening right this minute varies from source to source and is often spun in various directions.

Does anybody think the Trojan War happened the way Homer described it? Do we really know all of the conversations and negotiations that took place at Yalta? Even simple facts, like the top speed of the Bismark or the number of Model T Fords produced could, quite simply, be wrong from simple error in recording or some other oversight.

That's true for the educated and scholarly, and even more so for the average person. No matter what your opinions on anything, I guarantee you that there are thousands of people in the world with a conflicting opinion so off the wall that you would consider it mad.

So, walk into a tavern in the Forgotten Realms, and you'll here that smokepowder was REALLY invented by Asmodeous rather than Gond as a plot, and the Dragonborn were created from thin air by Elminster to fight dracoliches. The Shadovar are actually drow being mind-controlled by rogue eladrin. The last king of Cormyr was secretly a vampire, and Thay is really controlled by a rogue group of witches from Rashemon. From a player's perspective, it doesn't have to make any sense, and there could be more than one plausible story.

I think everybody has a tendency to want to know what really happened...we have that X-Files commitment that the Truth Is Out There. In reality, everybody forms opinions and makes decisions based on the best information available, and we manage to get by. So, the next time a company completely revamps a setting, I'm going to treat it as just another opinion in the tavern...

 

[amysrevenge]

Welllll

That's true to an extent. Especially when talking about relationships and human-scale events. Who broke up with who, who cheated first, were we on a break, etc.

But there are some things that you just can't get wrong, or have too much of a subjective opinion about.

If, in a future RPG setting, a huge meteor smashes St. Louis to a pulp in 2079, then any subsequent supplement had better have a big stinking crater in Missouri. They can claim that it was directed by aliens, or the CIA, or Al Qaida, and even change that claim from supplement to supplement, but that crater is still there (ie. it's canon).

 

[ExploderWizard]

The greatest thing about canon as it relates to settings, is that individuals are free to include or discard whatever bits they choose for thier games. Every published campaign world has as many alternate realities as there are gaming groups. Moving between gaming groups within the same setting is kind of like an episode of Sliders. It's basically the same place but things are a bit different.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I really want to run my Star Wars game one day. It involves Darth Vader not having a mask, or a living son. It's a retread of episode 4, but the characters actually get to star.

 

[Doug McCrae]

So, walk into a tavern in the Forgotten Realms, and you'll here that smokepowder was REALLY invented by Asmodeous rather than Gond as a plot, and the Dragonborn were created from thin air by Elminster to fight dracoliches. The Shadovar are actually drow being mind-controlled by rogue eladrin. The last king of Cormyr was secretly a vampire, and Thay is really controlled by a rogue group of witches from Rashemon. From a player's perspective, it doesn't have to make any sense, and there could be more than one plausible story.

That's a good point but it's pretty hard to do, to not only have a real world but also multiple false interpretations of it, often very complex. Or even to leave open which one is true, or for none of them, or all of them, to be true, RuneQuest style.

Problem is no one has the time to create a fictional world that approaches anything like the scale of the real world. You can't really do realism.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

If, in a future RPG setting, a huge meteor smashes St. Louis to a pulp in 2079, then any subsequent supplement had better have a big stinking crater in Missouri. They can claim that it was directed by aliens, or the CIA, or Al Qaida, and even change that claim from supplement to supplement, but that crater is still there (ie. it's canon).

But St. Louis WASN'T destroyed, you see...I mean, have you actually stood in the crater yourself? It's just a coverup. The government released a virus that was meant to sterilize ethnic groups, and it killed everybody by mistake. The meteor story is just to keep folks from finding out the truth.

No, actually, St. Louis WAS destroyed, but it wasn't a meteor. Terrorists exploded a nuke, and the govmint doesn't want anybody to know they screwed up and let it happen.

Noooo...obviously, St. Louis was hit by a large meteor, but it only took out part of the waterfront. A LOT of folks still live in St. Louis. The supposed crater is just the remains of where a munitions plant was located in the impact area. The meteor itself actually exploded just over the city.

50 years later, the crater is GONE. Residents rebuilt, and they filled in parts of it and bulldozed other parts. You can see a VAGUE outline via satellite, but you wouldn't know just to walk around in the area. Some residents, especially kids, don't even know much about the strike. Some would be surprised to know they live in an impact crater.

Or, 50 years later, the city of St. Louis was resettled down the river. Some of the residents, especially kids, don't know that St. Louis wasn't ALWAYS where it is today. Isn't that meteor just an urban legend based on that old movie with Bruce Willis?

What, are you ignorant? St. Louis was never hit. There was a strike in a small town called Santa Luis in Honduras, and some idiot at the cable news service got it wrong and started that rumor. Natives still laugh at tourists who come into town asking to see the "impact crater." Some con-artists even sell guide maps.

 

[Umbran]

What struck me as funny is that there really isn't a real-world version of "canon."

I prefer to think that there is a real-world version of "canon", but it hasn't been published yet. In the past, we've rarely known what it is, but as time moves forwards, we are finding that more and more often, we have access to enough information to have a canon.

This is best exemplified by how, more and more often, when a public figure says, "I didn't say that," some commentator can bring out the tape and show that the public figure did, in fact, say exactly that.

 

[Krensky]

The problem is that the OP along with most of fandom and their enablers (read authors) use the word wrong. Canon is a either a general principle or a body of literary work. Well, there's some other meanings relating to music or ecclesiastic issues, but they're not important here.

Fandom has conflated the two meanings above into the 'authoritative sources about a fictional universe'. The real world has canon in both of these senses. Religion, universal morality, most basic science, mathematics, etc fall into the first category. The second are things like the Western Canon, The Four (or Five) Great Classic Novels of China, and the bodies of work that fandom obsesses over are all canons.

Canonical works in fandom are considered authoritative because they are part of a single body of work that adhears to a set of principles. If they deviate from those principles, even if by the same author, ofter fans will reject their inclusion. You see this in Star Wars, for instance, with people ignoring the Prequels. Then there's things like the Expanded Universe in, again, Star Wars that isn't canon because (in essence) Lucas neither wrote it or accepted it into his official vision of the universe.

Comparing canon to history or anything else in the real world is like comparing apples and pomegranates. It may work as a literary convention, but they really don't have anything to do with one another.

 

[Cam Banks]

When I worked on Dragonlance this was an important part of my job. I eventually determined there were two things going on here: continuity, which is essential for framing a campaign setting properly in publication and in tying it together with what has come before; and canon, which in large part is decided by the end user.

It's quite possible that a book, game product, or movie gets made that the fans collectively decide is not part of the accepted body of work in that setting or property. This end user determination often influences and advises the management of continuity for the IP owners, especially when something drastic happens or flies in the face of everything that has come before and the IP owners realize it didn't make sense or doesn't do well with the audience.

This is where retcons and reboots come into the process. For instance, with the 3.5 Dragonlance line we understood there were greatly divided opinions about what Dragonlance was and should be in the future. Many people hated the Fifth Age, or were tired of the War of the Lance, or wanted more stuff set in the Pre-Cataclysm eras. There was a collective agreement on many aspects of the setting but some folks simply didn't accept parts of it. We closed a lot of loopholes, tied up many loose ends, engaged in some selective revision and updated some other things.

It's true that whoever is in charge of a specific IP generally controls what the continuity and "official" state of things are, but canon is out of their hands. All they can do is provide sufficient avenues for allowing the end user to pick and choose what they want without feeling they have completely diverted their own version of the setting from what's "official."

Cheers,
Cam

 

[The Ghost]

But St. Louis WASN'T destroyed, you see...

Now you are assuming St. Louis evens exists. How do you know that we are not all just imagining this? Maybe we are nothing more than batteries and this world that we perceive is created to confuse us from the truth. Aliens are out there! Don't you know that that is the truth?!?

...

Really, I think every setting needs a certain number of people, places, things, and events that are considered canon. The reason is simply for ease of communication between people. If I say I am playing a pre-wars Greyhawk game, people who know Greyhawk understand what that means. They understand what I am trying to do. Now, there may be small changes here and there that divert from established canon but there still is a basic understanding of what the game world is like.