Canon isn't realistic...

[Krensky]

What makes a work set in a specific universe canonical? Is it merely popular opinion? Is it ownership? HP Lovecraft encouraged the use of his mythos by other authors, so are all of those works canonical? If Star Trek supports multiple universes, than isn't EVERYTHING potentially canonical -- just not necessarily part of the same timeline?

Again, it depends who is defining the canon, but since this typically refers to the 'official' canon, it's whoever 'owns' the universe. In Star Trek, that's Paramount. For Star Wars it's Lucas. For Lovecraft, it's stickier. There are a few accepted Lovecraft canons, with Derlith being the biggest dividing point. In these cases it's really up to whoever is making the list.

As for Star Trek, canon is the movies and live action TV shows (although there's ambiguity about deleted scenes not in the original presentation but inserted in a director's cut or home video release. The novels, cartoon, games, etc are all non-canon, although certain elements were made canon by inclusion in the shows or movies, that doesn't transfer canon status beyond that specific element.

It's crucial to remember that the concept of literary canon is a construct of literary analysis and education. Canon isn't an organic thing, it's something imposed to delineate a topic of discussion. As used regarding fannish topics, it's used to determine the actual imaginary events that make up a world in order to facilitate discourse, or to make things manageable for writers.

Is the concern with canonicity a matter of simple influence? If something I don't like in a universe is taken as "canon," then other creators may use that aspect in their own work. Ultimately, this could drive the fictional universe in a direction that I find less enjoyable overall. Is this the root of debate here?

I'm actually a little fuzzy on what the debate actuall is, but I think it's about changing existing worlds into something else, ala FR4e?

If so, the fetish for canonicity comes from the nature of fans (remeber, fan is short for fanatic) and the implication of 'holy writ' that the word canon brings along with it. In fandom it usually comes about as a tool in debat (read arguments) about the work.

"Kirk had a love affair with Mary Sue and pined for her every day after that because she was his true love."
"That book wasn't canon you idot!"

or

"I loved the three Star Wars movies"
"You mean six."
"There were only three."

In the former it's either a thought terminating cliche or an attempt to limit the scope to commonly accepted 'genuine' works and in the later its sort of a No True Scotsman.

 

[DreadPirateMurphy]

TV Tropes has a lot to say on the subject of canon.

Canon - Television Tropes & Idioms

The even mention Dragonlance specifically.

It never even occurred to me to think that there might be canon debates for the Peanuts comic strip!

 

[avin]

When I think about RPG canon I like the subtle approach, instead of the direct.

Just for the sake of example, MotP 4E says things like "City of Brass is the eldest city in creation". This is written in a 3rd person editorial style, like set in stone. Not all entries on Motp4E look like that, I'm just pointing an example for comparison.

Planescape uses other tone: "nobody knows exactly what Orcus did to the drow demigodess", along those lines.

I think canon works far better when is loose, leaving the door open for DMs.

 

[Aeolius]

I think canon works far better when is loose, leaving the door open for DMs.

I used this image on my game site, back in the 90s:

 

[Krensky]

Indeed. A RPG canon would be the list of books and sources allowed in a campaign.

 

[Ktulu]

Wait...so was there, or was there not, a spoon?

Sorry, got lost in the theoretical discussion.

I'm with the OP on what his intent is; that nothing is required to be guaranteed and set in stone in any campaign. If Drizzt happens to be a maniacal serial killer with good PR, all the better.

Maybe Luke Skywalker is just as much percieved truth (ahh, love you, Obi-Wan), and that he's really just an Uncle Sam for the rebellion.

In fact, the entire canon of Star Wars is just anti-empirical propoganda. There's no "wicked, evil emperor" and the Death Star was a myth.

It's how I run all my games when I use official settings. I don't twist it beyond being part of the world, but I do like to make it unique for the player experience.

In a recent SW campaign, two major changes were implemented; 1. Luke joined the Dark Side, effectively ending the war. 2. The Empirical Think-Tank was working on a biological weapon that, when released onto a planet, would consume all living entities. Unfortunately, it consumed/destroyed some Dark Jedi and became self-aware. (essentially, they had created the Zerg from Blizzard's Starcraft) With canon out the window at that point, the heroes were forced to ally with the Empire to destroy this much deadlier enemy. Players loved it.

 

[billd91]

From this, I take it to mean that you feel that there is a distinct, objective shared reality in the actual universe.

I don't know that it is true. If it is true, I don't know that it matters.

For what it's worth, I believe there is a distinct, objective shared reality - but our understanding of it is constantly filtered and interpreted by subjective instruments. The whole idea that "reality is subjective" smacks to me of bumper-sticker philosophy that means nothing significant. I'd be more comfortable with "reality is put through a subjective wringer".

But our perceptions of and interactions with the world around us are different from establishing the reality of a game world. Canonical works (which is to say works published as official or canonical by the owners of the IP or accepted as canonical), if they present the facts of a campaign world, establish the objective reality of the campaign world. Because the campaign world is a construct, it can do so. This contrasts with establishing the facts and objective reality of our own reality because our own reality is not constructed in the same way by an author (there is no overall authority). Our reality is built up over a ridiculous number of years chronicled by spotty records, historians with axes to grind, and so many subjective takes on it that our best records do little more than help us to infer what that objective reality really is.

The authoritative facts of a campaign world help the DM and players to establish the various subjective takes on the campaign that they will encounter as PCs interacting with NPCs. In that sense, some kind of canon is very useful because it lets you know what sources to consult. The problem with RPG setting canon is that it tends to get pretty detailed after supplement after supplement gets published.

 

[Jack Colby]

Agreed completely with the OP... great post. I personally find canon takes away from any setting far more than it gives. It exposes all the little flaws and inconsistencies that would otherwise be glossed-over. It also tends to expose it as a created world rather than a "real" one, since different authors make mistakes, then explanations are put forth to try and explain what is clearly a mistake as something other than a mistake. In an RPG context, canon also tends to squash creativity and the very play of the game it was designed to support.

 

[Bumbles]

From this, I take it to mean that you feel that there is a distinct, objective shared reality in the actual universe.

Cogito, ergo sum.

This is nothing you can't find in any philosophy class.

 

[Dausuul]

The authoritative facts of a campaign world help the DM and players to establish the various subjective takes on the campaign that they will encounter as PCs interacting with NPCs. In that sense, some kind of canon is very useful because it lets you know what sources to consult. The problem with RPG setting canon is that it tends to get pretty detailed after supplement after supplement gets published.

Indeed. In the real world, if I'm wondering whether a giant meteor hit St. Louis, and I want to know bad enough, I can saddle up and head out to St. Louis and look for the freakin' crater. Either it's there or it isn't. Now, that still leaves plenty of room for speculation (was it a meteor or a nuke? when did it happen? did anyone know it was going to happen? is this actually where St. Louis used to be? did St. Louis ever exist at all?), but I can see with my own two eyes that there is, or is not, a crater. It's not open to debate.

In a fictional world, the voice of the author(s) is the equivalent of "your own two eyes." (There's some shadiness about the edges here, what with first-person versus third-person and unreliable narrators and all that, but in general, it is expected that the reader shall regard the narrative as true within the reality of the fictional world.) Since we can't actually go to Middle-Earth and see if Barad-dur was destroyed, we agree to an unspoken compact with Tolkien: If he says Barad-dur was destroyed, we shall accept that in the world of the story, it was so.

It gets a little stickier with RPG settings, of course, and different DMs have different takes. But in general, the basic assumptions of the setting serve as "verifiable reality" for the players. If the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide says that Elminster lives in Shadowdale, then we accept that it is so - unless the DM says up front, "In my version of FR, Elminster lives in Waterdeep." It isn't a rumor, it's a verifiable fact, which some of the PCs may well have verified in the past. Having such verifiable facts available helps the players to feel that they have some grasp on what's going on in the game world.

IMO, the best settings are those which limit themselves to describing things that are verifiable, while leaving room for vast amounts of interpretation. For instance, the original Dark Sun boxed set described the ruined city of (IIRC) Kalidnay, with a ziggurat in the middle that had been cracked open like an egg, and streets littered with skeletons. It also mentioned that Kalak of Tyr was building a giant ziggurat and expending vast resources to do so. But it didn't actually say what happened in Kalidnay, or what Kalak was doing or why. That was up to the DM to decide, and the players to guess.