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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Autumnal" data-source="post: 9341813" data-attributes="member: 6671663">Someone mentioned doing a lot of work for hire, many pages ago, and not agreeing with the idea that Elmore ought to be allowed an authoritative say. I agree with that, having done a lot of work for hire, some of which changed work of my predecessors and some of which has been changed in small ways and big ones by my successors.Some thoughts:I find it stress reducing to treat each edition as its own continuum. Changed mechanics, which seem to be the most reliable marker of edition change in most RPGs (not all, just most), offer a good opportunity for setting tweaks. There may be spelled out to the public or might not. Even when new setting stuff generally aligns pretty closely with what’s come before, not assuming it’s all the same makes things more relaxed all around.Work-for-hire creators should have a strong sense of head-canon versus official decisions. A fair number of pro fiction writers have done fanfic in settings and with characters they created. In the Storyteller's Vault on DriveThru, you can find fan supplements by people who had been working on cancelled lines, doing work they might have done if the lines had continued. And so on. But it’s important to preserve the awareness of what’s official and what isn’t.I can tell you what I would have preferred to happen in cases where I don’t like how things went. But I am not entitled to say that it should have or ought to have gone my way. That’s not how work for hire goes. When we turn in our work and get paid for it, our authority over the work is done. And this is true for Elmore’s art work, too.By my preferences, then, no version of figures now can retroactively changed what’s come before. And the public can decide for themselves whether we’re looking at different renderings of the same person all along or not, for our various head-canons. Elmore can say what his intentions were and WotC can say what’s official at the moment, and neither of those is authoritative unless we’re asking about his intentions or their policy of the moment.This may seem hair-splitting, but it’s not. Keeping these distinctions clear is very important for reducing stress and unnecessary conflict.</blockquote>

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