Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="comrade raoul" data-source="post: 3677981" data-attributes="member: 554">I've seen two discussions of canonicity on the boards recently--one here, about the Forgotten Realms, the other in the general d20 forum about Star Wars. I can't understand why anyone would care about the details of whether or not something was canon in the context of a roleplaying game.I mean, let me step back for a moment. I can understand caring about canon when you're writing fanfiction or something--you want to fill out what could plausibly happen in a fictional world, outside of but continuous with the narrative being presented by the viewer: what you watch on film or read on the page. That's what distinguishes fanfiction from regular fiction, after all: you want to feel as though you're speculating about characters you already have a stake in, or expanding someone else's narrative in a way that fits.But roleplaying games aren't fanfiction--right? Isn't a campaign setting just a means to an end--a way to facilitate fun, narratively satisfying gameplay? Isn't the choice to use a published setting mostly about convenience--the ability to have a setting that you know basically works, without having to spend a lot of time working on a homebrew and maybe only ending up with something that's not as good as the published alternatives anyway? You pick a published setting because you know it's reasonably internally consistent, there are fun built-in opportunities for adventure, and--ideally--everyone in the group has knowledge of their world that more closely resembles what their characters know.All of these goals are consistent with nontrivial violations of canon. Fanfiction in an alternate universe fundamentally changes the character of the fiction, but roleplaying in an alternate universe doesn't. If you want to play in a Realms where Elminster died before the game began, or in a Galactic Empire where Luke died in childbirth but where a few dozen Jedi survived the Purge and kept the Order intact, as part of the Rebellion, there shouldn't be anything wrong with that, as long as your changes don't hurt gameplay or leave your players too confused. You're just playing in a slightly homebrewed setting, right?I mean, do any of you really care about canon, or have players who do? How do you deal with it?</blockquote>

Verification