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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Stormborn" data-source="post: 3678014" data-attributes="member: 14041">I am not one who cares a great deal about canon in RPGs, but I do understand why others do.   Your comparison to fanfiction is apt.  For them playing in an established setting is, in many ways, like reading or writing fanfic.  The choice of a setting is not only "a means to an end--a way to facilitate fun, narratively satisfying gameplay", it is a chance to play in a very specific world, one in which other players of the game share a common experiance.  There is a connection to everyone who plays a particular setting, not just those at your table.  You can go to a convention, or a message board, and talk about the major NPCs, setting elements, and timeline and have a shared frame of refrence with each other.  In some ways that makes adhearing to canon more important, for while there are supplements and adventures written about a particular campaign its only "life" is in the play and conversation of the fan base, as opposed to fanfic where the "life" of the setting is in an official writen and produced work that exists independent of the fan base.So yes, lots of people really do care about canon.  I understand their reasons and support them.  I prefer to play and run in homebrew settigns that have little or no connection to published ones, but thats just me.</blockquote>