Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Joseph_Silver 06-30-06, 09:46 PM	Is there a book in works which will advance the metaplot? Something along the lines of the Faction War in Planescape? Maybe a thick adventure book about the Mark of Death? I would be very disappointed if there is nothing like the Planescape Faction War for Eberron.
Nerdicus 06-30-06, 10:10 PM	I think that would be cool, but only if it kept things open at the end of the adventure officially speaking. The Faction War really did a number on the statis quo for Sigil.
yrogerg 06-30-06, 10:27 PM	I don't know if there's official sources saying this, but it seems to be generally assured that -at least for the time being- the metaplot is frozen at YKK 998. I think it's a great thing in some ways, and a not-so-great thing in others, myself. I really wouldn't object if the metaplot advanced if we ever got to a 4th edition D&D- something similar to what happened with FR, in that regard. I'm sure others would disagree, however.
Joseph_Silver 06-30-06, 10:34 PM	What I want to know is if the metaplot will ever advance. The New World of Darkness, for example, has no metaplot, so it will never advance. But what about Eberron?
Elemental_Elf 07-01-06, 12:41 AM	They won't advance the metaplot a mere 2 years after Eberron's release. Maybe for the 5th anniversary or something like that, but don't expect it any time soon. Anyways it would be cool when they do, but IMO they rely on the DMs to advance their own plots. Changing things suddenly only makes people unhappy and unhappy constomers don't buy products. Seriously, just wait a few more years before you go making or breaking an entire setting. Eberron is so young any drastic change like a metaplot advance could ruin the entire Setting, and that is the last thing any of us want. :weep:
ArcTan 07-01-06, 12:47 AM	They won't advance the metaplot a mere 2 years after Eberron's release. Maybe for the 5th anniversary or something like that, but don't expect it any time soon. Anyways it would be cool when they do, but IMO they rely on the DMs to advance their own plots. Changing things suddenly only makes people unhappy and unhappy constomers don't buy products. Seriously, just wait a few more years before you go making or breaking an entire setting. Eberron is so young an drastic change like a metaplot advance could ruin the entire Setting, and that is the last thing any of us want. :weep: I don't think there was anyone, anywhere, who really liked what WoD did with Gehenna, for instance.
Deadguy 07-01-06, 04:44 AM	Everything produced so far makes it clear that there is no intention of creating an advancing metaplot for the setting. Metaplots create problems for players new to a setting and upset DMs whose own plots have taken a different direction. As such they make more enemies than friends. What they could perhaps consider doing is a book of plotting ideas, a collection of "what-if's" for the setting. None of these would be binding (any more than the novels are), and wouldn't be reflected in future products. but they could serve as springboards for DMs looking for suggestions for campaigns.
Ath'kethin 07-01-06, 08:53 AM	Metaplots create problems for players new to a setting and upset DMs whose own plots have taken a different direction. As such they make more enemies than friends. Ha! Anybody remember the first Dark Sun novel series, the Prism Pentad? Took a brand new setting, right out of the box, and by the end of the series had changed it completely, making much of the setting's game material inaccurate within a year of its release. I loved that. I don't think there really is much of a "metaplot" to Eberron, probably for this very reason. It's designed to be our world now.
Raziel_Brokodar 07-01-06, 11:24 AM	As far as I know they won't be advancing the plot, that's for the creative minds of every DM to think about (if they're brave enough to do so) they're not trying to limit you I guess.
Korhal_IV 07-01-06, 12:04 PM	On Amazon's website you can view future releases from WotC. In March 2007, they're releasing a sourcebook called The Next War, in July there's a novel called End of the Prophecy, and in September we get Screwing Around with Our Customers, which is the last game supplement for Eberron listed. :)
Joseph_Silver 07-01-06, 03:07 PM	Is that true, or are you just kidding? I know you're kidding with the screwing around with the customers part, but what about the others?
mhacdebhandia 07-01-06, 07:40 PM	No, the others are jokes too. Secrets of Xen'drik comes out this month, Faiths of Eberron follows in September, Dragonmarked hits the shelves in November, and the last book we know of is February's Secrets of Sarlona. While no-one who knows Wizards of the Coast's plan for Eberron in the long-term is telling, Keith Baker has always said that he doesn't think Eberron should be subject to the same metaplot changes that, for instance, the Forgotten Realms have undergone over the years. In other words, he hopes (and so do I) that there will never be anything like the Time of Troubles in Eberron, and that future adventures and sourcebooks will concentrate on fleshing out the world rather than changing it or advancing the timeline.
Edymnion 07-01-06, 07:55 PM	What I want to know is if the metaplot will ever advance.No, advancing the metaplot is what ruined the Forgotten Realms. Advancing the metaplot is what made everybody Epic level as they tried to keep up with the books constantly one upping themselves. Pretty much everything that people don't like about Faerun is the direct result of advancing the metaplot. WotC learned from that failure, and has stated many, many times that they are not going to repeate it. Default Eberron is at the year 998, and thats the year the default setting is going to stay at. The day WotC advances that date so much as a single year is the date I officially boycott WotC for outright lying to my face and abusing it's customer base.
Elemental_Elf 07-01-06, 11:43 PM	I see meta plot advances like this: Think about Games like Warcraft, Mortal Kombat and others. Even if you strive and sweat and eventually win with Humans (in Warcraft) or Jonny Cage in Mortal Kombat, the next game released tells you the way you won was WRONG. It was the Orcs and Lui Kang that won. Not your team. You failed. You're ideas, your determination mean NOTHING. You must bow to the power of the almighty corporation for you mean nothing. That's frusterating, most esspecially when you think about how long it takes people to make, play and complete campaigns in D&D. Metaplot advances ruin all of this invested time. Sure you could just ignor the new book and time line but that never really feels right. The only way for metaplot advances to work is to establish that every few years the plot of the setting is advanced. This makes it obvious that certain things will change and everyone must prepare for it when that time comes. A good way for this to work is to produce large campaign Books like Red Hand of Doom and smaller source books of roughly the same size. Of course this method of making Campaign Crafting is often expensive as you need the latest books as well as making it very expensive for new comers. Hense the reason this meathod is not oft used.
yrogerg 07-02-06, 02:15 AM	I see meta plot advances like this: Think about Games like Warcraft, Mortal Kombat and others. Even if you strive and sweat and eventually win with Humans (in Warcraft) or Jonny Cage in Mortal Kombat, the next game released tells you the way you won was WRONG. It was the Orcs and Lui Kang that won. Not your team. You failed. You're ideas, your determination mean NOTHING. You must bow to the power of the almighty corporation for you mean nothing. Really? I thought the Humans won in the Warcraft meta-plot. I mean, the Orcs did a lot of damage, but... In any case, with video games, I always got a bit of a thrill when I realize that there was a Good, Coherent Story behind the game. The _craft games do this very well, IMO. That's frusterating, most esspecially when you think about how long it takes people to make, play and complete campaigns in D&D. Metaplot advances ruin all of this invested time. Sure you could just ignor the new book and time line but that never really feels right. The only way for metaplot advances to work is to establish that every few years the plot of the setting is advanced. This makes it obvious that certain things will change and everyone must prepare for it when that time comes. A good way for this to work is to produce large campaign Books like Red Hand of Doom and smaller source books of roughly the same size. Of course this method of making Campaign Crafting is often expensive as you need the latest books as well as making it very expensive for new comers. Hense the reason this meathod is not oft used. Well, yeah. I'd say that if there's a major rules edition change, like the hypothetical 3.5-4 transiton, then a metaplot advance could be seen as in-order. I wouldn't complain, either way, since, as you said, it would involve a major rules shift, invalidate a lot of abilities and classes, and generally make us to start over anyway.
Nerdicus 07-02-06, 10:24 AM	I belive that with a setting like Eberron, rather then focussing on any sort of Meta Plot, the creators and designers can further explore and expand on the nit and the grit of the core setting. Now, I don't have all the Eberron setting material, I have the Core, the Races of, the CoT, EHB, FN, and the main published adventures, and from what I have read in those books, each new peace of solid information put our for the setting merly scrathces the surface, and always leaves room and hints for even more information. So, having said...er...typed that, I think the big book of plot "what if's" is a big one that could help further the story for the indavidual DM's out there and help keep the setting feeling fresh for players and DM's alike. And then continue putting out books that get into more specific issues. Like, the Five Nations book was full of a great idea,s but now I want one like that that gets into all the new nations, Droaam, Dhargun, Q'barra, ect. One that gives you a full clear view of the story of and what not for the new nations at the time of game start. Then all us Dm's out there can meta-plot our own meta plots, for the time being. Speaking of meta plots...has other people out there been thinking that the next war will include the other land masses on Eberron? Will it include the barbarian hords of the Argonnessen humans with their Dragon overlords and all the others? Will it be the massive mash up of fighting forces on Eberron, from the halflings of the Talenta planes, to the Quori of the Plane of Xoriat?
Elemental_Elf 07-02-06, 02:59 PM	Speaking of meta plots...has other people out there been thinking that the next war will include the other land masses on Eberron? Will it include the barbarian hords of the Argonnessen humans with their Dragon overlords and all the others? Will it be the massive mash up of fighting forces on Eberron, from the halflings of the Talenta planes, to the Quori of the Plane of Xoriat? IMO the catalyst of the next war will be Droam, Draguun or Valenar. They're by far the most militant and border the greater powers. Militantism + Good Geographic Position = Amazing ways to beging a war.
Edymnion 07-02-06, 08:43 PM	IMO the catalyst of the next war will be Droam, Draguun or Valenar. They're by far the most militant and border the greater powers. Militantism + Good Geographic Position = Amazing ways to beging a war.Only problem there is that all three of those groups are "outsiders" in khovaire, meaning the five nations and the other smaller nations like Zilargo would likely band together against them, making it a very short war.
stone_dog 07-02-06, 08:58 PM	I don't think there was anyone, anywhere, who really liked what WoD did with Gehenna, for instance. I did. And I'd love for something similar, but "non-canon" to be provided for Eberron too. Take any given event and make a four part possibility book out of it. Four authors get so many pages each to detail how they would run the return of the daelkyr, the spread of the mournlands, the awakening of the demonwastes or any other such massive event. Heck, I have pillaged Gehenna and Apocalypse for material for Eberron before! A few tightly focused campain seed books might not go amiss.
ArcTan 07-02-06, 09:24 PM	Really? I thought the Humans won in the Warcraft meta-plot. I mean, the Orcs did a lot of damage, but... The Humans lose WC1, win WC2 and the expansion, and then more or less lose WC3, depending on how you look at it. (WC3 is different because it only has a *plot*, not a metaplot -- there's a single storyline you must play through to get thorugh the game.
treehouse916 07-02-06, 09:58 PM	This is one topic where I wholeheartedly agree with the Keepers of the Canon. The way the world is set up right now, everything is about to EXPLODE sometime in 998 or 999 YK, but the setting leaves it up to you to cherry pick plots to activate in your own game, while ignoring the ones that don't spark your imagination. Does the Last War reignite as diplomatic talks break down? What about the impending Reidran invasion? Lords of Dust ever get around to unleashing a Rajah? Did the Cultists of Khyber finally break all of the Gatekeeper seals? It's up to the DM right now, but if they advance the metaplot, we lose a lot of these great options. I, for one, am intensely uninterested in the Mark of Death plot. It's such an afterthought in my campaign that I had a key NPC give my PCs all of the relevant info on it just to gain their trust. I used a campaign seed that some people milk for countless sessions as a bargaining chip. But I know a lot of people absolutely love that storyline, which means if they ever advance the metaplot, I might have to incorporate it in a meaningful way into my own campaign. Blah! In short, I hope they never advance the metaplot. I'd buy up a Book of What-Ifs in a second, as long as it was original and included things that I wouldn't think up on my own.
Sythion 07-02-06, 10:37 PM	Well, if you consider books to be official content, the mark of death series is actually advancing that particular meta plot. It doesn't play in with what I want for my campaign involving the MoD, however, so I'm ignoring it entirely (except for the really cool stuff that I plagerized for my own campaign :P).
Splendide 07-02-06, 11:24 PM	I personally loved the advancing metaplot in Shadowrun. I wouldn't mind a bit of it in Eberron if I had more faith in WotC.
Siran Dunmorgan 07-03-06, 01:11 AM	Metaplot? It seems more as if you're discussing advancing the plot, without the 'meta'. The metaplot advances whether the plot does or not: c.f. the upcoming stream of Secrets of… sourcebooks. We know that Wizards of the Coast has no intention of advancing the plot: as Edymnion pointed out, that stays put at 998 YK. But the metaplot? Just the publication of Magic of Eberron threw in several fascinating twists! We suddenly found ourselves making room in the ideology of the Eldeen druid sects for things like plant grafts, for example; I can't imagine these sit altogether well with the Ashbound, for example, though the Gatekeepers would likely embrace this 'druidic technology' with open arms. As far as I can tell, Wizards of the Coast has every intention of advancing the metaplot with every sourcebook, article, and adventure. Look at what they've done with elemental binding, for example. In the beginning, it was something the gnomes did, that they might have learned while exploring Xen'drik. But now—we have descriptions of the binding process, an organization devoted to working with voluntarily employed elementals, and—in Player's Guide to Eberron—the High Binder. Those elements strongly advance the metaplot, and they're spread out over at least three sourcebooks. There's a lot of information brewing about the Arcane Congress, too: the astonishing lack of description of this organization in Five Nations suggests a meta-metaplot to release information about this institution in small bites over the course of several sourcebooks. So, aye: the plot is held still. The metaplot is alive and well in the hands of Wizards of the Coast, their stable of freelance writers, and—to a limited, but nonetheless effective degree—us. —Siran Dunmorgan
Splendide 07-03-06, 01:33 AM	Ah, ok. Well whatever you want to call it, I wouldn't go frothing mad if WotC decided to advance the timeline. If the stuff you've described covers the best of the metaplot, then I would certainly love for that to cease all together. Give me an advancing timeline, not a constantly shifting present.
Rowan_Grey 07-03-06, 02:45 AM	I personally loved the advancing metaplot in Shadowrun. I wouldn't mind a bit of it in Eberron if I had more faith in WotC. So did I. It seems that all good metaplots are inevitably fated to spiral downward into an endless abyss of suckitude. (Shadowrun and L5R being the best examples). In the end, metaplot was what caused me to lose interest in those two settings and resolve never to purchase new material for them. (Well, that and L5R discarding nearly all of its supposed Oriental flavor in favor of mass appeal, but I digress) For a good long time, Shadowrun's advancing metaplot was absolutely awesome. I ate it up. As time went on though, (specifically,after FanPro picked up the product line, though last generation FASA had its fair share of SNAFUs) the annoying bits started to surface. The whole Comet arc, SURGE (Which was basically an excuse so that people could play whatever sort of furry or freak they wanted as a metahuman race), Dunkelzahn's reincarnation in the novel line, the ridiculous Art Dankwalther One-Man-Destroys-an-Entire Megacorporation farce....Over time, things just started piling up. More importantly, though FanPro started pumping out the State of the Art books rapidfire, and each one of those was advancing the timeline a whole year, giving GMs and Players little time to absorb the changes or react to them in their own campaigns. Not to mention the fact that they ran rough roughshod over their customers own storylines. Then of course, this all culminates with System Failure , where they completely annihilate core elements of the setting and generally muck two decades of worldbuilding up beyond repair, all to usher in a 'Shadowrun-for-dummies' fourth edition rulebook. The straw that broke the camels back with Shadowrun though is fortunately something we'll never have to worry about with WoTC, and that was when FanPro released a sprawling, multipart adventure (Shockwellen in German, then refused to translate it to English, while still maintaining all the events of the adventure path to be canon. (And these included such things as the orbital bombardment and destruction of major corporate facilities, the secret of a rising megacorp-to-be people had been waiting years to see resolved.) But anyway, that said, I'd be more than happy with having source material on Eberron frozen in 998 YK. The novels can do what they will past that date, but anything else has the potential to get ugly. Although, at this point, even Keith's Dreaming Dark series takes place before the start of the campaign proper. (from996-997 AK).
ArcTan 07-03-06, 03:12 AM	Well, if you consider books to be official content, the mark of death series is actually advancing that particular meta plot. It doesn't play in with what I want for my campaign involving the MoD, however, so I'm ignoring it entirely (except for the really cool stuff that I plagerized for my own campaign :P). This is why in a sensible world novels don't count as core game materials, for anything. I still can't understand why the FR people decided Drizzt should exist in the "real" FR.
ArcTan 07-03-06, 03:16 AM	Metaplot? It seems more as if you're discussing advancing the plot, without the 'meta'. The metaplot advances whether the plot does or not: c.f. the upcoming stream of Secrets of… sourcebooks. We know that Wizards of the Coast has no intention of advancing the plot: as Edymnion pointed out, that stays put at 998 YK. But the metaplot? Just the publication of Magic of Eberron threw in several fascinating twists! We suddenly found ourselves making room in the ideology of the Eldeen druid sects for things like plant grafts, for example; I can't imagine these sit altogether well with the Ashbound, for example, though the Gatekeepers would likely embrace this 'druidic technology' with open arms. As far as I can tell, Wizards of the Coast has every intention of advancing the metaplot with every sourcebook, article, and adventure. Look at what they've done with elemental binding, for example. In the beginning, it was something the gnomes did, that they might have learned while exploring Xen'drik. But now—we have descriptions of the binding process, an organization devoted to working with voluntarily employed elementals, and—in Player's Guide to Eberron—the High Binder. Those elements strongly advance the metaplot, and they're spread out over at least three sourcebooks. There's a lot of information brewing about the Arcane Congress, too: the astonishing lack of description of this organization in Five Nations suggests a meta-metaplot to release information about this institution in small bites over the course of several sourcebooks. So, aye: the plot is held still. The metaplot is alive and well in the hands of Wizards of the Coast, their stable of freelance writers, and—to a limited, but nonetheless effective degree—us. —Siran Dunmorgan ...That doesn't sound like advancing the metaplot, that sounds like publishing new books. I mean, if you define "advancing the metaplot" as "adding new story elements", then of course WotC advances the metaplot whenever they publish a new book. I mean, they kind of have to, unless the only books they published were new versions of _Spell Compendium_ and _Unearthed Arcana_ (i.e. all-crunch). I think the standard definition of metaplot *is* plot -- that is, the *real* plot of D&D is what happens at your table, but the metaplot is the stuff that the published material pushes on you as constantly advancing background story that you're forced to take into account whenever you or your players buy new books. Eberron doesn't advance the metaplot because it has to maintain the status quo -- it can't jump forward to the year 1000 and tell us that some element of the status quo we took for granted, like the shaky peace between Darguun and the Five Nations, has changed.
mhacdebhandia 07-03-06, 06:55 AM	Exactly. The plot happens in each individual game at each individual table. The metaplot, the plot beyond or above the plot, is the progression of changes to the setting outlined in each published book as the canon timeline advances. White Wolf's old World of Darkness games were infamous for metaplot - the Stargazer tribe leaving the Garou nation, the near-extermination of the Ravnos clan of vampires, the Time of Thin Blood - but D&D settings haven't escaped it either: the Greyhawk Wars, the Time of Troubles, the slowly-advancing timeline of the Forgotten Realms in general. Thanksfully, both Eberron and the new World of Darkness are supposedly free of metaplot.
Joseph_Silver 07-04-06, 04:14 PM	So the Eberron novels aren't considered canon? Is that what you guys are saying? It would really suck if the novels aren't canon, IMHO. Most of the novels in other campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, etc.) are considred canon.
yrogerg 07-04-06, 04:34 PM	By default, no, but either you or your DM are free to treat them that way, or incorporate characters or campaign hooks based on them. But what happens in the novels, should, at most, be treated more as an example of what things *could* be like for your PCs, rather than who's already there, and what's already happening. One problem I remember from the Dragonlance novels is that those characters are *the* important characters in the setting, and whatever you, the PCs, do won't change the meta-plot. You didn't win, aren't aren't winning and won't win the War of the Lance; Tanis and Raistlin and Caramon and Tasslehoff and all the rest have, and are, and will. Which is a shame, considering the fact that the Chronicles series of Dragonlance, for example, grew out of a D&D campaign itself. One creative difference in Eberron is that *your* PCs are the main characters, *your* PCs are the ones changing the world and holding the forces of darkness at bay, when nobody else can or will. Your PCs are the ones whose actions the world are supposed to turn on. That's the argument against advancing the meta-plot, particularly through the novels.
yrogerg 07-04-06, 04:39 PM	On Amazon's website you can view future releases from WotC. In March 2007, they're releasing a sourcebook called The Next War, in July there's a novel called End of the Prophecy, and in September we get Screwing Around with Our Customers, which is the last game supplement for Eberron listed. :) So Screwing Around with Our Customers is they one where they tell you how to end your Eberron campaign, forever, and never play in the setting again, right?
Hellcow 07-04-06, 05:01 PM	It would really suck if the novels aren't canon, IMHO. Most of the novels in other campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, etc.) are considred canon. In my opinion, the novels should serve as inspiration, not restriction. The novels should open doors rather than close them - allowing DMs to say "My party could have an adventure like that" instead of "Oh, someone else has already done that." As yrogerg says, you CAN choose to use the heroes of the novels in your campaign and to take everything that happens in them as canon. But the intention of Eberron is that your PCs are the heroes of the world. A key example of this appears in Secrets of Xen'drik. The book includes statistics for the docent Shira. In The Shattered Land, this item falls into the hands of the warforged Pierce. If you want, you can say that Pierce is somewhere in your world and that he has Shira. Or you can let YOUR players get Shira, and use the novels as inspiration about how the docent behaves. Essentially, if Eberron was Middle Earth, I'd want you to feel that you had the option to go through the entire War of the Ring with YOUR characters taking the place of Aragorn and Frodo... as opposed to watching on the sidelines. But at the end of the day, the choice is yours! Treating the novels as canon has the advantage of creating NPCs that your players can recognize as peers, and there's something to be said for that as well. There's no right or wrong: it's all a question of what best suits your play style.
LordofXoriat 07-04-06, 06:30 PM	So the Eberron novels aren't considered canon? Is that what you guys are saying? It would really suck if the novels aren't canon, IMHO. Most of the novels in other campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, etc.) are considred canon. Um, why would that suck? I'm not saying your wrong, I just can't see your reasoning. To me this is good. :confused:
Edymnion 07-04-06, 07:57 PM	Well, if you consider books to be official content, the mark of death series is actually advancing that particular meta plot.They aren't official. They are individual authors takes on the setting that ignore, change, or create entire branches for the express purpose of advancing their own plot.This is why in a sensible world novels don't count as core game materials, for anything. I still can't understand why the FR people decided Drizzt should exist in the "real" FR.This is exactly why Faerun turned into a high powered setting where every town has it's own 20th level wizard sitting on his hands, and why the gods walk the streets of Waterdeep, because TSR tried to keep the setting up to date with the books. And every book that came out meant the characters and the situations had to become bigger and more powerful to keep challenging the characters. So, essentially, the entire setting leveled up with one or two parties, leaving everybody else in the dust.So the Eberron novels aren't considered canon? Is that what you guys are saying?Nope, the novels are not canon. Several of them actually break with the setting in fundamental ways, such as bringing back the Mark of Death, just to tell their own story. The novels are, essentially, nothing more than glorified fanfics. They are no more a canon resource than that last Star Trek fanfic you found on the internet. Sure, somebody that produces canon material could see it and think its a good idea and add it, but that doesn't make the original fanfic canon. It would really suck if the novels aren't canon, IMHO. Most of the novels in other campaign settings (Forgotten Realms, Dragonlance, etc.) are considred canon.Actually, no, they're not. They were in TSR's time, but to my knowledge, WotC put it's foot down and basically said that Salvator & Company was not going to be writing the entire setting anymore, and took the reigns themselves. Which was a good movie, IMO. Keith Baker created the setting, and his novels aren't even considered canon.
ORC_Paradox 07-05-06, 01:45 AM	I'd go as far as to say even the RPG books themselves are NOT "cannon". Even the idea of something being "cannon" is wrong. D&D is your game. It is my game. It's everyone's game, not just one person's. To insist the game world is somehow solid and HAS to play in only one way is wrong. Case in point: I hate psionics, thus you wouldn't find them in my game. (Having said that, darn you Keith! I'm starting to warm up to them through the whole Kalishtar/Dreaming Dark story arc...) Even though I'm starting to warm up to it, currently I wouldn't allow players to play psionic characters. The idea that someone wants to come to the boards, never played or going to play in either my game, the author's game or the game designer's game to tell me I'm playing the setting wrong because it's not cannon is both wrong, and going to get ignored and laughed at. (Behind the screen, of course.) How is my game not following what's printed exactly going to harm other people's games? Answer: It's not. You can cry in your oatmeal all you want about it, but "official" means nothing at the table other than I wouldn't accept just anything posted on the internet, but I'm not going to adhere to something that happens in a novel I may or may not have read as being the "Official and Only Way" things are in my game world. Keith hit the nail on the head, though.
ArcTan 07-05-06, 07:49 AM	Well, I interpret "canon" as what, officially, you can expect people to have read when you discuss the setting and use as a starting point to build things from. The novels aren't canon -- or are less canon compared to the RPG books -- because the information they have wasn't intended for gaming, doesn't tend to make gaming easier, and often takes significant work to translate into a form you can use for a game. (The same, sadly, is true of many RPG books, but not usually by design.) They can serve as inspiration for ideas for a game, but so can any non-game-based novel or movie.
mhacdebhandia 07-05-06, 10:24 AM	Exactly right, Paradox. Among fans of other games, canon is not such a big deal. GURPS players don't sit at the table and expect everything in every book Steve Jackson Games publishes to be part of a given campaign - indeed, not every element in a book like GURPS Space would appear in a space campaign. White Wolf's new World of Darkness abandoned the metaplot that the original World of Darkness setting was famous for; all their games are now toolkits for individual groups to use in creating their own stories. Many of their supplements, especially for Vampire: The Requiem, present explanations and ideas in the same book which are mutually contradictory. VII and Mythologies are prime examples of these books, which suggest wildly divergent answers to a given question or mystery so that each Storyteller can choose the answer she prefers, or be inspired by the published explanations to come up with her own. The sooner D&D players let go of the idea that everything Wizards of the Coast publishes is - or should be - appropriate for any given campaign, the better. Given that they've already taken the position that the true identity of the Lord of Blades shouldn't be revealed, and feel free to drop contradictory hints and suggestions as to the answer to such questions, I think it'd be excellent if Wizards of the Coast published some new statistics for the Lord of Blades that flatly contradict those published in Five Nations, giving another variant take on the abilities he possesses and the way in which he operates. For instance, what if the Lord of Blades were statted up as a cleric of the philosophy he espouses? I'm pleased by the hints which have been dropped so far about Secrets of Xen'drik, inasmuch as they paint a picture of a "toolkit" supplement which presents options and freedom, not hard answers and canon. Perhaps it's the deliberately wide-open status of Xen'drik that makes it possible, but I'd love to know that Secrets of Sarlona is going to take the same tack, presenting options on how society operates over there. I'd even be satisfied with a few specific "it's up to the DM" mysteries - for instance, if they only gave a few suggestions as to the true purpose of those psionic monoliths, rather than explaining their "canon" purpose. In short: canon is for jerks.