Re: Canon

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Adam Miller" <night_druid3000@?????.com>
Sent: Monday, January 29, 2007 2:26 PM
Subject: Re: [SPELLJAMMER] Canon


> Ugh, hit the send button too soon :p
>
> --- Paul Westermeyer <westermeyer@???????.net> wrote:
>> But semantics aside, I would argue that the only
>> viable basis for 'canon' material we can make is
>> published material.  If we use the published
>> Spelljammer material as our canon, then we can more
>> usefully understand each others ideas and work by
>> noting how it differs from that established canon.
>
> Personally, I'm not a stickler for canon anymore.
> Maybe its disillusionment, or maybe reality set it,
> but I kinda don't see a real purpose for it.  A DM is
> going to use what he/she wants to use; canon be
> darned.  Maybe things would be different if we had a
> team working together on a common goal/project, but
> those rarely turn out the way we hoped.  Could be
> proven wrong, though :)

I'm afraid that I have to disagree with you here, Adam. I think it is vital 
to establish SJ cannon, because the cannon defines the baseline of the 
campaign setting. I'm not saying that we then have to stick with cannon at 
all times. But just knowing what is cannon can help us decide when to use 
the cannon and when to swap it out for something else.

As you said in another post Spelljammer is a very disorganised product line. 
Even if you want to stick to 2e rules (or switch back to 1e rules) the 
original SJ products have rules scattered across several sources. Certain SJ 
products conflict with each other and certain non-SJ products clash with SJ 
ones.

WotC are unlikely to bring out a new version of Spelljammer in the 
foreseeable future (especially with Shadows of the Spider Moon getting poor 
reviews by some), so any project to sort out the cannon would have to be fan 
based. Even if WotC did bring out a new SJ product they would probably make 
changes similar to those employed in the 3e FRCS and DLCS, so the people who 
don't want to use 3e or the people who want to stick to the timeline of the 
original SJ boxed set would still need to work out what was going on before 
this hypothetical 3e SJCS.

A wiki would probably be a good way to organises something like this as lots 
of people could contribute. Wikis can be sabotaged (as Wikipedia often is), 
but sabotage can be reverted by other wiki editors and I believe a person 
installing a wiki has the power to control who is given the rights to log in 
and edit the wiki. A wiki could be something that everyone on this list 
could contribute too. Any small addition of material would benefit us all. 
However, given the lack of contributors for Wikipedia articles on 
Spelljammer, I do wonder how many people would be willing and able to spend 
the time to help document SJ cannon.

At the moment, it *might* be more useful to get more Spelljammer related 
articles uploaded to Wikipedia. Maybe we could organise something similar to 
WikiProject Dragonlance:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Dragonlance

A WikiProject like this could help us to create a "shopping list" of 
Spelljammer subjects that need to be "canonised". Then again, we might be 
able to do both things at the same time.

There are several sources for SJ cannon and I think that it would be useful 
to categorise things depending on the source material. That way when 
different sources clashed we could make a judgement on which to trust. I've 
found an article written by a guy talking about errors in Star Wars cannon 
material and I think that demonstrates the sort of discussion that we could 
be having if we had an established encyclopedia of Spelljammer cannon:
http://www.theforce.net/swtc/continuity.html

I've got an example of the sort of thing that might come up from an 
examination of SJ cannon:

We have recently been discussing Krynnspace and I've been trying to sort out 
some continuity errors with the "crossover setting". One glaring continuity 
error (laughed at by some Dragonlance fans) is the fact that their is a 
massive SJ port next to Palanthus (according to Krynnspace SJR7) yet Teldin 
Moore travels to Palanthus (according to Beyond the Moons - the book not the 
website) and can not find out anything about the port. Gomja also knows 
nothing about Krynn's "main spelljammer port".

I'd say that when we have all the cannon material together we can look at 
continuity errors like this and ask ourselves which "truth" is more in 
fitting with the rest of the Spelljammer Campaign Setting. In the case of 
crossover material like this (or Realmspace, Greyspace or SJ material listed 
in other product lines) I think we can use the cannon of the other campaign 
settings to help us come to a decision. However, I think it would still be 
very useful to have an encyclopedic reference of the cannon material we are 
disputing so that other SJ fans can see why we disagree with it.

In the specific case of the Port of Palanthus, I think that a publicly known 
spelljammer port is out of keeping with both the Cloakmaster Novels and the 
DLCS. I would suggest that their should either be no spelljamming port (as 
suggested by the Cloakmaster books) or a secret spelljammer port that is 
unknown to almost everyone in Palanthus (a compromise that could *perhaps* 
satisfy the intention of SJR7 as well as the Cloakmaster books). I would 
love to see a cannon listing here as their might be other SJ or DL products 
that mention spelljamming in Palanthus (and that might change my gut feeling 
about this).

I think that a cross referenced source of SJ cannon would allow us to repair 
continuity errors in SJ RPG products, improve the crossover settings 
(Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace), infer from those settings (and the 
Astromundi Cluster) what "rules variations" can occur within different 
crystal spheres and compile a list of cannon crystal spheres (and other 
locations), races and organisations.

A cannon source could help people who play all flavours of D&D. Paul could 
use it for his sphere map and timeline. OD&D and 1e fans could use it to 
convert SJ back to older rules and 3e fans could use it to convert SJ 
forward to the new rules. (Respecting WotC's copyright is an important issue 
here, but Dragonlance Nexus has an encyclopedia and that sort of thing 
helped get the new DLCS off of the ground. So as long as we are careful we 
should be improving the chances of WotC allowing someone to bring back SJ - 
Hackjammer and mentions of SJ in WotC products suggest that they might bring 
SJ back if *we* build a market for it.)

A SJ cannon could also show us what is "missing" from SJ (which in my 
opinion is mostly a list of phlogiston rivers and a documented timeline). 
People wanting to create new SJ material could then find one of those 
missing areas and fill in the blanks. If we could somehow agree on what 
missing areas to fill in, we could create a (version free) SJCS that works 
for everyone. I think that a "repaired" SJCS can be represented like a 
mathematical equasion.

SJCS = (*SJ cannon* - *SJ continuity errors*) + *fan material replacing 
missing material*

Missing SJCS material would probably be the cause of a lot of debate, but I 
think that we need to have things like phlogiston rivers, trade routes and 
enough material to take the partially complete crystal spheres of the 
Cloakmaster novels (and other SJ products) and give them the treatment that 
Bralspace (Spiralspace) got on BtM.

I think that if we could examine the building blocks that make up the SJCS 
we would be able to see the "crunch" (rules) and "fluff" (background 
material) in the correct context. Then we would be able to make informed 
decisions about: converting SJ "crunch" to 3e, 1e or OD&D; updating the 
crossover campaign settings (Greyspace, Krynnspace and Realmspace); creating 
new crossover campaign settings (like Adam's excellent Crimson Sphere) and 
last but not least adding new plot arcs that can keep the SJ campaign 
setting interesting after the Second Unhuman War.

Apart from conversion material (which is obviously only useful to players of 
one version of D&D) we should be able to include version free fluff (or 
fluff with multiple sets of rules) for new SJ material. I really believe 
that a cross referenced encyclopedia of cannon could help us SJ fans to do 
better research when we decide to create new SJ material. I often see new SJ 
authors struggling with the same subjects as others before them (especially 
if they try to work out how SJ "science" works instead of just winging it) 
and a cannon resource would allow would be authors to search out those 
subjects and learn from the combined knowledge there. If we had something 
like this then perhaps we could all improve our writing skills and more of 
us would be able to create things as good as your "Moon of the Month" on a 
regular basis.

David "Big Mac" Shepheard
Virtual Eclipse Role Playing Club
http://uk.groups.yahoo.com/group/virtualeclipselrp/links/d20_system_001071937434/Spelljammer_001071430476
http://www32.brinkster.com/virtualeclipse/