Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Canon... but not of scripture
It's fascinating how words find new, but related uses.
Only in the last few years have I come across the use of canon and canonical lifted from the ecclesiastical and into the realm of Role-Playing Games. It seems to be applied especially in cases where there is an extensive corpus of published works, from a variety of sources. Hence there is the Traveller Canon (although I'll have to be a pedant and suggest that this definition actually might not match with what the original author and owner the game states) and the Glorantha Canon.
So, what's the point of this? Well, only to note that not only has my Caratan material been published in Tradetalk 15, as blogged previously, but I've heard in the last few days that a mention has been included in the forthcoming publication Blood over Gold, which makes the Auloring people and the land of Caratan canonical. You can call me sad, but I'm also dead chuffed!
(All I need now is there to be enough demand and interest to allow a re-working of the Fan-Published material into a more professional format.... it's not the money, it's the kudos. Which doesn't mean I'd do it for free, of course.)
Canon as in clerical "rank" - that I can live without. An honour maybe, but nothing particularly exciting, but this sort of canon - yes please!
Only in the last few years have I come across the use of canon and canonical lifted from the ecclesiastical and into the realm of Role-Playing Games. It seems to be applied especially in cases where there is an extensive corpus of published works, from a variety of sources. Hence there is the Traveller Canon (although I'll have to be a pedant and suggest that this definition actually might not match with what the original author and owner the game states) and the Glorantha Canon.
So, what's the point of this? Well, only to note that not only has my Caratan material been published in Tradetalk 15, as blogged previously, but I've heard in the last few days that a mention has been included in the forthcoming publication Blood over Gold, which makes the Auloring people and the land of Caratan canonical. You can call me sad, but I'm also dead chuffed!
(All I need now is there to be enough demand and interest to allow a re-working of the Fan-Published material into a more professional format.... it's not the money, it's the kudos. Which doesn't mean I'd do it for free, of course.)
Canon as in clerical "rank" - that I can live without. An honour maybe, but nothing particularly exciting, but this sort of canon - yes please!
Labels: Life, Role-Playing Games
¶ 8:31 pm
