The story
Once upon a time, there was a land called the Forgotten Realms, which was rich with heroes and villains and neutral-aligned characters of ambiguous morality who *did things.*
These things were recorded in sourcebooks, novels, and even video games, and were determined “canonical”—i.e. they truly happened in the Forgotten Realms. These characters (created by authors such as the prodigiously bearded Ed of the Greenwood, the deadly Bob “Twin Scimitars” Salvatore, the mysterious Paul “Shadows” Kemp, and so on and so forth) respectively righted wrongs, wronged rights, or maintained their list of gray hero/villain uncertainty traits through many a tale. In this way, they filled out a rich fantasy setting, which—like all settings in every sort of genre of entertainment there is—required characters and stories to do exactly that.
But a storm was brewing on the horizon. Thousands upon thousands of gamers were visiting this marvelous world on a regular basis, and a growing displeasure swept through them. They believed that these heroes, villains, and dodgy characters of illegible intention were, as it were, stealing their thunder. For in a setting with so many powerful characters, how could they get anything done?
They wanted *their* heroes to *do things* that Elminster, Drizzt, Erevis Cale, and so many others were already doing.
And so the great canon wars began.
The Dilemma
Much has been made over the years of Forgotten Realms canon (or pick your setting!), and specifically how it applies to your home FR game, and one of the major *criticisms* of the setting (and one of the suggested reasons for the 3e to 4e shakeup) has to do with canon itself.
Specifically, it was that canonical characters—usually novel characters such as Drizzt, Elminster, the Seven Sisters, etc.—with their power and influence, seemed to be the primary movers and shakers of the setting. The perception was there was nothing for the PCs to do in the Realms, because the novel characters were doing it all already. And since the novels are considered canonical, that adds to the perception that the events of the novels have to guide their game.
This, as I see it, is a false perception, but we’ll get there.
The struggle between sourcebooks, novels, and home games has always been going on, and *will* always go on. How you deal with it, however, is entirely up to you, and what I hope to do in this article is offer some insights into how you can reconcile things the best way for your game. Because it’s really all about having fun, isn’t it?
The Central Problem
The basic problem is this: I write something in one of my Forgotten Realms novels that affects your game in some way, either major or minor, and you have two options: 1) ignore it or 2) incorporate it.
Seems like an easy choice, but there are variables to consider—particularly if you pride yourself on “being canonical.”
For instance, I write that there is an organization called the Eye of Justice (hardcore shadowy paladin vigilantes) that operates out of Westgate (dodgy “sin city” in the Realms) and played a major role in the elimination of the Night Masks (a vampire thieves guild, formerly of Westgate). This shows up in my most recent novel Downshadow, my forthcoming novel Shadowbane, and a DDI article I published in Dungeon called, well, “The Eye of Justice.” And who knows? It might be in more stuff.
Trouble is, you don’t like it. Or it doesn’t fit into your game. Or—even more dire—what if you’ve already explained the elimination of the Night Masks in some other way? (For instance, Elminster popped in, said “enough of this, then,” and blasted them all to the Fugue Plane.) Or your PCs might have vanquished the Night Masks on their own without those paladin vigilante ponces, and now I’ve all of a sudden overwritten their exploits.
This is easy enough to ignore, then, but if you’re really hard-core into keeping things canonically perfect, what are you supposed to do?
The Point of Canon
First of all, there is no virtue in “being canonical” unless that also means “making it fun.” As a DM, if you’re not making your game fun and coherent and sensical for your players, then you are failing at the job that you were appointed to do. DMing is a *service* you’re doing, and your masters aren’t WotC or the designers or the authors who make up canon, but your players. We don’t care if you use our stuff—I mean, it’s cool if you do, but ultimately you need to do what’s best for your game.
Second, you have to understand the *purpose* of canon. It isn’t to give you rules and boundaries to determine the scope and direction of your game. It’s about filling in a campaign setting to provide 1) entertainment, 2) a place to play in the form of a fully visualized setting, and 3) inspiration for your games.
We’d love to make your PCs the heroes of the setting—we really would. But since there are thousands upon thousands of you with different PCs doing different things all the time, we have to settle for giving you a sandbox to do it in, and offering novels/sourcebooks/adventures/etc. to give you ideas about things that might have happened in that sandbox.
(And besides, Drizzt, Elminster, etc., are basically the PCs of their respective novels, and to deny them the chance to be heroes is just as bad as denying anyone else.)
Canon is necessary in order to build a fully realized campaign world for you to use. That's it--that's the purpose of it.
The Illusion of Exactness and the Necessity of Interpretation
I’ll let y’all in on a little secret as regards canon: you’re never ever going to get it exactly right.
I mean, unless you’re running a game wherein your PCs play the Knights of Myth Drannor through Ed’s three marvelous books (Swords of Eveningstar, Swords of Dragonfire, The Sword Never Sleeps) with exactly the same plot and exactly the same things that happen in exactly the same order at exactly the same time with exactly the same dialogue everywhere without any acting or improvisation but basically just reading the novel to yourself (not even out loud, since that would be an interpretation), then what you’re going to be doing in your game is an INTERPRETATION, not the exact thing.
When you run a published module, you can’t play it “as is,” because the very act of reading it and ascribing what it says to action is an interpretation. I mean, unless the author sets down in a specific order exactly what every monster is going to do every round, you are going to have to interpret the creatures’ strategies to your PCs’ actions. Basically, some intelligence needs to go into the monsters’ artificial intelligence, or else it’s just an old-school Nintendo platformer with anthropomorphic turtles jumping and hurling hammers in a set pattern.
The way you get it *right* is by playing it in such a way as your players have a good time, and feel like they had a real Realms experience. If the canon presented fits, then great--if not, there is NO reason you should feel constrained to it. In fact, if you go your own way and create your own stuff, you are likely to have a better time.
Canon is also always moving. New books get published, and things have to happen in them. New sourcebooks appear. Gods die. Landscapes explode. The game keeps changing, in order to give new settings, new ideas, etc., to old gamers and new gamers. What you knew about the setting one year might not apply the next year. And this is just something that has to happen as time passes, or the setting stagnates and becomes irrelevant.
What to do about Canon
So let’s get specific with the above situation (I created an organization in the Realms that relates to your game). The options still stand, but now they have other consequences—note that all the ones marked *2* still fit into what I would consider a “canonical Realms game.”
1) Ignore it.
If it doesn’t fit your game, that’s an easy choice.
2) Incorporate it.
If you do happen to like it, roll with it. Your interpretation, as noted above, isn’t going to be the same as mine, so no matter what you do, it’s not going to be *exact*—but then again (as noted above) it shouldn’t be.
2a) Incorporate and ignore it.
It’s there, but it has no bearing on your game. Perhaps the organization was long ago crippled by some great catastrophe, or perhaps your PCs just never run across it. Or perhaps the focus of your first adventure is to eradicate it because you hate it that much. Either way, you win.
2b) Incorporate and modify it.
It’s there, but the motivations and goals expressed in the article/novels are just a cover for its *real* schemes, to bring back the Night Masks to Westgate. The leaders are all vampires, and Uthias is really Orbakh the Night Master.
2c) Incorporate and flesh it out.
It’s there, but the people noted in the article/novels take a back-seat to events in your game. Instead, you focus on other leaders/operatives in the organization of your own invention (as I only detailed one of the councilors and a couple of the operatives). Go nuts!
2d) Incorporate it as a distant background.
One character in your group might hail from the organization or have had dealings with it in the past. There might be a subplot. Otherwise, it’s completely absent from your game.
Final Thoughts
Finally, please note that you--or whichever gamer in your group gets stuck with the job--are the DM, and what you say goes.
No player should ever stand up in the middle of a session and say "no, it works this way--I read it in [insert author name here]'s book." If that happens, you can either say "no, it's my way" (because you're the DM) or you might change your mind (if you find the argument convincing or the new interpretation helps your game) but either way, you need to have a talk with that player and make it clear that as the DM, you are the arbiter of everything, because the group *chose you to be.*
If your players question your portrayal of the world or events therein, then maybe they want a new DM.
Do what works for your game. Do NOT feel tied by canon, because remember what canon is: a tool for your game.
Cheers
