"Cannon, FanFic, or Originals?" Topic

For people who play wargames based on a published milieu … Star Wars, Elric, Starship Troopers, Conan, Cthulu, etc. … do you play games that are part of the "official" material (however it is defined by the owner of the property), fan fiction ideas from others, or make up your own compatible events?

Cannon
FanFic
Originals
Cannon, FanFic
Cannon, Originals
FanFic, Originals
Cannon, FanFic, Originals

Did I miss one?

Added some fan film components to our Star Trek game at Salute – it was original series (of course) and we added an Andorian character from the Fan production Starship Exeter.

When it comes to Trek, after all, there is c canon and mostly canon and JJ Abrams…

John T

We never recreate a specific movie/book scene, its always an encounter of our own devising.

Hmm.You may have missed one. The Conan rights are held by something called "Conan Properties Inc" which funnels a lot of money into the L. Sprague de Camp estate and doesn't lose a lot of sleep over anything else.

But there are those among us for whom ONLY the original Robert E.Howard stories really count as canon, just as there are those for whom only the 60 Sir Arthur Conan Doyle stories are canonical Holmes, not all the things "licensed by the estate."

Doesn't mean I won't read anything else: there may be original radio drama with Rathbone and Bruce this evening. But I don't take what some suit has licensed any more seriously than I take my own ideas or fan fiction. I can pick and choose among them as I please, where I'd think long and hard before contradicting anything by Howard or Doyle--or Tolkien and Burroughs, come to that.

I think cannon can have multiple sources. If you play Howard Conan or de Camp Conan, you are still following a cannon.

Your point about contradicting brings up "intra-cannon" – those things that are referenced in cannon, but never explicitly happen.

I hate to be the grammar Nazi here, but you guys are driving me nuts. A "cannon" is a tube that fires things that go boom. A "canon" is a collection of laws or sacred texts.

I'm not sure I get the point of this thread as to what you mean by canon or originals. Do you mean that following canon you would only play scenarios appearing in the accepted body of work?

Now I am confused about the meaning too :-)

I hate to be the grammar Nazi here

No problem. You are right.

I'm not sure I get the point of this thread as to what you mean by canon or originals. Do you mean that following canon you would only play scenarios appearing in the accepted body of work?

Canon would be events in the accepted body of work. An original would be something using the forces, capabilities, and locales of the canon, but not an event from it.

The intra-canon idea would be something that's referenced, but not described in the canon. So, if Ulfgrar is the sole survivor of the Black Night Massacre on the Borderlands, but this is the only info we have on said massacre, that would be intra-canon.

FanFic is really just another referent for canon. As mentioned above, there might be different types of canon such as Lovecraft old ones or Derleth old ones or howard old ones.

I love other creative works of others but use them as a framework for compatible events. So I won't contradict canon directly but set effects either well before or after to allow myself enough leaway to be creative, while staying in the spirit of the original writers works. So, as an example, I would not use a "Dragonriders of Pern setting and then introduce "all dragons are long dead and gone. I would however perhaps introduce new types of dragons or a new treat type or types as long as it made reasonable sense from the spirit of the original stories.

My games freely mix canon, apocrypha, and outright heresy. I try to make it clear what is in and out of bounds for a particular game, but if it is fun it gets played.