: It only matters what is actually declared as canon by the
: company. In Star Trek's case: only the things that are
: actually made by the company, the TV shows, Movies,
: and Technical Manuals. In Myth's case: the games
: themselves and the manuals. There is no way, no way,
: you can refute that Bungie only approved what IT made
: as canon. If you disagree, present the physical
: evidence. Otherwise, we go by what is already clear.
: Only in extremely situations should this have exception,
: and none are readily apparent except in theory.
I showed how I determined "canon," and why. I asked for the justification of your definition, but you don't seem inclined to give one. "That's how it is" is hardly sufficient.
: Not in the slightest. He wished to create better clarity
: for his readers, and so inserted a few things. The
: same writing style? It's only a few words, and anyone
: can easily copy a writing style, not to mention
: hand-writing style and signiture.
: Your proof? None. Your reasoning? You see a title and a
: name. Nice imperical evidence
(please pardon my
: sarcasm, but every time I knock out a leg of your
: proverbial table, you invent a new one, each time less
: poignant)
I'll pardon your sarcasm, but I have no idea what in hell "poignant" means in that sentence. Although I can guess at "imperical." Yes, even I can stoop to spelling snipes sometimes. :-) And I'm just adding on legs to the table in the hope that you'll give up on trying to saw through that first one. Now that this metaphor has been ruined for eternity, let's move on...
GURPS Myth was clearly written off more information than is in the games. Quite a bit of what it says can be confirmed or supported by Tales and by prerelease info--the Skrael, the Voiceless One, the Wands of Malagigi, etc. Now Tales could certainly have been brought along by one of the Bungie guys working on GURPS, but how would Seabolt get any of the stuff we know only from prerelease beta info? Would the guy who's too "lazy"/pressed for time to actually beat "Shiver" go trawling around the web and retrieving prerelease info from fansites? Obviously, he was given additional info from Bungie.
Also, there's a post at
http://carnage.bungie.org/myth/asylum/asylum.forum.pl?read=3905
which you should read. I would have brought it up earlier, but somehow I overlooked it. (I shouldn't have, since I was very active on the forum at the time.) Dan Rudolph and I both wrote GURPS about their various errata. Seabolt's reply to Dan was a little bit friendlier than to me, partially because I was a bit...ah...confrontational--but mainly because he misinterpreted Dan's b.org address and thought he was a Bungie employee. :-) Anyway, unless Gene Seabolt is a lying S.O.B., the following things are true:
Seabolt had access to Bungie's design docs.
A number of GURPS weirdnesses and contradictions are Seabolt's attempted reconciliations of contradictions within Bungie's own story.
Seabolt repeatedly asked Bungie employees questions about the Mythworld and based GURPS information on their answers.
The book was given to Bungie to review and clear of errors prior to printing. Seabolt expected that they would catch errors such as the ones we complained about, and he was evidently willing to change whatever they noted.
So GURPS is more linked to Bungie's Mythworld than Myth III could ever be.
: Actually, it's anything the company or companies want. It
: might be a shame in some cases, but in reality it
: keeps us from making errors which are unintended.
On legal issues, it's what the company wants. On artistic issues, it's the creative team that matters.
: Ah, an interesting and complex question. I like the story
: of Myth. I like theorizing about what's missing in the
: story. I like learning abouts other people's ideas and
: expressing my own. I like debate. :-) That's pretty
: much the most straightforward answer you'll get from
: me. I share as well your own interests at being here.
But from that point of view, there's really no reason to have "canon" at all. Any 3rd-party product can be added in so long as the story's interesting. You could analyze the combined world of Myth and the Wizard of Oz, simply because if the Tin Woodman was a Stygian Knight, wouldn't that be cool?
There's nothing wrong with this, certainly. But you really can't argue for or against something as "canon" from that standpoint.
--SiliconDream
