canon versus non-canon in a non-supported game

[Olefin]

My two cents and you can take it for what its worth or not

I know that many people arent comfortable with the idea I have raised of ignoring Howling Wildnerness and Kidnapped and saying that they dont make sense with the rest of the established canon - but I think a lot of people are missing the point

It would be one thing if we were talking about a supported game that was still issuing modules, with Challenge magazine still golng on and new stories coming out all the time -

But that isnt the case - Twilight 2000, no matter what version is now only supported by its fans and the last of its diehard players

And those two modules were the tail end charlies of the line - i.e. there isnt a whole bunch of material afterward that has to be thrown out if you throw those two out - and while there is stuff with later dates its almost all either set in Europe or the Middle East- or its so generic that whether or not the uber drought happened doesnt mean much to affect the story - City of Angels for instance works both with and without the uber drought, so does Satellite down for that matter

As for 2300 AD and its timeline - it is so generic in many ways that it really doesnt matter if the drought happens or not - you can still acheive it

And as I said earlier today canon is what you make of it - in our game we killed the Baron in Ruins of Warsaw - so there goes Return to Warsaw. We gave the Madonna to Stark who turned it over to the Polish Free Congress - so there goes White Eagle.

For the Last Boomer we didnt take the long trip thru New England - our GM said he couldnt believe that MilGov would lose a submarine - so all we did was the part where the torpedoes have to be grabbed and in our case it was not just torpedoes but six operational Harpoons and spare parts to get so that the Corpus Christi could not only do the Med cruise but also drop off parts in Israel to fix an American SSN that was stuck there because it needed parts to make its reactor functional again.

And those games, while differing substantially from what some say would be canon were very very fun.

Frankly I wish my GM had never picked up Kidnapped and Howling Wildnerness and lost interest in the game. (As he said he didnt want to GM an Aftermath game). And the Return to Europe modules were no good for us because of what we had done earlier.

And frankly no one was interested in doing a reboot - so the campaign died.

So the lesson from this - if the game was still supported officially I would be right there saying follow canon as much as you can because otherwise you may just paint yourself into a corner one day (or have to have Bobby be in the shower for a year like Dallas did or have Fonzie jump the shark)

But if its unsupported and you feel like changing canon - as long as its fun and the players have a good time then go for it. There are some here who may not like that you do that - but unless they are your players or your GM dont worry about it and l cant wait to hear about what you come up with.

As Gary Gygax said - canon is in the hands of the Dungeon Master and the players that enter his world. Dont let canon stop you from having fun.