What is "canon" these days?

[nats]

George Lucas decided what was canon for Star Wars, now Disney decide
Gene Roddenbery decided what was canon for Star Trek, now CBS and Paramount decide
Marc Miller decides what is canon for Traveller

Generally I would say the latest set of rules are canon as they were approved by Marc last - so that would be Mongoose Traveller V2

 

[Sigtrygg]

And you would be wrong.

The latest setting canon is T5 and Marc's novel Agent of the Imperium.

The Mongoose version of the Third Imperium is an ATU much the same way the GT Third Imperium was an ATU.

 

[Condottiere]

GURPS was the first iteration of that option, that there can be multiple timelines, especially if either the players or the dungeon master disagreed with how the current or previous edition(s) was (were) presenting it.

 

[Infojunky]

Note Canon is for writers and not for those plating the game.

 

[Subzero001]

So if "Marc's novel Agent of the Imperium" is Canon is there a timeline notes for it Out there in the either (WWW)? Just so we get the "rewritten" Canon history right.

 

[ShawnDriscoll]

So if "Marc's novel Agent of the Imperium" is Canon is there a timeline notes for it Out there in the either (WWW)? Just so we get the "rewritten" Canon history right.

The audio book comes with an annotated PDF of the novel.

 

[Anonymous]

Note Canon is for writers and not for those plating the game.

It does affect gameplay. The rules are optizmized for canon situations and define player expectations of what can happen in a game. In a small group only playing with themselves it matters less, but if you have people joining your group regularly or expect to be able to play purchased scenarios out of the box, canon's important.

One thing causes me much problem is that any Traveller starship is large and fast enough to slam into a planet and "apocalypse asteroid" everything, or accelerate a planetoid to that speed within hours, but no-one does it because "it's not Traveller" and fixing it would require the entire game background to be changed. Or so they tell me - they've never had to deal with me as player I guess.

 

[Condottiere]

Obviously, your dungeon master is never going let you have the opportunity to get hold of the controls of a working spaceship.

Deus ex non functioning machina.

 

[Gamerguy]

I mainly run CT with lots of rules from Mega, TNE, GT thrown in. I play Traveller as generic SF and do whatever I want for adventures.

I do run some Third Imperium stuff similar to Canon, but I do pick and choose on the Ancients, Technology, Starships, etc.

 

[Linwood]

One thing causes me much problem is that any Traveller starship is large and fast enough to slam into a planet and "apocalypse asteroid" everything, or accelerate a planetoid to that speed within hours, but no-one does it because "it's not Traveller" and fixing it would require the entire game background to be changed. Or so they tell me - they've never had to deal with me as player I guess.

I once (with help from others) deliberately broke a bad AD&D campaign back in the day with that sort of thinking. The DM was - well, let’s just say really frustrating his players with death traps, arbitrary rulings, omnipotent NPCs, etc. So I was asked to help do something about it. The end result was analogous to an asteroid strike on a villain’s castle.

I’m OK with not worrying about why there aren’t more planet killers when the tech allows it in Traveller mostly because I think of such things as plot devices generating Dramatically Appropriate events. I simply assume that for most spacefaring powers the damage to a potentially valuable economic asset is too great to justify the attack in all but the most extreme cases. That leaves terrorists, ‘lone actors’, accidents and acts of god - all of which fit my Dramatically Appropriate Event criteria.