... Canon

Canon. The big C-Word. Worshipped by Star Wars fans all over the place. And the most used argument by roleplayers in forum discussions. And, like cannons, often seems to be mainly used to destroy someone’s concept, character or idea while defending one’s own.

But what exactly is canon? Well, according to the most accepted definition, there’s G-canon (The movies, screenplay and radio shows, and to a slightly lesser extent, the novelisations of the movies) and then there’s the rest of the published stuff that sports the Star Wars Logo as approved by Lucasarts, also called canon, but not as canon as Georg Lucas’ personal work.

How does canon work in roleplay? Well, theoretically, canon is the base of the background all roleplayers in SWG share, a common ground and a way to separate Star Wars from Star Trek or Conan. In practice, its most important role is to support out of character arguments, as in „this is not canon, and therefore wrong!“ The reasons for that are numerous.

The first reason is simple, yet overlooked by many of the canon fanatics: There is simply too much „canon“. If we would just be sticking to the movies, the thing might be manageable, but alas – few are the players and star wars fans who have the maturity and wisdom to stick to the movies when dealing with canon. Most fixate on the Expanded Universe as the paradise for Star Wars roleplaying. And the expanded universe is huge. Really huge. Hundreds of novels, comic books, games and game source books, multiple tv series and countless stuff fanboys wish were canon so hard they are trying to pass it off as canon. So, the whole EU canon is too vast to know in its entirety, defeating the very idea to use it as a common ground for roleplayers in Star Wars Galaxies. Odds are, the average Star Wars Galaxies roleplayer will not even know that she just ruined a fanatic’s immersion by playing a green-eyed Corellian, since everyone who ever read the appendix notes to the 1985-era novel „From Corellia with love“ should know that no Corellian has green eyes. Not that this will stop the fanatics from expecting everyone to know exactly what they know (and heaven help anyone who claims to know differently...), and blame SOE for not following canon.

The second reason why expanded universe canon does not work as the foundation for the roleplaying in SWG is that much of the canon is either silly, stupid, outright trash, or contradicts each other. The Carebears... err, Ewoks TV series? Combat droids jousting clone troopers with lances? The Emperor coming back from the dead twice? Clichees such as „the new alien/imperial menace to the galaxy from outer space, dealt in a single novel by a handful of rebels and then forgotten“? All examples of stuff many roleplayers want to forget, and even hardcore canon fanatics try to pretend never happened. Not that this will prevent the canon fanatics from claiming canon has to be followed in game though – hypocrisy has always been a strong trait of true believers.

And the third reason for the lack of canon in star wars roleplaying is that star wars canon does not make for a good massive multiplayer roleplaying game. Star Wars, and many fanatics conveniently forget or neglect this, was first and foremost made as a movie, not as a game universe, or even a logical, consistent universe. Its canon reflects this. If something looked cool, it got into the movie – without much care, if any, for the conclusions and extrapolations some fanatics would draw from a single scene. And novels are even worse. „Cool super power to deal with clichee menace“ here, „original cool idea for a novel“ there, mixed in with „and the fate of the galaxy hangs in the balance in this novel too, since I need this to add suspense“ plots. That may work for a single-player game, where the player can play the central hero character, but trying to change this into something adaptable for a massive multiplayer roleplaying game is all but impossible. Of course, that does not stop people from trying anyway, with predictable results. Even SOE tried that approach, with the NGE, and failed, because the „single hero saves the galaxy“ theme does not work in MMOGs.

On top of that, even among the EU, not every canon is equal in the eyes of the fanatics. Computer and Video Games, even though wide spread and well known among players, and therefore probably one of the most common ground outside the movies, are rated less than the most obscure novels (unless a fanatic is a fan of something from a video game, in which case it’ll be elevated to G-Canon in his ramblings). Roleplaying sourcebooks, even though made for roleplaying games, are given less weight by fanboys than some deus ex machina gimmick used in a trashy novel – probably exactly because the game mechanics from the sourcebooks are balanced, and not as lopsided as the novel stuff, since we all know how fond fanboys are of stuff like „X is the most uber ever, you cannot beat it!!!“.
And, even more strangely, the game itself, which IS a common ground, is ignored completely. I can’t fathom why so many canon fanatics ignore Star Wars Galaxies in favor of novels and other games that are of far worse quality and internal consistency, but it may be a mixture of an inability to handle game mechanics well enough to „pwn“ others in game, unwillingness to adapt to another universe than the fanatic’s personal, tailor-made „canon“ fandreamland cobbled together from bits and pieces and omissions all over the EU, and plain SOE hate.

In an interesting twist, many fanboys even hate or ignore true George Lucas canon – not stuff „approved by GL“ that he probably never saw or read, but actual, hand-written movie canon, including entire movies. While it is always refreshing to see when people start to think for themselves instead of blindly following the great leader, it raises a question too: Why would they claim to follow something they hate part of the core of, and try to force it on others though?

Because „it’s/it’s not canon“ sounds nicer than „I hate to lose“ „I don’t want to roleplay with you because I don’t like you“, „you are having badwrongfun, you deviant!“ or „I don’t like your idea because it comes from you!“. „It’s canon“ sounds more noble than „I want to play exactly like that, and you should too because I say so!“. Of course, the whole posturing is about as honest as a politician.

That said, it would be easy to have a common ground in Star Wars Galaxies. Take the movies as a base, and then go by the game world. Even immersion would be better too - since there would be less clashes between RP backgrounds of all kinds and with game reality. Of course, right now the fanboys are crying out in terror about how stupid SWG is, how un-canon, and how much of a pain it is to play in the game – as opposed to watch Carebear... I mean Ewoks, I assume. Then comes the mechanics bashing, usually filled with inaccuracies and bias, the usual jedi hate and exceptions for friends. Followed by the fervent belief that all would be right if only we’d follow canon – or what the specific true believer has formed into canon.

But, if seen from an unbiased point of view, SWG is actually a very flexible world. It has a place for nightsisters that escaped from Dathomir, Mandalorians from the marvel comics, daring rebel heroes doing the right thing against impossible odds as well as organised rebel forces actually winning a battle, good cops and corrupt cops and inept cops, all in the same organisation, sneaky pirates, evil criminals, hybrid species and clones and genetic research subjects that escaped, cyborgs, force users of all kind, and all the great scenes and fights we know and love from the movies.
It would even have a place for canon fanatics, or, to be more precise, fanboys who picked their own version what they consider absolute canon – if only they’d not expect everyone to follow their vision, and had a smidgen of flexibility instead of the usual „this would not be possible according to canon“ fire and brimstone they sling at anything that they dislike in the slightest way.

Not that many of the average roleplayers actually want to play with such fanboys, especially those fanboys who ignore canon whenever a friend or crony may be concerned, yet bring it up at every other occasion.