Talk:Greyhawk canon

Historical notes on community attitudes to Greyhawk canon

Recently I've been reading some documents revealing past attitudes of various members of the broader Greyhawk fan community when it comes to the definition of "canon". For reasons of historic interest, I'd like to summarize them here.

Team Greyhawk

Steven B. Wilson's Greychrondex v.4.2 (PDF), released May 2001, is a World of Greyhawk timeline originally intended for use by Team Greyhawk, Wizards of the Coast's staff group working on the setting from 1997-1999. It describes Team Greyhawk's division of canon, and therefore WotC's attitude in the late AD&D 2e era going into D&D 3e.

Team Greyhawk divided Greyhawk canon into four categories:

• Canon: All AD&D 1e/2e TSR/WotC Greyhawk sourcebooks, nearly all adventure modules by Gygax et al, AD&D 1e/2e core rulebooks and monster books, Unearthed Arcana, the OD&D Greyhawk and Blackmoor supplements, Spelljammer sourcebooks, Deities & Demigods, Encyclopedia Magica, some AD&D 2e sourcebooks (e.g. Book of Artifacts, Monster Mythology, Encyclopedia Magica), some AD&D adventures (Rod of Seven Parts, Night Below, Die Vecna Die), and a few others. The list also includes the unpublished Ivid the Undying, The House On Summoner's Court from the fanzine Oerth Journal #7, Return of the Pick-Axe, the Living Greyhawk Gazetteer, and the Dungeons & Dragons Gazetteer. Several Dragon magazines from 1981 to 1997 were also cited by the index as canonical.
• Non-canon: A short list of Greyhawk-relevant works which Team Greyhawk excluded from their official canon. EX1 Dungeonland, EX2 The Land Beyond the Magic Mirror, the controversial parody WG7 Castle Greyhawk, WG9 Gargoyle, WG10 Child's Play and WG11 Puppets, parts of WG8 Fate of Istus, The Shattered Circle, Return to the Keep on the Borderlands, Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, Bastion of Faith (although this book was heavily supported by past members of Team Greyhawk), and Len Lakofka's L3 Deep Dwarven Delve.
• Broad canon: All D&D third edition sourcebooks and magazines, where Greyhawk is the implied default setting. These were omitted from the Greychrondex.
• Living Greyhawk: Living Greyhawk and RPGA material, including the adventure module Fright at Tristor and the Living Greyhawk Journal. Living Greyhawk Gazetteer content was listed in the index in purple, the color normally reserved for Living Greyhawk level canon. Living Greyhawk was considered essentially an "Alternative Setting" or alternate continuity which fans or writers could optionally draw from.

Notably omitted from the list are Greyhawk novels.

Wilson considered that beginning with D&D 3rd edition, the concept of Greyhawk "canon" in WotC products had become irrelevant. The official WotC stance was that all D&D 3rd edition sourcebooks were canon to the setting. Winter criticized this view, arguing that the freedom of WotC writers to make changes (including in Dragon and Dungeon magazines) would allow a large number of people and products to make independent changes to the setting's canon without consulting the central authorities of the now-disbanded Team Greyhawk, leading to clashes in canonicity. Additionally, following the disbanding of Team Greyhawk, WotC retroactively considered some older products such as L3 Deep Dwarven Delve to be canon.

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I think Wilson's "notably omitted from the list are Greyhawk novels" bit is a very strict view of the material, in my personal opinion.

Much like the way modules or adventures are viewed ... not everyone has the same experience with Falcon's Revenge (or whatever other adventure). The individual events of the adventure (as a player experiences them) aren't necessarily canon, but the setting and the background information therein are considered officially published material. So go the novels, I think. (As is reflected in the current version of the page). Though we may not necessarily use the events of Gord's life from the novels, the information about the City of Greyhawk itself should be considered officially published material.

As Wilson, and Rob Vest (below) make clear, canon (or officially published material) is difficult, at best) to delineate rigidly. Which is why I think a very soft-touch should be taken with it, but, I think we're doing a pretty good job of it right now, at the least.

Rob's essay

In December 2007, Robbastard wrote an essay titled "Greyhawk Canon" on the Canonfire Greyhawk wiki. Here he noted that in the Greyhawk fandom, the definition of "canon" varied considerably between individual fans. (Indeed, the introduction to the original 1981 Folio seems to encourage this attitude, declaring "The World of Greyhawk is yours now — yours to do as you wish.")

Some players, he noted, accepted only "Gygaxian" products, those written by Gary Gygax or produced during his tenture at TSR. Others accepted a broad range, including mentions of Greyhawk in AD&D 2e, D&D 3e, Dragon magazine articles, novels, and even certain fan publications such as the Oerth Journal or the Canonfire!' website.

As a wiki editor, however, Rob noted the difficulty of maintaining a Greyhawk encyclopedia unless the editors can all agree which sources are factual. Rob sought to define a standard, which he did as follows.

• Canon: All sourcebooks and web publications approvied by TSR/WotC which are "of significant value to the setting". This explicitly includes Dragon and Dungeon magazine, generic D&D 3e products with minimal Greyhawk references, and the Living Greyhawk Journal.
• Apocrypha: Publications of limited value to the setting or available to a limited audience, novels, comics, Living Greyhawk, and unofficial content by noted Greyhawk writers which are implied to be part of Greyhawk. Specific examples included WG7 Castle Greyhawk, WG9 Gargoyle, WG10 Child's Play, WG11 Puppets, some Oerth Journal articles, and Gygax's The Revenge of Ghorkai. It is not clear whether Rob intended apocrypha to be included in the wiki.
• Fanon: Unofficial fan material, specifically banned from inclusion in the wiki. These included most Canonfire! and Oerth Journal articles. Rob noted that some fan content would later become official when a writer was given an opportunity to include it in an official product. However, after the essay was written, Wizards of the Coast discontinued D&D third edition and released practically no new Greyhawk content thereafter until Ghosts of Saltmarsh (2019).

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I have found Rob's essay to be a great expression of the purpose and foundation of this wiki. There's a good basis to the approach there. I have changed a few things, updating it to a more "contemporary" view of what is considered "Officially Published Material". But the foundation of it is the same, retains the same spirit, and functions in the same way as Rob's view. Also, it continues the be the basis on which the "Greyhawk canon" page is formed for the current version of the wiki.

... which kind of reminds me that I should make a point of not just having Rob's name in the Edit History, but also on the page itself.

The only point I would really disagree with is that WotC "released practically no new Greyhawk content thereafter until Ghosts of Saltmarsh (2019)." That's, at best, a very limited view of the material released in those years. Yes, I understand there wasn't any "branded" material, or there wasn't as much as, say, other settings that have whole books. There's plenty out there, it's just spread throughout other books and magazines. --Icarus (talk) 07:55, 12 June 2021 (CDT)

Other attitudes

The Gran March region of Living Greyhawk considered an unpublished adventure module called The Patrol by Pete Winz to be part of regional canon, according to GRM3-09 In The Blink of an Unseeing Eye. This is a rare example of unpublished work nonetheless entering (regional) canon, despite it being unavailable to other writers to reference.

According to The Unofficial Living Greyhawk Bandit Kingdoms Summary (2016), the BK triad did not consider Prince Zeech's appearance in Dungeon magazine's Age of Worms adventure path to be canon within Living Greyhawk. Paizo was under no special agreement to coordinate their plans with regional Living Greyhawk triads, with the result that naturally some lore would diverge.

Rexidos (talk) 12:41, 7 June 2021 (CDT)

Regarding "Canon" vs. "Apocrypha" …

For the sake of posterity, this is re-added, imported from the history of the "False Mirror GLoG" at wait-wtf.com:

I think that there needs to be something more than these two distinctions. "Canon" mentions that it doesn't include anything written off wholesale by the IP Holder.
But, we're putting WG7: Castle Greyhawk and Child's Play and Revenge of Ghorkai in the same category as In the Shadow of Dragons.
Ghorkai isn't even published or approved by the IP Holder. I am hard pressed to understand why it's listed - I can't even find GH reference in it. Gygax wrote a lot of things that have nothing to do with GH.

For example, The Adventure Begins specifically says, "Note: WG7 Castle Greyhawk [TSR#9222, 1988] is a comedy version of this dungeon, not for use in a straightforward and serious Greyhawk campaign."
I can't think of a more direct way of writing off that adventure, wholesale.
At the same time, the Gord novels, while certainly useful and revered by some, other than the first two, do not meet the stated criteria of being "approved or published by the IP holder". And on top of that, contain absolutely non-canon elements, like destroying the world.

In the end, Canon and Fanon are clear terms. "Apocrypha" isn't. We need to separate that into at least two distinct catagories, and entirely remove Castle Greyhawk from the list of Apocrypha, either way.

- Icarus (talk) 21:07, 25 July 2018 (EST)