 November 22, 2010 - 8:53am | Because you know I love doing this to you guys. Lets discuss what is canon. do we take canon to be only what is written in AD, KH and begrudgingly Zebs guide, Or does canon include everything including the modules. Or do you consider canon materials to include everything TSR wrote about Star Frontiers (thus canon includes every TSR article in Dragon magazine, and everything in those endless quest books)? Or do you define Canon as anything produced officially by the company that bears the SF license in which case we have to..wait for it now...here it comes....accept what WOTC has published about SF as cannon too? So what is SF canon? "Hey guys I wonder what this does"-Famous last words "Hey guys, I think it's friendly." -Famous last words "You go on ahead, I'll catch up." -Famous last words "Did you here that?" -Famous last words |
 November 22, 2010 - 9:41am | For me things are canon in this order: 1) AD and KH rules 2) The 10 published modules 3) Zeb's Guide and the published articles in Dragon, Ares, Polyhedron, etc Things higher in the list usually take precedence over things lower unless I like the new stuff better  . I do not consider anything WOTC did after buying TSR to be canon (especially since I've never actually seen any of that stuff . I have all the original TSR material stitting on the bookself in front of me). Mainly because they were not publishing Star Frontiers material but rather taking SF material and stuffing it into other systems.Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 November 22, 2010 - 10:13am | Yup. i agree with Terl. I have Alternity/Stardrive & d20 scifi books. Wasnt really impressed with either. I do have to give cuddos to the guys that did their best to keep SF going with the Alternity article. But its still not canon. Time flies when your having rum. Im a government employee, I dont goof-off. I constructively abuse my time. |
 November 22, 2010 - 12:27pm | +2 TerlObar! Stated nice and concicely. I even have trouble with how Vrusk, Dralasites, and Yazirians were drawn in the D20 stuff. The same ones that are included in the remasted books. Too vertical and missing that 50's art look. -iggy |
 November 22, 2010 - 3:35pm | For me, the canon tiers are: 1) AD, KH, modules 2) Any Star Frontiers material written by David "Zeb" Cook (According to the definition of canon) 3) What is commonly accepted by the community 4) Zeb's Guide 5) Dragon Magazine Articles 6) Star Frontiersman 7) Web Content 8) d20 Future 1-3 are solid canon for me. 4-5 and 8 are apocrypha, and 6-7 is fanon. Anything in 4-8 may come to fall under number 3, based upon popularity. d20 Future is to Zeb's Guide as Zeb's Guide is to Alpha Dawn and d20 just doesn't belong in the same neighborhood as Alpha Dawn. d20 Future was Alternity with Star Frontiers grafted in, and badly. That said, I do appreciate the fact that they tried to resuscitate it, and that there is a fan base that uses the d20 system. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
 November 22, 2010 - 3:30pm | I like how you have your list, Ascent. I have to agree with your points on how you accept something as canon or not and to what level it resides in the game. I keep the pure canon tech more available than any other tech in my games. Even when a play tries ingame to create something, I weigh it against what already exists and come decide if it can happen or not. If it is like an original item, the player will have to spend log time ingame to make it better or is it? |
 November 24, 2010 - 5:00pm | I like TerlObar's list, although I consider Zeb's as "2e Star Frontiers". In other words, AD and KH plus all the modules is canon Star Frontiers, Zeb's is canon 2e Star Frontiers. As for the goods in Dragon/Polyhedron etc, as much as I've incorporated some of those (and again I'll claim unfamiliarity with a lot of it) I consider that more "fanzine-based" or even "house rule", and would only include it in a game if the players were already familiar with it (or at least allow them to "discover it" if they're not). Ditto for merging stuff from Zeb's into the AD/KH game --- if players are familiar with it, use it/incorporate it/re-spec it. If they're not, no need to force it on them. In the end, my game is not going to be drastically altered if players don't want pod lasers, RAFLURs, or Mazers in their game...I can scale everything back to canon (re: AD, KH, & Modules) and still have the same game and the same fun. |
 November 25, 2010 - 12:01am | I don't think I will ever like Zeb's enough to list in the same category as AD and KH. I only use it as a source for new equipment, weapons, races. I never cared for the timeline or the new game mechanics. Even at twelve years old I knew the rules section was hog wash with all that shifting. Uggghhhhh. Kudos to its artists and the good source content but everything else can collect dust on my shelf. |
November 25, 2010 - 2:41am | Kudos to its artists Beyond the cover art and possibly the new race renditions, I don't recall anything worthy of kudos...it was all meaningless mish-mash and zip-a-tone. |
 November 26, 2010 - 11:56am | My List of canon does not include Zebs guide, sorry to those who like it, but AZ and Shadow are right it has nice pictures and nice equipment list but the column shift stuff is not for me. The Time line is garbage in my opinion. I stick with AD and KH and the published adventure modules. To me Zebs guide is not cannon. It is a mishmash of thrown together too quickly stuff. That being said I like to adventure in areas outside of canon it keeps the players on thier toes as most of them had read through it already. that being said i dont use zebs guide. The bombing starts in five minutes. |
November 26, 2010 - 3:40pm | Don't get me wrong, I consider Zeb's canon. Just not canon to AD/KH. I think of it as the new red box D&D game that WOTC just released. It's no canon game to the Moldvay B/X or Mentzer BECMI game (the latter of which it blatantly copies for the box itself), but it's canon to itself. There are supposed to be many follow up supplements and modules for the new system. If those supplements never make it to market, the red box will flop in the D&D communities just as Zeb's did for us. |
 November 26, 2010 - 4:44pm | As far as I can recall, the only things WotC has published directly related to SF since acquiring TSR are a Dragon Magazine article that converted the SF "core" races (Dralasite, Vrusk, Yazirian and (possibly, not sure) Sathar) to Alternity rules, and the Star Law campaign model for D20 Future. The Dragon article was direct conversion with little or no new "fluff" material, and to me it seemed more intended to allow usage of the SF races in a Star Drive (Alternity's default far future/space opera setting) campaign than to allow a full SF campaign to be run using Alternity rules. Nothing really new or contradictory here, so its impact on publisher canon is negligible. The D20 Future material does lean more toward running a SF campaign under that ruleset  but once again, it's basically just a thumbnail sketch of the setting, with an emphasis on the Star Law stuff. There's not really a lot of new, setting specific material provided, and I figure they assumed that most players using that campaign model are already familiar with the Frontier setting. Once again, the impact on SF canon by way of new or contradictory material is minimal.As far as my view of what is definite SF setting canon (rules are another issue, IMO, I use AD and KH, with house rules and some options from different sources like fan sites and the SFm ezines) is, in order: 1: The AD and KH rulebook material 2: The Published Adventures material (Except 2001 and 2010, of course) 3: Zeb's Guide material, where it doesn't contradict AD or KH. 4: Dragon and Polyhedron magazine material As far as fan material, including SFm ezine, I adopt stuff on a case by case basis, but don't consider it canon. Hypothetically of course, if the authors of this material were granted some form of official license by WotC to produce new, official SF material, their contributions stand a good chance of becoming future canon. - Rich
"You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else." - Albert Einstein |
November 26, 2010 - 5:24pm | I think DWD studios should approach WOTC about purchasing the rights to SF |
 November 26, 2010 - 10:10pm | I think DWD studios should approach WOTC about purchasing the rights to SF "Your tauntaun will freeze before you reach the first marker." "Then he'll see you in hell!" Unfortunately we believe our tauntaun would in fact freeze while still getting saddled. The headaches dealing with the purchase of said rights is more than we want or really care about. We have license to produce what we have been doing and that works well for everyone. We are focused on completing FrontierSpace which is something that we created, from scratch. We didn't purchase it from another, we made it. Maybe that'll change at a latter date. Ya know they dropped Star Wars so what Sci-Fi game fills that gap? |
November 26, 2010 - 10:20pm | Oh... andI AM CANON! |
November 27, 2010 - 2:16am | BTW - welcome to the site, Rich! (love the Spaceman Spiff avatar) |
November 27, 2010 - 11:38am | hmmm, now that I think about it, the fact that 2001 and 2010 were adapted into modules is curious as they don't fit into the SF setting at all. They do have a very hard sci-fi element to them but all the "alien" monolith and "world building" that is going on in 2010 are very sci-fantasy. Don't get me wrong, I did enjoy the movies but they just don't fit into the setting at all IMO. I think that if they were going to do a Movie adaptation module "Enemy Mine" would have been a much better fit in so many ways. |
November 29, 2010 - 3:45am | I don't see it that way, but I don't worry about the monolith as not being hard science. I do believe in Clark's third law from Profiles of The Future (1961): "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I mean lets face it, what type of machine would you use to solarform a new sun? -LZ |
 November 29, 2010 - 6:37am | I don't see it that way, but I don't worry about the monolith as not being hard science. I do believe in Clark's third law from Profiles of The Future (1961): "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." I mean lets face it, what type of machine would you use to solarform a new sun? -LZ I'm with LZ on this one- the human side of the equation is hard science while the alien side is speculative science of the jules vern stripe- nothing wrong with that IMO after all Verne got quite a bit right- my favorite was his speculation on documents being transmitted by electricity over wires (fax machines) even if his discription of how its done falls short. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
November 29, 2010 - 8:25pm | But what does that have to do with the Star Frontiers setting? It has a lot to do with hard sci-fi but doesnt seem to fit into the star frontiers universe at all. |
 November 29, 2010 - 11:51pm | I'm going with Terl's view of SF canon. After KH and modules, everything got all wonky (although Zeb's column shift chart DID speed things up a bit). The remastering work is truly a thing of beauty however, and serves to remind us all how much we dig this game.  My SF website izz: http://ragnarr.webs.com |
 November 30, 2010 - 6:39pm | Kudos to its artists Beyond the cover art and possibly the new race renditions, I don't recall anything worthy of kudos...it was all meaningless mish-mash and zip-a-tone. I think they used some art from AD and the originial modules in ZEB's, but I could be mistaken. " 'Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." |
November 30, 2010 - 6:44pm | The bad art in Zeb's overshadowed the quality rehashed stuff from Caldwell and DW that people had already seen. Remember, the wicked witch wasn't going to spend more money on a game she planned to replace anyway. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
November 30, 2010 - 7:22pm | yes cover art was what i was speaking of specifically |
November 30, 2010 - 9:46pm | But what does that have to do with the Star Frontiers setting? It has a lot to do with hard sci-fi but doesnt seem to fit into the star frontiers universe at all. Well I never really saw 2001 and 2010 as part of the Frontier setting but rather as an interesting diversion for a group that might need a change of pace Yet you could still add the new equipment form the modules to the frontier as canon. IIRC 2001 had a moon buggy in it. wonder if its in the ultimate equipment guide yet? I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 1, 2010 - 2:50am | Nope, not in there. " 'Beware the Beast, Man, for he is the Devil's pawn. Alone among God's primates, he kills for sport, for lust, for greed. Yea, he will murder his brother to possess his brother's land. Let him not breed in great numbers, for he will make a desert of his home and yours. Shun him; drive him back into his jungle lair, for he is the harbinger of death." |
December 1, 2010 - 8:47pm | I don't know what the stats on the moon buggy are; but who would want one when they can have an Explorer. I think for $#*!$ and giggles some one should run 2010 with a full core four players all armed with standard SF equipment. |
December 2, 2010 - 6:21pm | Expeditions are expensive. A buggy would be an excellent option. Besides, a buggy can allow an expedition to split up. One uses the ship as a base, another group pulls hard duty with the Explorer and another group of one or two does ranging and collecting in the buggy. View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
December 2, 2010 - 7:25pm | Expeditions are expensive. A buggy would be an excellent option. Besides, a buggy can allow an expedition to split up. One uses the ship as a base, another group pulls hard duty with the Explorer and another group of one or two does ranging and collecting in the buggy. a couple of buggies would be able to be broken down and stored in a small storage space- not possible with the explorer- plus they could be easily treated as a disposable asset and left behind as they were cheap (compared to the explorer though I doubt nasa's moonbuggies were all that cheap in US dollars), small and light wt allowing them to be stored in usefull numbers (as apposed to haveing just one aux. vehicle on the scout craft). I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
December 6, 2010 - 4:40pm | Okay, so who wants to design this buggy for the magazine? View my profile for a list of articles I have written, am writing, will write. "It's yo' mama!" —Wicket W. Warrick, Star Wars Ep. VI: Return of the Jedi "That guy's wise." —Logray, Star Wars Ep.VI: Return of the Jedi Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? - Felicia Day (The Guild) |
December 6, 2010 - 6:44pm | Okay, so who wants to design this buggy for the magazine? I'm busy with a bunch of other projects so someone else should step forward I recommend a very utilitarian moon buggy look, stripped down frame motors, parabattery, seats and controlls. collapsable low top speed but very much a handy little mule in rough terrain. I might not be a dralasite, vrusk or yazirian but I do play one in Star Frontiers! |
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