As a note: It's actually 100% fine to reference existing canons, so long as no one has apped in from them yet. When someone apps in, the stuff gets retconned. Obviously, with bigger fandoms (eg, star trek) it's a good idea to make expies in advance.
That being said, note that both Galaxy Quest and Go-Bots ARE real canons! It's just HIGHLY UNLIKELY that anyone will ever app from them.
And as ANOTHER aside, there are some existing games/canons where it's probably okay to keep referencing them, for a few reasons...
> Dungeons and Dragons: It's pretty much impossible to app someone in from this "canon," even if you're apping from a tie-in novel. The problem is canon puncturing, and with D&D, there's really no "canon" to puncture; a character won't recognize that this game is SUSPICIOUSLY similar to the memories they're getting because it's not like their memories will contain things about critical hits or armor class or levels; and as for spells, a LOT of universes have "fireball" or "Words of Power" or whatever.
With the tie-in novels and specific campaign settings, those WOULD "go away" if someone apped in; so if someone apped Raistlin Majere, then the Dragonlance books would go away.
This isn't true of all tabletop RPGs -- I'd say that White Wolf games tend to have too much of a "canon" (recurring NPCs, persistent world, etc). So yeah.
> Canons that themselves break the fourth wall and have medium awareness: if the characters in the canon know they're in a TV show / cartoon / horrifying postmodernist novel / whatever, then they're not in danger of canon puncturing because their canon has already been punctured. This has to be more than just a single episode or moment of LOL HI AUDIENCE, but baked into the show itself. With House of Leaves, for instance, the book exists within the book's universe in almost identical form to the book itself (which is a mindscrew...) so if someone apped Johnny Truant, there'd be no need to retcon.
THAT IS HOW I UNDERSTAND IT
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A MOD BUT THAT'S HOW IT WAS ESPLAINED TO ME IN THE BEGINNING AWRIIIIIGHT
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That being said, note that both Galaxy Quest and Go-Bots ARE real canons! It's just HIGHLY UNLIKELY that anyone will ever app from them.
And as ANOTHER aside, there are some existing games/canons where it's probably okay to keep referencing them, for a few reasons...
> Dungeons and Dragons: It's pretty much impossible to app someone in from this "canon," even if you're apping from a tie-in novel. The problem is canon puncturing, and with D&D, there's really no "canon" to puncture; a character won't recognize that this game is SUSPICIOUSLY similar to the memories they're getting because it's not like their memories will contain things about critical hits or armor class or levels; and as for spells, a LOT of universes have "fireball" or "Words of Power" or whatever.
With the tie-in novels and specific campaign settings, those WOULD "go away" if someone apped in; so if someone apped Raistlin Majere, then the Dragonlance books would go away.
This isn't true of all tabletop RPGs -- I'd say that White Wolf games tend to have too much of a "canon" (recurring NPCs, persistent world, etc). So yeah.
> Canons that themselves break the fourth wall and have medium awareness: if the characters in the canon know they're in a TV show / cartoon / horrifying postmodernist novel / whatever, then they're not in danger of canon puncturing because their canon has already been punctured. This has to be more than just a single episode or moment of LOL HI AUDIENCE, but baked into the show itself. With House of Leaves, for instance, the book exists within the book's universe in almost identical form to the book itself (which is a mindscrew...) so if someone apped Johnny Truant, there'd be no need to retcon.
THAT IS HOW I UNDERSTAND IT
DISCLAIMER: I AM NOT A MOD BUT THAT'S HOW IT WAS ESPLAINED TO ME IN THE BEGINNING AWRIIIIIGHT