[Child of the 7th Age]

To me, term like "canon friendly" or "canon consistent" are merely words that are descriptive and which will help the poster decide whether or not he or she would enjoy participating in the story. I don't see them being used to shut out stories, which may take another approach to Tolkien. That's never been done before at the Downs, and I think, even with the new rules, that people aren't going to be unreasonable.

I would think it might be helpful to use a descriptive term like this in the introductory paragraph just to let posters know what they're getting into. But I'm not even certain it should be obligatory. As Pio says, none of us are Tolkien, and anything we create is inherently bound to have differences.

The overall problem is, whether you are constructing a fanfiction, or making rules for the RPG room, you must have some structure and guidelines, but not so much that creativity is crushed. I have a lot of faith in Mithadan who is helping Elenna to come up with these policies. He has done RPGs and fanfictions, has been at the Downs a long time,and knows many of the challenges involved in writing. I don't think they would come up with something that's completely unreasonable.

Helen -- I'm not sure that it's practical to divide things up into so many piles. And sometimes it's hard to judge exactly how a story will develop. I guess my gut feeling would be to have a single moniker describe those stories which generally encourage posters to stay close to Tolkien's models (albeit with some alterations).

Let's say a general term "canon friendly" which would still cover a range of things. But it would be helpful to be given some definitions or examples of the above as I'm uncertain myself what this would exactly mean!

sharon, the 7th age hobbit