So I recently got a copy of Xenology to peruse and was wondering if someone would be able to tell me how current the information in it was compared to current information available in codexes.

Also how useful you'd feel it would be in an Ordo Xenos campaign.

You are assuming that it even wants to be consistent with Games Workshop's own material. It is not. Examples include Orks having green blood instead of red (because chlorophyll), or Tau having long toes instead of hooves .

Of course, that does not make it a bad book. In fact, I found it very enjoyable to read, thanks to the small story bits and the detailed descriptions, as well as the images. However, it is a different interpretation from the one propagated in the Codices and White Dwarf, as it was written by different people with different ideas.

So, you could absolutely use it in a DW campaign, either by tying the story into the book's own narrative, or by copying some of its images as cool handouts. Just keep in mind that there is no canon , and be aware that some of it may contradict the Deathwatch books as well - in fact, the core rulebook seems to deliberately poke fun at it, when it mentions an autopsy of an Etheral not yielding anything explaining their control over the Tau, even though the Inquisitors were soo sure to find some sort of mind control organ ... which happens to be what Xenology tells you.

When it comes to deciding between conflicting sources ... as usual, pick what you think sounds best. That's what GW wanted you to do when they established this laissez-faire policy regarding the IP's background.

Besides the images in the book, which have a bit of artistic liscence to them(toed tau, eldar with no gonads, lol) the information therein fits the earlier canon back when it bothered to make sense. It fits information in a lot of the novels (c.s. goaway's works excluded) and while not holding to the modern letter fits the initial spirit.

The stuff in Xenology fits in very well with the narrative structure of role play, badly within the screwball structure of modern GW.

Btw it is noted in some modern works that the tau allowed false etherials to be captured to throw off imperial scrutiny. Also imagine an Etherial consumed by the hive mind if the original concept was followed through? The tyranids would instantly be able to evoke any emotion at insane intensity to every tau on a planet.

We'd be tossing smoke grenades full of tau despair pheremone in deathwatch instead of bullets.

The new supposed *fact* that tau starships use nothing but raw thrust to move almost as fast as light for their basic transportation shows an abscence of knowledge in relativity and physics, no less travel times(even without time dialation) that boggles the mind.

You are assuming that it even wants to be consistent with Games Workshop's own material. It is not. Examples include Orks having green blood instead of red (because chlorophyll),

This was the GW fluff in the 1994 Orks codex("Their blood, which is green, carries a symbiotic algae through their veins," Orks codex 2e, pg. 6). I can't find anything one way or another in the 1999 codex. Next Ork codex was released in 2007, the year after Xenology.

The greater point about there not being any canon still stands and in any case, the fact that GW have contradicted themselves on the ork blood issue (to say nothing of the Tau feet or other discrepancies which I don't know about off the top of my head) is far more of a blow to the idea of trying to piece together canon like 40k was an archaeology dig and not a haphazardly assembled shared fiction setting where most of the authors don't really even bother trying to agree on any setting details. Even major elements can be radically changed if Matt Ward decides he feels like completely rewriting Necron fluff today. Following official publications like religious dogma when the official publications themselves treat their own work as a loose set of guidelines is pointlessly limiting.

This was the GW fluff in the 1994 Orks codex("Their blood, which is green, carries a symbiotic algae through their veins," Orks codex 2e, pg. 6). I can't find anything one way or another in the 1999 codex. Next Ork codex was released in 2007, the year after Xenology.

Oh, will have to read up on that then! I've only seen that they described Ork blood as red in a WD article at around 3E.

Following official publications like religious dogma when the official publications themselves treat their own work as a loose set of guidelines is pointlessly limiting.

This was the GW fluff in the 1994 Orks codex("Their blood, which is green, carries a symbiotic algae through their veins," Orks codex 2e, pg. 6). I can't find anything one way or another in the 1999 codex. Next Ork codex was released in 2007, the year after Xenology.

Oh, will have to read up on that then! I've only seen that they described Ork blood as red in a WD article at around 3E.

The ork blood article was about painting it red for visual reasons (green on green would have looked terrible, according to the article). It had actually nothing to do with the fluff at the time (which held that ork blood was green).

Woot!

Keep in mind too that in Xenology, the Magos Biologis is going insane, as well as the Inquisitor who is being studied and driven onward by the murder of his companions and what-not by a Necron.

The ork blood article was about painting it red for visual reasons (green on green would have looked terrible, according to the article). It had actually nothing to do with the fluff at the time (which held that ork blood was green).

Sort of! The painting/display issue was the reason - but still, the question (posted by a reader .. man, back then fans were still able to talk to them!) was "What colour is Ork blood?", and the answer was Red, because green just doesn't work.

Of course, it's a bit more complicated in an RPG, where the players and the GM need to share a common ground to roleplay in, but that's why I recommend discussing the setting as part of the pre-game preparation, to prevent broken expectations or needless debate due to conflicting ideas later on.

When I started my DH campaign, one of the first things I did was write up a document indicating which versions of canon (in case of conflicts) I was going with. Only one of my players had any familiarity with 40k, however, so I think he's the only one who actually read it.

Hey, I'd say you made at least one player have more fun, then!

Personally, I would much prefer a consistent setting a la Battletech or Star Wars,

Star Wars is not consistent. While it doesn't have as many discrepancies as 40k because it does at least try to be consistent, these efforts were not organized until several years into the EU, and weren't really organized in an easily accessible way until the creation of the Holocron database in the year 2000. Because of the haphazard evolution of the EU's early years, Star Wars has a tier of canon which specifically designates some works as being either canon or not, depending upon the whim of the individual author. Then George Lucas made the Clone Wars series and it did such incredible damage to the canon of the EU that they had to create another tier of canon just to contain it. Then Disney burned down everything below that tier and have begun restructuring the entire setting in a way that isn't fully clear yet, meaning that with the exception of movies and TV shows, as of right now everything exists on that level of "either canon or not, depending on the decision of each individual author."

I brought up archaeological digs specifically because they are absolutely the wrong way to think about fictitious settings. An archaeological investigation of a civilization is going to get closer and closer to the truth as time goes on. The odds of a new discovery completely overturning everything we know about an era or location get smaller and smaller the more we know about that era and location, and as we discover more the puzzle pieces will usually begin falling into place. The more people investigate a single subject, the more we will understand about that subject.

In fictional worlds, this is turned on its head. As time goes on, the odds of a major reboot or overhaul rise . The more attention is paid to a single event or location, the harder it is for all the authors to keep track of what's going on, and thus the odds of contradictory details cropping up increases . Having more people contributing to that subject also increases the odds of contradiction. Perhaps most importantly, the direction of the setting and which things are or are not true is wholly subject to the whims of whatever business owns the IP, and that business will gladly purge enormous swaths of its EU when they feel it's convenient, because the overwhelming majority of fans do not care one whit about what is or isn't canon.

The rules Star Wars holds its licensed authors to are only binding if you are one of those licensed authors. If you're a GM and your story is created for an audience of five people, what matters is what will be the most fun for those five people. Disney has sacrificed Grand Admiral Thrawn on the altar of JJ Abrams' apathy towards the EU. If you think the Star Wars setting is lesser for that sacrifice, but you adhere to it in your own Star Wars games (or writing, or whatever) out of religious devotion to the whim of a faceless corporation who owns the relevant IP, you should seriously re-examine your priorities.

Star Wars is not consistent. While it doesn't have as many discrepancies as 40k because it does at least try to be consistent, these efforts were not organized until several years into the EU, and weren't really organized in an easily accessible way until the creation of the Holocron database in the year 2000. Because of the haphazard evolution of the EU's early years, Star Wars has a tier of canon which specifically designates some works as being either canon or not, depending upon the whim of the individual author.

That does make it consistent - you had a list that clearly organised the different sources, allowing you to discard any inconsistencies by knowing which of the conflicting details was right.

An archaeological investigation of a civilization is going to get closer and closer to the truth as time goes on.

That doesn't help you as an individual in determining the truth, though, as you never know when you have reached it. Unless we develop time travel some day, the best we can do is guess based on whatever information we have available. There's so much debate going on behind the scenes of what it says in the history books (which differ depending on who wrote them too), as different historians lend different levels of credence to the many sources we have available now.

In a way, historians are often just as bad as 40k authors when it comes to agreeing on some detail.

I also don't really agree on the odds of reboots or remakes depending on the volume of information added to a setting. Yes, the likelihood of contradictions rises (many cooks, broth, etc), but if you have a proper set of rules for handling things as Star Wars did, there is no problem as "the system" takes care of its own mistakes. The cause of reboots and remakes is still found in the passing of time, but actually it's more about "ownership" of a setting shifting from one party to another, and in addition to different people having different ideas, execs in larger corporations generally also like to prove their worth by introducing change for the sake of change, just so they can say something was their doing instead of just continuing what their predecessors set up.

If you think the Star Wars setting is lesser for that sacrifice, but you adhere to it in your own Star Wars games (or writing, or whatever) out of religious devotion to the whim of a faceless corporation who owns the relevant IP, you should seriously re-examine your priorities.

How did you get that idea? I continue sticking to the old canon specifically because I like consistency.*

That is why, as mentioned in my previous post, I also started considering to detach "my" 40k from what the current Games Workshop publishes, because I like what they have written in the past too much to miss out on it.

*: Well, that, and I have zero faith in the "new" Star Wars being as good. In fact, I think Disney may have dug a grave for an IP that has been running well for decades. I have seen what JJtrek did to "reinvigorate" the Star Trek franchise, and aside from two mediocre flicks (billed as "the action movie of the year" rather than science-fiction), a mobile game and a comic, I have yet to see any of this new life. I expect roughly the same for JJwars.

I'd like to finish with a quote from the CEO of Stardock, made in reaction to the clusterfeth that was Master of Orion III:

"If you're making a game that ends with '3,' or Something: The Sequel, it should be similar to the original game. Don't go off and say, 'I have my own artistic vision.' Okay, good -- so call it something else. Don't ride the coattails of the people who came before you to launch your own artistic vision."

This sums up my feelings in regards to any setting, be it Star Wars, Star Trek, Battletech, or .. well, 40k.

That does make it consistent - you had a list that clearly organised the different sources, allowing you to discard any inconsistencies by knowing which of the conflicting details was right.

It's equally consistent to 40k. Both Star Wars and 40k have a long list of source material associated with them. In both Star Wars and 40k, these sources are not consistent to one another. Star Wars has an officially mandated list of which sources are to be listened to in the event of an inconsistency, but that does not mean it is not inconsistent. It is. The contradictions are there. They don't actually go back and rewrite the inconsistent material.

The fact that there is a system for determining which of two versions to roll with when they contradict means that inconsistencies will not propagate from one work to another, with warring camps of authors each supporting different versions of events and each creating new stories built on the different interpretations and thus reinforcing the inconsistency. It also means that nobody will see the controversy and decide to write something completely different since the point isn't agreed upon anyway, thus compounding the inconsistency. And it also means that the fans, through either conditioning or self-selection, are more tolerant of inconsistency, which means you can intentionally contradict older works with much reduced fear of audience backlash. So a setting with stricter rules on canon in official publications is going to be more consistent, but it is not going to be hold back the inherent problems of a very large number of people contributing to the same setting. It will be inconsistent, and Star Wars is inconsistent, and no level of effort will prevent that, nor prevent it from growing over time.

That doesn't help you as an individual in determining the truth, though, as you never know when you have reached it. Unless we develop time travel some day, the best we can do is guess based on whatever information we have available.

A relevant Asimov quote:

[W]hen people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

Someone who believes a current historical theory is almost certainly getting something wrong, but they are very likely to be considerably less wrong than someone who believes a theory that was debunked ages ago. There is currently a theory that King Arthur was a real guy who led the Britons in a battle against the Saxons at Badon Hill and repelled a major invasion, planting the seeds that would eventually grow into the entire Arthurian mythos. No matter how wrong that theory ultimately is, it is most definitely less wrong than the Arthurian mythos itself, in that at the very least it contains a maximum of one false event rather than dozens. If you genuinely believe that whoever is presently wrong about King Arthur is just as wrong as the people of 15th century England, you are wronger than both of them put together. We don't guess what happened, we estimate . And if you think calculated estimates are as reliable as guesses, I strongly recommend you avoid the stock market.

Theories on fictional histories, on the other hand, are all equally wrong, in that they are all 100% wrong, and beyond that, literally anything you make up off the top of your head will be exactly as wrong (and therefore exactly as right) as anything else, no matter how much other media it disagrees with. When you say that Emperor Palpatine had a clone who led Imperial forces after his death, you are completely wrong. When you say that Emperor Palpatine was killed at the Battle of Endor and never cloned, you are also completely wrong. When you say we don't know for sure whether Emperor Palpatine had any clones, you are still completely wrong. When you say that Emperor Palpatine was secretly a Skrull infiltrator who arrived via wormhole from the modern day Milky Way galaxy as part of a plot to defeat the X-Men, you are not any wronger, because you can't get more wrong than completely. The correct answer is that there is no such person as Emperor Palpatine. When you get into an argument over whose version of events is closer to the truth about Emperor Palpatine, the answer is nobody. When you get into an argument about who is correct about King Arthur, this is decidedly untrue.

I also don't really agree on the odds of reboots or remakes depending on the volume of information added to a setting.

I never said they do. I said the odds go up over time.

How did you get that idea?

Because you have a stated willingness to let people you've never met resolve setting contradictions for you. The guy currently burning Star Wars canon to the ground has exactly as much authority as the guy who used to curate it. In fact, those are literally the same guy (Leland Chee).

Star Wars has an officially mandated list of which sources are to be listened to in the event of an inconsistency, but that does not mean it is not inconsistent. It is. The contradictions are there. They don't actually go back and rewrite the inconsistent material.

Ah. Well, what matters for me is that this officially mandated list exists . That, to me, creates the consistent background, as opposed to Warhammer "Anything Goes" 40,000.

100% consistency throughout all sources is impossible. Somewhere, sometime, someone will screw up. And I believe that what is important is how a franchise deals with these mistakes when they do occur.

Hence I'm talking about a consistent setting , not consistent sources .

Someone who believes a current historical theory is almost certainly getting something wrong, but they are very likely to be considerably less wrong than someone who believes a theory that was debunked ages ago.

Perhaps. Though even that is not guaranteed. There's a saying that all myths contain a grain of truth, for example. Twenty years ago, historians would say that amazons never existed. On the other hand, today there are theories based on new findings and evaluations that discuss what caused those myth to come into existence, and how close it was to the truth. So here we have a situation where it could be argued that someone believing in the myth was actually closer to the truth than what was the gospel of later historical debates.

But I feel that all of this is splitting hairs. It doesn't really matter how many pieces of truth you have in a given historical analysis when the conclusions drawn from them are still wrong.

The correct answer is that there is no such person as Emperor Palpatine.

I can't quite follow you here. Are you saying we shouldn't discuss fictional settings, because they are not real?

Well, that just doesn't sound fun.

I never said they do. I said the odds go up over time.

Yes, but you alleged that they go up because of more material being added. I disagreed, and suggested that with settings that have a proper "canon", a change of custodians/authors is the far more likely cause. Star Wars is actually a good example, given how the EU survived so many years, only to be cut down when Disney took over. This was no coincidence.

The same can be witnessed in this very RPG when you compare the background in Dark Heresy books published by Black Industries to those published by FFG.

Because you have a stated willingness to let people you've never met resolve setting contradictions for you.

Aye, when they do resolve contradictions. The new Star Wars canon does not do that, but instead - similar to JJtrek - is simply a big reset. In a way, it creates a second background, a different world. And it's not mine, so I stick to ye olde lore.

I like it when a centralised authority takes care of consistency, because it creates a common ground that people can subscribe to - voluntarily, of course, as nobody forces you to stick to a canon if you don't want to. And I miss this option in 40k sometimes, because it resulted in disappointed expectations (books getting stuff "wrong"), much pointless arguing (especially as GW isn't exactly straightforward with its handling of the IP), and the cultivation of a fairly pragmatic attitude towards the official products.

I don't think it matters an iota whether or not someone has ever met said authority. What matters is whether you like and enjoy the setting as moderated and thus protected by them.

If not, you can still opt out.

Hence I'm talking about a consistent setting , not consistent sources .

The setting is just as consistent if you personally resolve the contradictions as it is if you let someone else do it.

So here we have a situation where it could be argued that someone believing in the myth was actually closer to the truth than what was the gospel of later historical debates.

It is technically possible to argue this if, for example, you are a lunatic. In reality, taking ancient Greek porn at face value is much further from the truth than believing that certain Balkan war parties may have had female warriors among them. The former requires the invention of entire civilizations which never existed and behaved in a way that is completely absurd and often supernatural. The latter requires moderately adjusting the military structure of civilizations which actually did exist.

But I feel that all of this is splitting hairs. It doesn't really matter how many pieces of truth you have in a given historical analysis when the conclusions drawn from them are still wrong.

If you actually believed this, you would be literally incapable of functioning as a human being. Living life requires making decisions based off of observable reality, and that requires acknowledging that your picture of observable reality is going to be imperfect without simply discarding all information you ever receive and walking directly into traffic because hey, it could be a mirage. It's not splitting hairs, it is a foundational element of all rational thought: Wrongness is a spectrum, and the impossibility of perfect correctness does not invalidate becoming less wrong. The fact that you can't technically be 100% certain that you are correct about something absolutely does not prevent you from acting on whichever version of events is most likely to be true, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.

I can't quite follow you here. Are you saying we shouldn't discuss fictional settings, because they are not real?

No, I am saying that fictional settings should be discussed as fictional settings and not as though they were an archaeological dig into a real place and time. When discussing an archaeological dig site, we have actual evidence to examine and we can come to conclusions which are more or less wrong. When discussing the events of Emperor Palpatine's life, no one can ever be wrong about anything because there was no Emperor Palpatine. If you're discussing whether or not someone is correct in a statement they made about Emperor Palpatine, you are automatically wrong because you are asserting that there are facts about Emperor Palpatine at all. Emperor Palpatine is fiction, so the only relevant conversation to have is which version of his story is better, not which version is more accurate. None of them are even a little bit accurate, but some of them are more compelling than others, and that is where all of the actually interesting conversations are.

Yes, but you alleged that they go up because of more material being added.

No, I did not. An allegation is an unproven claim of wrongdoing. I have never made the claim you are suggesting I did, nor did it include any particular wrongdoing. You have explicitly stated that you agree with me on the point I actually did make, and at this stage your argument is purely that I must have intended something other than what I said. You do not and cannot know my intent, and my actual words are very much not what you claim they are.

The setting is just as consistent if you personally resolve the contradictions as it is if you let someone else do it.

No, because I am not an authority respected by the fans.

It would be my version of the setting (like I have "my" 40k), but not the setting.

The former requires the invention of entire civilizations which never existed and behaved in a way that is completely absurd and often supernatural. The latter requires moderately adjusting the military structure of civilizations which actually did exist.

Yet the latter was arguably not done for a rather long time, whilst the former was.

People at their time made up their version of history based on the findings and beliefs that existed at that time, just like we do today. These findings and beliefs may add to the truth, or they may take away from it, all depending on the conclusions and interpretations taken.

If you actually believed this, you would be literally incapable of functioning as a human being. Living life requires making decisions based off of observable reality, and that requires acknowledging that your picture of observable reality is going to be imperfect without simply discarding all information you ever receive and walking directly into traffic because hey, it could be a mirage. It's not splitting hairs, it is a foundational element of all rational thought: Wrongness is a spectrum, and the impossibility of perfect correctness does not invalidate becoming less wrong. The fact that you can't technically be 100% certain that you are correct about something absolutely does not prevent you from acting on whichever version of events is most likely to be true, and to pretend otherwise is dishonest.

You're not following me. Just because we in the present are forced to "make decisions based off observable reality" does not change the fact that they can be right or wrong, and in this segment of the discussion, we are analysing the effects of this behaviour on previously held beliefs, not what led to them. That is entirely irrelevant to the point.

When discussing the events of Emperor Palpatine's life, no one can ever be wrong about anything because there was no Emperor Palpatine. If you're discussing whether or not someone is correct in a statement they made about Emperor Palpatine, you are automatically wrong because you are asserting that there are facts about Emperor Palpatine at all.

I'm sorry, but you're not making much sense here. We are all aware that these settings are fictional. If an official authority on the subject - widely respected and acknowledged by the fans as creating that which is commonly understood as a "canon" - declares something, then this becomes a fact for that fictional setting, and yes, it would be wrong to claim otherwise.

To prevent a misunderstanding, as I have a feeling that for some reason you're going down a completely different path here: the "right" and "wrong" would refer less to the existence of the subject at all, but more about what said official authority has declared - making your entire argument about fiction versus reality pointless. Nobody cares that Palpatine was not a real person; people simply wanted to know what Lucasfilm declared to be true for their setting.

In theory, of course you could go on and declare that you have your own ideas about something, but needless to say, your word will have much less weight and you'd simply get laught out of the room in 99% of all debates about Star Wars.

In 40k, this is different -- or rather, it should be different, as Games Workshop refuses to establish these facts for their setting, and instead relinquishes a great deal of control to the various writers, designers and gamers. The mistake lies with those fans who didn't get this memo and instead apply rules of canonicity from different IPs to 40k, and then wonder why so much stuff does not add up. Unfortunately, I feel this is actually the majority, but as Aaron Dembski-Bowden once said, part of the mistake lies with GW for not making it more obvious.

No, I did not.

"As time goes on, the odds of a major reboot or overhaul rise. The more attention is paid to a single event or location, the harder it is for all the authors to keep track of what's going on, and thus the odds of contradictory details cropping up increases."

Given the context, I assumed that "attention" which leads to information becoming harder to keep track of means a growth in volume. If my interpretation is incorrect, what did you want to express with the above instead?

It would be my version of the setting (like I have "my" 40k), but not the setting.

Okay, sure, but there is no more Grand Admiral Thrawn in the setting. He's been removed. A huge chunk of Star Wars fans are going to go to the JJ Abrams movie and that will be their source for what happened after the Battle of Endor. Those who insist there is a Grand Admiral Thrawn are going to begin a very rapid shrinking away into nothing, because copyright laws prevent people from pushing that version on a scale that can possibly compete with Disney, and far too many of them are (like you) only too happy to accelerate the process by insisting that the IP holder's word is law, but then say that this doesn't count when Disney does it. The newer fans who aren't losing anything to these revisions can see the contradiction. The authority respected by the bulk of the fans has said there is no Grand Admiral Thrawn, and when Episode VII comes out the overwhelming majority of Star Wars fans will walk into theaters and get that version and not care about some book released in the 90s, before a lot of them were born and which in any case never got a video game adaptation. Timothy Zahn isn't respected by the fans. Neither is pre-Disney Leland Chee. They're respected by a small subset of fans, those who cared enough to read books on the subject in 1991. The Star Wars fans who follow television shows and play video games but do not read books released in 1991 are a very large number of Star Wars fans, and are in fact the majority. The only reason I don't fall into that category is because I recognize that the history of Star Wars starts in 1977, not ~35,000 BBY, and that history, the real actual history where Timothy Zahn is a real guy who produced real books, isn't so easily erased.

And no, I'm not counting people who go and see Episode VII, only people who actually go out of their way to consume Star Wars media generally. These are people who might care if the Force Unleashed was removed, and who are still pining for a third Battlefront game, who will talk to you about how the Clone Wars show started weak but got better with time and you should give it a second chance, but they haven't read Zahn because he was before their time and they do not especially care that he's gone, because the limit of their exposure to him was that one mission in Empire at War. The creators have spoken. The fans have respected them. Are you giving up on Thrawn or not?

Yet the latter was arguably not done for a rather long time, whilst the former was.

Yes, so? It doesn't matter how long it took people to realize that one interpretation was more wrong than another. All that matters is that statements like this:

It doesn't really matter how many pieces of truth you have in a given historical analysis when the conclusions drawn from them are still wrong.

Are incorrect. Truth is not absolute, you are not simply completely correct or completely wrong. You can be more or less wrong and when examining history even if you aren't quite completely correct, and this does not apply to fiction, nor should anyone pretend it does.

then this becomes a fact for that fictional setting

This is an incoherent statement. Fictional settings cannot contain facts . Definitionally. Now, Leland Chee is a real guy, and it is factually true that he has declared that Emperor Palpatine was lying when he told Luke he'd transferred bodies multiple times prior to the Battle of Endor. It is also factually true that Leland Chee has now declared that there is no Grand Admiral Thrawn. To say that Leland Chee is right when he said Palpatine had a clone who was lying but wrong when he said there is no Grand Admiral Thrawn would require there to be some actual facts for him to be right or wrong about. There are not.

It's for the defense of Thrawn specifically that this whole issue is even important to me. I mean, sure, it's irritated me a bit for a long time that people have treated fictitious worlds as though they have facts when in truth they do not. But now we have the IP holders actively declaring that a well-received and oft-retold story is never going to be retold again, because they want to let JJ Abrams have a sandbox to play in for the moviegoing public. And fans of Thrawn like you are still insisting that the Star Wars galaxy must be thought of as a real place even as that attitude is going to destroy your favorite stories.

It doesn't matter whether or not Thrawn really took the reins of the Galactic Empire after the Battle of Endor. Thrawn never really existed at all, and for that matter neither did the Galactic Empire. What exists in the real world are the novels and the people who produce them, and the more you push the archaeology dig perspective (which is false - there is no dig) instead of the collaborative fiction perspective (which is true - people really did write novels and make games), the more you kill the version of the setting you yourself want to remain popular enough to be recognized and built upon.

Given the context, I assumed that "attention" which leads to information becoming harder to keep track of means a growth in volume. If my interpretation is incorrect, what did you want to express with the above instead?

The only context you're taking into account is the sentence immediately following it. In the previous paragraph I discuss how archaeological digs work, and in the paragraph you are quoting a fragment of I discuss how shared fictional settings work. The point was to compare the two and point out how they are, in fact, rather the exact opposite of one another. Thus, the relation between the two sentences is not that one causes the other, but that both of them are the reverse of what happens in an archaeological dig.

You know, I think we're just not on the same page here.

I'm gonna drop it and give the thread a chance to return to its original purpose. Apologies for the increasingly impatient tone throughout my previous posts.

Yeah, I mean while I don't like Nim for creating that off topic thread for, personally I feel at least, just to throw it in my face I feel like it might have been useful here.

My apologies to you as well, Doc - I can be incredibly stubborn when I'm convinced of something, and just kind of forgot where this debate took place. I also should have noticed earlier that a consensus just didn't seem likely.

From what I know Xenology was the book that made GW/BL sit up and go "Ok, we need to get a handle on what we're putting out!" , resulting in a larger drive to make things more consistent (and have more control) over what gets published. That's why I refer to Xenology as "anti-canon" (rather than non-canon) because, like a time traveller stepping on a bug in the past, the book affected everything that came after it whilst simultaneously no longer "counting" as part of 40K lore.

BYE