Talk:The Nocturnal Sea

can we get a cite and page number on that quote from the NSGaz? -- Gonzoron 03:40, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Yes. I have just started work on the page.Cure 05:31, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I haven't looked this over carefully, but at a glance Meredoth has been downgraded from Darklord of the Nocturnal Sea to Darklord of Nebligtode. That has of course been done in a netbook, BUT done by the Fraternity itself in the Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer rather than in an article just submitted by you or I to a Quothed the Raven issue. My point is two fold:

(1) Practically, does most every entry in the Nocturnal Sea have to broken up into sections for canon and for non-canon worthy additions of the Frat that was continuing, in effect, the defunted Gaz series?

(2) At what point do we throw in the towel, admit that nothing knew of consequence is every going to be forthcoming from "official" sources, and grant official Frat work (and Kargatane work) the distinction of canon? For my two wolf fangs, that time is now. Cure 06:13, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

I agree it's a bit tricky, but this is exactly why I created the distinctions between Netbook-canon, Canon, and Homebrew canon.

1) IMHO, yes. And that's not a bad thing. If I'm Joe Ravenloft-Fan and I look up Meredoth, and don't know about the Frat netbooks, I expect to see that he's the DL of the NS. If I see Nebligtode, I will be confused. Where did that come from? But if I see...

"Canon: Darklord of the Nocturnal Sea....blah blah blah... Netbook-Canon: The FoS NS Gaz proposed that Meredoth is the DL of only Nebligtode, the area of the sea immediately surrounding and including Todstein and Graben islands. The sea itself was was reimagined as a separate domain known as The Drowning Deep."

Suddenly, all is clear.

2) This is not for us to decide. WotC has never given official sanction to any Frat work. They are the arbiters of what's official. They allowed the Karg to publish official stuff briefly (Shadow of the Knife and CotN:Demons specifically) when it was thought that RL was dead for 3e. But guess what, out of the grave it came. WotC has clearly not forgotten RL is in their stable of IP. (see the forthcoming boardgame and the pillaging of RL concepts for 4e in Dragon, etc.) I would be delighted, but not that surprised, to see it revived as a campaign setting in some fashion before the release of 5e. So as much as I like the frat and karg netbooks, and as much as you like them, they are not official. And believe it or not, there are people out there who don't like them. I know, I was one of them once. More precisely, I never read them because I didn't think they "counted," and I had plenty of official stuff to catch up on. Of course, I eventually came around, but there are fans out there who have no intention of considering netbooks canon. Then of course, there's the issue of conflicting netbooks. www.ravenloft.br has some very spiffy looking netbooks, including gazetteers of Sourange, the Nocturnal Sea, and the Sea of Sorrows. I don't know what's in them because they are in Portuguese, but I bet they contradict the FoS at least a little. What right do we have to declare ours to be more canon than theirs? I believe the Mistipedia should be an impartial compilation of info, not an arbiter of canon.

I will now step off my soapbox. :) -- Gonzoron 19:50, 9 March 2010 (UTC)

Can you confirm that CotN:Demons is canon? If so, there are a bunch of netbook-canon labels that need to pulled.Cure 00:18, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Hmm... perhaps I was wrong on that point, since both CotN:D and SotK say on their front pages "An Unofficial Ravenloft (Adventure/Accessory)" Will have to dig into the history, maybe the wayback machine has a copy of the announcement.. but I guess it's safest to call them netbook canon for now. -- Gonzoron 18:53, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

And yet the CotN:D proposal guidelines said it would be an "official" product. Sadly, it seems the announcement naming them the official torch bearers of RL seems to have been somewhere between May '99 and Mar '00, a time period which the wayback machine is missing from its archives of the kargatane site. Well, unless corrected by the Kargatane themselves, I guess we go with the most recent information, which is the books themselves. They call themselves unofficial, so I guess they are. And hence netbook-canon. -- Gonzoron 02:22, 16 March 2010 (UTC)