Greetings everyone. I would greatly appreciate everyone's insight and input on this topic.

This has significant impact on how we organize and run the magazine.

I had this in the back of my head since starting the zine, and discussions have forced me to try to now define in writing those thoughts more clearly.

This has to do somewhat with the ever hotly debated topic of "canonicity", but I'm hoping to avoid the slippery slope by make the following 3 clearly denoted

distinctions. These terms are based on Role playing gaming terms for "Official/Core Rules", "Optional Rules", and "House Rules" thusly:

• "Official" content
  
• "Optional" content
  
• "House" content
  

I'm going to propose, as far as the magazine is concerned, that anything Tolkien himself wrote (or Christopher Tolkien compiled of his writings), is "official".

This could be separated into a sub-category of "optional". This is where canonicity can be an unfortunate topic of debate. Basically my thinking is that (and the

"optional" part of this discussion is very open to debate) if Tolkien wrote something, and there is NOT something he wrote at a later date to counter it, it still fits as

"official". However, if he wrote or said something later to completely refute the previous incarnation, then it instead is considered "optional". The Book of Lost Tales might

fall under the "optional" better than the "official" category as well. Lots of potential ideas for adventure ideas, but doesn't quite fit the "official" path.

That means there can be contradictions between older and newer writings of Tolkien, and that's fine. The point is, it allows a writer/artist to specify in citation

something that Tolkien wrote, as a premise for the artist/writer's sub-creation. But these contradicting parts are more "optional".

Where "house" comes into play is where pure extrapolation based on the "real world" or other summations are used, rather than anything Tolkien himself wrote.

There's nothing "wrong" with "house" ideas, it just should be clearly demarked for the viewers/readers as not based specifically

anything Tolkien wrote. That means capable of citation from Tolkien. If there is no citation the writer/artist can give to support their premise clearly, it can not be considered

either "official" or "optional" and must fall under "house". Maybe some better terms to suggest for the three categorizations?

So, Lots of great possible discussion above.

The second part of this discussion, is how to clearly demark each of the three (or other) categories.

There could be any number of ways to do this.

If the entire content is based on one of the three categories, then the heading of the entire content could clearly have an "icon" or some sub text

stating "official", "optional", "house".

That's easy to address.

What gets tricker is the much more common situation of different parts in the same submission.

For example an essay might have one paragraph that is based on "official" source. The next paragraph might be "optional", and the following one "house", all with any combination

of the above. That could be demarked by an icon, or different text, or box, or shading, etc.

What would be really ugly is if content submitted, has 2-3 all in the same paragraph. That would be poor writing style to begin with, because it means jumping around in

supporting a premise.

I guess we could put small icon by any such sentence(s), but wouldn't it be better to try to mandate to the submitters to break up their paragraphs in such a way that they stick

to one ("official", "optional", "house") idea per paragraph?

Is this too much hassle? Too dictatorial? Thoughts?

I think we should accept ALL submissions initially (as long as they are complete enough, well written enough, and relevant of course).

Then as the editorial/reviewing staff look it over, ask specific questions of the submitter to "clean up" their submission

in such a way? Otherwise we, as the editors will have a LOT of work researching and checking the work, more than we probably will have time for in most cases.

Of course, the most important thing is that the submitter use lots (but appropriate in length) of proper citation.

Once there is a citation from Tolkien, we know it's either "official" or "optional" at least right off the bat.

We could just, when receiving a submission, respond with comments to each section asking "is this official or optional? If so please add a citation that this is based on. If not, then is

it house? If so, let us know so we can mark it accordingly."

There is precedence for this in the Tolkien gaming community. The Decipher LotR source books clearly denote which parts of the Peter Jackson movie are actually based on what Tolkien wrote,

as opposed to "creative license" from PJ, versus made up by the Decipher folks. I think that is a valuable tool for anyone wishing to make use of the magazine either as a gaming resource

or a Tolkien-related scholarly resource.

Thoughts on all this?

Thanks!

-Hawke

Firstly I'm keen to see how my text and the quotation below it display.  In the quotation I deleted lots of (what I guess were) spurious end-of-the-line-in-the-editor-window linebreaks that made the post look longer and less easy to take in.

Onto the matter at hand.

I think we should be wary of claiming "official" for anything, as the commercial outfits rather like to think only they're allowed to dub anything "official", or of course sell the rights to the word "official". 
   I'm not sure about "core" either.  It could be very useful to distinguish "hard core" from "soft core" but those terms do have rather tasteless connotations these days...  Whilst I'm comfortable with the world of MMOs talking about "hard core roleplay" I'm less happy about the idea of calling anything "soft core Tolkien" and having to explain repeatedly that it is NOT slash fan-fiction!
   So I guess "Canon" itself would work best for me, and perhaps margin-icons depicting a book/tome.

• a tome with a "C" for Canon (? also "Conclusive")
• a tome with an "A" for Attested -- coming from Tolkien's own words, but inconclusive and/or conflicting with other references (? also "Ambiguous")
  I'm personally very keen on the responsible use of this category. 
  E.g. Tevildo should not exist if Sauron does, but if we have a world to populate it is surely better to use even a superseded piece of Tolkien's own creation than something made up by any 'lesser' other mind. 
  E.g.2. Whilst Tolkien distanced himself from the early material in TBoLT, many gamers DO want to have more magic and enchantment in their game than there is for most of the population of the M-e of TLotR , better to tie it into the material in TBoLT than have it just be generically fantasy.
  
• a blank tome for material that makes no claim on Tolkien
  (People will all have their own "House" rules, so it might help not to always need to distinguish between "OM House" and "personal House"...  The construction: "fanon" is clever, but not terribly OM to my mind.)
  

If we're to go with such a scheme of canonicity we would need to define our terms to the reader, which probably warrants a page of article in its own right.
   I'm afraid this isn't really my area.  As the italic-passage above points out, I am mostly focussed on what I like.  But I don't often cross swords and debate it with people whose position differs.

Cheers,
--Os.

Previously Hawke wrote:

This has significant impact on how we organize and run the magazine.

This has to do somewhat with the ever hotly debated topic of "canonicity", but I'm hoping to avoid the slippery slope by make the following 3 clearly denoted distinctions. These terms are based on Role playing gaming terms for "Official/Core Rules", "Optional Rules", and "House Rules" thusly:

• "Official" content
  
• "Optional" content
  
• "House" content
  

This allows a MUCH broader base of content than the debate over "what is canon and what is not" in how I have seen it discussed in the past.

It seems to me at least, that the canon debate usually argues over whether The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings

are the only "canon", versus including The Silmarillion, The Children of Hurin,  The History of Middle-earth series, or Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien.

I'm going to propose, as far as the magazine is concerned, that anything Tolkien himself wrote (or Christopher Tolkien compiled of his writings), is "official".

This could be separated into a sub-category of "optional". This is where canonicity can be an unfortunate topic of debate. Basically my thinking is that (and the "optional" part of this discussion is very open to debate) if Tolkien wrote something, and there is NOT something he wrote at a later date to counter it, it still fits as
"official". However, if he wrote or said something later to completely refute the previous incarnation, then it instead is considered "optional". The Book of Lost Tales might fall under the "optional" better than the "official" category as well. Lots of potential ideas for adventure ideas, but doesn't quite fit the "official" path.

That means there can be contradictions between older and newer writings of Tolkien, and that's fine. The point is, it allows a writer/artist to specify in citation something that Tolkien wrote, as a premise for the artist/writer's sub-creation. But these contradicting parts are more "optional".

Where "house" comes into play is where pure extrapolation based on the "real world" or other summations are used, rather than anything Tolkien himself wrote.

There's nothing "wrong" with "house" ideas, it just should be clearly demarked for the viewers/readers as not based specifically anything Tolkien wrote. That means capable of citation from Tolkien. If there is no citation the writer/artist can give to support their premise clearly, it can not be considered
either "official" or "optional" and must fall under "house". Maybe some better terms to suggest for the three categorizations?

The second part of this discussion, is how to clearly demark each of the three (or other) categories.

There could be any number of ways to do this.

If the entire content is based on one of the three categories, then the heading of the entire content could clearly have an "icon" or some sub text stating "official", "optional", "house".

That's easy to address.
What gets tricker is the much more common situation of different parts in the same submission.

For example an essay might have one paragraph that is based on "official" source. The next paragraph might be "optional", and the following one "house", all with any combination of the above. That could be demarked by an icon, or different text, or box, or shading, etc.

What would be really ugly is if content submitted, has 2-3 all in the same paragraph. That would be poor writing style to begin with, because it means jumping around in supporting a premise.

I guess we could put small icon by any such sentence(s), but wouldn't it be better to try to mandate to the submitters to break up their paragraphs in such a way that they stick to one ("official", "optional", "house") idea per paragraph?

Is this too much hassle? Too dictatorial? Thoughts?

I think we should accept ALL submissions initially (as long as they are complete enough, well written enough, and relevant of course). Then as the editorial/reviewing staff look it over, ask specific questions of the submitter to "clean up" their submission in such a way? Otherwise we, as the editors will have a LOT of work researching and checking the work, more than we probably will have time for in most cases.

Of course, the most important thing is that the submitter use lots (but appropriate in length) of proper citation.  Once there is a citation from Tolkien, we know it's either "official" or "optional" at least right off the bat.

We could just, when receiving a submission, respond with comments to each section asking "is this official or optional? If so please add a citation that this is based on. If not, then is it house? If so, let us know so we can mark it accordingly."

There is precedence for this in the Tolkien gaming community. The Decipher LotR source books clearly denote which parts of the Peter Jackson movie are actually based on what Tolkien wrote, as opposed to "creative license" from PJ, versus made up by the Decipher folks. I think that is a valuable tool for anyone wishing to make use of the magazine either as a gaming resource
or a Tolkien-related scholarly resource.

Thoughts on all this?

Thanks!

-Hawke