The Baron of chaos wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:Dr. Doom III wrote:Kevin had a fictional character tell his readers what the fictional character believed the world of Rifts to looked like and that character was wrong because he decided she was wrong and put something there either when he wrote it or after the fact. When doesn't really matter.
What's your source that Kevin decided that Tarn was wrong?
Hmm I think he did not decided she was neither wrong or right at the moments,
I disagree. The fact that he consistently has Tarn mention some of the information that she provides in the form of rumors or otherwise questionable information is a very strong indication that he means for her own personal claims to be taken at face value.
When she says, "there are reports of x" that means that there are reports of x.
When she says, "I have seen x" that means that there are x.
I think that we all agree on this.
The problem with Japan and certain other areas is that she does not say either "there are reports of" or "I have seen," but rather states the matter as if it were certain fact.
But since the context is her own journeys, that is the proper context to take such descriptions in.
If somebody says, "I have traveled the world, and there is a beautiful fountain in Cicily," even though they do not specify in that statement that they have personally seen the fountain, it is the obvious implication.
The same is true even when the two thoughts are separated:
"I have traveled the world. There is a beautiful fountain in Cicily."
Even if the two thoughts are separated even further, with a number of sentences or even paragraphs in between the two thoughts, as long as the first thought above is providing the context of the second thought, it still remains the safe assumption that the person talking to you has actually seen the fountain.
The context of the world overview is "let me begin chronicling my journeys."
Thus, the context of the passage on Japan is that it is part of her journeys, as there is no stated exemption from that context.
as we don't know if he ever suspected Rifts line would go on like it did. But once it did, yes he decided she made some mistakes. It was the entire point of our discussion here in the end.
You claim that he decided that she made some mistakes.
In cases where that is not specifically stated, I disagree. All we know is that canon has changed, not how the change affects the previous canon.
Going back to my earlier example of Erin Tarn describing an island as empty, while a later book describes a giant, glowing statue of Mickey Mouse as having been there when Tarn visited.
This is a change in canon. The island was empty, but now it has never been empty.
Since there is no way for Tarn to have missed that statue, and since there is no reason to assume that she would lie about seeing it, the previous canon that Erin Tarn ever made that claim in the first place, or that she ever described the island, is
gone.
It is incorrect to call Tarn a liar or an idiot, because we no longer know whether or not she ever even made the claim that there was nothing on the island. The reality of the encounter has been retconned, so the old reality no longer applies.
Here's another example of canon being changed and retconned: the Boom Gun.
In the original Rifts book, the description stated:
The famous "Boom Gun" is a unique rail gun that can accelerate its flechette style rounds to a speed of Mach 2.In the book
Free Quebec, the description states:
The famous "Boom Gun" is a unique rail gun that can accelerate its flechette style rounds to a speed of Mach 5 (mistakenly cataloged by most to be Mach 2).Apparently, if I were to mention in a post that the stats on the Boom Gun had been changed, I would end up in a 7-year-long on-and-off argument with dozens of people who would claim that I was wrong, that the stats on the gun NEVER changed at all, only that the fictional people inside the world of Rifts had cataloged it incorrectly.
The problem is, that's insane.
What actually happened was that originally Kevin gave the rounds one speed, then realized that it was pretty slow, so he CHANGED the speed in a later book.
The canon is not the same as it was. It has changed.
The old canon (the rounds travel at Mach 2) is no more.
The new canon (the rounds travel at Mach 5) is the new reality.
Kevin's mention that the speed was often cataloged incorrectly is NOT any indication that canon has not changed.
It does not mean that any of us misread the original stats, nor does it mean that Kevin mis-wrote those original stats.
What it does is to establish an additional new canon to the one above (the speed now being mach 5) which is that in the game world, this speed has often been cataloged incorrectly.
The only significance of which is that GMs have an official sugar-coating that makes the change slightly easier, since any times in their campaigns when the speed was described in-character by a PC or NPC as being Mach 2 now have an official reason instead of being a random celestial hiccup.
Meanwhile, the stats on the ammo capacity for the same weapon were also changed at some point.
In the RMB, the ammo capacity for the Boom Gun was 100.
In a later book, it was upped to 1,000.
This time, there is no pill to swallow- there is no mention of any in-game explanation.
Does this mean that the NPC store clerks that told the PCs that the limit was 100 rounds were WRONG?
No.
Does this mean that all the PCs and NPCs that only loaded 100 rounds into their Boom Gun were morons?
No.
Does this mean that the original stats in the RMB were wrong?
No.
It means that, barring GM intervention, any battles where the 100 round limit was a significant factor also need to be retconned in order to fit the new continuity.
This is something that I presume no GM has ever bothered to do, because every GM I know of has either ignored the new stats, or come up with some kind of in-game explanation as for why there was a change in the ammo capacity of the weapon.
None of which means that anybody was wrong when they used or referred to the old stats.
They were not.
They, whether they were NPCs, or PCs, or players, or GMs, or writers and staff at Palladium, were all correct- they were using the current canon at the time.
The fact that canon was changed out from under them does not suddenly make them wrong.