Is the Book of Unlife "canon" for Cidri?

[Shaira]

Hey everyone,

So, yeah - is it? I guess like other TFT fans, my own campaign setting derives its "real world" logic from the TFT core rules. So, no divine magic, no gods bestowing miracles on worshippers, and little of the "mythical" approach to undead. IE, vampires aren't undead but have the vampirism disease, skeletons and zombies are magical constructs and not undead per se. It's a very clear design choice of TFT / ITL, which is a refreshing contrast to many other fantasy RPGS, giving a "non-mythical", almost science-fictiony underpinning to Cidri and its in-world reality.

The Book of Unlife, while a fab supplement, changes quite a lot of that. Suddenly there are undead vampires (nosferatu) as well as the "standard" TFT vampires, there are spirit guides, there are proto-divine powers in the blessings bestowed by Ancestrals, you can meet souls of the dead, and there's very clearly an afterlife, and a whole lot of themes that had been pinned down by TFT / ITL are profoundly changed.

Now, obviously I get that you can take or leave whatever material you like or don't like in your own game. That's fab. But as many of us enjoy winkling out the "reality" of Cidri from what's in the TFT rulesbooks and building our games round that, I'm wondering if The Book of Unlife effectively "overwrites" old Cidri with a new metaphysics. What do you think?

Cheers,

Sarah