How do things become canon from 3rd parties?

I have a [censored]load of ideas for weapons :S

They don't.

Why don't you post those ideas in 'Fallout4 speculation and suggestions' ?

I'm confused what does canon even mean

The word "Canon" is most likely derived from the word "Canonization" in which the Pope declares a person as a Saint or Holy. Now if a game maker like Beth (a.k.a. The Pope) decides to make some element of a story or something (a.k.a. The Person(s) canon, they make it part of the games lore. A... Universal Truth to the game if you will. And all of the story and characters and such in the game (Minus Easter Eggs) is referred to as "Canon"

Edit: Example:
Beth says there are 323 vaults. This is canon
If some random dude(tte) makes a fan-fiction saying there are more or less vaults (Or just writes a story involving V5732) the that is NOT canon

Where'd they say that? It was 122 in the original canon, and I've never heard of Beth changing that number.

Also if you have a Fanfiction and it gets published and you can by it at say....Barnes and Noble. That's considered canon too.

Like the Fanfiction novels that are coming for Oblivion. The leaks of the story aren't canon whatsoever in the lore but when it gets to the shelves it'll be considered canon.

It's just an example, I suspect. For example, Bethesda could say that the Lone Wanderer was a mutated giraffe, and because it's Bethesda saying it, it's canon.

Basically, anything in a Bethesda Fallout game (or anything else published by Bethesda, such as books) is 100% officially canon, anything in a previous Interplay Fallout game is canon unless it contradicts something from a later game.

http://www.gamesas.com/bgsforums/index.php?showtopic=1018630 thread explains canon fairly well, I think.

In regards to the Elder Scrolls Bethesda has generally considered anything included in the games and officially published materials to be canon. So if one of the developers releases their own story on the forums it isn't officially canon - but if its then included in the game it has become canon.

Fallout is a bit different since Bethesda has only developed one of the games. From my understanding Bethesda considers Fallout, Fallout 2, and Fallout 3 to be canon. Material in FO: Tactics is generally considered canon, and FO: Brotherhood of Steel is not considered canon. I don't know how they classify things like the Fallout Bible or Van Buren since these were never really published. I'd guess they're considered semi-canon, like Tactics.

122? I'm gonna have to check my Bible. I have always believed that it was actually 99 vaults commissioned. Then there was one more, Vault Zero that totalled it to 100 vaults. Then Beth said "let there be one hundred and three vaults...(by adding vault 101 thereby vault 100 as well)...and they saw that it was good and then they rested on the sixth dlc..."

122 is the number given in the Fallout Bible. Vault 106, which appears in FO3, was actually first mentioned in the Bible. See:

http://fallout.wikia.com/wiki/Vault



Tactics is semi-canon (major events canon, some details non-canon), as for the Fallout Bible, they follow some parts pretty closely, like the timeline, but ignore some other stuff, e.g. how GECK works. As for Van Buren, they have been using some ideas from there in Fallout 3 and its add-ons, and nothing in Beth's FO3 contradicts Van Buren lore, but they have never officially declared any of it canon or non-canon. I suspect that the makers of New Vegas will use even more Van Buren lore.

I stand corrected. This is what happens when you don't read your Bible. I am so ashamed...

Yeah, I think if Bethesda were to make an official comment on the matter they'd only consider work in published materials to be canon - but for most intents and purposes the Fallout Bible is considered canon. They probably feel similarly about Van Buren.

While one could argue that Bethesda is the only one who can truly tell us what is and is not canon I've always felt this is really an individual choice. Using the Elder Scrolls as an example, there's been a lot of stuff that is not actually official but has involved current and former developers: stories released on the web (particularly by MK), a number of semi-RP threads in the Lore forum (most famously the Trial of Vivec), and even Loranna's long running RP. While none of this is canon by Bethesda's accounting it is 'real' enough for plenty of fans. Ignoring for a second that some of this material has been put in or alluded to in later published work, if these fans want to consider it canon for their view of the Elder Scrolls then that's what they should do!

Well, Fallout Bible *is* officially published material.

Woops, I didn't realize that. I thought it has simply been released to the public

Well yes, it was released to the public by Black Isle - I consider that an official publication. Unlike Van Buren docs, which were leaked unofficially.

I wouldn't take this whole canon thing too seriously. Much of the Kotor 2 stuff is not considered canon, same goes for Fallout Tactics. Who decides what's canon and what's not? Who's the proclaimed authority. Well, I say Fallout Tactics is canon and Fallout 3 is not. How about this? Who's going to contradict me? But who cares, really...

What KotOR 2 stuff is not considered canon? Well, aside from the dark side patch, since the light side patch is always canon in SW games?

Any official release is canon, unless it is deemed later to not be so (called a retcon). When Brotherhood of Steel came out it was canon, but now it is not. That's how I look at it.

Bethesda controls Fallout now, so anything they release is canon, until either they or a future rights holder deems it not to be canon.

As Ausir stated, Bethesda has removed Brotherhood of Steel from canon and parts of Tactics (hairy Deathclaws and such). If they deem it required they could remove parts of FO1 and FO2 later, at their discretion.

At this point, being that Van Buren has permeated so much of Bethesda's interpretation of Fallout, it basically has made itself cannon. The only thing that we can't be sure of is what happened to "The Prisoner" and "Dr. Presper".

Not even Interplay considered BOS canon... If you view a particluar article on Duck and Cover, there's a quoted forum post from an Interplay dev saying that BOS was not canon.

To be honest, there is only one way: By building upon them in a sequel.

Exactly my point, it was canon until the official Fallout owner said it wasn't... which happened very quick in that game's case, thank God.

The Vault thing is something that I think is very constraining to anyone trying to write new content, part of Fallout is the Buck Rodgers like feel of a character coming into the wasteland and witnessing the evil, ugly, and weird of the wasteland. By only having a limited number of vaults you have to either stretch how the character isn't experienced or is oblivious to the outside world. I don't think an official number should ever be canon.

The official number of vaults (122) was given in the Fallout Bible. And not every Fallout game has to start in a vault. Fallout 2 didn't, Van Buren wasn't going to.