Ultima Codex:Canon policy
Canonicity of various facts related to the Ultima series is often questioned. For most purposes, the "canon" consists of the material from games that were officially sanctioned by Richard Garriott, and single-player Ultima games and Ultima Online form a separate canon and timeline.
However, several parts of the canon are highly controversial. Ultima IX in particular has many contradictions with previous games, and fans consider many "new" facts somewhat outlandish. How one regards this information is up to the person in question; one might respect Garriott's views, or just apply the parts that make sense and don't contradict previous parts. What the Codex will choose is still up for debate.
The following guidelines are based on Hacki's Nitpicking Rules, but were originally designed for the purpose of nitpicking and are not necessarily the best for an encyclopedic work. Please make changes as needed, but discuss if there's conflicting views.
Ultima canon[edit]
- All of the mainline games and their official remakes: Ultima I, Ultima II, Ultima III, Ultima IV, Ultima V, Ultima VI, Ultima VII: The Black Gate, Ultima VII Part Two: Serpent Isle, Ultima VIII: Pagan, and Ultima IX: Ascension .
- All of the expansion disks: Ultima VII: Forge of Virtue, Ultima VII Part Two: The Silver Seed (and U8 Speech Pack, which doesn't really add or detract any information)
- Underworld series: Ultima Underworld and Ultima Underworld II
- Worlds of Ultima series: Savage Empire and Martian Dreams
- All of the manuals of the aforementioned games and expansions
- All of the trinkets and cloth maps of these games
- All separate publications released for the aforementioned games and expansions, such as hint books
Ultima Online canon[edit]
- Ultima Online and its various expansions
- Cloth maps, manuals, etc...
Non-canonical material[edit]
- Akalabeth: Ties to mainline Ultimas are weak at best
- Runes of Virtue series
- Escape from Mt. Drash: nominal Ultima
- Third party publications using the Ultima license, including commercial fiction and comics
- To lesser extent, the console ports of the mainline games, where they deviate significantly from the original computer versions. (for example, the drastic plot changes of SNES version of Ultima VII...)
- Unused material produced by developers: It's difficult to assess what material represents the final artistic vision of the creators.
- Fan-created content of all kinds (though it may constitute fanon of its own)
Note: This includes the Timeline found at the Ultima IX: Redemption website. While purporting to be a reliable historical account of the Ultima universe, it contains many significant embellishments that are not supported by source material and should therefore not be cited.