User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-26285319-20170104192003/@comment-24894325-20170125190047

It is my feeling that the four rules were written with the overriding idea that the story should be first and foremost intended to be in DWU, and only such stories are to be considered. It is somehow the unwritten rule 0. Like a writer not having a DW license but doing some FP'y trickery, with the common mythos, common game rules, common backstory. Think of, I don't know, Jamie arriving in Middle Earth and joining the forces of Gondor. Or River joining the ranks of Hogwarts defenders. Clearly out of place, right? But not excluded by the four rules explicitly.

Just having common characters zipping in and out of various series is not yet evidence of wanting to play by the same rules. As the fork analogy above suggests, you can branch and return, having small inconsistencies or big inconsistencies, but not completely different rules. If Vince Cosmos lives in a world of Wellsian Martian invasion, with no mention of the Doctor, and with Tom Baker the actor who never played the Doctor, what is there in common, in intent with DWU other than the character that is fun to write for.

What the four rules should demand, I think is some evidence of the intent to keep the storyline within the very widely understood multiverse of DWU. It is wide, but it does not include everything. And I'm pretty sure it does not include all Magrs' works.