So at the end of Return of the Jedi, we see this nice image of the Force ghosts of Yoda, Obi-Wan Kenobi and Anakin Skywalker. Those lucky enough to see it when it first came out saw Anakin portrayed by
Sebastian Shaw. But not too long ago some guy named George came along and changed it, and now he's portrayed by
Hayden Christensen. Now it's my understanding that this was a fairly unpopular change among die-hard fans. But if someone was to go up to George and tell him that he was wrong, that the "real" image of the Force ghosts had Sebastian Shaw in it, George could quite rightly say "No, the original image is non-canon. The image with Hayden Christensen is canon." Why is the new image canon? Exactly and precisely because George said so. It's his franchise, he can say that a game of Dominion on Tatooine between Donald and guided in which they each scrawl the score on their respective bellies with their own blood is canon if he wants to. So regardless of what actually came out originally at the movies, or how anyone else feels about Hayden, or Jar Jar Binks, or scoring with your own blood, what George says is canon is canon and what George says isn't canon isn't canon.
So what are the official rules of Dominion? Well, exactly the rules according to its creator. The rulebooks do their best to convey these rules both as completely and as succinctly as possible, but who has the higher authority? The rulebooks or the writer of the rulebooks? The books, as we know, are incomplete. We have an official "
lose track" rule. We also have an official ruling on how
Ironworks and Trader interact. Donald has added some rules that are not present in the rulebooks. He can do that - they're his rules.
Now we can argue all day about exactly what you can and can not infer from the Base game rulebook. But that seems a little, I don't know, narrow-minded given all the rules and rulings we've received since said rulebook was published. And why do we need to? We're lucky enough to have the creator of the game and knower/decider of all rules to tell us anything that we're not sure of from the rulebooks.
Of course, not everyone's so lucky. Not everyone reads these forums. Someone could go their whole Dominion life never knowing that a lose track rule exists, or what the official Ironworks + Trader ruling is, or that the official rules prohibit the use of pen and paper to track the scores. Do they really need to know? Probably not. The rulebooks are enough to teach them how to play the game. If they come across anything unclear from the books, the group makes a decision, they play that way from then on, and everyone's happy. But those of us who love Dominion enough to go on a forum about it have Donald to tell us exactly what the official rules of his game are.