D&D General WotC: Novels & Non-5E Lore Are Officially Not Canon

At a media press briefing last week, WotC's Jeremey Crawford clarified what is and is not canon for D&D.

"For many years, we in the Dungeons & Dragons RPG studio have considered things like D&D novels, D&D video games, D&D comic books, as wonderful expressions of D&D storytelling and D&D lore, but they are not canonical for the D&D roleplaying game."

"If you’re looking for what’s official in the D&D roleplaying game, it’s what appears in the products for the roleplaying game. Basically, our stance is that if it has not appeared in a book since 2014, we don’t consider it canonical for the games."

2014 is the year that D&D 5th Edition launched.

He goes on to say that WotC takes inspiration from past lore and sometimes adds them into official lore.

Over the past five decades of D&D, there have been hundreds of novels, more than five editions of the game, about a hundred video games, and various other items such as comic books, and more. None of this is canon. Crawford explains that this is because they "don’t want DMs to feel that in order to run the game, they need to read a certain set of novels."

He cites the Dragonlance adventures, specifically.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Dumping 50 years of stories is exactly what they are doing and treating long term FR fans with contempt.

No.

They are not.

If you want to feel insulted in your superiority for your supposed mastery of the setting lore because you knew every books by heart, feel free to do so, but this kind of attitude will get you nowhere and angry.

The rest of the people want readily playable, fun and inspiring setting, not your version of setting purity. Asking WotC to never change a thing because it would favor adapting to new market instead of your personal taste is called Gatekeeping.

Saying ''my accumulated experience with a setting is worth more than your fun participating in a hobby'' is not a good stance.

 

[Scribe]

Sean Connery ain't suiting up as James Bond again any time soon and that, honestly, they wouldn't make some of his movies the same way again today, or at all.

But it happened. It was part of the story (if bond had a meta plot, I don't know)

When they gender swap or change the lineage of the original Dragonlance characters, I'm walking away.

 

[Reynard]

No!

Let my canon well alone!

Drizzt has balding pattern and huge sideburns! WotC is trying to steal that from me! Please god, make them lose their jobs, I cant stand my Drizzt with non-80' appearance!

See, this is exactly the kind of derisive and insulting attitude I objected to in this thread. People are actively insulting those who prefer their D&D settings to have consistency and depth. I think it is mean and am a little surprised it is so blatant and widespread.

And for the record: I personally do not care one whit about canon, official or otherwise. I barely care about it in my own campaigns, because half the time I am flying so completely by the seat of my pants I misremember what I said last week. So this isn't me feeling insulted, it is me thinking some of you are kind of being jerks for no reason.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

FR depth of lore is part of the appeal of the setting, that its a living setting, dumping 90% of lore kills that and also means that current FR lore makes no sense because the context of the past lore when acted as the foundation for the 5e lore.

They're not dumping it. They're saying they have the option of doing so. Which is, of course, obvious. They own it. Not you, not Ed Greenwood, them.

They also aren't likely to do so, since the last time they messed with the Forgotten Realms, during 4E, it didn't go great, to put it mildly.

The more fans who are truly invested in the canon of a setting, the less likely WotC is to use the nuclear option.

On the other hand, Jakandor could look entirely different next time it appears (narrator: it will never reappear), since almost no one has any emotional attachment to that setting.

 

[Remathilis]

I always feel the need to post this in canon debates...

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

People are actively insulting those who prefer their D&D settings to have consistency and depth

Nope.

I'm making fun of the gross exaggeration of people saying WotC should fire people because of a stupide change. Which isnt really one, anyways, because D&D not following a set canon for more than 4 seconds isnt something new.

 

[Parmandur]

See, this is exactly the kind of derisive and insulting attitude I objected to in this thread. People are actively insulting those who prefer their D&D settings to have consistency and depth. I think it is mean and am a little surprised it is so blatant and widespread.

And for the record: I personally do not care one whit about canon, official or otherwise. I barely care about it in my own campaigns, because half the time I am flying so completely by the seat of my pants I misremember what I said last week. So this isn't me feeling insulted, it is me thinking some of you are kind of being jerks for no reason.

Not trying to yuck anyone's yum, but canon-enshrining is a gatekeeping tactic that has a toxic history in fandom.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That history, that lore, is no longer relevant to the canon.

Not what was said.

They have the option of changing elements. They are not indicating any desire to do so.

It's helpful to look at what happened with Disney and the Star Wars extended universe. It was all technically wiped away, but the good stuff, like Thrawn, reappeared almost immediately. Stuff like Chewie getting killed by a moon falling on him, or an evil clone named Luuke, were dumped.

Not every element of the past almost-50 years of D&D continuity is worth keeping. If WotC wanted to remove the comedy version of Castle Greyhawk from continuity (which they already did with the 3E Expedition to Castle Greyhawk adventure), very few people would actually seriously object.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

This is almost certainly being stated now in advance of the revised and heavily altered Dragonlance campaign

We don't have context. It could also be an answer given in response to a question from the member of the press asking about the Ravenloft changes.

 

[D1Tremere]

Dumping 50 years of stories is exactly what they are doing and treating long term FR fans with contempt.

Not really. D&D 5E started a new design trend of building out from the players point of view. A bottom up instead of top down perspective. Instead of lumping 50 years of lore, world features and non-character knowledge on top of the players, we start in the town or city where the adventure is set and build out from there on what the players know and learn along the way. This design model is incompatible with the idea that 50 years of lore, most of which the players shouldn't know any way, should be in their mind the whole time.
Why is this better? Players and DMs aren't burdened with extraneous and overwhelming volumes of lore that mean literally nothing to their characters, while the game can still incorporate anything from that lore that players and DMs see value in.
Bottom line, fans of the novels and past products are still free to use that material, they just can't rely on their encyclopedic knowledge of non-player-character knowledge to dictate the game world.
The truth is, any DM may use every bit of the history and novels as cannon in their game. The difference is that, as a player, you would need to learn that from gameplay experience.