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.

 

[Einar Stormcrow]

And so by association, to desire a hard canon, to be against statements such as Wizards is making, is to be aligned with if not outright labeled, as a toxic gatekeeper.

Fantastic.

The expectation of a hard canon, or for people to zealously adhere to it, in a medium that is all about creativity, collaborative storytelling, and focusing on the stories of the PCs instead of the NPCs...is kind of a weird take, yeah.

 

[Shardstone]

Call it what it is, abolishing canon, not demphasing it, that is sugar coating this disaster. I see no connection between decanonizing things in DL including more women and PoC, the women of DL are popular and iconic already.

With who?

 

[Reynard]

Love it.
The people this “pushes out of the hobby” probably aren’t the type of people we want around anyways.

Well, at least we know where the discourse is now.

 

[Stormonu]

Hear me out here: They can create a 5E Dragonlance in which the Companions do not exist, or do not adventure, and it's up to the player characters to save the day.

They tried to do that when the modules first appeared (I know someone who ran the modules NOT using the Companions). The books just made it so no one wanted to use their characters, they wanted to use the Companions.

If they do return to Dragonlance during the War, I think they would be better served if they rewrite the adventures so they are elsewhere and perhaps have a cameo interaction with the Companions and their actions at best.

I would approach it similar to the way that WEG did the Star Wars game; the modules generally took place in the time between New Hope and Empire, and the likes of Luke, Han and the rest were mentioned or might have a distant involvement with the characters (In Graveyard of Alderaan, you have to ward of an inquisitive cruiser ferrying Princess Leia), but you’re not recreating the events of the movies.

 

[Mirtek]

Is that a thing? I have never seen anyone express the opinion that any D&D video game is canon, even when they were actually popular.

Actually WotC (and TSR) had statements, just like the one this thread is about, exactly about such cases. Video games themselves were not canon, but the novels based on those video games then were the canon version of how it happened

 

[Shardstone]

Is preferring consistent canon in a franchise in which you are heavily invested a toxic idea to you?

Do DC and Marvel have toxic ideas of canon as the new WotC does?

 

[Mirtek]

You can still share in your enjoyment of canon and linked together stories and the mythos of the Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance by going back to those stories and books yourself.

Yet for some people that means we will no longer be able to enjoy new stories and the mythos of the Forgotten Realms .

Having now read more and more of this thread I am more sad about so many posts expressing their outright glee about seeing something that other people cared about deeply being destroyed than about the destruction itself now.

 

[billd91]

It always amazes me that the BBC's Doctor Who office and similar outfits don't have in-house historians in the same way.

If they don't, it's because it's not worth the expense. Someone playing that role might make sense for certain kinds of studios who have money to burn. That's not really the BBC.

 

[Scribe]

It's also super-confusing to those of us who haven't read any of the novels (like me) and who didn't buy the adventures with the meta-plot elements (like me).

Plus, sometimes adventures have end results that people just don't like. Like the Planescape Faction Wars, where it seems like most people, whether they played the adventure or not, didn't like how they rewrote the factions.

Totally fair, and there are many things I just head canon in other settings.

I'm again not saying that canon should be a club to let people wield at their tables, but that in a shared setting a history, and World building, can enrich ones experience.

Or ignore it as they choose.

 

[RFB Dan]

If they don't, it's because it's not worth the expense. Someone playing that role might make sense for certain kinds of studios who have money to burn. That's not really the BBC.

The BBC should take that imaginary cash to instead find copies of the lost episodes. I would love to see more of the 2nd Doctor but most of his stories are incomplete.