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.

 

[Scribe]

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

How very inclusive.

 

[Umbran]

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

DC and Marvel reboot their universes with some regularity.

 

[Shardstone]

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.

You were never entitled to get more of the old Forgotten Realms that you enjoyed, nor was anyone, WotC included, beholden by any metric to provide for you more of that same old universe you had come to enjoy.

I understand that losing the chance for more stories in your old myths hurts. I get that. It's happened in Star Wars, has happened in Star Trek, has happened in Marvel and DC and all other major American comics.

But WotC doesn't want to be chained to the Fantasy that was written in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Those times are passed. Fantasy as a genre has evolved leaps and bounds BECAUSE of what was written back then. Because of that evolution, because of the foundation OLD D&D established, the audience of D&D has developed new tastes, and the audience as Fantasy as a whole has become so much more sophisticated.

The expectations that you had for the old to return were never realistic. The world has progressed 30+ years, 40+ years. Its time for a new canon for a new audience to grow with.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

Ask any woman who's had to answer the equivalent of an AP History exam before buying something in a comic book shop.

 

[Shardstone]

DC and Marvel reboot their universes with some regularity.

Yep, that's my point!

And this below is my point too!

Ask any woman who's had to answer the equivalent of an AP History exam before buying something in a comic book shop.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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.

I choose to believe all those running down corridor shots and quarry locations were artistic choices, not monetary ones!

 

[RFB Dan]

Any changes that are made to Dragonlance I'm going to blame on Tasselhoff's using the time travel artifact.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

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.

Yeah, I simply don't get it. Like I'd get it somewhat if we were talking about media that we just passively consume, but this is not that. Even if you and I had read all the same FR books and considered them to be 'canon' for out FR games, the moment we start our games and let the characters run loose in the setting out versions of Forgotten Realms would diverge. Hard canon doesn't make sense for RPGs. PCs might kill Elminster, marry Drizzt, become the king of Baldur's Gate or whatever.

 

[Faolyn]

They did it in Ravenloft. No reason to think they wouldn't do it elsewhere.

Generally speaking, most of the Darklords that got significantly changed were the really problematic ones. Dominic d'Honaire's whole shtick was mind control (and being rapey--he may appear ugly to any woman he has feelings for, but you can't tell me he wasn't mind-controlling random housemaids and the like just to get off). So was Urik Von Kharkov, who also had the problem of being one the only dark-skinned Darklord in the Core, and he also literally an animal that was turned into a person. Vlad Drakov was racist against everyone, to the point that the 3x books noted that he even enslaved or killed humans who weren't white enough. The only real out-of-nowhere change is for Victor Mordenheim--and he wasn't even really the Darklord in the first place.

So the question is, do Dragonlance or Greyhawk or whatever have major NPCs that are that sort of problematic? I know there's Goldmoon and her people, but that wouldn't require much more than a simple change of costuming). But I don't know those settings well enough to be able to think about any other NPCs and go "yeesh, what were they thinking?"

 

[RFB Dan]

Yeah, I simply don't get it. Like I'd get somewhat if we were talking about media that we just passively consume, but this is not that. Even if you and I had read all the same FR books and considered them to be 'canon' for out FR games, the moment we start our games and let the characters run loose in the setting out versions of Forgotten Realms would diverge. Hard canon doesn't make sense for RPGs. PCs might kill Elminster, marry Drizzt, become the king of Baldur's Gate or whatever.

Back in the day (1993, 2e days) my group killed Manshoon and Fzoul, and told Sememmon to leave because he wasn't worth our effort. Those were fun games that usually went stupid along the way.