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]

something that other people cared about deeply being destroyed

But nothing's being destroyed.

They're only saying that nothing from the past lore is protected by a grandfather clause and might be overwritten in a future product if need be.

It does not invalidate what came before unless they specify it in a new product.

 

[Stormonu]

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

Honestly, I’m waiting for a the inevitable Tasselhoff gender swap. Not only would it be hilarious (the interactions with Flint would be at whole new level), that topknot always threw me on his gender.

 

[Mirtek]

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.

And all of that would be possible to grow from 1486 DR (or wherever FR currently is at) onward. No need to throw out novels that happened 1273 DR from ever having happened

 

[RFB Dan]

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?"

I had figured that Victor Mordenheim was changed simply because he was an obvious attempt to bring Frankenstein into Ravenloft, and they thought this change would make it somewhat better.

 

[Bolares]

I disagree. It's one of the reason I never bought an Eberron novel.

Well, that's fine

 

[Umbran]

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.

The Second Doctor was in 21 stories. One or more episodes were lost from 16 of them, which is sad. Animation reconstructions have been made and released for 10 of those 16, so that they are now complete. This leaves only 6 incomplete stories out of 21, which is not "most".

 

[RFB Dan]

The Second Doctor was in 21 stories. One or more episodes were lost from 16 of them, which is sad. Animation reconstructions have been made and released for 10 of those 16, so that they are now complete. This leaves only 6 incomplete stories out of 21, which is not "most".

I didn't realize they did that many animated reconstructions. I'll have to check those out!

 

[Umbran]

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

Loki and a bunch of TVA goons pop into the Inn of the Last Home.
"Give me that, you complete git! You're messing things up!"
Loki and TVA goons pop out again, with artifact.
Multiverse breathes a sigh of relief.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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

DC I will give you. Marvel in the comics has bent over backwards to keep their canon as close to accurate as they can without messing up the possibility of future stories. Just about ever happened in the Marvel universe...still happened, albeit in broad strokes in some cases. They created the MCU as a separate reality, just like they did with Ultimate universe back in the early 2000s.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I also can't help but wonder if this is WotC trying to pre-emptively disown the new Dragonlance novels.