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.

 

[Faolyn]

It doesn't go away, but nothing new is added
The story is over

So I don't get this. You have all the information. You own the books. You have access to the various fanpages and wikis. WotC isn't going to come over to your house and force you to use only Approved Materials when you read or run a game.

All this really means is that any new books are going to contain mostly new information or new takes on old info instead of just rehashes of the stuff that's already been printed in previous editions. Personally, the entire reason I bought VGR is because it was new stuff. I already have the 2e and 3x Ravenloft books so I don't need a 5e book reprinting that exact same information but with 5e mechanics.

So how exactly does this decision actually negatively affect you? You're not required to like or buy any new books they put out, of course, but how does it stop you from enjoying the stuff you already have? And, of course, you might just end up liking the new stuff if you give it a chance. If that's the case, it doesn't mean that you were wrong to also like the older stuff. It just means you have new stuff you like.

 

[Faolyn]

Plus, the problem with Dragonlance isn't the setting. It is that the major issues of the setting were solved by canonical characters, along a canonical path. I think it made for entertaining fiction that probably sold well. But it doesn't make for a setting that gets players engaged, because players generally prefer to play their own characters, and make their own way through the issues of the day.

I mean, you could say the same thing about Star Wars but people still like playing Star Wars RPGs.

The question is, can Dragonlance support stories told in it that don't involve the things the main characters did and that still feel Dragonlance and not like generic D&D fantasy? (I'm not a DL fan; I literally don't know.)

 

[Faolyn]

If the novels are being produced in part as a means of getting non-players interested in playing the game (which I've always thought was part of their purpose, even if unspoken), then the lore in the game should 100% match the lore in the books. This includes everything - history, "rules", geography, the lot of it.

"I STABBED THIS GUY IN THE HEAD WHY WON'T HE DIE!!!"

"You, uh, you used a dagger and this guy's gotta be high level. He definitely has more than four hit points."

 

[Lanefan]

But, you didn't pay them for the future. You're assuming that creators owe you for having been a past customer. And that just isn't fair.

Maybe it's not fair, but it's an understandable response.

If, say, I've been a loyal customer of a restaurant for a long time because I like the food they make, and then one day they decide to change the whole menu over to food I don't like, it's only natural for me to feel annoyed that my long-term loyalty to them hasn't been reciprocated.

Yes, that annoyance is my problem to deal with, I get that; but that it's my problem to deal with doesn't invalidate it.

Put another way, is it right to feel that a business, in a way, owes a long-time customer something for that customer's sum-total part in making said business a success? I think it's fair to say yes; that loyalty should to some extent run both ways.

 

[Bolares]

If the novels are being produced in part as a means of getting non-players interested in playing the game (which I've always thought was part of their purpose, even if unspoken), then the lore in the game should 100% match the lore in the books. This includes everything - history, "rules", geography, the lot of it.

Even more important that the upcoming movie gets this right. People are going to see a character do something on the screen and expect their character to be able to do the same thing in the same way in the game; and if the movie uses an established setting (or a new one that gets side-along released as a new setting book) it has to remain true to that also.

Then, when (not if) a DM departs from this established lore those players who have been drawn in to the hobby by the books and-or movie know what's being departed from.

There is a world of difference between the novels respecting and representing well the game and the game being beholden to lore stabilished in the novels...

 

[Lanefan]

Also, hey, I just remembered that my brother's first AD&D character was named Canon. I guess I need to break the news to him about this...

Was its last name Fodder?

 

[Faolyn]

Every once in a while we get a thread that gets a bizarre level of activity. That is this thread.

We change the lore every time we play. The lore has been inconsistent and mismanaged the entire time. And people are up in arms because of an off hand comment that they're really only concerned with what they did recently? I just can't.

This is why I've never been able to wrap my head around metaplots, especially those that involve adventures. If you don't play the adventure exactly as written then you're going to get vastly different results--but the metaplot would assume that I got the results that it wanted me to have.

 

[Bolares]

Put another way, is it right to feel that a business, in a way, owes a long-time customer something for that customer's sum-total part in making said business a success?

The customer can feel that, sure. Doesn't make the business own the customer anything. And the analogy can be flipped too. "We've been feeding that guy for decades. The first time we change things up he bails on us!"

 

[Lanefan]

There is a world of difference between the novels respecting and representing well the game and the game being beholden to lore stabilished in the novels...

So you're saying the novels should respect and represent the game (which is great!) but that the game doesn't have to respect and represent the novels?

My point is they need to respect and represent each other equally, where they can.

Why? Because while some people come to the novels via first playing the game, others come to the game via first reading the novels. Moving in one of these directions should not be less "valid" than moving in the other direction.

 

[Bolares]

where they can.

This is the main point. Where they can. And WotC has been doing this. Where they feel they can, or want to represent lore from the novels they do (Artus Cimber in ToA). But they are not obliged. Being able to relly on novels is good. Needing to abide by them is bad.