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.

 

[Bolares]

Moving in one of these directions should not be less "valid" than moving in the other direction.

I would agree with this if D&D was as important as a multiverse for novels as it is for games. D&D is first and foremost an RPG. And all decisions involving this IP will always prioritize the RPG. The game is and always will be more important then the novels, even if some players could come to the game from the novels.

 

[Lanefan]

I would agree with this if D&D was as important as a multiverse for novels as it is for games. D&D is first and foremost an RPG. And all decisions involving this IP will always prioritize the RPG. The game is and always will be more important then the novels, even if some players could come to the game from the novels.

Not "always", but you're correct at the moment.

There's been times in the past (mid '80s with DL, early-mid '90s with the FR novels) where the D&D novels were arguably as or even more popular than the D&D game; and decisions around the game IP were made with the novels in mind. Given that there would seem to be a wave of new novels coming down the pipe, if they're at all successful their importance to the IP is liable to rebound at least a bit.

A much bigger wild card is the movie. If that thing takes off (and let's hope it does!) then who knows what becomes most important - does the game start bending to the movie(s) at some point?

 

[Urriak Uruk]

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.

But this canon thing is much more like this analogy;

There is a restaurant, that changes the menu every season, usually removing the least popular dishes and replacing them with new ones. This over time results in very different menus, as the clientele changes and dishes that were once popular no longer are so.

40 years pass; the restaurant has changed owners in that time, and even is owned by a much larger restaurant brand, although this restaurant keeps its old name and serves the same genre of food. Despite that, its current menu is very different than its very first (although customers would say both belong to the same genre of food).

One customer, who has eaten at this restaurant regularly for 40 years, asks the chef when they will ever bring back that first menu. The chef frowns, "Or you joking? I didn't even work here then. I'm not going to bring back a menu 40 years ago, most customers like this menu we serve today!"

The restaurant didn't just rip up its menu and start from scratch; D&D evolved a lot, sometimes gradually and other times fast, to get to 2021.

 

[Bolares]

does the game start bending to the movie(s) at some point?

We've seen that happen in other IPs before so even if I don't believe it will happen I can't say it won't. Also, I'm an abjuration wizard not a divination one

 

[jdrakeh]

It's worth remembering that TSR's decision to tie the game so closely to other media - including novels and electronic games specifically - played a significant part in its demise (notably, Random House returned a HUGE amount of unsold stock - much of it novels - and SSI declined to renew their agreement to publish electronic games). Some really bad business on TSR's part regarding those tie-ins was also to blame, of course (notably a clause that allowed Random House to return unsold stock and a decision to artificially inflate the licensing fee for SSI) but the tie-ins themselves were part of the problem. The novels and games just weren't making much money in the end (1995-1996-ish) and they helped drag TSR down.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Honestly, if you told me this happened in The Sundering or some Ed Greenwood penned book, I would not be surprised in the slightest.

Would you prefer the Simbul to wake up and say how she had the weirdest dream as Eliminster gets out of the shower?

Hahahahah, if only! Sadly, at that age such witticism was beyond us.

Was its last name Fodder?

It's easy to forget this far in hindsight, but yeah, TSR's fiction line regularly cracked the NY Times bestsellers list. Heck, the deal to acquire the Lord of the Rings as an IP fell apart because TSR wanted the rights to publish new novels and they (Saul Zaentz, I think, but maybe the Tolkien Estate?) weren't willing to agree. As much as TSR publishing a Middle-Earth setting would've blown my mind back then and been a literal game-changer, new fiction would've been an abomination.

There's been times in the past (mid '80s with DL, early-mid '90s with the FR novels) where the D&D novels were arguably as or even more popular than the D&D game; and decisions around the game IP were made with the novels in mind. Given that there would seem to be a wave of new novels coming down the pipe, if they're at all successful their importance to the IP is liable to rebound at least a bit.

While I utterly disagree that Wizards is in any way disrespecting fans or the game's history, I have to say it's kinda nice to be not discussing the latest gaffe from NuTSR/Wounderfil(l)ed/ et al (which was the Dungeon Hobby Shop Museum posting the wrong date for Gary Gygax's birthday - if that doesn't illustrate how much a slapdash nostalgia con they are).

 

[Remathilis]

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.

Marvel TV (prior to Disney+) respected the MCU, but the MCU never reflected the events of the TV shows.

Doctor Who TV has never treated the Target novels, comics or even Big Finish audios as cannon, except as Easter eggs or inspiration.

George Lucas gave no cares about the EU when designing the prequels, which is why the Rule of Two, Jedi marriage and C3P0's origins in the older novels and comics got hastily retconned.

It can happen. It DOES happen. Primary sources often take priority over supplemental. D&D is no different.

 

[Dausuul]

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.)

Dragonlance is an interesting example, because the novels long ago smashed everything that made it Dragonlance. "Dragons of Summer Flame" was written as an ending to the entire thing: Three moons turned into one, the whole pantheon departed, the ancient conflicts of the setting more or less concluded.

As a grand finale to the novel series, it was decent. Maybe not the way I'd have chosen to wrap things up, but it got the job done. But it did no favors to anybody wanting to play a game on Krynn! If you read the Dragonlance novels and then sit down to play a game, you want clerics of Paladine and wizards of the three moons and battles against the dragonarmies--not "Oh, that's all gone now, have some generic D&D fantasy."

And then they wanted to sell more novels, so they brought in crazy dragon overlords from the far side of the world, and revived the gods so they could start killing them, and I don't know what all--I lost all interest after a while. It just felt like the writers yanking us around. And this incoherent mess is the canon people want to preserve?

I mean, in some sense I do understand: Folks want to maintain a sense of continuity, a feeling that what's being released today is building on what they knew and loved. I just don't understand how anybody can have a sense of continuity with such a whipsawing storyline. The only thing that could bring me back to Dragonlance would be to clear away all of that stuff and return to the original foundations--the world of Chronicles and Legends--and build from there.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Dragonlance is an interesting example, because the novels long ago smashed everything that made it Dragonlance. "Dragons of Summer Flame" was written as an ending to the entire thing: Three moons turned into one, the whole pantheon departed, the ancient conflicts of the setting more or less concluded.

As a grand finale to the novel series, it was decent. Maybe not the way I'd have chosen to wrap things up, but it got the job done. But it did no favors to anybody wanting to play a game on Krynn! If you read the Dragonlance novels and then sit down to play a game, you want clerics of Paladine and wizards of the three moons and battles against the dragonarmies--not "Oh, that's all gone now, have some generic D&D fantasy."

And then they wanted to sell more novels, so they brought in crazy dragon overlords from the far side of the world, and revived the gods so they could start killing them, and I don't know what all--I lost all interest after a while. It just felt like the writers yanking us around. And this incoherent mess is the canon people want to preserve?

I mean, in some sense I do understand: Folks want to maintain a sense of continuity, a feeling that what's being released today is building on what they knew and loved. I just don't understand how anybody can have a sense of continuity with such a whipsawing storyline. The only thing that could bring me back to Dragonlance would be to clear away all of that stuff and return to the original foundations--the world of Chronicles and Legends--and build from there.

I would be fine with a Dragonlance setting book taking place immediately after Legends. Much like what was done with Dark Sun back in the day. I am extremely skeptical we'll get that, however. It's far more likely they'll start from scratch before the War of the Lance so they can make more sweeping changes. That's why I'm glad the Draonlance Nexus put out their book before WotC had the chance. That, and the 3rd ed Draonlance books, are all I need.

 

[Parmandur]

A much bigger wild card is the movie. If that thing takes off (and let's hope it does!) then who knows what becomes most important - does the game start bending to the movie(s) at some point?

I think that is what is animating this clarification: setting the expectation that neither BaldursGaye 3 or any film has a bearing on the game material per se.