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.

 

[Parmandur]

"kiddie fiddler" Durnan in Waterdeep

I'm sorry, say what?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

The age difference between the couple was giant. Durnan was born in 1283 DR,[4] and his wife was thirty in 1371 DR turning them into a couple with an age difference of fifty-eight years. Furthermore, his daughter was sixteen when his wife was thirty, meaning that she gave birth when she was fourteen.[1]

Whaaaaaat the hell?

 

[Catulle]

They didn't selectively wipe some stupid stuff out (for example unlike the wonderful novels, the aweful, worst book in FR history, Aquistitions Incorporated, is still canon), they threw out the best lore and kept the trash.

See?

 

[Catulle]

Whaaaaaat the hell?

That. So very much that.

 

[Parmandur]

Whaaaaaat the hell?

I mean, not to fall too hard into a Thermian argumenr...but that's not unrealistic (aside from his arrested aging, which is touched upon in Dungeon of the Mad Mage). I do a lot of genealogy work, and it's really nit that long ago where that wouldn't be that odd an occupancy, even if the normal age of first marriage was closer to 30 as it is still.

 

[Catulle]

I'm confident that they're going to address that. Alzeheimer's Disease is something that, again, the vast majority of society agrees is something to be feared and pitied, not something to be used to make someone the object of ridicule, outside of very dark humor, which WotC historically has not done.

To a degree I can see it as code for a God whose worship has subsided, so he's only getting so much prayer (oxygen) through to his essence (brain), but yeah, the way it was handled, tropes and the like, I'm sure there's a good metaphor right there if it's handled just a little more sensitively (i.e. less for the lols)

 

[Catulle]

I mean, not to fall too hard into a Thermian argumenr...but that's not unrealistic (aside from his arrested aging, which is touched upon in Dungeon of the Mad Mage). I do a lot of genealogy work, and it's really nit that long ago where that wouldn't be that odd an occupancy, even if the normal age of first marriage was closer to 30 as it is still.

So let's not, and wipe the pederast from the canon entirely? (I believe his 5e treatment leaves those details entirely out of the picture, so a "no, that never happened" is a general good)

 

[Parmandur]

To a degree I can see it as code for a God whose worship has subsided, so he's only getting so much prayer (oxygen) through to his essence (brain), but yeah, the way it was handled, tropes and the like, I'm sure there's a good metaphor right there if it's handled just a little more sensitively (i.e. less for the lols)

Based on the D&D Live presentation, Fizban sounds playful and eccentric, but with it. Sharp, even.

 

[Parmandur]

So let's not, and wipe the pederast from the canon entirely? (I believe his 5e treatment leaves those details entirely out of the picture, so a "no, that never happened" is a general good)

Yeah, certain not going to argue that: but it's not a crazy situation historically.

 

[Catulle]

I'm sorry, say what?

Sorry, I've been in and out of the realms for about thirty years now, since the second edition AD&D box set (which was also, for the historians, and unhelpfully, grey) and I've... accumulated a lot of this nonsense over the years. I only wish I was this absorbant in my law lectures!