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.

 

[Uni-the-Unicorn!]

I'm sorry, say what?

Pedophile?

 

[Catulle]

That is patently absurd. No one expects you to like what they are doing, but be serious. WotC does not hate the Forgotten Realms, or the history ofvthe Forgotten Realms.

In fact they hated it so much, they put it front-and-centre of the best selling edition yet! That'll teach those grognards! It's gonna tank so bad... wait, what were we talking about?

 

[Catulle]

Canon isn't an all-or-nothing proposition, you know. You can retcon/ignore specific bad ideas without throwing out the entire thing.

And to put it mildly, it's pretty unfair to suggest someone who wants to keep canon is endorsing child rape.

It's pretty fair to suggest that someone who wants to keep all canon is... or (as I was aiming for) that they hadn't fully thought through their position.

 

[JEB]

It's pretty fair to suggest that someone who wants to keep all canon is... or (as I was aiming for) that they hadn't fully thought through their position.

As fair as arguing that vegetarianism is immoral because Hitler was also a vegetarian, I suppose.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

Edit: Removed. Needlessly snarky.

 

[Catulle]

I hate pineapple on pizza because I'm mildly allergic (makes my mouth itch)
It's causing this end-user to have problems

Therefore I want NO pizzas to ever have pineapple again and it to be removed from the menu. People who want Hawaiian pizza can simple add it themselves to ham pizza they buy

Practically everyone is allergic to pineapple (in fact, the itching is it desperately attempting to digest us) - for some of us, it's a buzz. We may maybe naturally selected for short lives due to poor taste, but it's a way out from actual harm.

 

[Catulle]

As fair as arguing that vegetarianism is immoral because Hitler was also a vegetarian, I suppose.

One, he wasn't.

Thus two, what the hell?

The avoidance of harm isn't the same as accumulating harm credits you absolute weapon.

 

[Catulle]

That's a very different issue
Harmful canon is bad and can be safely removed
But there's a big difference between harmful lore being removed and ALL past lore being removed because a small percentage might be harmful

And guess what?
Gatekeeping STILL exists and there is STILL lore people are expected to know to prove they're True Fans/ Gamers
It's just four years old rather than forty
You can't remove the behavior by removing one method the naughty words use to be naughty words

Do you want to be the guy that roots through the Forgotten Realms for kiddie-rapists, because I'll bet nobody else does! Better just be rid and pay attention to the themes of the past without being beholden to the awful specifics the past has thrown up.

 

[Dire Bare]

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.

I think referring to this version of Durnan as a "kiddie fiddler" or pederast is a bit much. It was certainly a bad idea to add to Realms lore, and it's definitely one of those artifacts we can gladly leave in the dust. But a 14-year-old isn't a kiddie, they're a teenager. And it's only relatively recent in human history that teenagers weren't of marriageable age. Not to make the Thermian Argument that this little bit of Realms lore is OK (it's not) due to the medievalesque basis for D&D style fantasy, just a little pushback on the extreme reaction.

Of course, D&D isn't medieval historical recreation, it's a fantasy only loosely based on romantic notions of medieval times and was created for a modern audience. And that modern audience is very not OK with 14 year olds getting married to old dudes, nor should they be. This should have never been added to Realms lore, and it needs to be excised.

I'm not familiar with the context, outside of what's been discussed in this thread . . . . but I'm really hoping that Durnan's 14-year-old wife is a math error rather than intentional. Please, I'm really hoping this is the case. If 500 year old Durnan married an adult woman (by today's standards) . . . I'm totally cool with that idea, despite the "vast age difference".

Of course, this also gets into the ridiculousness of needlessly adhering to existing canon. Durnan, and all of the other mysteriously long-lived denizens of the Realms . . . should have either died at their appointed times, or the setting shouldn't have been advanced. We have a ridiculous number of Realms characters who have survived from pre-Avatar times, through the Spellplague, and to the modern Realms . . . . so stupid and immersion breaking.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

And honestly? As much as I love 4E D&D (and Zeitgeist/Ashes of Athas have my heart forever), the Realms iteration was the worst of the lot in my opinion; just a thematic mess from start to finish. Obliteration of the "FR Canon" as-was at least relieves us of "kiddie fiddler" Durnan in Waterdeep and a load of similarly ill considered artefacts. I'm glad to be rid of them. And of any fans of said iteration of that character. Good riddance.

It could be simple that the writer messed up the math.