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.

 

[Umbran]

People that like frizzy '80s hair, sexy boobplate, token ethnicities and checks notes story lines entirely dependent on on a be-penis-ed protagonist.

Mod note:
You are rather too close to laying a whole lot of crud on others just because they happen to like canon. This is not an acceptable approach to the issues in this thread.

... you absolute weapon.

And here, you are just calling people insulting names. That it is British name-calling doesn't make it acceptable.

It is rather past time to dial back the rhetoric, please and thank you.

 

[cmad1977]

If I were so attached to FR “Canon” that it made me this upset…

I’d see a therapist.

 

[Catulle]

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.

Dire Bare: if they're 14 years old it isn't rape.

Really spicy take there, champ. Brave.

 

[Catulle]

Mod note:
You are rather too close to laying a whole lot of crud on others just because they happen to like canon. This is not an acceptable approach to the issues in this thread.



And here, you are just calling people insulting names. That it is British name-calling doesn't make it acceptable.

It is rather past time to dial back the rhetoric, please and thank you.

We have literal apologia for child abuse in thread.

Try moderating that.

 

[Neonchameleon]

There's a difference between an implied approach of "everything in older editions was true, except for these bits we don't like" and an officially stated approach of "everything is older editions is not true, except for these bits we specifically like."

And the difference is clear and doing things the way WotC have is clearly the better option for two reasons:

1. There's an absolutely intimidating amount of Realmslore, and a default of keeping it all will both intimidate newbies and empower people to wield 25 year old books like a cudgel and other jerk behaviour
2. We've an example that's been discussed over the past page or two of a pedophile non-evil Lord of Waterdeep. If WotC were to take the "everything's included except things we don't like" they'd either have to leave a non-evil paedophile in there or draw attention to the fact that they were specifically excluding this person and thus making the whole thing about him obvious rather than something to brush aside

The silliest part is that they could have had exactly the same policy, but never announced it.

That's about the only weird part here.

That all said, in the post you quoted, I'm criticizing someone insinuating that because they found one specific piece of lore that's super horrible, all lore should go, and anyone who says otherwise is clearly in favor of that gross lore. It's a ridiculous assertion, like saying we should throw out vegetarianism because bad people have been vegetarians.

No one is saying people are encouraging the bad lore or think it shouldn't go. But if you say "We don't want this part" you're shining a light on the bad lore and preparing dozens of fights and PR pieces.

 

[Catulle]

And here, you are just calling people insulting names. That it is British name-calling doesn't make it acceptable.

It is rather past time to dial back the rhetoric, please and thank you.

I'm also not sure you understand the context of the term, and thus in the interests of broadening the horizons of the board...

The colloquialism "absolute weapon" is not British, it's Scots vernacular, which is the language of a colonised people frequently used as the shock troop of empire. This sucked, for a lot of reasons.

The term "weapon" was coined due to the confluence of the notion of lashing out combined with the chance of, so doing, to harm one's own people (as a conquered folk are like as to do)

The "absolute" part refers to the indiscriminate (unthinking) use of said approach.

Get it, yet? It's about hurting ourselves.

Thus, criticism of an unwieldy approach to a conflict that flashes back on one's own as much as it advances a cause... if one is lucky... is a critique of that which harms the body politic to which we belong.

There's the context of your insult. The fear of harm to the group from which it emanates. I'm kind of embarrassed to have to explain this given the Americanisms would cheerfully fly without explanation.

I'd just hate to be the Mod telling the people arguing against canonical child abuse to shut up while doing nothing at all to counteract the other side.

It makes the stance horribly clear, and not a single one else of us wants that.

But when moderation won't, we will.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

That's about the only weird part here.

Not if they were asked about it (possibly multiple times).

 

[Neonchameleon]

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.

Can we not have child abuse apologetics please? Especially when it's based on a persistent myth. The fact there was technically a minimum age for marriage that that would have been legal under does not make it remotely normal. If we look at some data as to what happened rather than what was technically legal we find

Marriage statistics indicate that the mean marriage age for the Elizabethan and Jacobean eras was higher than many people realize. Data taken from birthdates of women and marriage certificates reveals mean marriage ages to have been as follows:​

​

1566-1619	27.0 years
1647-1719	29.6 years
1719-1779	26.8 years
1770-1837	25.1 years

So yes, it was technically legal - but highly abnormal.

 

[Catulle]

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.

A 14 year old is a child and if you're defending their place as a reproductive host, you are literally defending rape.

In your own words, no less and quoted for emphasis.

 

[Catulle]

Dear thingy, I had hoped we'd got past "rape is cool" at least 25 years ago but no, turns out, there's a pile of tossers out there ready to make it happen should we relax for a moment