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.

 

[Catulle]

Remember he's more than half a century older than she is. When she gave birth at the age of 14 he was in his 70s.

As for "non modern life", sure. And we get to slaughter the slave Lords. This guy is tagged as Neutral and this is presented as no big deal. (There is another possibility - that he's impotent or gay and needed an heir, while she was about to lose all status due to pregnancy before he married her)

Literally, thank funk for the realms making him a more palatable character by cutting that back story. I mean, we had the conversation when he first emerged and the DM was less Realms-y than we were "so is that the same..."

 

[Zardnaar]

And were 70 year olds frequently having sex with 14 year olds? Because 58 year age gap

I'm not sure on the context of the referred material. I haven't read the material so idk how it was handled etc.

Humans can live hundreds of years in FR as well.

It's a fantasy world with different social mores, laws, expectations etc so can't really be judged using modern morality espicially if said novel was written decades ago.

Note I think the vast majority of FR novels are garbage. Well D&D novels in general.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

For me it's a grey area. The law can say one thing but the 13-15 years olds (and younger) were having sex with each other in the 90's when I was a teenager.

Dumbass teens doing things with dumbass teens is less problematic than an adult who knows better getting involved. The laws in the US typically have carve-outs for teens with teens.

And from the sounds of it due to the internet nothing has changed and it's even more common now.

The age that Americans have their first sexual experience with another person has actually been going up and sex with young people has been becoming less common for more than a decade now. Lots more prevalent sex education and the ability to get porn on demand on your phone has apparently cooled a lot of folks' jets.

 

[Catulle]

"Steve, are you sure about this dude..."

"Oh, HOLY FUNKING SHIRTBALLS, that never happened"

And we all lived happily ever after with no child abuse.

Like cutting the Realms' history to 2014 will do without the need to comb through books looking for instances of sex abuse that literally nobody wants to do.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

It is but I think the laws around age of consent s are very grey. It's 16 here, 18 USA afaik.

The whole point is that grown adults should not be having sex with kids. If kids are having sex with other kids, well stopping hormonal teenagers from exploring their sexuality is as hard as herding cats, so the best thing we can do is provide a safe environment where they can properly educate themselves. If they do decide to, uh, "practically apply" their knowledge amongst each other, that's their prerogative so long as everybody directly involved consents and are not abusing each other. BUT ADULTS SHOULD NOT BE HAVING SEX WITH KIDS. Which then brings me back 'round to the point that the age of consent, and the legal definition of where "kid" ends and "adult" begins, should be higher than it legally is in some places.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I'm not sure on the context of the referred material. I haven't read the material so idk how it was handled etc.

Humans can live hundreds of years in FR as well.

It's a fantasy world with different social mores, laws, expectations etc so can't really be judged using modern morality espicially if said novel was written decades ago.

Note I think the vast majority of FR novels are garbage. Well D&D novels in general.

We just had a whole thread (or was it several) on the Thermian Argument, do we have to go over that again?

 

[Catulle]

I'd note we haven't even hit the problems of things like the Dark Elf trilogy, or the Spellfire one in terms of Realms consent.

 

[Zardnaar]

The whole point is that grown adults should not be having sex with kids. If kids are having sex with other kids, well stopping hormonal teenagers from exploring their sexuality is as hard as herding cats, so the best thing we can do is provide a safe environment where they can properly educate themselves. If they do decide to, uh, "practically apply" their knowledge amongst each other, that's their prerogative so long as everybody directly involved consents and are not abusing each other. BUT ADULTS SHOULD NOT BE HAVING SEX WITH KIDS. Which then brings me back 'round to the point that the age of consent, and the legal definition of where "kid" ends and "adult" begins, should be higher than it legally is in some places.

Not saying it's right and I don't disagree with what you're saying.

However when it comes to novels or history books it's up to the individual adult to make up their own mind what they're comfortable reading.

The line for me is if you read about something and that's gross/wrong becomes "that's a good idea" (from the readers pov) and that's on the individual reader imho.

 

[Catulle]

The whole point is that grown adults should not be having sex with kids. If kids are having sex with other kids, well stopping hormonal teenagers from exploring their sexuality is as hard as herding cats, so the best thing we can do is provide a safe environment where they can properly educate themselves. If they do decide to, uh, "practically apply" their knowledge amongst each other, that's their prerogative so long as everybody directly involved consents and are not abusing each other. BUT ADULTS SHOULD NOT BE HAVING SEX WITH KIDS. Which then brings me back 'round to the point that the age of consent, and the legal definition of where "kid" ends and "adult" begins, should be higher than it legally is in some places.

I refer you to the Birmingham Teen Pregnancy Unit hanging out in the International Convention Centre with free condoms because it was easy to access and had the cleanest public toilets in the city. Championship work.

 

[Zardnaar]

We just had a whole thread (or was it several) on the Thermian Argument, do we have to go over that again?

No all I'm claiming is read what you're comfortable with.