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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...

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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."


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"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.
 

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Catulle

Hero
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.
It's definitely in the author's framing, too. For an easy example, see Romeo and Juliet.

Vis a vis, say, Othello
 

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Catulle

Hero
I will admit, it's far easier to parse Zardnaar once you've heard him in the original kiwi, and it's a thing I struggled with (as a racist assumption, tbf) until I'd grasped that.
 

Zardnaar

Legend
It's definitely in the author's framing, too. For an easy example, see Romeo and Juliet.

Vis a vis, say, Othello

Exactly. What's art and what's not is highly debatable at the best if times. I'm not overly familiar with Othello being honest.

I think our version of that type of work was Once Were Warriors.

The best D&D novels I have read also tend to be the most mature ones.
 

Zardnaar

Legend
I will admit, it's far easier to parse Zardnaar once you've heard him in the original kiwi, and it's a thing I struggled with (as a racist assumption, tbf) until I'd grasped that.

Might be a cultural thing as well. Age 14 I watched Once Were Warriors, aged 10 or 11 read Brother in the Land, age 13 read about the Holocaust.

So I've got a strong stomach for various topics.
 



Zardnaar

Legend
The thing about Othello is that he is not, by any degree, honest ;)

I don't know much about Othello we didn't do Shakespeare at school at least not that one.

We got Enders Game, Animal Farm, something by Byron and other stuff I've forgotten.
 

Catulle

Hero
It's a great film, up there with City of God, Beasts of No Nation and the one about the invasion of... not-Berlin. I can't remember which, but it was about German children as the front collapsed. Maybe one of the coastal cities?
 

Zardnaar

Legend
It's a great film, up there with City of God, Beasts of No Nation and the one about the invasion of... not-Berlin. I can't remember which, but it was about German children as the front collapsed. Maybe one of the coastal cities?

Haven't seen any of them. Wife vetoed Beasts of No Nation not familiar with City God.
 


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