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.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Why do new players need to be prioritized over long term loyal players and readers. Use a setting like Eberron instead for new players, that prefer less depth of lore.

Believe it or not not all long term players want a lore mountain either. It's more "why on earth would they prioritise a small fraction of long term players over a similarly sized fraction of long term players plus accessibility for newbies when newbies should outnumber both groups of long term players."

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Then make sonething else the base setting.

because 1) that getting will get all the new lore and in time that lore will become an obstacle to new players. Establishing lore and unreliable in canon is a better long term strategy. Though that is what I think they are doing they have not confirmed that yet.
2) as a fan of FR lore that is of little use to you because base on past performance (not just in 5e) WoTC do not publish much lore in the non default setting. Your favourite setting would be unsupported and unlikely to get no more lore.
So why exactly is the WoTC stamp of approval important to you? What does it get you that you do not already have?

 

[TheSword]

because 1) that getting will get all the new lore and in time that lore will become an obstacle to new players. Establishing lore and unreliable in canon is a better long term strategy. Though that is what I think they are doing they have not confirmed that yet.
2) as a fan of FR lore that is of little use to you because base on past performance (not just in 5e) WoTC do not publish much lore in the non default setting. Your favourite setting would be unsupported and unlikely to get more lore.
So why exactly is the WoTC stamp of approval important to you? What does it get you that you do not already have?

Not only that, it doesn’t hurt FR players. All their lore is still there, in a useable format, in a hundred or so books that WOC have also made available for a pittance. They’re just saying 5e is a total reboot, so don’t expect us to stick to exactly the same stuff.

In the absence of contradiction FR fans are free to fill the gaps with what they have got. I don’t see how WOCs announcement discourages me in any way from using the map of Ashabenford from 3e and the extra detail from the 2e Volo’s guide to the Dales.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Believe it or not not all long term players want a lore mountain either. It's more "why on earth would they prioritise a small fraction of long term players over a similarly sized fraction of long term players plus accessibility for newbies when newbies should outnumber both groups of long term players."

This also, like @AcererakTriple6 but much further back in time, in the 3.x era when I returned to running D&D I attempted to engage with the FR lore and quickly gave up. There was too much and too much of it I did not find all that interesting and then I got "Well Achtuallyed" at my table once and that annoyed me. So I decided I am only going to use the lore that I know, comes with the adventure i am using or that recently caught my attention and I am actually going to use.
The rest never happened. Now if a player wants to engage with a piece of lore I am open to suggestions but otherwise no.

 

[guachi]

I'm only on page 22, so forgive me if I'm not up to speed on the other 28 pages.

But all the hullabaloo makes me glad my favorite setting is Mystara because at least that setting isn't drowning in material. It had a few forgettable novels and a metaplot that's easy to skip. Plus, it has lots of fan content that easily fits into the existing material.

Being a FR fan would probably drive me crazy with all the possible permutations out there.

 

[Steampunkette]

Why do new players need to be prioritized over long term loyal players and readers. Use a setting like Eberron instead for new players, that prefer less depth of lore.

1) New players are the future.
2) Old players who know the old lore just go "Yeah, right." and play the game normally, changing things as they like.
3) WotC know this and outright stated it in the beginning.

So you wind up with:
1) WotC free to write what they want.
2) Newbie players don't have a big daunting wall of backlogged material to learn for new content to make sense.
3) Older players who have read that backlog of material get to use it for their campaigns to increase narrative depth.

Win/Win/Win situation.

Except for people who can't stand the idea that "Canon", a nebulous concept at -best- with D&D, doesn't include their pet preferences.

 

[Hussar]

I see it the other way around. D&D has always operated on a nebulous quasi-canon, where things are generally true until something comes along and says otherwise. This works great since people can take it or leave it from one edition to the next.

But declaring a wiiiide swath of material to not be canon takes intentional effort to exclude and create boundaries.

Gatekeeping behavior is the real concern. So let's work on that, and not just take away the watercooler where gatekeepers sometimes hang out.

But, what is the impact here? That's what everyone seems to ignore. You know what's changed for Forgotten Realms from last week to this week?

Nothing.

Not a single element has changed.

The ONLY impact declaring stuff non-canon has is when and if WotC decides to publish a new book/adventure/whatever, it forestalls any of the canon police showing up to decry how they've murdered the Realms with this or that change. Nothing else has changed. Zero, zip, nada. Nothing is different.

So, what's the problem here?

 

[Staffan]

I think it's telling that the new Critical Role setting book is being self-published rather than being published by WotC like the previous one was. I believe it's so that Matt Mercer can have complete control over his campaign setting and avoid being in a situation like Keith Baker's, where the campaign setting he created and is still passionate about is owned by WotC and his own products elaborating on Eberron lore officially are non-canonical.

A big difference is that Eberron was never Keith Baker's own setting. Sure, he came up with the basic idea, and was instrumental in writing a lot of material for it, but the setting was created by committee with Bill Slavicsek and James Wyatt being instrumental in designing it as well (not to mention contributions by artists like Wayne Reynolds). Exandria, by comparison, is Mercer's baby much like the Realms were Greenwood's before he sold it to TSR back in the day.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

He actually weighed in on that yesterday:

That's a pretty interesting take, actually: The problem wasn't necessarily the lore itself, but that the lore wasn't designed and used in a way that benefited people running games.

With his own adventure in Candlekeep Mysteries he wanted to make lore relevant to the adventure, rather than just being background fluff that was never utilized.

 

[cmad1977]

Can I ask in what way the announcement hurts you?

I’m pretty sure, at least according to that posters description, that the injury is somewhere in the posterior region. And it hurts apparently.