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.

 

[Chaosmancer]

you just read up on it online? Seriously no fan site did a full summary of it? Not a single one?

A summary of what?

Part of the insidious thing is that you are going to get a reference to these events, but no call out to what that is referencing. Maybe it is just bad writing. I've certainly thought the authors are referencing something to find out that... no, they weren't.

So, the first thing that happens is you get confused and taken out of the story. Then you have to search up why you were confused. Then you have to hope that some third-party wrote a sufficient summary, and you will still never expeirence the story directly, which is a big deal. Reading a summary is not the same as experiencing the story, I've gotten that from experience

 

[JEB]

I'm confused as to why someone who is intensely interested in Canon and wants to debate or discuss or reminisce or whatever about it it is a "Bully" and a "Jerk". This is where you've taken this individual who -really likes- the previous canon that is now being erased.

Meanwhile there's a bunch of people in this thread who are intensely interested in Canon and want to debate or discuss or reminisce, but they're "Nice people who just like Lore".

This is the dichotomy you've invented to create imaginary bad faith people who are the "Real Problem" and are "Being Punished".

You previously cited folks who argued with the DM at length at the game table, over old canon, to include public settings like Adventurers' League. I assumed this was criticism of their disruptive behavior. I was agreeing with you - I thought - that this is disruptive behavior, but disagreeing that restricting canon to 5E will really address it, or even stop it. Because the ultimate problem isn't about canon.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a player that wants a canon-accurate game. But if it becomes clear that a game won't be canon, they can either accept it, perhaps treating this campaign as an alternate universe; or gracefully leave, hopefully to find a game that better suits them. Sticking around and ruining everyone else's fun is jerk behavior, and trying to force the DM and other players to conform to their needs is bullying. That has nothing to do with canon, it's just about player behavior.

You also have players who argue over rules, but that doesn't mean you should toss aside most of the D&D rules to stop them. You also have players who role-play disruptively, but that doesn't mean role-playing should be strictly regulated for everyone. That would make things less fun for the vast majority of other folks, who liked playing by the rules or going all-out with role-playing, but never ruined a game over it. Just like there are many folks who loved the idea of an official continuing story since the dawn of the game, and were never a problem for other players, but now no longer feel like they have that story.

 

[Chaosmancer]

When Aunt May goes from being an elderly, frail lady to a MILF in Ultimate Spiderman (and the recent movies) they don't ever reference old lady Aunt May ever again. Aunt May is no longer an old lady. She's a MILF played by a very hot actress who possibly is dating Iron Man's sidekick.

Okay, I admit. That bothered me. It is fine, I know its fine... but that bothered me.

Weirdly, it didn't bother me with Into the Spiderverse making her a bad-ass with a baseball bat, but hot may bothered me.

She's actually older than the Aunt May from the original Spider-Man movies! We just don't consign women to cronehood after 50 quite as quickly any more.

That... would explain a lot. I thank you for this knowledge, because it helps me be a little less frustrated with the change from a sweet old lady raising her kin to being... a hottie just because.

Edit: Oh, I thought you were talking about Comics may being just a bit over her 50's. Which, at the time, was shown by her being very old. I'm keeping to that explanation though. I like it.

 

[Hussar]

The problem is @JEB, canon police are very, very active in and out of games. Even the merest whiff of a change brings them out of the woodwork to bludgeon all and sundry with their encyclopedic knowledge of canon. Heck, suggest that a Tolkien race be removed from D&D and replaced with one that is more popular is met with reaction akin to someone slathering a puppy with ketchup and taking a big old bite.

 

[The Green Hermit]

Okay, I admit. That bothered me. It is fine, I know its fine... but that bothered me.

Weirdly, it didn't bother me with Into the Spiderverse making her a bad-ass with a baseball bat, but hot may bothered me.




That... would explain a lot. I thank you for this knowledge, because it helps me be a little less frustrated with the change from a sweet old lady raising her kin to being... a hottie just because.

Edit: Oh, I thought you were talking about Comics may being just a bit over her 50's. Which, at the time, was shown by her being very old. I'm keeping to that explanation though. I like it.

I am seeing that, too. If Ben was his uncle, not his great uncle, he wouldn't have been that old, even if there was a 20 year age difference between the brothers.

 

[Scribe]

Following from this theory, canon is in rpg gaming (as it is in religion and literature) inherently coercive. Those who enjoy the game through canon need other people, in particular a central authority, to validate lore. If it's just them and their game, then that lore is less meaningful and enjoyable. This means that the official source (wotc in this case) needs to take a stance on whether goblins are evil, they need to print this stance in the MM and in adventures (along with a little alignment tag), and that's the baseline. This baseline is required in order for canonophiles to have fun. Implicitly, everyone else needs to also accept that baseline, even if we are "free" to ignore it in our games (thus making a large part of our purchased book irrelevant

Yes.

A developer or owner of the IP is the central authority, and despite ones implementation of that canon, is should still be acknowledged as correct.

So 100% yes. WotC provides the Alignments. They provide the ASI. They provide the canon.

Removal of this detracts from there even being settings, because as you say a shallow setting is easy to have for people who don't want to be part of that shared world.

 

[Scribe]

If you're referring to the sexual harassment lawsuit, they're mostly about former employees, I believe and Blizzard is taking steps, including some just announced today, to distance themselves from the most prominent alleged harassers. League of Legends and Riot survived some seriously awful allegations as well -- hopefully by becoming a better place to work. I suspect Blizzard will be fine as well, although the next year or so will probably be a rocky one.

Lawsuits come and go. Retail being a disgrace is a whole different kind of self inflicted wound.

 

[JEB]

(I don't know Marvel enough to know if they did anything like Crisis or if they just switch universes.)

Marvel did Secret Wars in 2015, which technically rebooted the continuity... but in practice it was an identical history, except for moving Miles Morales and his family onto the main Earth. So they're actually one of the few major media franchises that still has a continuity that continues from the beginning (if with many, many retcons over the years).

I consider this to be D&D's own Crisis on Infinite EarthsSettings.

Would it be more palatable if they declared fifth edition to be a separate multiverse?

To be honest, if D&D did some kind of Crisis event that brought all the classic settings together for one last hurrah, and then reset the multiverse at the end with new versions of all the settings, it'd be pretty cool.

You'd still make some fans unhappy, because they still wouldn't want to lose their old favorites, but at least there'd be a "true" in-universe explanation for the changes (rather than it only being a business decision). I think that would satisfy more people than it would upset.

 

[JEB]

The problem is @JEB, canon police are very, very active in and out of games. Even the merest whiff of a change brings them out of the woodwork to bludgeon all and sundry with their encyclopedic knowledge of canon. Heck, suggest that a Tolkien race be removed from D&D and replaced with one that is more popular is met with reaction akin to someone slathering a puppy with ketchup and taking a big old bite.

Sure, but this canon policy won't make folks like that go away. It might just make them more upset and more likely to complain...

 

[SehanineMoonbow]

See... I'd be more willing to believe you if it wasn't for two things.

The Time of Troubles
The Spell Plague.

Both are consistently mentioned as horrendous attempts to address the lore in a wide sweeping manner, and generally hated.

In fact, I think the only major shift in Canon I have not seen utterly panned is The Sundering (and this includes me seeing discussions of the Dark Sun Prism Pentad thing, the Greyhawk Wars, the Time Wars, ect ect ect) and I think that the reason the Sundering isn't hated is because it was a single moment that reversed a lot of things hated about the Spell Plague and Time of Troubles. It was less a change and more a single use reset button.

So, actually... no, I don't think it has pretty much ever been better to address these things in-universe. Every attempt that has been made is generally met with derision.

If they come up with a reason why something is no longer canon, then they're going to make it an even more convoluted mess than it already is, and most likely everyone would hate whatever reason they used to do so. Ao decided to meddle? Time travel? Someone went and mass-murdered/brainwashed/removed from the timestream all the people of X culture/faction/guild/city/religion, leaving nothing behind? Toril and Oerth crashed into each other, forming a super-fantasy-world? Ed Greenwood fell asleep while Elminster was in his kitchen prattling on about something, and his dreams created a new universe?

Sometimes it's a lot easier just to wipe the slate clean.

(Quoted you both since you said similar things). That is a good point. Many of their in-universe explanations...haven't been great. The rest of my post still stands though. I still feel like they are just trying to handwave (and are being disrespectful and two faced, to boot) and at least with some things, they have the opportunity to build on what was already there (looking at the "new" drow), but won't.

(If they really want to wipe the slate clean, they should make a new setting).