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]

And I want them both, and that video game, and that comic book, and that TV show, and that movie, to all be consistent with a shared world which has references and continuity across every piece, and form of media, all overseen by the IP owner.

The issue is that has literally never happened, and attempts to make it happen ruin IPs all the time. Though, I will admit, the opposite happens all the time as well.

There has never been a movie that perfectly adapted the canon of a book, comic book, or video game. Video Game movies are particularly horrendous in this regard. But part of that is that you cannot possibly make it work. What works in a book doesn't work in a movie. Some things must change by necessity.

Now, this can go too far. You can ruin a movie or show by removing too much canon, but we have to acknowledge that perfect canon transferal across media is impossible.

And this applies triple for TTRPGs. Because to make them "canon" you have to remove player choice. That, or the "canon" is just the background set piece that the adventure takes place in... and then resets ignoring the player's efforts.

 

[Mirtek]

A summary of what?

Of these events. Some fansite surely must have written them down. So when you get the reference in the show, you can later go online and read up on it

 

[Mirtek]

Why, when it is so easy to know that the novel was a mirror universe to the game?

Because I would not enjoy reading that

What if I've been running a game where Azoun is supposed to be an important NPC we time skip from 1370 DR to 1375? Do I tell the players that "the canon says he died, so all of that work building an alliance was for nothing, sorry."

Than that's your game. Doesn't matter for the ongoing canon metaplot. Neither does mine. My own games don't even matter for myself beyond the single campaign.

Kinda like saying you've seen a movie because you read the Wikipedia article on it.

Which I actually do a lot if the Wiki entry is detailed enough. I skipped quite a few entries in longer movie series when I "had to" watch a later movie and haven't seen all previous installments of the series.

I mean some Wiki summaries are really barebones, but others are long and detailed enough that you don't need to see part 3 of something after reading them and are perfectly ready to see part 4

IT is? Please give me a page and book quote. From Season 1-10 adventure league modules or any of the adventure paths books, which reference the Troubles and has the Troubles center stage as a plot point.

There were followers of Cyric and even a chosen of Cyric in AL modules

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Let folks who like canon think it's all one story;

How is that not lying?

 

[JEB]

How is that not lying?

If you don't have an actual policy on canon, except "whatever works for this product" (which, I suspect, is always their stance in the end)... it isn't a lie when you don't declare any particular span of works to be or not be canon.

 

[TheSword]

And I want them both, and that video game, and that comic book, and that TV show, and that movie, to all be consistent with a shared world which has references and continuity across every piece, and form of media, all overseen by the IP owner.

Even if that means living with the sins of the fathers? Like four different power groups occupying Myth Drannor in the space of 30 years, Each one wiping the previous one out? After a thousand years of unchanging. Even if those groups fundamentally change and in some cases destroy the things that made that place cool? The lore on Myth Drannor is a mess read the wiki page.

 

[Keldryn]

A lot of the EU is back. Lucasfilm/Disney just took the opportunity to replace anything they didn't feel worked from the EU, rather than feeling constrained by it.

Yes, they've definitely been mining it for ideas, borrowing elements but usually re-contextualizing them. Lucas and Filoni did a fair bit of that on The Clone Wars.

Kind of like what a lot of DMs do with adventures band campaign settings, really.

They won't even release the Holiday Special on Disney+, they just cut out the good part, the animated Boba Fett story, and gave us that. Disney+ has both Ewok movies, the Droids cartoon, and the Ewok cartoon. The Holiday Special is almost anti-canon at this point. However, they did release a LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, which was an homage/satire of the original . . .

It was also awesome. Love the LEGO Star Wars shows.

 

[TheSword]

There were followers of Cyric and even a chosen of Cyric in AL modules

That’s like saying having priests of Cyric were in 5e is putting the Spellplague as a major plot point for 5e

 

[Paul Farquhar]

If you don't have an actual policy on canon, except "whatever works for this product" (which, I suspect, is always their stance in the end)... it isn't a lie when you don't declare any particular span of works to be or not be canon.

With two classic and one revisited setting coming up in the next year or so, that adds up to an awful lot of "whatever works for this product", and WotC have just witnessed all the wailing and gnashing of teeth over Ravenloft. It's only fair that WotC try to explain to people "you know that canon thing, it doesn't really exist".

 

[Azzy]

Because I would not enjoy reading that


Than that's your game. Doesn't matter for the ongoing canon metaplot. Neither does mine. My own games don't even matter for myself beyond the single campaign.

This is sad.