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]

But only because WotC decided that they no longer have those. In the past they used to have them. In fact until this thread I assumed the 5e adventures still have them.

Actually now that I think about it, even with this thread the adventures must still have them. Because adventures taking place after RoT don't happen in a world ruled by Tiamat.

So her failure is the canon outcome implied by the other printed stuff that comes after it

So who was canonically implied to have defeated her? In the adventure, which PCs are you supposed to play to match canon? How canonically was supposed to die? Why, canonically, did those adventurers get captured by the Drow in Out of the Abyss? How did that canonically affect Ten Towns before the Curse of the Frostmaiden froze them?

If it was a hard canon, these would have answers. Hard answers that the table would have to follow and accept to have canon. We never had answers to these questions. Beyond "the world wasn't destroyed" we had no canon answers to how these adventures panned out. Because that would limit tables and how they could play the game.

 

[Bolares]

So who was canonically implied to have defeated her? In the adventure, which PCs are you supposed to play to match canon? How canonically was supposed to die? Why, canonically, did those adventurers get captured by the Drow in Out of the Abyss? How did that canonically affect Ten Towns before the Curse of the Frostmaiden froze them?

If it was a hard canon, these would have answers. Hard answers that the table would have to follow and accept to have canon. We never had answers to these questions. Beyond "the world wasn't destroyed" we had no canon answers to how these adventures panned out. Because that would limit tables and how they could play the game.

Yeah, I find hard to believe that in a world where the death curse canonically existed, the adventures and stories after ir weren't affected by such a huge world shaking event.

 

[billd91]

But I don't think continuity and consistency are what people mean by canon. Because Canon alsmot never comes up in discussions of a single author working a single series. It is usually brought up in regards to works by many authors in a shared universe. And canon is rarely the big things. No one really brings charges of "non-canon" to something like a Star Wars story where Vader is the Emperor. That is considered something else. Canon is usually called up on the details.

That's true and it makes sense - a single author has full authority over what happens in their work and how it all relates together even if they accidentally brain-fart something that's discontinuous. No degree of canonization is necessary to legitimize what they say as being said with authority.

 

[Malmuria]

I think the stress of learning lore from decades of game products for new DMs is real, but not the only way lore limits accessibility. Game products that are lore-centric would need to be designed differently from those that are game-centric. Of course it's a spectrum, not a hard line, but some generalities come to mind:

	Lore centric	Game centric
General	defined, exhaustive, codified	suggestive, vague, toolkit
Locations and Characters	detailed and consistent	"draw maps, leave blanks"
Art	Accurate to canon descriptions, easter eggs	evocative and used for inspiration
Timeline	static, detailed, intricate, deep, incorporates long-running metaplot	dynamic, focus on the current situation and history as relevant to that situation or adventure locations (e.g. ruins, etc)
Tools	character options, creatures, magic items	<-- all that, plus advice and tables for generating adventure hooks, locations, ideas, rumors, faction goals and "fronts"
Organization and layout	intended for reading during spare time, sections of writing that build upon and follow naturally from one another	intended for using during gameplay, layout makes information easy to reference and supports improvisation at the table

Of course, you can do both. But the point is that there are trade offs involved into where one puts time and energy, and I assume it affects design from the initial conception to the writing, organization, editing, and marketing.

 

[Yaarel]

I like a lore-centric setting. But I want the players to determine what that lore is, via their experiences and activities.

The best settings have been when new characters are the offspring of high-level characters, and the players are investing in and fill out the world. There are relationships between characters.

 

[Umbran]

Checkmate.

Lol not remotely.

Mod Note:
So, the two of you are viewing this as a competition that you are trying to win? Please stop. This thread is not your gameboard.

Change your view on what discussion is about, please, before one of you tries a gambit that gets you more red text.

 

[Mirtek]

If it was a hard canon, these would have answers.

Not necessarily. Earlier adventure series even had the canon ending of each adventure printed at the end so that a DM would be able to prepare for what to expect from the next installment of the series and where he'd most likely would need adjust and change based on the outcome of his particular table.

However the answer was mostly just "some adventurers". Hard canon doesn't mean that they spell out the shoe size of the party leader. A "hard canon" answer of old be along the lines of "In 1489 DR the church of Tiamat almost succeeded in summoning her deity to the material plane. At the last minute a band of adventurers intervened and stoped the summoning ritual from succeeding"

Unless there would also had been a novel about it, the names of those adventurers may have never been known.

When they were still releasing FR novels, the events of the adventures were mentioned in the novels. Up to a totally out of place encounter with a cloud giant castle floating over Waterdeep, the giants asking for the right way and then flying off. Had nothing to do with the actual story of the novel and was purely a reminder "He guys, Stormkings Thunder is happenenig at the same time elsewhere"

The events of RoT were spread over some Drizzt novels. In one an astonished drow asked another drow how they managed to enlist the aid of so many dragons. He replies that the wyrms are currently after as much gold and treasure as they can get their claws on, because her goddess demanded it for something.

In a later book there's a short talk about why the dragons have mostly left and the remaining ones are in a particular sour mood, to which is replied "that some important ritual for their goddess has recently failed"

That's it. Due to the barebone release schedule the novel line had during it's dying throes. In the past such references would have been handled with more room and been better fit into the ongoing story

 

[Mirtek]

Yeah, I find hard to believe that in a world where the death curse canonically existed, the adventures and stories after ir weren't affected by such a huge world shaking event.

Absolutely. If it's not at least mentioned in passing as an easteregg that's disappointing. I didn't really read any 5e adventure in full.

 

[Dausuul]

Actually now that I think about it, even with this thread the adventures must still have them. Because adventures taking place after RoT don't happen in a world ruled by Tiamat.

So her failure is the canon outcome implied by the other printed stuff that comes after it

Not necessarily; it is just as possible that "Rise of Tiamat" never happened at all.

 

[Parmandur]

Not necessarily; it is just as possible that "Rise of Tiamat" never happened at all.

Probable, even.