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.

 

[Grendel_Khan]

So what is the function of a novel?

Is it to provide an entertaining story, even a good and well-told one? Or is it to be a catalogue of references and allusions that serve no artistic purpose, but whose function is simply to remind some readers of other things they have read or might read?

Keep in mind that the person you're posing this question to said they regularly read Wikipedia plot summaries of movies so they don't have to watch them.

 

[Azzy]

So what is the function of a novel?

D&D novels? They are pretty much commercials for the game. Much like the G.I. Joe/He-Man, Transformers/etc. were commercials for their respective toy lines. While they can be enjoyable, let us not mistake that they were created to drive sales for a product.

 

[Dire Bare]

D&D novels? They are pretty much commercials for the game. Much like the G.I. Joe/He-Man, Transformers/etc. were commercials for their respective toy lines. While they can be enjoyable, let us not mistake that they were created to drive sales for a product.

Yes . . . but no . . . or, not just this.

Commercials? Not really, but ways to broaden the brand, create new ways for fans to engage with the brand (and spend money), create synergies with other aspects of the brand bringing customers into the game from the novels (and customers to the novels from the games).

Then there is also the very real artistic purpose, the creatives working for TSR/WotC (writers, editors, artists, designers, etc) genuinely try to create products that customers will love, just like any other creative outside gaming.

Products, especially in the creative industries, can have multiple purposes.

Saturday morning cartoons (He-Man, GI Joe, Transformers, etc) . . . the cartoons themselves didn't generate a lot of income, although they did generate some through advertising, they were definitely designed to be loss leaders driving toy sales. But even then, the creative folks behind those cartoons were artists creating products that expressed their own artistic impulses (within the constraints of their corporate masters) and hoped that folks would take joy out of their work.

D&D novels were not loss leaders, they were profitable on their own. The idea was for the novels to drive game sales, but the reverse as well. And the artistic goals of the creators were real and important.

 

[Scribe]

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.

I'm not making this a game at all. If any of my posts have generated that belief then I am sorry.

I'm pretty sure I have remained clear in my position, what I value, and what I feel people who share my view may feel like they are losing.

You will note a lot of 'me' and 'I' and 'feel', there.

I'm not telling people what they must do, or feel, or accept, and I highly doubt that on the summary position I'm being antagonistic.

If I am, let me know and I'll leave the thread.

 

[pemerton]

Keep in mind that the person you're posing this question to said they regularly read Wikipedia plot summaries of movies so they don't have to watch them.

And some of us read the reviews rather than the books so we can keep up at dinner parties! But I don't think that's the criterion for assessing the worth of a book. And even reading plots on Wikipedia doesn't get us toa catalogue of references and allusions that serve no artistic purpose, but whose function is simply to remind some readers of other things they have read or might read. Maybe reading summaries on TV Tropes does that?

D&D novels? They are pretty much commercials for the game.

Or is it the other way around - the game provides a core testing-ground and "foundation" for novels and other works that sell in better quantities? I know sales numbers in both categories change, but I thought for a long time FR was selling more novels than modules.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Old Man Drizzt could also make for a very cool movie or TV series. Gets at the longevity of D&D while being much more interesting, I think, than retelling his core story from the beginning.

I would have loved to see either Drizzt or Bruenor in a series about the generations of Wulfgar's kids and grandkids and greatgrandkids, going back and forth between the elders and the humans and sort of following that dog tumblr post.

Hell, I'd love to play a character whose family has a patron dwarf or elf who is in their twilight years, and my PC is one of the last generation to be taught and mentored and sponsored on their adventures by the patron.

 

[Hussar]

Well, FR was a story setting long before it became a game setting and while being a game setting it managed to have a always continuing meta plot advancing via no less than 287 (!) novels and just as many game supplements. Sometimes a game supplement would introduce a new devlopement that would then be fleshed out in a novel, sometimes a novel would be first and then the events would their way into further game supplements.

And FR is far from unique. The #1 RPG in Germany is still DSA and let me tell you that FR was a barely detailed barebone of a setting if compared to the rigid details and metaplot of Aventurien.

W40k is also a popular setting and it too is tirelessly advancing driven from from both the actual gaming side of things as well as from it's novels

Umm, what? The first Forgotten Realms novel was 1988. FR had been detailed in Dragon and in actual game setting books for years before the first novel was even a gleam in Salvatore's eye. Sure, Greenwood may have been "telling stories" in the Realms, but, no, it was a game setting first for anyone else.

 

[Echohawk]

Umm, what? The first Forgotten Realms novel was 1988. FR had been detailed in Dragon and in actual game setting books for years before the first novel was even a gleam in Salvatore's eye. Sure, Greenwood may have been "telling stories" in the Realms, but, no, it was a game setting first for anyone else.

That would be a gleam in Douglas Niles's eye, since he wrote Darkwalker on Moonshae. But I think that Mirtek was referring to the fact that Greenwood was writing Forgotten Realms fiction (not necessarily published fiction) long before he was developing his own game material for the setting.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Lords of Darkness has an amazing cover, too. Easley's skeletons are absolutely the best (see also The Magister's cover).

So I used to* get sleep paralysis pretty often when I was a teenager, and it was pretty scary, with genuinely terrifying monsters looming over me when unable to move and feeling like I was awake but not being and so on. Then one night it's a skeleton exactly like that one, and despite having the scary sensations of sleep paralysis, I just started mentally laughing, because I couldn't take it seriously as a threat - it was just too over-the-top, no matter how cool it looked, from then onwards sleep paralysis stopped being scary just generally. So those skeletons helped me out!

* = I later worked out what caused it eventually, which was if I got really exhausted, like, mentally and physically, and just flopped into bed and laid there - if I didn't fall asleep like immediately, I almost always got sleep paralysis - but if I tried to read a book or something, even if I only got 1-2 pages before I couldn't even keep my eyes open, I didn't. It's weird, dunno if it'll help anyone else, but I mention it in case it does.

 

[Hussar]

I've noticed that you seem to derive a fair amount of glee from the idea that canon fans are upset. Am I reading that correctly?

I have to admit that after years and years of having people use canon to bludgeon me over the head and tell me, repeatedly, why anything I happen to like is crap and then ducking behind the wall of "canon", there is a decidedly delicious level of schadenfreude in watching these same folks lose their collective poop when their favorite toy gets taken away. I felt largely the same way when Disney did the same thing and also when Star Trek did as well. So, yeah, that's not an unfair reading.