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...

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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."


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"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.
 

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“We also look at alignment. For example, chromatic dragons are typically evil, so can there ever be a good black dragon? The beauty of the word ‘typically’ is that there’s always the possibility. Each entry in this chapter starts with a table of personality traits and a table of ideals. And the final entry on the table of ideals is always something that’s dramatically outside the norm for that dragon’s alignment as we wanted to make the point that typically does mean typically, not always.”

They’re are doing it in such a way as to allow for typical alignments but making it clear that non typical alignments are acceptable if not encouraged.
Fantastic to see. I'll have to pick this one up then, as I didn't purchase the last book that declines to provide this.
 


TheSword

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Fantastic to see. I'll have to pick this one up then, as I didn't purchase the last book that declines to provide this.
Yes it is good. I have no idea why someone would 🙁 that post. It seems a wholly good thing to me. Alignment but with clear indication that it isn’t binding.
 
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Yes it is good. I have no idea why someone would 🙁 that post. It seems a wholly good thing to me. Alignment but with clear indication that it isn’t binding.
There are folks that want it removed completely.

It's never going to be good enough until people who like it, lose it completely.

Just like ASI.
 
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There are folks that want it removed completely.

It's never going to be good enough until people who like it, lose it completely.

Just like ASI.
I can't comment on ASI, but with alignment, I think the issue is that it was so crap, for so long, before it became essentially optional, that at this point, some people just want it removed because it is going to constantly remind them of when it was crap and mandatory, and if it's even optional, it still slightly warps the game (which I think is true).

Personally, I'm fine with it existing, but I think it should be come "more optional" than it already is. I don't think WotC will delete it entirely as long as things like the 9 point alignment memes walk the earth though.
 




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