D&D 5E WotC Explains 'Canon' In More Detail

Recently, WotC's Jeremy Crawford indicated that only the D&D 5th Edition books were canonical for the roleplaying game. In a new blog article, Chris Perkins goes into more detail about how that works, and why.

This boils down to a few points:

• Each edition of D&D has its own canon, as does each video game, novel series, or comic book line.
• The goal is to ensure players don't feel they have to do research of 50 years of canon in order to play.
• It's about remaining consistent.

If you’re not sure what else is canonical in fifth edition, let me give you a quick primer. Strahd von Zarovich canonically sleeps in a coffin (as vampires do), Menzoberranzan is canonically a subterranean drow city under Lolth’s sway (as it has always been), and Zariel is canonically the archduke of Avernus (at least for now). Conversely, anything that transpires during an Acquisitions Incorporated live game is not canonical in fifth edition because we treat it the same as any other home game (even when members of the D&D Studio are involved).

D&D Canon | D&D Studio Blog | Dungeons & Dragons

In this D&D Studio Blog, Chris Perkins describes the D&D Studio's position on canonicity.

dnd.wizards.com

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...

www.enworld.org

 

[Ibrandul]

I haven't followed the debate about the Wall too much and I'm not familiar with that lore, but I do have one question, and it determines what I really feel about it:

Was the Wall presented without commentary? Was it just a 'thing'? Or was it ever indicated how one should feel about it, or how characters feel about it? Was it ever interacted with? DId it mean anything?

I think I'd consider it a pretty yucky aspect if it was ever stated to be a 'good' thing or nobody ever commented that it was a cruel fate. And it'd also seem strange if it was just mentioned as a 'by the way' aspect.

The reason things like this are tricky and often lead to strife is because a bad element is included without well, acknowledging it's bad or somehow proving it's deserved or even being presented as a good thing.

If that's the case here, then I think I'm glad this isn't a common element in D&D.

It hasn’t ever been explicitly labeled as an evil thing, to my knowledge. Implicitly, though? Well, an evil god originally created it, and Kelemvor’s submission to Ao’s demand that it be retained is (reading between the lines a bit) one important step in the process of solidifying his transformation from a Good human into a Neutral inhuman/deity.

I’d add that precious little in D&D has been presented “with commentary” (at least, omniscient-narrator-style commentary) until relatively recently. For most of the game’s history, it wasn’t a widespread cultural norm to expect writers (in whatever medium) to explicitly pass judgment on all elements that would now be called “problematic,” nor was it assumed that representing such elements without explicitly passing judgment upon them necessarily amounted to condoning them. This cultural norm—the demand for what amounts to an “artist’s statement” of the type you see on some gallery walls, instructing the public how the artist views the art’s signification re: any problematic content—is relatively recent, and still somewhat contested, though the trend is obvious and ongoing.

If you’re interested in the various presentations of the Wall, the FR fandom wiki has a decent entry on it.

 

[Mirtek]

I'm an atheist. I'm personally offended to be told that a so called "good/just" god (Kelemvor), even in a fantasy world, would have me be imprisoned and endlessly tormented under their care in a wall that was made out of my soul and the soul of fellow atheists.

To me, that's just as offensive as saying that any real world religion would get a similar treatment, even if their belief system (or lack thereof) is objectively wrong in that setting. It's both unnecessary to the setting and offensive to those real world groups.

And other RL groups are offended by and have protest agains the very existance of magic and multiple deities and by extension the very game itself. You can't please everyone.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Is the argument than, "there might be a hidden canon, but it doesn't matter and we should all ignore Perkins' reference to it"? Doesn't seem likely on a fan site.

Partially, I think we should be more focused on his "every table has their own canon" part.

DnD is a game that, unless you railroad to the most extreme degree, involves the players making choices about where the story goes. Everyone agrees with that, across the board.

So, it seems to me that we have a choice, as a community. We can go forward that for each setting there is only a single, true canon, that everything at our tables is by default not true, and WoTC holds the keys to vault where the secret "ultra true" version is.

Or

We can accept that every game is true in and of itself. That each setting is a toolbox or paint set for us to use or not as we see fit, and no aspect of the lore is any more true than another.

 

[ReshiIRE]

it wasn’t a widespread cultural norm to expect writers (in whatever medium) to explicitly pass judgment on all elements that would now be called “problematic,” nor was it assumed that representing such elements without explicitly passing judgment upon them necessarily amounted to condoning them.

That doesn't really seem correct?

Stories, whether particularly concerned about morality or not, have always implicitly or sometimes explicitly, passed judgement on actions, elements, people, etc., contained with in them, by having characters commentate on them, by showing different perspectives (or not), by having consequences and other bad things happen (or not).

I also don't think anyone today requires explicit judgement passing, but generally it is being challenged that portraying certain things as 'just is' is not necessarily something without consequence or without harm.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Partially, I think we should be more focused on his "every table has their own canon" part.

DnD is a game that, unless you railroad to the most extreme degree, involves the players making choices about where the story goes. Everyone agrees with that, across the board.

So, it seems to me that we have a choice, as a community. We can go forward that for each setting there is only a single, true canon, that everything at our tables is by default not true, and WoTC holds the keys to vault where the secret "ultra true" version is.

Or

We can accept that every game is true in and of itself. That each setting is a toolbox or paint set for us to use or not as we see fit, and no aspect of the lore is any more true than another.

Unless it's in the 5e core books, of course. Then its definitely true.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Offence presumably is not our measure for including things in D&D. Some people are offended by the fiction including magic, and demons, and so on, but the game still has them.

And for the sake of clarity, and speaking as a participant in many threads dealing with "evil races" and the like, the problem with racism and with sexism is not that they cause offence but that they are racism and sexism. The legitimate offence caused is an effect of what's wrong with them, not the reason they're wrong.

But a setting which posits that atheists suffer because the cosmology prioritises faith is not recapitulating a set of discriminatory tropes, or reinforcing existing patterns of subordination.

If the FR rules said we all have to toast and cheer at the table every time an atheist's soul gets sucked into the wall of the faithless that might be a different thing, but I don't think it does, does it?

This might have been dropped by the time I respond (I'm five pages back), but I think you are missing some very very obvious parallels here.

The Wall of the Faithless is saying that a good and just being, for the sake of the balance of the world, must horrifically punish and torture people for their beliefs.

You can try and argue that atheism is not a set of beliefs, but that gets into very very thorny territory. And, you say that the offense comes from the -ism that it is, from reinforcing patterns? Atheists are often discriminated against because of their beliefs. Often told that a just and good being will torture them for all eternity for their lack of worship. In the real world.

I find that just as discriminatory and disgusting as Sune's insistence that physical beauty is the only pertinent measure of a person, or if there was a Lawful Good deity who believed in "human purity" and concerned themselves with bloodlines. It all is terrible.

 

[Mirtek]

Ask Mystra what happens to magic when she died.

Hint: it begins with Spell and ends with Plague.

There's even more. During the interregnum between Cyric losing the lordship over death and Kelemvor attaining it, no mortal on Faerun could die. There were samples of mortals being left in some serious predicament until Kelemvor was in office and they could find sweet release in death.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because I'm not a lazy, half-assed DM. If I just discount something out of hand because I don't feel like doing the effort, I'm doing a disservice to the players who might be missing out on something better.

If Strixhaven was released with PHB classes that had different abilities, I'd have to look at them all.

Well, that is incredibly insulting to every single person who doesn't agree with you.

Though, maybe it just comes from you misunderstanding the question. I wasn't asking if you would look over the class and make it available. I was asking why you would feel the need to incorportate the Witherbloom college, a magical school that specializes in that type of magic and is the "official" source of that subclass, into the game world. It could easily just be a different type of druidic magic. Unless you have also gone and laid out exactly which sects of druids practice which types of magics, and have... seven entirely different sects with different practices, beliefs, organizations ect

 

[J.Quondam]

They're all disliked groups.

The fact that one group isn't "born that way"--since I'm not going to get into a debate about that here--doesn't change the fact that the game was singling out a group of people that real-world society looks down upon when there is absolutely no reason for them to do so.

It may or may not be arguable that they are all "disliked" in real-world society. But, again, it is not arguable that the degree or historical significance of that "dislike" is anywhere near comparable across those groups.

But more importantly-- because it seems to be your actual point-- in a game like D&D with real gods, it's quite clear that in-game "atheists" aren't even logically the same as real-world atheists (who themselves aren't even definitionally united, much less ideologically united).

No one is being "singled out" in the game, except by virtue of the word* used to name them in the fiction.

* And near as I can tell, the word is actually "Faithless," not atheist. Not sure, though, as I don't really FR.

 

[the Jester]

I’m so glad that you aren’t bothered by writers saying an entire group of people who actually exist in the real world deserve horrible annihilation or being turned into a creature of evil for simply engaging in a thoughtcrime.

Do you really believe that is what the writers were saying?