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

 

[Remathilis]

Not everybody is obligated to like or agree with the themes of Dante's Inferno just because it's a classic.

Wait, so we're getting rid of the Nine Hells of Baator too now?

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Wait, so we're getting rid of the Nine Hells of Baator too now?

Sure. 5e Eberron did that, and people loved it. (I know, different circumstances. I'm just being cheeky.)

 

[Mirtek]

Let's go with the notion that we actively oppose the Wall and tear it down. What happens then? Well, demons then invade the Fugue Plain, stealing souls for eternal torture that would rightfully have gone on to their just reward. Everyone seems to conveniently forget that the Wall actually serves a purpose and that purpose is not punishment. It's not that the Wall is a prison. It's protecting the souls of the dead on their journey into their afterlife. Those that refuse to have faith in this setting are bound to defend those who do.

Actually that's not the case. The wall is around the City of the Dead, not around the entire Fugue Plane. The souls of the faithful never enter the confines of the wall. They gather in groups on the field outside of the City of the Dead and are then picked up by collectors send by their deity.

Only the false and faithless even make it inside the confines of the wall and of those the faithless then become part of the wall.

Even demons just know better than trying to steal the faithful gathered to wait for pickup.

 

[Hussar]

Ok, let's drill down a bit. ((Yes, I realize that the whole Wall argument is WAYYY off topic, but, frankly, we've done the Canon thing into the ground and this is interesting to me. ))

People have pointed to Theros as a good way of doing it. (sorry, did I spell that right?) That using the carrot is acceptable but not the stick. Which, basically, shoots in the foot any argument that forcing PC's to be religious is unacceptable. At the end of the day, it's the same thing - the players choose faith for their characters. Why you are doing it doesn't really matter at the end of the day. At the end of the day, you don't have an atheist character.

That you, (whoever you are) are okay with it because of the carrot approach, simply is a point of preference. I get that. But, that doesn't make the Wall bad and Theros' Piety rules good. It's simply a case of preference. Both are doing exactly the same thing - pushing players to create characters that have Faith/Piety. Because, in those games, in those settings, having Faith/Piety is important to play. It MATTERS.

If you remove the Wall from FR, as has been done, and tell players that it doesn't matter one whit whether your character has faith or not, then, well, faith isn't very important in that setting. If something is important in a game, then there must be mechanics or at the very least, lore, that reflects that. I'd argue that they probably didn't go far enough in FR. The Wall is there to make Faith important in the game. That's it's function in the game. If you play FR, the game is intended to have characters that are participating in this HUGE element - how many Faith's and Avatars books are there? - of the setting.

IOW, you can't complain about the Wall enforcing consequences of you playing a character without faith and at the same time not complain about Theros' Piety rules. There's no difference at the end of the day. They are both telling you, in no uncertain terms, that faith is important in this setting and you are expected, if you play in this setting, to engage in that.

 

[Remathilis]

Sure. 5e Eberron did that, and people loved it. (I know, different circumstances. I'm just being cheeky.)

And somehow 4e Eberron had it. 2 out of 3 editions, I guess.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

I don't agree that I am mind-shatteringly dense. Nor that I am horrifically frightening.

The relationship between faith, conviction (religious or otherwise), life, freedom and suffering is one of the most basic topics of literary exploration. The Wall of the Faithless seems to me to express the same idea as Casablanca; and when compared to The Quiet American to be (i) crude but (ii) sitting in the same thematic space.

The idea that the FR "faithless" are stand-ins for real-world atheists strikes me as no different from the idea that FR's Orcs can't be a racist trope because they're not humans: it's treating the in-fiction as literal and ignoring the actual trope and theme that are at work.

You are vastly overestimating the level of literary prowess possessed by the authors of the Forgotten Realms. The only time the Wall of the Faithless was ever used to explore anything was in Mask of the Betrayer, but that just ends with the status quo. Everywhere else, it has just been treated as a thing that is, without any thematic weight given to it.

 

[Scribe]

Sure. 5e Eberron did that, and people loved it. (I know, different circumstances. I'm just being cheeky.)

Its stuff like this that has me looking for the door lol.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Atheism is not a religion, at least as per most conceptions of religion. It's not a belief in the supernatural. It's not a form of life oriented towards reconciliation with the world and/or salvation. It's not a tradition of ritual and belief associated with the sorts of things mentioned in the previous two sentences.

I'm not going to try and argue about what is or isn't atheism. I will point out this much, in Kaufman v. McCaughtry (2005) the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeaks held that Atheism counts in regards to the Constitutional First Amendment with Freedom of Religion. They further argued “The Supreme Court has said that a religion, for purposes of the First Amendment, is distinct from a ‘way of life,’ even if that way of life is inspired by philosophical beliefs or other secular concerns. A religion need not be based on a belief in the existence of a supreme being, (or beings, for polytheistic faiths) nor must it be a mainstream faith.”

This is a very thorny and complicated topic, but I think it is fair enough to say that since legally and constitutionally Atheism is close enough to a religion to be protected by the same rights, it is close enough to be discussed as a religion for our purposes.

There are people who lose families and communities because they are Communists. Or because they refuse to take up military service. Or for any number of reasons. That doesn't mean that George Orwell isn't allowed to write books attacking orthodox Communism or implying that those who won't take up arms against Fascism are shirkers.

Engaging with questions of conviction, allegiance, and what is or isn't valuable in life is at the core of what fiction is about!

There is a subtle difference however. Orwell was attacking the ideas and policies of orthodox Communism. The people who were killed and had their lives ruined for their beliefs. IF Orwell was writing that it was right and just to hate your brother because he believes in Communism, then I would criticize him for it. Yes, Fiction is about questions of conviction, allegiance and what is or isn't valuable, but at the end of the day, I default to Vonnegut's answer to the meaning of life. "Be Kind to each other."

 

[Chaosmancer]

I think it more like, 99.99% of Kelemvor's believers are human, so he ends up with those almost exclusively. Elves would have their own death beliefs involving their own gods and those gods would have dominion over them. However, some few elves do follow Kelemvor and that belief would put them under his sway, not that of the elven gods.

Non-applicable. The conversation was about the space between Cyric and Kelemvor, when "people didn't die"

No one was a worshiper of Kelemvor before he ascended to be a god. But, supposedly, with Cyric no longer being a god of death, no one was dying. Despite the fact that there are dozens of other death gods who were still active.

 

[pemerton]

I tend to separate the post from the post-ee. People can say dense and frightening things without themselves being those things. If you took it as me calling you those things, I apologize, as that was not my intention and it may have been unclear.

That's generous of you, but unnecessary. I'm not offended. I believe your views are sincere. So are mine. I hope it's clear that I intend you the respect you are due. I don't feel that you've treated me otherwise than with respect.

I'm not going to bring in the whole Orc discussion again. Atheism (disbelieving in god(s)) is atheism, whether or not it takes place in a fantasy world. For all intents and purposes, they're the same thing.

On this we disagree.

Doing serious criticism of FR is hard, because it's a fiction of little merit and no coherent conception of things underlying it. But nevertheless forging ahead, it presents a world of active and opposed divinities (and here I include all the archdevils, demon princes etc - I think the hair-splitting attempts to distinguish these being from gods are what I've just described them as) who are at the centre of all change and conflict. Mortal conflicts are proxies for, and/or manifestations of, these divine conflicts. In this world, to be "faithless" is to have refused to commit; to have not taken a side. To have disavowed the conflicts. The Wall is the fate of those who don't commit.

In the real world, the analogue of the faithless is not an atheist (at least as I see the world - there are probably people, not so many in Australia but more numerous in other parts of the world perhaps including yours, who see things differently) but someone who refuses to engage in the great questions of justice of our time. That's why I've mentioned the existentialists, and also George Orwell - or to give another example, last night I watched the second episode of Ken Burns's Hemingway series and it discussed Hemingway coming under the same sort of pressure to engage in the 30s, from Communists and other leftists, and from his third wife.

Whether I think such people - the disengaged - deserve the sort of fate for which The Wall is a metaphor is not something I'll post on a pubic forum (you're welcome to PM me if you wish) but I can certainly wrap my head around the idea that they do - ie the idea that disengagement is a type of wrong or even a betrayal of one's humanity.

Sorry, but I'm young. These references aren't doing anything for me. I've yet to see Casablanca or The Quiet American, so the comparisons will need further elaboration if you want me to get them.

Well, I don't want to spoil a great film or a great novel for you. But both stories feature protagonists whose self-conception is one of disengagement - Rick in the context of Vichy-ruled North Africa; Fowler in the context of French-ruled Vietnam - and both stories see the protagonist's self-conception put to the test. The Quiet American is more subtle than Casablanca; part of what makes Casablanca wonderful is its lack of subtlety - who has no tears when Rick allows the band to strike up the Marseillaise!