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.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

What are you talking about? I've cherry picked nothing.

Your data set is trash, so your observations and inferences are trash. AND you admited to manipulating the data input. Garbage in, garbage out.

 

[Maxperson]

Your data set is trash, so your observations and inferences are trash. AND you admited to manipulating the data input. Garbage in, garbage out.

Whatever dude. Don't respond to me again about this. I don't like your attitude or insults.

 

[Faolyn]

It's not as poor as you want to make it out to be, but it's not very strong, either. I'll grant you that much.

No. I'd be willing to be good money that a majority want alignment. At least 50.01%

Since you have absolutely no evidence to back that up, and just admitted to making up the numbers...

As I said, many of them are normal groups just playing there. And players aren't going to write alignment on their sheet for a sit down game. If they don't use alignment, it won't be on the sheet and they will just make it up and tell that to a DM who wants it.

What? What sort of games are you encountering?

Okay, but this is not relevant to my claim.

Your claim is that lots of people are using alignment. You admitted that, with your group, it was more habit than actually liking alignment and wanting to use it. That is 100% relevant to your claim that people want alignment.

Okay, but I'm not trying to say that they really want alignment.

You just did at the top of your post.

And yes, I do really want to include something that doesn't have any real meaning to the players, because I find it invaluable as DM.

So there shouldn't be alignment except as an option in the DMG. Gotcha.

I also have seen MANY new players and a lesser number of less creative players rely on alignment to help them roleplay. My players don't need it, but there are a good number of players that do. It should be present for them as well.

Wow. Not only is this incredibly rude to players in general but it certainly looks like you just called yourself less creative because you rely on alignment as a DM.

It is evidence. Circumstantial evidence is evidence, whether you personally like and agree with it or not. Your opinion doesn't really matter here. It's going to remain evidence anyway.

Hey, if all your claims are based on crappy evidence, then your claim can also be dismissed as crappy. So anything you say can be safely ignored.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Thread overrun by rampant jackassery.

Thread closed.