D&D General WotC: Novels & Non-5E Lore Are Officially Not Canon

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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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Zaukrie

New Publisher
WotC doesn't hate you, or your love of lore. They aren't lazy. They just don't want to tell people they need to read decades of materials to understand canon. They aren't saying your game can't use that info, just that current products don't really on it. I just don't get the personal attacks on them for doing things differently than you want.
 

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billd91

Not your screen monkey (he/him)
We understand that. But the reality is that whatever version of an official setting canon you run is very, very different from others because you don't build it from the same building blocks. Tabletop RPG settings are innately fragmented and granular. There's not a single book you can buy that will give you the definitive version with all the information you need to run your games. And there's plenty of other material that contradicts itself.
No doubt. There's no better example than when substantial groups dislike changes that occur in the timelime, such as the Greyhawk Wars, and then you have different groups treating different works as canonical such as the DMs who based their GH campaigns post-war and those who based theirs pre-war.
But I think Reynard is also getting at something that's rife in the gamer community. And that's lack of willingness to understand, empathize with, or tendency to outright dismiss or belittle other gamers and their concerns. And it applies to things more broadly than current topics like identity and inclusion that tend to run along political viewpoints. It honestly doesn't take a lot of intellectual work to understand why someone might prefer the maintenance of canon even if you don't agree.
 

opacitizen

Explorer
Can't wait for Free League, the publisher of The One Ring 2nd edition to declare that whatever came before their rpg is no longer canon, JRR Tolkien's work included (but it remains a great inspiration!) Will they do it, do you think?

Also can't wait for the Louvre (the museum in France) to commission a sequel to Mona Lisa (yes, the painting), and then declare Leonardo's original a non-canonical, but definitely inspirational "legend".

Just joking. Right?
 


Parmandur

Book-Friend
Yeah, that's the thing here. It's not like Star Wars, where it's a one-way street between creators and fans. With D&D, fans are creators. The resources aren't going away and people will use them.

Still from a design philosophy, it's been pretty clear from the beginning that 5e, for all its nods to the past, wasn't going to be bound by the hundreds of novels, modules, and sourcebooks that've come before. And it makes sense.

Did anyone really get that worked up over say, Falkovnia being a zombie apocalypse domain ruled by Vladeska Drakov, instead of yet another oppressive land ruled by the most blatant Not-Dracula of Ravenloft?
I mean, yeah, some people got really salty on these boards about Ravenloft's approach to canon. Given the shifting nature of the Mists, that one was odd.
 

Remathilis

Legend
Holy over-reactions Batman!

D&D lore is scattered over 40 years of sourcebooks, novels, magazines, video games, toys, cartoons, movies, and comics. It's inconsistent with itself and changes edition to edition. It makes Doctor Who look like a cohesive narrative! Why should game designers be beholden to some Dragon article published in 1987 or a Lost Tails of Dragonlance book referenced in the wiki?

This is merely an indication that in the process of updating settings they aren't going to be beholden to the old lore nor will they use RSE's to explain it. This is 100% what they did with Ravenloft and is going to be used liberally in Dragonlance, Dark Sun, and other future settings. They are preempting the "Actshully, according to 'Tails from Uncle Trapspringer...'" Type of criticism.

Is WotC going to ignore everything before 2014? Obviously not. They love thier nostalgia. But they aren't worried that the Novel Mordenheim or Lords of Necropolis is no longer cannon. They are probably going to use this to justify lore changes to various races or monsters as well.

I just don't see why this is a big deal. WotC's been doing this all along on smaller things all along (Strahd's origin, female gnome deities in ToF, etc). They are telegraphing a Dragonlance setting that isn't going to align with the novel line. It's just nice to see they are acknowledging it.
 

The unbridled arrogance of Jeremy Crawford and his fellows, 5e's unearned success has gone to their heads if they think they can dump years and years of FR canon into the trash can.

When 5e was created it was to unite fans, and the fans came and it was a huge success, but now that FR fans are needed anymore, because its so popular thanks to social media, they can flip FR fans the bird. I hope they all get the firing they all so desperately deserve.

And better yet I hope Ed Greenwood sues WotC for breach of contract and takes FR back from them. I wish WotC endless failure for this act of treachery.
 

RFB Dan

Podcast host, 6-edition DM, and guy with a pulse.
It does make me wonder if this announcement was really aimed squarely at Dragonlance, and they are going to invalidate the old modules/novels with “reimagined” content.
That's my take. Part of that whole hullabaloo last year about the Weis/Hickman lawsuit against WotC hinted at their new novels going back to the initial War of the Lance. A retelling, perhaps?
 


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