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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Micah Sweet

Level Up & OSR Enthusiast
It's all a calculated risk, from what I see. First, we need to acknowledge they're not going to drastically alter the settings. I recognized the new Ravenloft just fine, for example. Knowing that the core of what makes Krynn, Athas, or Toril what it is will still be there.

Many have said that the decades of lore can be daunting to new players. I can see that. So here's where the calculated risk is for WotC. They can either conform to the old canon, continuing to make newer players a bit overwhelmed the the amount of source material, or do this and make the older players read the new book to understand the changes. To WotC (and many here from what I see), it's better for their current audience to have older players read the new canon that the new players already have to read too, instead of a mass dump on the newbies.

Sure I'm sad; the Dragonlance Chronicles & Legends mean a lot to me. But I still have them. And WotC isn't going to be removing all those modules & accessories from DTRPG any time soon as it's a low-overhead revenue generator.
I really dont think they care whether old fans read the new material or not. The new fans (and the winds of change) want things to go a certain way, and they wanted everyone to know officially that that's what they're going to do. Dont like it? Suck it up.
 

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Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
I can see both sides. Surely all the monster, setting and historical lore are only suggestions for your game. You are free to pick up, modify, discard and create as you see fit. However I can also see that continuity between products and even editions is a good thing too
Realistically, the continuity is in place. This just allows them to make changes if they think something would be better with a change. I think we can all point at elements from prior canon that we'd like to see changed, improved or removed.
 



Ok. I like canon. I love the 'deep cuts' that get thrown to new adventures referencing old material. What happens when the old material is problematic though? Do we cling to canonical Vistani or the reworked Vistani? WotC isn't dumping 50 years of stories, they just aren't going to hold them as sacred cows because of tradition. This is a good thing. Castle Greyhawk doesn't have to be a 40-year-old insult to Gary Gygax anymore. All of the mods and settings books from previous editions will continue to be offered digitally, but not all of the novels are in print or available anymore, how does someone access this crucial lore from one of the later collections of Dragonlance short stories that contain this invaluable bit of esoteric insight in the origin of tinker gnome hygiene?
Crawford is being honest. Truth is the 'canon' for most lines was only infrequently invoked. At best there have been Easter Egg mentions to things or timeline advances to 'preserve' canon. The Spellplague for 4E FR is canon and preserves canon by destroying the preexisting canon? These are the hoops you have to jump through with the fiction lines intersecting with the TTRPG lines in shared universes. I don't think they are going to suddenly remove the Sword Coast from the rest of FR and merge it with Greyhawk because there is no CANON anymore, we can do whatever we want. There is no longer one true table history for these settings, all tables are equal in the history of the setting. There is still plenty of historical text to mine for ideas though.

Dumping 50 years of stories is exactly what they are doing and treating long term FR fans with contempt.
 

Tales and Chronicles

Jewel of the North, formerly know as vincegetorix
Realistically, the continuity is in place. This just allows them to make changes if they think something would be better with a change. I think we can all point at elements from prior canon that we'd like to see changed, improved or removed.
No!

Let my canon well alone!

Drizzt has balding pattern and huge sideburns! WotC is trying to steal that from me! Please god, make them lose their jobs, I cant stand my Drizzt with non-80' appearance!
 



Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
Partially because "setting canon" means different things to different people. Take the Realms, for instance. Some are Gray Box purists. Some take the whole thing, from the 1980s to present. Others jettison the Spellplague and 4E completely. Still others just play in the somewhat nebulous 5E version, which is focused on whatever is in the adventures and everything else is just kind of "out there somewhere."

If we must compare RPGs to movies--even though they're very different--then I think it is better to compare them to James Bond than Star Wars. Think of each new edition as more like a new Bond actor; it is a reboot, and all the past "lore" is source material to draw from, but no longer applies. Of course each new edition is not a complete reboot, but it is a partial one.
James Bond is a really good example. Daniel Craig's Bond shares an M with Pierce Brosnan, but has a new Q and we canonically see his origin in Casino Royale, even though Judi Dench's M worked with an established James Bond in prior movies.

This approach allows WotC (and MGM) to carry forward the good stuff and update as needed, if needed. It's not "scorning" prior versions or fans, just recognizing that Sean Connery ain't suiting up as James Bond again any time soon and that, honestly, they wouldn't make some of his movies the same way again today, or at all. (The yellowface elements of You Only Live Twice are unsalvagable, and I don't think any studio would try; they'd do something very different or just adapt a different novel.)
 

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