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.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

To be fair, it took decades for FR lore to build up to "obstacle" levels. If they did create a brand new setting, whether Points of Light or something more built up, it would take a long time before it got to be unwieldy. And they could start out with pointers (maybe just for the setting's writers and not in the books) about what to do and what not to do, to help the lore from becoming unwieldy.

Will WotC do this? Almost certainly not. But they could.

To be even more fair they might yet in another 10 or 20 years in a different edition and under different management. However, I believe that lore only matters to a relatively small number of fans and not a worthwhile market segment for WoTC.

 

[MGibster]

Ok but the way it matters is not because it’s binding on future publications. But rather because it informs of us of the tone and style of that game world in that point of time. And more importantly it informs us of what the writer and publisher wants us to think or feel.

Neither one of us really gets to tell someone else how or why the fiction should matter to them. But I'm not asking anyone here to agree or disagree with their point of view, I was simply pointing out why they might be upset that the fiction they've invested 20-30 years of their life in is suddenly non-canon.

 

[Remathilis]

Nobody gained.
A certain segment, no matter how small, lost.

I keep hearing this, but what is the real value of this loss? What is actually being lost, what damages are being done?

Let's assume Event A is an event that happened in your favorite novel. Along comes a new game book that says Event A did not happen, this is Event B. A and B are in direct contradiction to each other and cannot be reconciled in a satisfactory way.

What are we going to do about this?

Well, first you can set whatever continuity you want for your home game, so that's a moot point. If you don't like B, replace it with A, or C, or J, or any other ideas you want. So the WotC canon police aren't going to come knocking, your choice to keep Event A is as valid as me making up my own.

I guess you theoretically lose the ability for Event A to influence future products (sequels that build on A no longer are possible). That might be a problem, but that's wholly dependent on how often said media gets direct continuation. Certainly Drizzt novels and Eliminster novels did, but how many beyond that? Further, novels can beget novels, Event B refers to the game and Event A a separate novel line, there is no reason both events can't be built off of in their respective media.

I guess there is the loss of the "living world' model, where the events of things that didn't involve your game or PCs change the setting from book to book. 5e has very much opted for the "locked in amber" model of presenting a setting locked to a certain time point and allowing the DM to decide where to go forward rather than moving the metaplot along with supplements. If you liked the idea other characters often had large world-shaking events happening that didn't involve you or your PCs, but I generally thought most people's biggest gripes involved accounting for the actions of god-like NPCs doing the important things in the world while the PCs actions go unnoticed.

Is it just the fact that "canon", like "RAW" establishes an aura of legitimacy or authority, allowing that to be the Word of God when it comes to discussing the topic? A is the final word and B-Z are lesser choices, except now B is the final word and A is illegitimate?

I'm still at a loss as to what, when the sun rises tomorrow, you actually tangibly lose?

 

[Grendel_Khan]

I keep hearing this, but what is the real value of this loss? What is actually being lost, what damages are being done?

I think the most compelling answers to this that I've seen in this thread are not about how this impacts your own game, but really about how invested some are in the lore itself. There's a reason that comparisons to Disney killing the Star Wars EU keep coming up. Angst over that doesn't have to do with gaming, and I don't think this really does, either.

I don't personally care about FR lore or the Star Wars EU at all. And maybe the people here who are upset about Crawford's comments will correct me, but FR is so lore-heavy that it goes beyond how you might use it at your table. Sometimes lore is cool purely as lore.

There isn't any RPG lore that evokes those kinds of feelings for me--despite all the time I spent obsessing over interlocking World of Darkness lore back in the day I was thrilled when I saw how Vampire 5 elegantly brushes so much of the metaplot aside. But I get what the reaction to this is about. And I don't think it's really about people being sticklers or weaponizing lore at the table.

 

[Weiley31]

Can you point us to the damage made by this invisible nuke as of now?

Well, the various races suddenly became Humans in Halloween masks. The Dwarves were pretty much "meh" about it but the Elves are still losing their flipping hits over it.

When Ao was asked questions about it by the news press, his words were "Well it was probably a Kender that did it" and just walked away while smoking his pipe. Helm and Mystara were nowhere around to comment.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

snip

I'm still at a loss as to what, when the sun rises tomorrow, you actually tangibly lose?

This is kinda of what i wonder also. As I see it there are a number of continuities in play, there are the in game supplements, novels, game or other media and the lot combined.

I presume that the novels constitute their own continuity, at least with in the scope of a single writer. Bob Salvatore or Ed Greewood are going to maintain their established in novel continuity. There is no particular reason not to. So I would see no real changes there.

There is the loss of the living world development but to what extent has that been a thing that paid off?

 

[Scott Christian]

Now I happen to think that WotC has a good reason to declare everything before 2014 to be non-canon. They don't necessarily want players born in 2001 to feel as though they need to read or understand setting material that was first written fourteen years before they were born just to be able to follow the Forgotten Realms.

No offense @MGibster but this argument needs to stop being used. Younger players relate to Forgotten Realms just fine, and definitely without knowing any of the older material. And most of the time without knowing the new material either. What younger players do is bring their tv shows and pop culture and apply it to whatever setting they happen to be playing in. Most young players I know might read the orc race or elven race or tiefling race, but then they just apply their cultural references to make them what they like; disregarding everything they just read.

Their orcs are not how the PHB describes them. They are exactly like the orcs from the Warcraft movies or Tolkien movies. Their elves are either Legolas or anime. Their tieflings are almost always the anime or manga versions. These examples often apply to classes as well.

The point is, I have never met a young player that felt the need to read old material, nor have I ever seen any type of peer pressure to get younger players to read old material. This just doesn't seem like a real argument.

 

[Steampunkette]

DMG, page 4:


The "Flavors of Fantasy" section (pages 38-41), for what it's worth, also describes Athas "as featured in numerous Dark Sun novels and game products", and points to the novels when referencing the other settings.

Thank you! That is super helpful!

Though I would like to note, While it says those novels, game products, and digital games are assumed to take place, it does not specify whether they're referring to new content, old content, or all content. So it could be read in several different ways. One of which lines up with their current public sentiment and tracks, specifically, with the "Mirror Universe" aspect of home-campaigns not being the "Real" Canon.

I still agree with their decision, of course, whenever it was made, and am enjoying freeing myself from Dark Sun Canon as I work on an adventure storyline with a new group.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

Well, the various races suddenly became Humans in Halloween masks. The Dwarves were pretty much "meh" about it but the Elves are still losing their flipping hits over it.

When Ao was asked questions about it by the news press, his words were "Well it was probably a Kender that did it" and just walked away while smoking his pipe. Helm and Mystara were nowhere around to comment.

That was bound to be a problem for as long as D&D was a human game played by human players, with a significant portion of those players being into neither method acting or speculative xenopsychology. I don't see how FR's lore changes and retcons have any bearing on the Halloween Mask issue (if it's even an issue in and of itself all).

 

[Hexmage-EN]

No offense @MGibster but this argument needs to stop being used. Younger players relate to Forgotten Realms just fine, and definitely without knowing any of the older material. And most of the time without knowing the new material either. What younger players do is bring their tv shows and pop culture and apply it to whatever setting they happen to be playing in. Most young players I know might read the orc race or elven race or tiefling race, but then they just apply their cultural references to make them what they like; disregarding everything they just read.

Their orcs are not how the PHB describes them. They are exactly like the orcs from the Warcraft movies or Tolkien movies. Their elves are either Legolas or anime. Their tieflings are almost always the anime or manga versions. These examples often apply to classes as well.

The point is, I have never met a young player that felt the need to read old material, nor have I ever seen any type of peer pressure to get younger players to read old material. This just doesn't seem like a real argument.

I'm not exactly young anymore (32), but I kind of love scouring older sources for obscure lore to utilize in my campaigns. I like collecting and nerd trivia in general, so that's definitely a big influence behind my desire to "collect" lore.

Powerscore RPG has a ton of deep dives I love. I pretty always go there first to see if there's an article on the history of, say, the Queen of Chaos and the War of Law and Chaos (there is, btw). Echohawk's own Monster ENcyclopedia articles here are also great, as are the many 4E lore threads that can be found on ENWorld.

My last campaign, for example, featured minor demon lords from previous editions (like Azuvidexis and Bechard), Alloces (from 4E's Codex of Betrayal), Ben-Hadar (Prince of Good Water Elementals), Renbuu (Slaad Lord of Colors), an expanding sphere of annihilation (from Bzallin's Blacksphere), and Geryon's Citadel Coldsteel (from a Paladin in Hell).

My current campaign is a mash-up of the adventures Thunderspire Labyrinth, Kingdom of the Ghouls, Shards of the Day, Night Below, the little details on the Underdark mentioned in Critical Role so far, and elements from 4E's Underdark sourcebook.

It increases my workload as a DM to grab all these references from things my players have never heard of, but it's personally super fun for me.