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.

 

[Mort]

After 47 years the shared experiences of this IP have created a Culture. For many people, this culture is real and meaningful (sometimes even saving their lives). Cultures shift and change all the time. Some elements die off, new ones spring up, etc.

But it's generally not okay to tell someone their culture is less valid than another. If it fades away naturally? Sure. But to actually say it? To make it your official stance? No.

I get that and mostly agree.

But that's why it's really worth stressing the nature of this announcement (something I don't think has been done enough in this long, long, thread).

Crawford is being extremely specific. He's saying the back lore (prior to 2014) is not cannon for the roleplaying game not the novel lines etc. So if a game supplement comes out, it might not be 100% tied to prior lore. That's it. And frankly, they've ALWAYS done that re: the game books - this time Crawford is just saying it out loud.

You'll note - even here, they're pretty careful. The released books fluff is generally from a not wholly reliable narrator (Volo, Mordenkainen, Tasha etc.) so even when the lore is contradicted it's contradicted in a non binding way.

So I sympathize (to a point) but I actually think WoTC is going far out of its way to satisfy those for whom cannon is such a big thing.

 

[Stormonu]

My only hope is that Kara-Tur, Maztica, and Zakhara are divorced from FR, and sent their own worlds. Especially Maztica and its quasi Conquistadors.

 

[MGibster]

Can you give examples where something WOC did in the 5e Forgotten Realms that has done what you or others are afraid of?

Again, I don’t have a problem with what WotC is doing so I’m not afraid of anything. You don’t understand why people might be unhappy and I don’t know how to make myself any clearer. I don’t think this line of discussion will prove fruitful.

 

[TheSword]

Again, I don’t have a problem with what WotC is doing so I’m not afraid of anything. You don’t understand why people might be unhappy and I don’t know how to make myself any clearer. I don’t think this line of discussion will prove fruitful.

No problem. I guess I was interested whether WOC had actually done anything, or whether it was simply the fear that they might that was the problem. The lack of examples in this thread seems to suggest it’s the latter.

 

[Umbran]

Why do new players need to be prioritized over long term loyal players and readers.

Because, as a business, WotC needs to keep the bottom line in mind. Which then brings in two things:

1) 40+ year-old, long-time gamers are down around 10% of their market.

2) In terms of long-term revenue, the young new player has a lifetime of spending on games ahead of them, and realistically the old gamer has... a shorter remaining time as an active customer.

Older gamers are not the best revenue stream investment.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

That's a pretty interesting take, actually: The problem wasn't necessarily the lore itself, but that the lore wasn't designed and used in a way that benefited people running games.

With his own adventure in Candlekeep Mysteries he wanted to make lore relevant to the adventure, rather than just being background fluff that was never utilized.

Alot of good points were raised actually.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I get that and mostly agree.

But that's why it's really worth stressing the nature of this announcement (something I don't think has been done enough in this long, long, thread).

Crawford is being extremely specific. He's saying the back lore (prior to 2014) is not cannon for the roleplaying game not the novel lines etc. So if a game supplement comes out, it might not be 100% tied to prior lore. That's it. And frankly, they've ALWAYS done that re: the game books - this time Crawford is just saying it out loud.

You'll note - even here, they're pretty careful. The released books fluff is generally from a not wholly reliable narrator (Volo, Mordenkainen, Tasha etc.) so even when the lore is contradicted it's contradicted in a non binding way.

So I sympathize (to a point) but I actually think WoTC is going far out of its way to satisfy those for whom cannon is such a big thing.

If there are 2 canons, one for 5e RPG stuff and one for everything else, folks will end up viewing the mostly open ended 5e rpg books as not canon in practice as you really can't really create any kind of canon out of them except for the SCAG, because they are so undetermined.

Still the novels covered in part or in full all the most important events of 5e, the Sundering for example and the Rage of Demons.

They should hurry up and clarify the twin canon thing before they alienate more people.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Because, as a business, WotC needs to keep the bottom line in mind. Which then brings in two things:

1) 40+ year-old, long-time gamers are down around 10% of their market.

2) In terms of long-term revenue, the young new player has a lifetime of spending on games ahead of them, and realistically the old gamer has... a shorter remaining time as an active customer.

Older gamers are not the best revenue stream investment.

You assume, falsely, that new players aren't interested in the lore, some, maybe even many are.

 

[Parmandur]

If there are 2 canons, one for 5e RPG stuff and one for everything else, folks will end up viewing the mostly open ended 5e rpg books as not canon in practice as you really can't really create any kind of canon out of them except for the SCAG, because they are so undetermined.

Still the novels covered in part or in full all the most important events of 5e, the Sundering for example and the Rage of Demons.

They should hurry up and clarify the twin canon thing before they alienate more people.

Twin suggests just two. My reading is that they have no plan to coordinate between Film, video games, and novels. So Baldur's Gate 3 is not canonical related to the upcoming movie, or even Dark Alliance.

 

[Alzrius]

You assume, falsely, that new players aren't interested in the lore, some, maybe even many are.

This. It's not like the deep body of lore in Doctor Who has kept that series from becoming popular; quite the opposite, actually.