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.

 

[TheSword]

The old stuff doesn’t stop being a springboard either. Just because 5e writers don’t agree to be bound by it.

In fact it will be a better springboard if grogs aren’t telling writers that they’re incorrect because the X empire never expanded borders beyond Y, therefore this fort can’t be X culture.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Maps: X location isn’t featured on Y map or has moved slightly. People were actually complaining that the new Daggerford map art has Daggerford on a different bank of the river… so freaking what!

See, to me, that seems like a good jumping off point for either an adventure or a story.

If the town was moved, it was likely destroyed. How did that happen? Is there anything at the previous site of the town worth recovering and what's keeping the proper owners from doing so?

It might be a mistake on the part of the map makers -- or there's some subtle reason it was done, like trying to be more realistic about geography (I have no idea) -- but that looks like a gift to me as a DM.

Dates: Complaints that X reference means that Y creature is only 30,000 years old not 40,000 years old. Or that B ruler must have been at war with C kingdom because the D war was happening at that point. I say again so freaking what!

Again, this feels like an opportunity for an adventure about a "secret war." Both in real life and (ahem) comic books, secret wars have occurred and are always dramatic and high stakes. While the rest of the world's attention was turned elsewhere, what was happening in this corner of Faerun? And why is knowledge of this war important now? In a fantasy universe, that sounds like a ruin to visit to recover something that no one knew was there until recently. An adventure featuring a race against the Red Wizards, or someone similar, for a lost magical super-weapon sounds like something to be excited about, not frustrated.

 

[dragoner]

That was a mistake.

They are right though dnd twitter is crickets on the subject, it blows up here because of the grogs.

 

[MGibster]

They are right though dnd twitter is crickets on the subject, it blows up here because of the grogs.

We don’t know how to use Twitter.

 

[TheSword]

They are right though dnd twitter is crickets on the subject, it blows up here because of the grogs.

Oh I see. I thought people were losing their mind.

Funnily enough, on Candlekeep there were a fair number of people who thought this matter had been resolved ages ago and that this had been clear pretty my since 2014.

 

[Parmandur]

Oh I see. I thought people were losing their mind.

Funnily enough, on Candlekeep there were a fair number of people who thought this matter had been resolved ages ago and that this had been clear pretty my since 2014.

I was surprised how many people at Candlekeep were cool with it, actually.

 

[Faolyn]

So you're saying the setting became popular initially because of all this "obstructive" lore that's nothing but a detriment? Huh...

It's almost like when you first get something, it's new and cool, but when you get too much of it it starts becoming a bit of a burden.

 

[Umbran]

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

Nope. I was responding to why new players are prioritized over the old geezers.

Why they chose this action of prioritization is a separate question, but one that also has an answer, which we see repeated over and over in RPGs with lore and developing world plots and situations.

Old lore is history. Water under the bridge. Unless you are writing new adventures set in the past, there's nowhere new players can be actively engaged with that lore. They aren't playing adventures set in those old times. The only use for that lore is to inform the present. And if it is doing so to significant degrees, then there's a whole lot of it to absorb before one can meaningfully engage. And the player's time is extremely valuable.

We older players are heavily invested in that lore in large part because it was new at the time we first engaged with it. New players are going to prefer new lore, that is revealed and unfolding as they are playing, relevant to the adventures they undertake.

 

[Faolyn]

Sure, but isn't that true for the Forgotten Realms also? I mean, people keep talking about how "the lore was preventing newcomers from understanding/enjoying the setting," but could you really not play Lost Mine of Phandelver from the 2014 Starter Set without having read piles of old products?

A published adventure is one thing. But diving in and making your own adventures is a bit tricky unless you actively choose to ignore the canon, and hope that the players do as well.

 

[PsyzhranV2]

They are right though dnd twitter is crickets on the subject, it blows up here because of the grogs.

Yeah, that was the point I was trying to make; only a small portion of D&D Twitter is paying attention to this (or even knows that it happened). Reactions are across the board: some are angered by the change, others are welcoming it, still others cautiously waiting to see where this goes; but it's all industry people along with older and more experienced players. The new players don't seem to care.