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.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Here I see a hypotetical conflict between creative freedom and coherence. Usually we can agree most of time in our own tabletop the creative freeedom is the priority. We don't need a timecop or agents of Time-Variance-Authority saying us "this timeline is against the canon and it has to be pruned to avoid a new multiverse war". And the TTRPGs has been designed to be the tool of players who love to create their own fanfic.

Usually the Game-Master has got the last word, and if this says the rose of Guadalupe is more powerful than other supernatural monster then this is true.

But I have said lots of time the future of D&D is as multimedia franchise. Even the own WotC warns the main goal will be the digital market, the videogames. Teorically this could allow enough creative freedom, for example swamping PCs, gender, class, race, hair color, alternate hair-styles...

Teorically the metaplot should have ended in the RPG industry by fault of spoilers from the internet.

I can accept, allow or forgive a reboot of all D&D multiverse if WotC can tell a right plot like DC infinity-earth-crisis or Marvel Secret Wars III.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And there's the rub. "Poorly". Judged poorly by whom? By the majority of folks that really don't care that much but enjoy the property, or by the tiny slice of hardcore fans that pore over details, post on message boards like this one and then shout from the rooftops for anyone who will listen?



Again, you're talking about episodes that aired before I was even born, and I'm not that young. New Who does not reference Atlantis at all, AFAIK. And, given that the Time War wiped out all the continuity of old Who, I'd say Who has pretty much scorched earth it's entire continuity when it rebooted.




I'll take your word for it.



You are kinda ignoring the massive amount of invective and the toxic cesspit that fandom devolves into when these changes are brought about. It would be fantastic is what you were describing here was how it worked but it's not. It's a small number of EXTREMELY loud trufans and canon police screaming from their soapboxes as loudly as they can to try to force their visions onto everyone else.


Me, as I said, I could kiss Crawford for this. Now, when someone whinges about how you can't possibly make succubi into devils, because that's what some out of print supplement said thirty years ago, the proper

I disagree, because the nature of canon is a declaration of status, which means that if something is declared to be non-canon, a change has been introduced unto itself (i.e. the status of the material) even if no alternatives are subsequently put forward. The current framework, in this instance, has been declared to not be part of the greater whole (i.e. that which is canon) and so no longer is understood to be part of the conceptual framework that you make use of when engaging with the lore in that particular mode.

To declare something non-canon is a change unto itself. Like with the islanders who are told that they're now living under the political purview of a foreign power, it might not have any practical implications, but the nature of the change is something very real, and for a lot of people it's very substantive (and not something to be happy about).

The authority is important, because that's a fundamental aspect of the nature of canon: it's a determination that's made entirely external to you (in the general sense of the word "you"). That externalization grounds it, making it more real, because it gives it a quality of immutability - or at least, immutability in terms of personal whim - which is something it then shares with the real world.

I suspect that this is where a lot of our inability to reach a consensus is coming from, because I'm of the opinion that canon is more than simply agreeing on the history/lore/rules; as mentioned above, it requires an authoritative determination of what's part of the imaginary world and what's not, and in so doing removes personal issues of agreement from the equation entirely. Even if you have different universes, storylines, or alternative takes on the same body of work, their canonity ("canonicity"?) is determined by the individual(s) who have authority over that particular work; not by the fans or other people who engage with the material.

Now, as noted previously, fans can break from canon in terms of how much they want to personally recognize, utilize, or otherwise partake of. But that doesn't change the nature of what's canon unto itself. It's just a degree of interaction.

It doesn't "harm" the canon (as I see it) because you're not changing the canon; it still exists, independent of what happens in your game. What happens in your home game isn't recognized by the authority which determines canon for that particular conceptual framework. Likewise, I'm of the opinion that the different modes of engagement can be separated very cleanly from each other. Using art as an example, you can still appreciate the technical skill of Venus Callipyge without caring about the statue's historical or erotic aspects; that mode of engagement is independent of the others, the same way engaging with lore for your home game is independent of engaging with it as an imaginary realm with externally-defined boundaries.

I wonder, if the point of the declaration was just so players could feel comfortable making their own story without being beholden to past lore, why did they declare canon to start at 5e at all? As has been said, even within 5e there are a few inconsistencies. If they really want people to make the game their own in regards to lore, they should have declared that nothing was canon, period. Just ideas different folks come up with.

 

[Scott Christian]

I considered a Boycott of WotC/Hasbro briefly, but rejected it for two reason. One, morally boycotting something over content feels like an an attack on free speech and I have seen to much harm come from that sort of thing to engage in it myself, which is why I refused to engage in the Gillette boycott, although I was sympathetic (I never bought the product to begin with to he fair, so my refusal to join in was symbollic at best).

The other reason is that it would be utterly useless, I simply can't produce the kind of numbers to hurt WotC's massive growth, as seen below. Over 100% growth for this year's second quarter compared to last year's second quarter. I simply can't beat that.

Hasbro Reports Growth in Second Quarter 2021 Revenue, Operating Profit, EBITDA and Earnings Per Share

That is impressive. Yet, it lumps digital gaming with Wizards. Impossible to dissect tabletop. No doubt though, it too is also crushing it.

 

[Scott Christian]

That's not what the old data said at all.

The old WotC market survey showed that the older the gamer was, the less they spent on the hobby. That's the specific reason why they excluded the 40+ range because they found that 40+ year old gamers didn't spend money. And, yes, the justification was that because the older gamers are, the more material they have and the less likely they are to buy new stuff.

I guess 40 really is the new 30.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Here is the bottom like what is the return on investment to WoTC for Canon Compliance?

 

[cmad1977]

Pretty sad how fragile dudes are over “canon” or a commercial.

Certainly wasn’t raised by the men I my family to be so… soft.

 

[wicked cool]

what dm's canon would be affected by this? the star wars stuff was 99% non canon as soon as they released the new movie and all changes were made to han's kids etc. they picked and chose waht they wanted

Does this mean that all the loth lore is going out the window? what is the new lore for characters such as Elminster and Raistlin?

 

[FrozenNorth]

The fans recognized the declaration, which is inherent in the release of the material by the recognized authority.

So… is that a “no”?

 

[Alzrius]

So… is that a “no”?

Just the opposite.

The declaration that something is canon is recognized as being intuitive, even if it's not overtly stated. You don't have to flat-out state something that's already understood to be the case; that's why Wizards had to overtly declare that everything before 5E was non-canon, since they recognized that the older material was canon otherwise.

If that wasn't the case, the default state would have been that nothing was ever canon to begin with (since there are no books which explicitly state "this material is canon"), and so there would have been no need for that announcement.

There's a reason why no one says that, because Tolkien never explicitly declared that The Lord of the Rings is canon to the events of The Hobbit, LotR isn't really part of Middle-Earth's lore.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Pretty sad how fragile dudes are over “canon” or a commercial.

Certainly wasn’t raised by the men I my family to be so… soft.

Appealing to stereotypes of toxic masculinity isn’t going to help your point or this thread.