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.

 

[Mirtek]

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

A large part would play the games anyway and most of the other part would just read the summary online, maybe even watch a video on youtube with all cutscenes taped together like a movie.

(I do this for some series which I am still interested enough to follow the story, but no longer interested enough to do so by playing the games- Heck, I actually skipped watching entire movies when there as a particular detailed Wikipedia summary

 

[Remathilis]

The inverse of this is Blizzard's historical insistence on putting World of Warcraft lore in novels and other books, and not just in the game. While some of the books are good (I think the novels are terrible, myself, but the guidebooks are really good), the general consensus among WoW fans is that this is a terrible system and it gets hated on constantly. (If they showed a limited version of all the big lore news in the game and then expanded it in a novel, that would be one thing, but there have been times when in-game events have been incomprehensible if you didn't either read a novel or a fansite summary of it.)

There was a Doctor Who multimedia event called Time Lord Victorious that told the story of the 10th Doctor going power-hungry and the 8th and 9th trying to stop him. It was told over novels, audio dramas, comics, an escape room, a live show, basically any type of media BUT the TV show. A lot of it only available in the UK to boot. Basically, it's impossible to get the full story unless you get all the supplement media (though I'm told you can still follow the main plot via the novels and audio).

Now imagine if all that was canon and referenced in season 13...

 

[Mirtek]

The inverse of this is Blizzard's historical insistence on putting World of Warcraft lore in novels and other books, and not just in the game. While some of the books are good (I think the novels are terrible, myself, but the guidebooks are really good), the general consensus among WoW fans is that this is a terrible system and it gets hated on constantly. (If they showed a limited version of all the big lore news in the game and then expanded it in a novel, that would be one thing, but there have been times when in-game events have been incomprehensible if you didn't either read a novel or a fansite summary of it.)

Blizz is also an example why a proper canon is important, because Blizzard regularily contradict itself in expansion after expansion. Then they finally put out a "definitive" guide to WarCraft lore only the turn around some time later and declare that very guide to be unreliable and started to contradict it again.

At least there's hope they'll start contradict the whole Shadowlands thing in 2 expansions down the road (if WoW doesn't die over it's current problems)

it's impossible to get the full story unless

you just read up on it online? Seriously no fan site did a full summary of it? Not a single one?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Blizz is also an example why a proper canon is important, because Blizzard regularily contradict itself in expansion after expansion. Then they finally put out a "definitive" guide to WarCraft lore only the turn around some time later and declare that very guide to be unreliable and started to contradict it again.

I've played WoW since alpha, and Warcraft III before that, and I think the complaints about contradictions are somewhat overblown -- usually it's new information, not contradictory information.

But boy, their delivery system needs work. Wanting people to read their terrible comics, but to ignore the later terrible comics in the exact same series, and not explaining any of that lore in the game until years after it had been incorporated into the game was insane.

As far as I can remember, the ending of Burning Crusade has never been explained in-game. Players have to read a manga -- not even the core World of Warcraft comic book line -- to know who that woman was and why good guys thought it was OK to sacrifice her and why the stuff happened as a result worked.

At least there's hope they'll start contradict the whole Shadowlands thing in 2 expansions down the road (if WoW doesn't die over it's current problems)

My biggest issue with Shadowlands is they have potentially laid out enough lore and new horizons for years of play that they seem to want to burn through before the end of 2022, which is a weird, weird choice.

We should be learning who the First Ones are after five or six more plane-hopping expansions, not in one to two patches from now.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There was a Doctor Who multimedia event called Time Lord Victorious that told the story of the 10th Doctor going power-hungry and the 8th and 9th trying to stop him. It was told over novels, audio dramas, comics, an escape room, a live show, basically any type of media BUT the TV show. A lot of it only available in the UK to boot. Basically, it's impossible to get the full story unless you get all the supplement media (though I'm told you can still follow the main plot via the novels and audio).

Now imagine if all that was canon and referenced in season 13...

I was really interested in Time Lord Victorious, but the scope of it, and the sticker shock that comes any time I think about buying a Big Finish audio series, kept me away.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

if WoW doesn't die over it's current problems

If you're referring to the sexual harassment lawsuit, they're mostly about former employees, I believe and Blizzard is taking steps, including some just announced today, to distance themselves from the most prominent alleged harassers. League of Legends and Riot survived some seriously awful allegations as well -- hopefully by becoming a better place to work. I suspect Blizzard will be fine as well, although the next year or so will probably be a rocky one.

 

[Parmandur]

I have $5 that says this was just a response to a journalist's question, rather than intended to be some sort of grand public thesis.

Crawford did say that the D&D Studio Blog would address canon policy in a few months.

 

[Mirtek]

I've played WoW since alpha, and Warcraft III before that, and I think the complaints about contradictions are somewhat overblown -- usually it's new information, not contradictory information.

Except for the whole shadowlands on it's own. #### whatever you held dear in live, you're part of team death now! The light that you praised, worshipped and served all your life? That's now the enemy. And they're actually invading, so hurry and fight them off.

The whole touching questline about trying to save that poor paladin who got infected with a necromatic disease and while you ultimately failed despite all your herculean efforts, you at least got a being of pure light to show up and whisk his soul away personally while even stating "the light does not abandon it's champions"? All a big fat lie.

Light does abandon it's champions all the time, just look at how many high ranking paladins you meet in the shadowlands just being converted from team light to team death with no being of light showing up to take them

If you're referring to the sexual harassment lawsuit, they're mostly about former employees, I believe and Blizzard is taking steps, including some just announced today, to distance themselves from the most prominent alleged harassers. League of Legends and Riot survived some seriously awful allegations as well -- hopefully by becoming a better place to work. I suspect Blizzard will be fine as well, although the next year or so will probably be a rocky one.

It comes at a time when WoW is struggling, subscribers leave in droves (although the remaining whales at least double down on their spendings) and there's finally some real competition showing again (with all the "WoW-Killers" that come and go eventually one will live up to it's name). And now this serious out of game issue.

Regardless what corporate PR released, the employees seem of a different mind.

WoW dev says “no work” being done amid Activision-Blizzard lawsuit - Dexerto

With Activision-Blizzard facing a flurry of legal trouble, a full hault has been applied to World of Warcraft's development claims one dev.

www.dexerto.com

Anyway, that's going even more off topic.

 

[JEB]

So you are complaining that WotC are being too honest, and should lie to fans?

No, I just don't think they needed an official declaration either way, just as they didn't have one for the first seven years of 5E. Let folks who like canon think it's all one story; let folks who don't pick and choose or ignore as they see fit.

But apparently, they felt a declaration was necessary. I suppose we'll find out why eventually.

 

[Hussar]

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.

Did they ever do that? Did WotC ever make claims over canon? Yes, they released material, but, at no point did they point to this or that and declare it to be canon. Fans just assumed that it was, which leads me to this:

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.

Yes, that reason is because fans make assumptions that the creators never bother to make. "Something is canon" is neither intuitive nor understood. It's a layer that fans add on after the fact. This is why fans will turn themselves into knots trying to justify inconsistencies. The creator doesn't really care. It's just a mistake. But, simply saying, "Oops, yup, this is wrong", fans make appeals to a mythical "canon" and then try to "fix" the inconsistency.

Again, it's all about adding an intrinsic value to canon that doesn't actually exist anywhere outside of the fan's heads. The fact that no book EVER states, "This is canon" should be a pretty big clue as to how unimportant canon is to the creative process. You'd think something so vitally important would be curated by those creating the thing instead of leaving it to fans to determine after the fact. And, frankly, fans are divided, divisive and rapidly unbelievably toxic whenever this sort of thing comes up.