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.

 

[JEB]

"Bullies". You think of people who have issues with the Canon being changed and talking about it vehemently as Bullies. That people who will spend 20 minutes during a game discussing whether or not X event is or isn't or should or shouldn't be canon are Bullies. Those people will just argue about something else. They'll argue about something said 20 minutes ago, 6 years ago, 40 years ago, or Rules.

No, I think that bullies who want to argue about how you can't do this or that, in order to gain some tiny degree of power at a gaming table, will use whatever tool they like best. The problem isn't the tool. It's the behavior. Removing tools from everyone who liked them, because of the behavior of a few bad actors, isn't fair.

And you, JEB, champion of the nice folks who just like the old Canon and are being "Punished" because of the "Bullies" who is somehow deeply offended that WotC would declare -all- the Modules as having their own Canonicity in advance, rather than going one by one by one and saying "This one's canonicity is self-contained, that one's canonicity includes all prior lore"... Are telling me "You can just tell people that the canon is self contained at the table!"

Well. There you go, JEB. WotC is telling you that all the Canon is self-contained. It's not "Punishing" any given player based on what lore they liked or know from 30 years ago. It's just them announcing that all the WotC products are "Self-Contained Canon" or "Canon for this Adventure".

Problem solved!

That isn't actually what Wizards said: they still include all D&D 5E RPG products as canon. They didn't say that every module stands alone. (Though I will say, in practice, that most if not all of the 5E modules can be run without referring to anything beyond the core rules, to include story beats; and that was the case both before and after this declaration.)

Meanwhile, I'm not quite sure why you seem to be making this personal...

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

At least with an official declaration, nothing about Eberron will be canon outside of the basic information in E:RftLW. With no canon to contend with, kanon becomes the de facto canon since it's the only one remaining. KB won't have to explain that certain things in the books doesn't fit his vision any longer (and justify it saying it's HIS Eberron only), since those things and books simply never happened. The kanon over canon match has been won, by forfeit.

 

[TheSword]

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.

I think it’s because they’re going to reinvent Dragonlance.

 

[MGibster]

I think it’s because they’re going to reinvent Dragonlance.

Which is think is a good idea. Just start from scratch at this point.

 

[Faolyn]

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.

Probably as forewarning. Take Ravenloft. Whether you include the 3e Sword & Sorcery stuff or only stick with 2e as canon, VGR completely rewrote it, keeping on the basics and the flavor. This angered a lot of people who didn't want to have something new sprung on them.

 

[Hussar]

They never had. Your campaign is un-canon basically the moment it starts.

If this is true, and, I do believe that it is, then what purpose is canon in an RPG?

If every game played is automatically non-canon, then you basically have this giant bolus of material, that is protected by the canon designation and cannot be changed officially, that serves zero function at the table since the table is automatically non-canon.

So, what canon actually do?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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 idea that the universe is much bigger than we realized -- this whole franchise started with orcs and humans whacking each other with swords, after all -- is a core part of the franchise. Every few years, it zooms out and we find out that things are a lot bigger, more complicated and less cut and dried than we thought. Warcraft III told us that orcs weren't necessarily evil at all and that war was all part of a very, very long-running cosmic war.

We've known that the Light didn't equal "good" for a while now, at the very least since the final patch of Legion with its very memorable sequence with Illidan and the Naaru whom players had been serving, despite her increasingly shady comments, all expansion.

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

The fact that the multiverse is full of absolutists who refuse to acknowledge that they're not the good guys -- even the Burning Legion and Void Lords both insist they're the forces of good -- is part of the shades of gray that have been part of the game since at least War3.

As someone who grew up in a military family with a veteran father, I actually feel the idea that no side is purely the good guys and that many of them aren't telling either their soldiers or victims the whole truth, to actually be a feature of the setting, rather than a bug.

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.

We'll see. Mid-expansion doldrums have always been a thing and this isn't the first time Final Fantasy pulled large numbers of players away.

No king lives forever, but I don't know that we have enough evidence to judge right now.

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

I think the employees are the ones who are most likely to make a difference here, since Activision leadership seems so tone-deaf and defiant.

 

[JEB]

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.

The Time War didn't wipe out the old continuity; there have been numerous references to the classic era of Who in the new series, up to and including the last season. The Time War just wiped out the Time Lords and the Daleks. Both of whom came back. And then got killed again... and then came back again... and then got killed again...

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.

Yes, there are toxic D&D fans who use canon as a bludgeon. There are also a much larger number of fans who just liked canon, and the idea of everything D&D being part of one largely coherent narrative. Making the latter group unhappy to thwart a tiny number of problem folks isn't very fair.

 

[Hussar]

Which is think is a good idea. Just start from scratch at this point.

But, hang on. You just categorically stated that you wouldn't play in a non-canon Star Wars game. That it wasn't really a Star Wars game. But, because you happen not to like the canon of Dragonlance, it's okay to to start from scratch?

How is this not exactly what people are talking about when they say enshrining canon is a problem? Basically, you're saying that if it's canon that you like, then it cannot be changed, it must be adhered to - you wouldn't even play in a Star Wars game that was non-canon. But, if it's canon you're not particularly enamoured with, then it's perfectly fine to change? So, the whole canon thing is essentially just a stand in for trying to justify your personal preference as some sort of objective value?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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

They didn't make one. This was a report out of a media event by a single outlet. Someone asked a question, someone (maybe the same person) reported it out, with limited context. The declaration, if it comes, will come directly from WotC.