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.

 

[billd91]

No one can disagree on that. But expansion doesn't need to be made in a time line. You can expand a story in other ways. That's why every spin-off is better than the original source

I'm not sure Joanie loves Chachi was better than Happy Days.

 

[Bolares]

I mean, in a choice between an ending like Firefly or Watchmen and an ending like GoT or Lost, it's kinda a toss up as to which is truly the worse...

Firefly wasn't supposed to end, and that kind of sucks. But things like the watchmen series, or Wandavision are really cool, and don't need to continue to be relevant. I personally haven't watched Firefly because I don't want the dissapointment of getting attached and not having the intended resolution.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I mean, in a choice between an ending like Firefly or Watchmen and an ending like GoT or Lost, it's kinda a toss up as to which is truly the worse...

Wait what, Watchmen? The comic or the TV show? Either both had solid endings, and neither was "cancelled", the author just said all he had to say.

Firefly though sure, that was in many ways worse than Lost even with the movie, because it got cancelled.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I'm shocked that nothing official has come out yet, not even an acknowledgement of what Jeremy Crawford might have said. If not for this 1 article we'd never have heard of this. No other news outlets at press conferences have confirmed it, I checked, just the one source. I'm starting to wonder if it was CB misunderstanding something and/or just an off the cuff comment from Jeremy Crawford. For now its not official policy and the alleged decanonization of the comics/novels/pre 5e ttrpg books is still unofficial and unverified. I've checked James Wyatt's, Jeremy Crawford's, Chris Perkin's, and Ray Winninger's twitters, no evidence this ever happened.

I'm starting to think this whole thing was comicbook.com click baiting us.

 

[billd91]

Firefly wasn't supposed to end, and that kind of sucks. But things like the watchmen series, or Wandavision are really cool, and don't need to continue to be relevant. I personally haven't watched Firefly because I don't want the dissapointment of getting attached and not having the intended resolution.

No, it wasn't supposed to end when it did. But because it did have an unfortunately short life, it's a relatively cheap investment to watch to completion and enjoy without the stress of anticipation of what's next because... there is no next after the movie. It may not be as satisfying as a series that has a good, multi-season run, but it's a damn good watch for a few evenings of TV binge.
Don't let lost potential keep you from enjoying something that's still good for what it was able to accomplish.

 

[dave2008]

Firefly wasn't supposed to end, and that kind of sucks. But things like the watchmen series, or Wandavision are really cool, and don't need to continue to be relevant. I personally haven't watched Firefly because I don't want the dissapointment of getting attached and not having the intended resolution.

That is pretty much the point of the movie. It wraps up the series.

 

[Bolares]

That is pretty much the point of the movie. It wraps up the series.

Can't find the movie on streamming services anywhere (in Brazil). Maybe when I get my hands on Serenity I watch the series

 

[Umbran]

They're taking all the old lore and disposing of it in a giant pit.

A better analogy is probably that they are taking the old lore, and putting it on a shelf. And maybe it'll come off the shelf, or maybe it'll gather dust.

No it's not, because dishes with mushrooms are designed to have mushrooms in them. With a few exceptions, campaign settings are not designed to tell an ongoing story, they are designed to play a game.

With one, you are talking about contents, and with the other, you are talking purpose. The result may resonate emotionally, but is not logically coherent.

If you buy a product to use for something it wasn't intended to do you have no cause to complain if it stops working.

I daresay you overstep your bounds in asserting the thing cannot, and was not, designed to do both. You show no evidence of having secret knowledge on that point that anyone else here doesn't have. And, with regards to FR, we have Ed Greenwood's aspirations as an author of fiction that suggest otherwise.

There are many good, multi-purpose tools in the world. You can embrace the power of AND.

 

[Scribe]

Even if that means living with the sins of the fathers?

Yes.

A hard canon approach will always be preferable, as one in which it's constantly reset devalues the setting. To me.

 

[TheSword]

Yes.

A hard canon approach will always be preferable, as one in which it's constantly reset devalues the setting. To me.

That fair enough. Poor quality storytelling devalues the setting more for me.