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.

 

[Scribe]

Businesses don't benefit from massive hard canon (fnaar fnarr as we'd have said in the '90s lol). They benefit from resets and changes in three big ways apart from the sheer effort of maintaining it:

I hear you. I honestly understand what you all are saying, and for me, again FOR ME, it's irrelevant.

Canon, or no Canon.

I choose a maintained, canon. Every time.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I hear you. I honestly understand what you all are saying, and for me, again FOR ME, it's irrelevant.

Canon, or no Canon.

I choose a maintained, canon. Every time.

And WotC chooses not to.

 

[Scribe]

I mean, it's pretty hard to walk back rhetorically from an admission that canon wasn't ever that seriously enforced, and routinely violated as needed.

When it isn't the context of the thread or the issue (all pee 5e is not canon) no. No checkmate at all.

I'm aware that they haven't ever hit the bar I would prefer. It doesn't change the point.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I hear you. I honestly understand what you all are saying, and for me, again FOR ME, it's irrelevant.

Canon, or no Canon.

I choose a maintained, canon. Every time.

Do you choose or would you prefer? It sounds like you're expressing a preference as a choice, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Like, do you actively select certain products because they have hard canon even if they are inferior in other characteristics in your view? If so do you have any examples. If it's just what you'd prefer fair enough!

I ask this in part because I think the reason that hard canon is rare (apart from cost of maintenance) is that it's not a choice a lot of consumers make.

 

[Scribe]

And WotC chooses not to.

What a revelation. That's certainly not the reason for this thread. LOL.

 

[Echohawk]

No it wasn't, it was the setting for Ed Greenwood's home game, and then the setting was published before the first novel (Dalkwalker on Moonshae).

That's not correct. Darkwalker on Moonshae was published in May 1987, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set in July 1987.

 

[Scribe]

Do you choose or would you prefer? It sounds like you're expressing a preference as a choice, but maybe I'm misunderstanding.

Like, do you actively select certain products because they have hard canon even if they are inferior in other characteristics in your view? If so do you have any examples. If it's just what you'd prefer fair enough!

Prefer, yes.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's not correct. Darkwalker on Moonshae was published in May 1987, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set in July 1987.

Interesting. Although I believe "Waterdeep" was published sometime in the 1970s.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

That's not correct. Darkwalker on Moonshae was published in May 1987, the Forgotten Realms Campaign Set in July 1987.

I'm fascinated that it was that late. So somehow they jammed in a huge number of 1E FR supplements before Forgotten Realms Adventures for 2E in 1990, and FRA's context was that it was updating, a really new, recent, and popular setting for the new edition.

Also holy crap I hadn't thought about a Shirokinukatsukami in decades lol until I looked closely at that text!

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Prefer, yes.

I would imagine there are 3PP who publish living settings. If not, there is a gap in the market that you could fill.