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.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

Ok. Look Crawford is not saying anything new here. They could always change canon. They have changed canon many, many times. Spellplague FR shows how much they can change while 'respecting' canon. All Crawford is saying is what they have done all along. They change what they want and the stories are still good, just won't stop us from doing what we want.

Yeah, exactly this. Crawford isn't really saying "Nothing in novels in video games ever happened" he's saying it may be canon.

If they do an adventure in Cormyr, they aren't going to read every novel and comic ever set there to ensure nothing in the book contradicts that content.

And the reason why this is good? Well, all of the novels, comics, and video games already contradict each other. They all can't be true anyway, something needs to be made non-canon for all of this to work. It makes sense to just say "5E books, they're canon. Everything else, maybe."

 

[teitan]

So, in other words, WotC is telling longtime D&D fans they aren't welcome in 5e and that decades of learning lore isn't appreciated, in fact it's scorned?

Retroactively rebooting all of D&D lore, in all settings and core lore effective 7 years ago?

Telling Realms fans that the Sword Coast Adventurers Guide is the only canonical Realms book?

Is WotC actively trying to alienate dedicated longtime fans? The last time I felt WotC was doing this was when 4e came out.

If that’s how you choose to see it sure but wouldn’t that kind of be on you. Nothing about that says “long time fans aren’t welcome”. What it says is “use what you want and don’t stress the small stuff”.

 

[GreyLord]

Right now this thread is growing almost faster than I can READ it!!!

My reply being written may be outdated by the time it is posted.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Right now this thread is growing almost faster than I can READ it!!!

My reply being written may be outdated by the time it is posted.

Everybody mess with GreyLord by not posting anything until he finishes the thread, just to make this post outdated.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It's not about the past; the past will remain where it is, accessible to anyone who wants to reference it. And it's not about your table either; of course you can do what you want in your own game. This is about the future. They are officially serving notice that, moving forward, they will be "reimagining" classic settings to conform with current opinions as they wish, and it's too bad if you don't like it. That's why they made the statement. Dragonlance, Planescape, Spelljammer, the Realms, and every other setting they touch on from now on will have alterations, and they want old fans to be warned in an attempt to stave off bad PR.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The only element of canon that was ever brought forward into future actors' runs was Bond's wife being killed in the one and only George Lazenby film

That could be a reference to the novels, rather than the movie.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That's why they made the statement.

Unless it was an answer to a specific question, as this came out at a press event. It's dangerous to assume context.

 

[Einar Stormcrow]

This is merely an indication that in the process of updating settings they aren't going to be beholden to the old lore nor will they use RSE's to explain it. This is 100% what they did with Ravenloft and is going to be used liberally in Dragonlance, Dark Sun, and other future settings. They are preempting the "Actshully, according to 'Tails from Uncle Trapspringer...'" Type of criticism.

Hell, I would be far less interested in Dark Sun if they didn't do this, and that's my favorite classic setting. If after decades, they decided 'yeah, we're gonna pick up the timeline after the second box set, which happened after the novels that resolved all of the setting's central conflicts', that would really kill a lot of my enthusiasm. I might still pick it up for the 5E stats, and see if I could grab the original boxed set off of drivethru for fluff, but it would be a really strange choice for them to go in that direction if they didn't have to. This decision by WotC is basically them saying 'we don't have to do that', and I'm all about it. If anything, I wish they had said it long before now.

On that note, those novels still serve as an example of one way that a Dark Sun campaign could go. In that way, the fiction serves a function. But it should never be binding. Personally, I think all settings should have a static metaplot and all major changes, it should be understood, are caused by the PCs and are limited to your table. But that's just me.

And yeah, there are the 'but Spellfire said that Elminster's outhouse was blue, not green' folks, but I think they were getting shut down before this announcement, and they'll continue to be shut down after it. That much isn't changing. I guess this is just an official declaration that no one cares about the purity of depictions of Elminster's outhouse.

 

[This Effin’ GM]

DOES THIS MEAN WE DONT HAVE TO ACKNOWLEDGE GUNS AND CANNONS IN DRAGONLANCE IN A 5E RELEASE?!?

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

If Elminster has an outhouse, he is really wasting his trips to alternate Prime Material worlds. He needs one of those fancy Japanese toilets, not a hole cut in a board, even if there's a Sphere of Annihilation or something down at the bottom of the hole. (And let's be honest, he'd totally use a Sphere of Annihilation that way.)