• The VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!

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...

Status
Not open for further replies.
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."


despair.jpg


"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.
 

log in or register to remove this ad


log in or register to remove this ad





Whizbang Dustyboots

Gnometown Hero
I would imagine that the Companions won't be changed. For the most part I don't really see any problem issues with them as a legendary group of adventurers (except for the rotten way that Flint had to die. Not cool. Should've been given a heroic death).
No one throws a dwarf ... in the trash!
 


RFB Dan

Podcast host, 6-edition DM, and guy with a pulse.
The truth is that WotC isn't changing something here, they've been doing this for years. This isn’t meant to alienate anyone, bit keep the RPG loose and open for people to use as they wish.
That's pretty much how I read it; not a statement of "FROM NOW ON WE DO THIS" (caps to make it sound all echoed and out of a gladiator movie) but "this is what we've been doing since 2014." All he did was show us how the sausage is made.
 


Honestly my assumption is that this is less about getting rid of all canon and more about getting rid of canon that conflicts with 5E canon. Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes established that all elves in every setting were either creations of Corellon or copies of Corellon's elves. The upcoming Fizban's Treasury of Dragons establishes that all D&D worlds were created from a First World that was destroyed by a conflict between Bahamut and Tiamat.

This announcement basically just says "anything that disagrees with something in an official 5E game book isn't canon" to make it so the new canon can supersede all that came before.
 

Status
Not open for further replies.
Remove ads

Remove ads

Top