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.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I don't know why, but I enjoyed reading this. Seriously don't know why, but it gave me joy. Maybe I'm insane?

Bites tongue

 

[Mercurius]

Can't wait for Free League, the publisher of The One Ring 2nd edition to declare that whatever came before their rpg is no longer canon, JRR Tolkien's work included (but it remains a great inspiration!) Will they do it, do you think?

Also can't wait for the Louvre (the museum in France) to commission a sequel to Mona Lisa (yes, the painting), and then declare Leonardo's original a non-canonical, but definitely inspirational "legend".

Just joking. Right?

These are very flawed comparisons.

The One Ring RPG does not equal JRR Tolkien's work. It is an adaptation, one of several made going back to MERP. It cannot "de-canonize" Tolkien, but nor does it need to remain exactly true to everything Tolkien every wrote.

I say this as a huge fan of Tolkien, and also quite leery of Amazon's alleged "Game-of-Thrones-ification" in their upcoming series.

Similarly, you're comparing paintings with campaign settings. The former are snapshots in time, while the latter are--by their very nature--meant to be messed with.

So if we can adapt campaign settings to our liking, why can't the publisher of said campaign setting change it as they see fit?

 

[Reynard]

But the setting is how you play it at your table. It isn't a static thing, like a movie. There isn't a singular version of the Forgotten Realms. Yes, there's the published version, but then each DM (and group) adapts it to their liking, to varying degrees.

You don't think that some people enjoy the settings for themselves? You don't think some people read the setting books as voraciously and deeply as other people read novels or comics? It seems weird to me that you couldn't recognize the fact that for some people, the hobby is not just the table -- or even the table at all. I bet there are people in this thread who don't even play, but consider themselves D&D fans.

 

[Bolares]

They made no indication 9f the difference between

.... I was making an outdated joke about a poster being worried about their post being outdated. Keep up!

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Secret Wars just smashed the best parts of other AUs into the normal Marvel universe but left most of the rest the same. You get Miles and Spider-Gwen in the normal 616 for example without Peter dying (as per thier backstories)

I think Spider-Gwen is still in her own world. They've had a lot of fun with Miles and him remembering the Ultimate Universe, even though they were able to roll things back, like the death of his dad in the prior universe.

And, of course, just like DC post-Crisis, it took them about 30 minutes to start having other worlds proliferate again, including an apparent copy of the Ultimate Universe.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

There are plenty of homeless old white dudes out there, that's not punching up.

Maybe it's your emotional state today, but you seem to be missing when people aren't being literal.

 

[Scribe]

You don't think that some people enjoy the settings for themselves? You don't think some people read the setting books as voraciously and deeply as other people read novels or comics? It seems weird to me that you couldn't recognize the fact that for some people, the hobby is not just the table -- or even the table at all. I bet there are people in this thread who don't even play, but consider themselves D&D fans

One of the best thing MTG ever did was illustrate that there are groups that enjoy the game for wildly different reasons.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

There are plenty of homeless old white dudes out there, that's not punching up.

He wasn't referring to homeless people, and you know he wasn't.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

You don't think that some people enjoy the settings for themselves?

It is hard to imagine anyone enjoying Forgotten Realms, but sure, I guess it is theoretically possible.

You don't think some people read the setting books as voraciously and deeply as other people read novels or comics? It seems weird to me that you couldn't recognize the fact that for some people, the hobby is not just the table -- or even the table at all. I bet there are people in this thread who don't even play, but consider themselves D&D fans.

So what? How does this affect them? Crawford isn't gonna come to your home to burn your old Forgotten Realms novels.

 

[Reynard]

He wasn't referring to homeless people, and you know he wasn't.

No, I deserved that. I was being pithy and didn't think it through.