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.

 

[Don Durito]

But Mr Crawford, I need you opinion, in official D&D is water considered wet?

 

[Urriak Uruk]

They said the novels aren't canon, what is so confusing to people that they don't understand they are dumping 90% of the lore, which has not appeared in the 5e RPG products?

The vast majority of D&D players don't buy books because they want an encyclopedia. That's why they don't reference a bunch of lore from other media that most folks will never use; they specifically focus on the most important characters, places, and items that PCs are most likely to interact with, combined with a variety of adventure hooks (usually as tables).

They aren't dumping lore, they just aren't going to bother cross-referencing every piece of past media that exists when making new RPGs books. Thank god they aren't, it's a huge waste of time and would make for worse gamebooks.

 

[Geoff Thirlwell]

I wonder if this is just a way of erasing chunks of Dragonlance. Gully Dwarfs will be gone, Kender won’t steal. Raistlin will be in a wheelchair. Tanis will be black. Riverwind and Goldmoon will be a gay couple and Sturm will be non-binary.
The Inn of the Last Home will be a gay bar with an accessible ramp for disabled draconians

 

[Urriak Uruk]

I wonder if this is just a way of erasing chunks of Dragonlance. Gully Dwarfs will be gone, Kender won’t steal. Raistlin will be in a wheelchair. Tanis will be black. Riverwind and Goldmoon will be a gay couple and Sturm will be non-binary.
The Inn of the Last Home will be a gay bar with an accessible ramp for disabled draconians

Example A: Add a few POC to a gamebook and people think you're trying to make everyone a POC...

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder if this is just a way of erasing chunks of Dragonlance. Gully Dwarfs will be gone, Kender won’t steal. Raistlin will be in a wheelchair. Tanis will be black. Riverwind and Goldmoon will be a gay couple and Sturm will be non-binary.
The Inn of the Last Home will be a gay bar with an accessible ramp for disabled draconians

What the actual Hell?

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I wonder if this is just a way of erasing chunks of Dragonlance. Gully Dwarfs will be gone, Kender won’t steal. Raistlin will be in a wheelchair. Tanis will be black. Riverwind and Goldmoon will be a gay couple and Sturm will be non-binary.
The Inn of the Last Home will be a gay bar with an accessible ramp for disabled draconians

Dismissal ad absurdum much?

And even if they went that far...so effing what?!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I wonder if this is just a way of erasing chunks of Dragonlance.

If it is (which I severely doubt), this is a good thing.

Gully Dwarfs will be gone,

'Cause they're ableist.

Kender won’t steal.

'Cause they're ableist and everyone has always hated Kender.

Raistlin will be in a wheelchair.

Now this statement of yours is ableist. (Saying that the inclusion of a disabled character is a bad thing.)

Tanis will be black.

This statement is racist. (Saying that including a black main character is a bad thing.)

Riverwind and Goldmoon will be a gay couple and Sturm will be non-binary.

This is homophobic and bigoted against non-binary people. (By saying that the inclusion of LGBTQ+ characters is a bad thing.)

The Inn of the Last Home will be a gay bar with an accessible ramp for disabled draconians

This is extremely homophobic and ableist.

Dude. Leave us (the marginalized communities you're attacking) the f*ck alone. What did we ever do to you?

 

[Zardnaar]

They can do whatever they like I suppose. I have not bought a novel since 4E. There's no real point if some future hack can just do whatever the hell they like invalidating them.

Haven't bought any Star Wars ones either since they burnt down legends. Same reason it's pointless. No point in investing in the characters if it doesn't matter.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Can we draw the conversion back to WotC's declarion of war against FR fans?

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

I think us not having context for why Crawford said this is a big part of the problem.

Was this a response to a question about Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft?

Was this Crawford passing around the cover art to the new Drizz't novel and talking, off the record, about their plans for the Forgotten Realms?

Was this about how the movie and TV show will affect the core game?

Without that info, we have people going off in a lot of different directions.

Maybe read the article then

The very first paragraph is

Wizards of the Coast has provided some clarity on the canon of Dungeons & Dragons in regards to what it considers canon for the core roleplaying game. Over the past 45 years, Wizards of the Coast and its predecessors have published hundreds of Dungeons & Dragons adventures and supplements, as well as hundreds more licensed and in-house novels, video games, comic books, and other pieces of spin-off works. While speaking to media last week ahead of its D&D Live event, lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford discussed the "canon" of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly when it comes to popular novel series such as the Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman or the Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore.

and

Crawford elaborated with an example from his own childhood, using the Dragonlance novels as an example. "I started playing D&D as a kid and I ran the original Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance adventure module, which actually came out before the novels did," Crawford said. "For me, Dragonlance has always been a wonderful D&D war story where every DM gets to play through their own version of that war story. And then the novels are one way where that story plays out. That’s how we view all D&D novels." Crawford also noted that they would dive more into the idea of D&D canonicity in a future developer blog post in the coming months.

Meaning Drizzt's adventures aren't canon and none of the events in the Dragonlance novels are canon anymore
Likely as they plan to rerelease Dragonlance with the War of the Lance and ignore the novels