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.

 

[Zardnaar]

Still no idea what that is.

High culture here involves getting punched in the face on the rugby field

Sorry that was high school my bad.

 

[Catulle]

Haven't seen any of them. Wife vetoed Beasts of No Nation not familiar with City God.

City of God is a bunch of non professional actors doing intergenerational gangster history of Rio De Janeiro and it's fascinating

 

[Zardnaar]

City of God is a bunch of non professional actors doing intergenerational gangster history of Rio De Janeiro and it's fascinating

Ah that's right I vaguely remember hearing about it years ago. Haven't seen it though. For that type of stuff I'm more into non fictional stuff about the Favelas.

 

[Catulle]

Only losers punch rugby players in the face! ...It's all about the conceivably deniable tackle, duh! Ankles and knees! Ankles and knees!

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

But again, Umbran not caring about the child abuse chatter, only the naughty words. What a naughty word.

You know that the mods have to be busy/offline right now, right? @Umbran hasn't been on since his last post in this thread (and has barely posted at all today), @Dannyalcatraz literally just came back and is likely catching up with things right now (and presumably also busy), and @Morrus also hasn't been active in about 9 hours (and isn't normally the one that moderates).

I understand that you're upset, and to an extent I agree with you on the pedophilia issue, but in the future maybe check their activity and be more patient before complaining about moderators "taking a side and not the other" and making personal attacks against them. Report and wait. That's what I did/do, and it tends to work.

Edit: I feel the need to make clear that I'm not attacking you, just trying to keep the thread from devolving while the moderators are gone. The route you went about things isn't going to solve anything.

(Also, if I get moderated for this, I understand. I was trying to keep things from spinning out of control. If it's not my job to do that as a non-moderator, feel free to punish me. Apologies if that is the case.)

 

[Catulle]

Well if game night cancels, we can do a stream drinking game, right?

 

[JEB]

And the difference is clear and doing things the way WotC have is clearly the better option for two reasons:

1. There's an absolutely intimidating amount of Realmslore, and a default of keeping it all will both intimidate newbies and empower people to wield 25 year old books like a cudgel and other jerk behaviour

Seems like 5E was doing pretty good despite the Realms ostensibly following the old canon, even before streaming became a factor. If the lore was pushing fans away, shouldn't that have interfered with 5E's success in a noticeable way?

As for fans who use lore as a cudgel, Wizards still left the seven years of 5E canon thus far in place, which could just as easily be used for jerk behavior. (Heck, one single book's lore could be used as a cudgel!) This policy won't really do anything about folks being jerks; I'm not sure any canon policy will help with that.

1. We've an example that's been discussed over the past page or two of a pedophile non-evil Lord of Waterdeep. If WotC were to take the "everything's included except things we don't like" they'd either have to leave a non-evil paedophile in there or draw attention to the fact that they were specifically excluding this person and thus making the whole thing about him obvious rather than something to brush aside

Or they simply retcon that specific piece of canon, just as they have many other details when they appeared in 5E, and leave everything else in place. Having canon isn't an all-or-nothing situation and it never was; retcons are still possible while assuming everything else could be true.

That's about the only weird part here.

No one is saying people are encouraging the bad lore or think it shouldn't go. But if you say "We don't want this part" you're shining a light on the bad lore and preparing dozens of fights and PR pieces.

So, the particular piece of lore in question? First time I'd ever heard of it in all my years as a D&D fan. Being able to dig up obscure and gross facts in the canon does not make an argument that the rest of canon has to go.

 

[Catulle]

You know that the mods have to be busy/offline right now, right? @Umbran hasn't been on since his last post in this thread (and has barely posted at all today), @Dannyalcatraz literally just came back and is likely catching up with things right now, and @Morrus also hasn't been active in about 9 hours (and isn't normally the one that moderates).

I understand that you're upset, and to an extent I agree with you on the pedophilia issue, but in the future maybe check their activity and be more patient before complaining about moderators "taking a side and not the other". Report and wait. That's what I did/do, and it tends to work.

It's a fair point that also illustrates how thin they're spread as well as how, well, manly their spread is.

 

[Dire Bare]

Dire Bare: if they're 14 years old it isn't rape.

Really spicy take there, champ. Brave.

The most offensive thing in this thread, period, is you calling other posters pedophile apologists and/or challenging folks to prove they are not. You and I are done.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

It's a fair point that also illustrates how thin they're spread as well as how, well, manly their spread is.

I agree that they're spread thin and that there should be more moderators too keep this from happening, but that's no excuse for contributing to the devolution of a thread. You could have done what I did and checked if any of them had been active recently and then been a bit more understanding of why you didn't see the moderation results that you wanted at the time/rate that you wanted.

You could have avoided the impending moderation by just not doing what you did. I was upset about it too, but I just reported and waited (and am still waiting).

Apologies, and I'm sorry if you think that I'm attacking you, it's just that things like what you did and said don't ever make threads or the response from moderation better. They always make it worse.