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]

At uni I think the lowest the average age was 19 in Europe. It wasn't super common. It varied by century.

But cough cough.

Fact or Fiction: 12-Year Olds Can Get Married in the U.S. | The Reeves Law Group

It may not surprise you that teenagers can get married, but can children as young as 12 legally marry anywhere in the U.S.?

www.robertreeveslaw.com

Think I read about it in the Washington Post not to long ago. Eeeewww

 

[Azzy]

At uni I think the lowest the average age was 19 in Europe. It wasn't super common. It varied by century.

But cough cough.

Fact or Fiction: 12-Year Olds Can Get Married in the U.S. | The Reeves Law Group

It may not surprise you that teenagers can get married, but can children as young as 12 legally marry anywhere in the U.S.?

www.robertreeveslaw.com

Think I read about it in the Washington Post not to long ago. Eeeewww

Yeah, I could go on a rant about this and how some politicians refuse to raise the minimum age to marry. But that would be against the forums rule, so I'll just allow you to imagine the rage and disgust I feel.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

I'm not convinced that the Gen-X demographic is unimportant to WotC

But not every older D&D player is obsessed with the lore of old settings. I would hazard a guess that the majority are not.

 

[Zardnaar]

But not every older D&D player is obsessed with the lore of old settings. I would hazard a guess that the majority are not.

Even if they are I don't think there's enough of them.

New players seem to know more about the settings than I expected must be the internet. I don't think many are to fanatical about it though.

 

[TheSword]

As fascinated as some people may be with the family members of a Waterdhavian innkeeper I suspect most people never even did the maths required to calculate back the age of Durnan’s wife when she had their child. Most people would just see a 45 year old (his age as described in the text being quoted), married to a 30 year old with a teenage daughter. Which is suspect wouldn’t even elicit a comment in normal circumstances.

Now suppose the mathematics were intentional and it’s not just an editors mistake in a massive book. That Ed intentionally had Durnan meet his wife as a young teen. We know it was a common misconception, certainly reinforced by writers like GRR Martin, and aped in film and popular culture. Does that make Ed a bad person, does it suggest that he condones that behavior in the modern age? To my knowledge the circumstances of their meeting was never referenced in the books, the details weren’t given. It has zero impact on the book and no indication it has any impact on the character.

Even if Ed did think it was a cool concept and somehow ‘edgy’ in a “look how counter culture my books are” way, later editions of the character deleted this element from the game and moved on. It’s obsessive fans that feel the need to compare inconsistencies in dates and then speculate wildly on the ramifications then bring it up 30 years later when it’s already been corrected. This is exactly the reason why Canon should only be seen as informative.

Let’s let the retrospective age of Durnans wife be condemned to the bin of things we roll our eyes at and ensure don’t make it into mainstream D&D products again, like chainmail bikinis and harlot tables. It is wrong, it was always wrong, but we can appreciate that the community have learnt and moved on. By all accounts, in this case, as with most of the others, they moved on several editions ago!

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

So... an important thing to note for those who think child-brides were common through history:

They never were. In any culture. At least not in a sexual way.

In European cultures it was fairly rare to marry young. Rare enough to be -remarked- upon when some 14 year old Prince wound up married to his 30 year old counterpart from another nation, or vice versa. These events typically involved a peace-treaty or a political maneuver against the royal family that essentially required reinforcement of right to rule through marriage to another, powerful, family.

Engagements, on the other hand, became INCREDIBLY popular among the wealthy, as it conferred many of the benefits of marriage (Social Standing, Political Force of Alliance) without separating parent from young child. Big part of why arranged marriage became huge in the late Medieval period and into the Renaissance era. It got even stronger in the Edwardian and Victorian eras, as even merchant families began engaging in the practice.

But it still wasn't something common people largely did. Because marriage was a multi-layered affair involving property rights, legal rights, religious beliefs, and so forth. Common people owned very little and had few legal rights for marriage to adjust. So for common folk marriage was almost invariably about children and religion.

Now you might be saying to yourself "But Steampunkette: What about the various cultures -outside- of Europe!?" And the answer is: Pretty much the same. In various African cultures children could be married at 13 years old, but such marriages had nothing to do with sex or child-rearing and everything to do with social cohesion. In most of Asia you waited 'til you were out of your apprentice-ship before you could qualify for marriage (Between 16 and 18 years old), and in the Americas it was roughly the same.

Did people commit child sexual abuse throughout history? Oh, absolutely, yes. Undoubtedly. But there was only ever one culture which condoned it, and only in the form of a contractual obligation between an adult man and his apprenticed student.

Rome.

And it was SOUNDLY condemned by everyone else. It was a big part of Paul's Epistles (Letters) to Rome for a reason. Even Philo of Alexandria, a contemporary of Paul's in the early 0s through 30s AD, spoke out against pederasty in the Empire. And Alexandria was -PART- of Rome, so it's not like he was outside of it looking in or anything.

Though in fairness, Philo's objection to pederasty was that it trained the boys to be feminine rather than any actual outrage about pedophilia, but that just gets chalked up to "Even the 'Good' people who stood up to Evil were often pretty terrible in the distant past"

All accurate, but dragging the discussion further from the point of this thread.

Let’s all get back onto THAT set of tracks, OK?

 

[Θ]

So, the only official Canon material for Greyhawk at the moment is the references made in the PHB to races and some of the gods... and one collection of adventures that happen in the Saltmarsh, lol

 

[Kodiak3D]

They'd best be careful with this idea. I feel like it stems from simply not being able to keep up with everything that has been written (which, in their defense, there has been A LOT). However, the idea of not being bound by what has gone before is part of how they screwed up the Forgotten Realms in 4th edition and made so many of their dedicated fans angry.

The novels and stories about the D&D game worlds are part of what has made them popular. Would the Forgotten Realms be nearly as popular as it is if not for the novels of Greenwood, Salvatore, Denning, Cunningham, or so many of the others? They helped create the world that people wanted to play in. WotC should think twice before they dismiss that.

I'm not saying I think WotC is going to go off the rails again. They seem to have better thinking about world design these days. They did a great job with updating Ravenloft while still being respectful to the old material. I just hope they can continue.

 

[Mirtek]

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

Really spicy take there, champ. Brave.

Actually it would be age of consent in a lot of european countries today. So it might be shocking to americans, but it's not automatically rape.

In Game of Thrones, there's deliberation and it's meant to be something we notice and care about and it's meant to send a message about the characters and world.

Actually GRRM has come out said that he simply did not think it through properly and today would have made them older.

 

[Seramus]

No. Those past novels and adventures are why I love the IP. 5E may be popular as heck, but telling me those old stories are not canon... is not canon to me.

Hypocritically, I don't mind retcons here or there, but blanket disavowment is a no go.