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.

 

[Parmandur]

They did it in Ravenloft. No reason to think they wouldn't do it elsewhere.

No reason to think that they would, either. Complete non sequitur...on the surface.

 

[Parmandur]

It actually has been brought up in other DL discussions, a desire to keep the companions, but to mix things up to better reflect modern values.

There's absolutely a desire to change quite a few things in DL, for better or worse.

Just drop the Companions. It would save page real estate, anyways.

 

[RFB Dan]

No, just taking the complaints about the potential "evil" of DragonLance including more women and PoC as the natural conclusion of de-emphasizing "canon" as indicative of what's really at issue here for some folks.

I agree. My first thought was just that they wanted to add in all the now-core stuff so that players don't get a barrage of "no you can't do that"s from the DM.

 

[Scribe]

Just drop the Companions. It would save page real estate, anyways.

I'd absolutely agree. Side bars or footnotes, or Easter eggs.

I'm not saying anything about how they must be used.

I'm saying, I don't want them changed.

 

[OblivionDrive]

So, in other words, WotC is telling longtime D&D fans they aren't welcome in 5e and that decades of learning lore isn't appreciated, in fact it's scorned?

Please don’t forget to stretch before a reach like this. Pulling a muscle is never fun. Especially for us “longtime fans” who are 40 and up.

 

[Reynard]

Why bring it up? Nobody suggested anything like that would happen.

I do think we will see a redo of the DL line without pregens, but nobody is talking about gender-swapping or "changing lineages."

To be fair, I think some folks are looking at it through an "MCU" lense and might fear such things occurring. That's not an excuse, just an explanation why some people might be concerned.

I think when people are very long time fans of things, those things become comfort food for them and it can be jarring or even traumatic to have those things changed up on them. I know that's life and it happens and all, but as I have said from the beginning of my involvement in this thread, it's worth taking the effort to have some empathy for those folks. Making fun of them or, worse, intimating they are toxic gatekeeping bigots just because they are fans of something is really not very kind.

 

[RFB Dan]

I'd absolutely agree. Side bars or footnotes, or Easter eggs.

I'm not saying anything about how they must be used.

I'm saying, I don't want them changed.

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).

 

[Scribe]

Making fun of them or, worse, intimating they are toxic gatekeeping bigots just because they are fans of something is really not very kind.

It's OK, one gets used to it here.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Please don’t forget to stretch before a reach like this. Pulling a muscle is never fun. Especially for us “longtime fans” who are 40 and up.

Its not a stretch, its a fact.

 

[Parmandur]

To be fair, I think some folks are looking at it through an "MCU" lense and might fear such things occurring. That's not an excuse, just an explanation why some people might be concerned.

I think when people are very long time fans of things, those things become comfort food for them and it can be jarring or even traumatic to have those things changed up on them. I know that's life and it happens and all, but as I have said from the beginning of my involvement in this thread, it's worth taking the effort to have some empathy for those folks. Making fun of them or, worse, intimating they are toxic gatekeeping bigots just because they are fans of something is really not very kind.

I'm not "making fun" of anyone: I have pointed out that this is what WotC has been doing for 7 years already, and pointed out that, yes, this sort of canon-centric approach is tied to gatekeeping. That's not a joke, but a sober historical judgement.