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.

 

[Reynard]

@Reynard, we understand you like canon. But I and others have seen so much canon conflict, we are tired of listening to what others thing should be canon. Canon is what the DM says it is.

Lol. You haven't actually read anything I have said in this thread.

 

[Charlaquin]

Stop making sense and being reasonable,

we're all mad here, and you must be,
or you wouldn't have come here.

You may have noticed I’m not all there myself

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

I did.

We still don't know if he said "oh, by the way, watch out for a FREAK OUT on ENWorld because we're about to delete everything that happened in a novel" or if he was answering a direct question about whether they feel constrained with future Dragonlance products based on some of the places the novels went, etc. The context this came up in matters.

It's an interview following the reveal of FIZBAN'S TREASURY, that mentions that book multiple times and mentions the world Fizban came from
Odds are very, very good it's not about ENWorld (and that Crawford doesn't know we exist) and was responding to questions about the Dragonlance novels
(And how every plot point and setting change in the novels or past game lines likely went poof)

Incidentally, are you able to be civil with anyone in your offline life, or is this you all the time?

I'm in the middle of a thread of people telling me my fun is wrong and I shouldn't enjoy learning lore and backstory and doing a victory lap over what I love going away
I'm a little extra cranky

 

[Disgruntled Hobbit]

So...if they release a 5e version of War of the Lance...I'm sure there will be many who would want to buy it.

Should they be forced to follow the events of the Novels...or release it in line with modern ideas and revise as such so players can use such things as the 5e core rules (dragonborn, Tieflings, and others) in such a book or not?

If it is dragonlance, I imagine releasing an adventure (next year as the year of the Lance?) would be focused on the most popular era of Dragonlance (War of the Lance) and having characters that could make a difference in accordance with 5e rules would probably be important, but may not correlate with an effective portrayal is stuck with AD&D restrictions.

Releasing a War of the Lance super adventure would be awesome! But I expect that to be effective and appeal to modern gamers (and there are a LOT of new gamers), there would, of necessity, need to be several changes made.

There's zero chance it doesn't accommodate all the classes, including the artificer, sorcerer, warlock and bard
And include races like tieflings and half-orcs
Likely drop mixed names like "wizards of high sorcery" for something like "wizards of high magic"

It might not be a "superadventure" but just a sourcebook like VAN RICHTEN'S GUIDE TO RAVENLOFT but focusing on war instead of horror. Types of war and battle, the role of PCs in war, alternate ways to do large battles without mass combat

 

[RoughCoronet0]

There's zero chance it doesn't accommodate all the classes, including the artificer, sorcerer, warlock and bard
And include races like tieflings and half-orcs
Likely drop mixed names like "wizards of high sorcery" for something like "wizards of high magic"

It might not be a "superadventure" but just a sourcebook like VAN RICHTEN'S GUIDE TO RAVENLOFT but focusing on war instead of horror. Types of war and battle, the role of PCs in war, alternate ways to do large battles without mass combat

To be honest, I'd be down for a book about war, battlefields, and strategies and how to utilize them in your campaigns. Could include it in a larger book about building kingdoms and how they interact with the world and other kingdoms.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

I'm in the middle of a thread of people telling me my fun is wrong

No they're not. That is, unless your "fun" is requiring people to learn as much lore as they can to prove that they're "True Fans" in unwarranted and unprovoked overly-aggressive D&D-Canon Pop Quizzes. If that's your fun, then yes, your fun is wrong.

and I shouldn't enjoy learning lore and backstory

Wrong. No one has discouraged anyone that enjoys learning lore from learning it. Whether or not it's "canon" doesn't matter, because "canon" only matters at each individual table. If you like all of FR/Dragonlance/Greyhawk's lore and having to spend hours and hours dedicating yourself to someone else's creation, that's perfect, because that's how you get enjoyment. However, it is not good to encourage new players and DMs to do the same, unless it is made clear of the task that it is to do so.

doing a victory lap over what I love going away

Again, nothing is lost here. It is the same as it was before, unless your table has a strange restriction on its lore only being what WotC considers "canon" for their 5e rulebooks (in which case, I would recommend finding a different table).

 

[Mecheon]

I'm in the middle of a thread of people telling me my fun is wrong and I shouldn't enjoy learning lore and backstory and doing a victory lap over what I love going away

I may be a Transformers lore nerd who can tell you all the absolute nonsense that occurred in the various flavours of G1 (Cartoon, Marvel Comics, Japanese extended G1, Japanese Boom Boom comics, the storybooks), but, does all this knowledge just, vanish if the subject of the day is IDW 05 Transformers, or Armada, or something else? Nope

If you want to tie in all of the minutia of 40 years into your campaign, go nuts. But its not necessarily relevant any more to everyone's

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I’ll judge each new iteration as they come. [...] Hey - it turned out I love the new Ravenloft! Will I love the next “classic setting” release under Mr. Crawford? Maybe, maybe not….open mind, critical eye…

I'm for good quality reboots like Ravenloft. All I'm asking is that WotC take the Star Trek approach to reboots rather than the Star Wars approach (which is what Crawford has voiced). Which means that the Novel Timeline, Adventurers Guild Timeline, various Video Game Timelines, etc. be given a shared in-world co-existence and in-world moniker. (Transformers Omniverse-style.)

And furthermore, that all the different rules editions be recognized as in-game Realities which continue on, past, present, and future, like Bruce Heard outlined years ago.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I may be a Transformers lore nerd who can tell you all the absolute nonsense that occurred in the various flavours of G1 (Cartoon, Marvel Comics, Japanese extended G1, Japanese Boom Boom comics, the storybooks), but, does all this knowledge just, vanish if the subject of the day is IDW 05 Transformers, or Armada, or something else? Nope

If you want to tie in all of the minutia of 40 years into your campaign, go nuts. But its not necessarily relevant any more to everyone's

Right, it doesn't vanish! And Transformers has officially recognized a gazillion Official "universal streams", and given them an in-world designation. Which is the most detailed continuity system of any IP that I know of. D&D deserves this.

But you're also right, that the mainstream of fandom needs to be nourished by a non-confusing Mainstream Timeline.
But that doesn't preclude an official recognition that the other Timelines exist and continue to exist. For example, the 5E Novel Timeline (which I call "Reality 5-N.")

The Mainstream Timeline is for the masses and the grognards both. So that there's no gatekeeping. But the grognards are also nourished by a comprehensive meta-continuity which makes an in-world framework for all continuities to co-exist. Even if that meta-continuity is just mentioned in a sidebar, or in occasional 'what if' side-stories and rare cross-overs.

 

[Scribe]

Again, nothing is lost here. It is the same as it was before, unless your table has a strange restriction on its lore only being what WotC considers "canon" for their 5e rulebooks (in which case, I would recommend finding a different table).

All this demonstrates is that you are not reading what others are saying. Something very much is lost, in dismissing anything before 5e as 'not canon'. It boggles the mind how anyone can not see this.