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.

 

[Bolares]

That's always a little sad, and I hope some of you out there can at least understand that.

I totally get the sentiment. As I said before, if they touch Eberron and change core stuff from it's philosophy I'd flip out. It's just that... from saying, "I'm emotionally invested in X and I'm hurt that they changed X" to "WotC doesn't care about me and my money" is quite a leap

 

[Campbell]

I look at this issue primarily through the prism of two of my favorite games - Legend of the Five Rings and Exalted. Over the course of both they have done some really dumb setting stuff (especially L5R's real dumb tournament win based metaplot). The newest editions of both games made me fall in love with the settings all over again largely because a lot of dumb stuff was changed to much better stuff.

Especially Lunars in Exalted. Changing them to hunters nipping the heels of the Realm and not exactly waiting on the return of Solars with bated breath has helped make the setting feel so much more vibrant and alive to me.

I really do not like the idea of being locked in to dumb decisions just because they are part of canon.

 

[Zeromaru X]

Wonderful, great to know that Arkhosia and the whole PoL setting is now officially non-existent!

My amusement knows no bounds.

Wait? They existed in 5e? As far as I know, they have been pretending that 4e never happened, lol

 

[Micah Sweet]

Did they though? Wich story has ended? The novels will keep coming... they will just not be shifting the game along with them.

Well, I'm personally not talking about FR, which I've never been heavily invested in. My favorites were always Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape and to a lesser degree Dark Sun. I dont expect any of those settings to continue their stories moving forward, and that's what makes me sad.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Understand, sure. Respect or empathize?

Ehhhhh

Sure, there are plenty of folk like you who dont care about that stuff; that's fine, you can be happy with what they're doing and it's no skin off my nose. But this is clearly a devisive issue in general, at least on this forum.

 

[Autumnal]

That's always a little sad, and I hope some of you out there can at least understand that.

I worry this will sound insulting but I mean it sincerely: honestly, who doesn't like feeling that they are part of a game's core audience? I can do a good job of feeling like my cats look during a really good scritching session. And yes, it very much sucks to have ever had that and then lose it. It takes more work than I wish it did to build out a platform for perspectives wider than that.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Well, I'm personally not talking about FR, which I've never been heavily invested in. My favorites were always Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Spelljammer, Planescape and to a lesser degree Dark Sun. I dont expect any of those settings to continue their stories moving forward, and that's what makes me sad.

That makes me actually interested to see them. I have no interest in Dark Sun where some people in some novels already solved everything.

Also Planescape and Spelljammer have cool overall concepts, but the previous execution leaves a lot to be desired. Just taking the basic idea of them and crafting one setting around that might produce something really interesting.

 

[Zeromaru X]

sorry, double post.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I look at this issue primarily through the prism of two of my favorite games - Legend of the Five Rings and Exalted. Over the course of both they have done some really dumb setting stuff (especially L5R's real dumb tournament win based metaplot). The newest editions of both games made me fall in love with the settings all over again largely because a lot of dumb stuff was changed to much better stuff.

Especially Lunars in Exalted. Changing them to hunters nipping the heels of the Realm and not exactly waiting on the return of Solars with bated breath has helped make the setting feel so much more vibrant and alive to me.

I really do not like the idea of being locked in to dumb decisions just because they are part of canon.

I was also a huge fan of L5R, and you're right, a lot of the tournament-based setting elements were pretty stupid. I still loved the setting in general, and by the time they rebooted it with FFG, I had pretty much moved on and dont care about the new stuff as much. I still love the old version more than the new one, and dont feel the need to engage in the reboot. The difference is that I no longer played either the CCG or the RPG by the time the new stuff came out, so the reboot didn't effect me much. Can't say the same about D&D.

 

[Einar Stormcrow]

And it's not like they haven't done this before. This is directly from the 4th Edition Dark Sun Campaign Setting book. And what they say here is what I'm assuming they will be doing with any of the classic settings they'll be releasing.

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And this is why, even thought I didn't play 4E, I had a lot of respect for how they did Dark Sun. (I worked at a FLGS at the time, I had a lot of time on my hands to just read). If they go the same route, keep Dark Sun a static setting, they will 100% get my money.