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.

 

[Faolyn]

Do you feel that Durnan, Masked Lord of Waterdeep and checks Neutral-aligned child-rapist deserves to stay within the canon? And that by his alienation, you feel excluded, because as a 30-year FR veteran, I sure as hell do not.

Out of curiosity (and having checked the FR wiki on Durnan, and yeesh) would you prefer that he get booted out or rewritten so he hadn't impregnated a 14-year old (or, this being a magic world, the child had somehow been magically aged up)?

 

[Chaosmancer]

When discussions of representation or problematic issues come up regarding older material we're often told "fiction matters." And what they mean by this is that fiction can provide us with new and interesting points of view, it can teach us lessons we apply to the real world, it can comfort us, entertain us, and change our minds. We can have an emotional attachment to fiction. I'm used to be a big Star Trek fan (orthodox Trekkie), and I have an emotional attachment to the original series, the next generation, and Deep Space Nine. These shows mean something to me and to a lot of other people as well. I know it sounds silly, but here's a nice story about astronaut Ronald McNair for whom the original Star Trek was something he eagerly devoured as a teenager.

If fiction matters then it matters what people do with it. If a new Star Trek series were to come along and suddenly tell me everything from TOS was invalid it would piss me off. Eh, for a certain value of pissed. I'm an adult so it's not like I'm going to fly into a rage or anything but I'd definitely be unhappy. So I can understand why some people are unhappy with something they've invested in for many years is suddenly not canon. When Disney declared the extended universe to not be canon I was overwhelmed. It was as if hundreds of thousands of nerds suddenly cried out at once and were suddenly silenced.

Edit: And I say this as someone who doesn't mind if they change the lore. I just recognize that for those who have a connection to the lore it kind of sucks for them.

I get why people are upset, but again I think the impact is overstated.

I have a friend who's recently been quoting a trivia fact. Do you know which version of Dracula has the Vampire being shot by an American Cowboy? The Original Novel by Bram Stoker. Is Bela Lugosi's 1931 Dracula a lesser movie for changing the canon to not include Mr. Quincey Morris? Is the Original Bram Stoker novel lesser because most versions of Dracula no longer include the character?

If someone came to you today and said that they were going to make a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie, but this time the main victim is one of the parents that burned Krueger alive instead of a teenager, would that make the original movies less impactful or important? It would be a clear departure from the "canon"... but the original story is still there and still whole. It just isn't the version people are working from anymore.

 

[grimslade]

Do you have a page citation for that? All I've been finding is "You can use old Forgotten Realms Novels for Inspiration" and similar phrasings.

I don't have a citation but this is a departure from the earliest of days of 5E going by the DMG and SCAG. I do believe it is their design rationale. WotC/Crawford are only going to use the lore they present in current books. You won't have to reference old materials to know what is going on and the new adventures/ rules companions will provide heavy amounts of lore. If a bit of old lore contradicts current lore it is ignored. There seems to be a conscious effort to leave a lighter mark on the Realms and other settings going forward. There will not be a lore reset but the Toril will be fuzzier and more 'forgotten'.
I am parsing a lot of what happened with PanzerLion into this revelation by Crawford. It is not so much that WotC is worried about contradictions. (Lord knows there have been some canon gymnastics over the years.) Looking at my 5E books especially from Avernus on, there is a lot less history put into the books. There is history/lore but it is hazy and either super specific to what is happening with a specific character/town or muted so as to not be needed. The adventures take place in the Realms, but not it is a mutable Realms.
I originally thought this 'announcement' was no big deal, it was Crawford stating the obvious light lore touch 5E has had. I now think I see it as a change in philosophy of what 'settings' are. The lore and history of a place are not the setting. The style of the gameplay is. Ravenloft is the horror setting. Forgotten Realms are the high fantasy setting. Eberron is the pulp action setting. You can have horror in the Realms, ie RotFM, but the lore presented in an adventure should not bleed into the setting as a whole. What happens in Ten Towns stays in Ten Towns. It is a philosophy of every table's Realms is different and nothing should contradict anyone's table. It is an interesting choice.

TLDR: I think the divorce from canon is going to result in very generic setting content in adventures and rules. This is more like the initial World of Greyhawk style where there is deep lore hinted at but not provided unless in a module.

 

[Alzrius]

I didn't feel the need to mention the movies because we all know they're in a different timeline/universe. The point is that each Trek series didn't invalidate what had come before it.

Saying that the Abrams take on Star Trek didn't invalidate the original universe is an understatement. The very first Abrams ST movie has the characters overtly acknowledge that they're in an alternate universe. It also adds lore to the original canon, by acknowledging that the original Spock has not only moved between the original universe and the alternate one, but also telling us about a new event that happened in the original universe (i.e. the destruction of Romulus).

It is, in other words, a spin-off more than a reboot.

 

[Faolyn]

Why do new players need to be prioritized over long term loyal players and readers. Use a setting like Eberron instead for new players, that prefer less depth of lore.

Have you not read the lore of Eberron? It's a million years deep. Literally.

 

[Dire Bare]

On one hand, you can't tell the players that their experience "doesn't count". I mean, imagine how it would go if to play Storm King's Thunder you had to say that Zhentarim agents stole most of the treasure from Tiamat's horde, leaving the Lord's Alliance nearly penniless. And then Storm King's Thunder meant that the Emerald Enclave was shattered, so that when Out of the Abyss came then there were no forces of good to aid you... a thing that might not be true in a campaign where the players laid claim to large swathes of the treasure and founded a new force for good that also has an alliance with the King of the Storm Giants allowing you to recruit the Stone Giants to fight the Demons.

They've certainly done that at times in the past, and . . . it was not well received. The original Baldur's Gate video game got a series of novelizations that not only crystallized the main character, Abdel Adrian (human fighter), but also crystallized the canon ending to the very open-ended video game. The character of Abdel Adrian even became one of those ridiculously long-lived Realmsian heroes. Ugh.

 

[MGibster]

I get why people are upset, but again I think the impact is overstated.

Fair enough. I don't particularly care about WotC saying that older products aren't necessarily canon. At this point it's been so long since I've even read Dark Sun, Forgotten Realms, or the old Ravenloft boxed set that I can't even remember what was canon.

If someone came to you today and said that they were going to make a new Nightmare on Elm Street movie, but this time the main victim is one of the parents that burned Krueger alive instead of a teenager, would that make the original movies less impactful or important? It would be a clear departure from the "canon"... but the original story is still there and still whole. It just isn't the version people are working from anymore.

I don't really see this as being the same but I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to explain myself further. I don't object to WotC declaring past material is no longer canon. But I can certainly understand why people are unhappy about it. Can you empathize with those folks at all and understand why they might be unhappy with the announcement?

 

[Dire Bare]

Have you not read the lore of Eberron? It's a million years deep. Literally.

It's not how many in-universe years of lore that is the issue, but rather how many words, or pages of lore. The Realms has got everybody beat on that count.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

To really and truly have a canon in a living world, you need to have canonical endings to events. And we have a few kind of things like that, but for the most part I'd say DnD is in a very hard position.

On one hand, you can't tell the players that their experience "doesn't count". I mean, imagine how it would go if to play Storm King's Thunder you had to say that Zhentarim agents stole most of the treasure from Tiamat's horde, leaving the Lord's Alliance nearly penniless. And then Storm King's Thunder meant that the Emerald Enclave was shattered, so that when Out of the Abyss came then there were no forces of good to aid you... a thing that might not be true in a campaign where the players laid claim to large swathes of the treasure and founded a new force for good that also has an alliance with the King of the Storm Giants allowing you to recruit the Stone Giants to fight the Demons.

Eventually, as the AP's came out, more and more people would have less and less reason to run them, because they are assuming "canonical" events that didn't happen for those tables.

Pathfinder, at least, took the interesting route of releasing a bunch of adventure paths that didn't affect the broader setting until Pathfinder 2E was released, at which point canon endings for those adventure paths were established that had an effect on the campaign world.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't really see this as being the same but I'm not going to spend a whole lot of time trying to explain myself further. I don't object to WotC declaring past material is no longer canon. But I can certainly understand why people are unhappy about it. Can you empathize with those folks at all and understand why they might be unhappy with the announcement?

Barely?

Like, I can understand being invested and feeling like the rug got pulled out from under you, but I've never understood the feeling people have that not being "canon" makes the previous things they loved a waste of time.

Actually, thinking about fanfics, I just remembered I encountered something kind of like this. I was reading a story someone was writing that was a light dnd/dungeoncore type story. I got to the "end" which was still very early in the story to see that the author had left for a while, came back and was wanting to do a reboot.

The new version kept some of the things about the story and the setting, mostly the barebones of some of the characters. But instead of being in a dungeon, it was in the destroyed holy city that had been hinted about. And instead of the angel being... a horribly dead mess fused into the MC, she is a tortured abomination creature.

The author, quite literally came in and changed the canon. The old story is not true anymore. The events didn't happen that way, the main character has some significant changes, many of my favorite side characters are altered and due to that alteration are never going to resume their old roles in the story.

That doesn't change my enjoyment of the original. That doesn't make me feel like I wasted my time reading that original story, even as I was honestly feeling like we were just hitting a good stride and many investments were going to pay off. I'm still enjoying the reboot, even if it is in a very different way.

So, I really don't get the people who, when a company says "this old material is no longer canon" begin declaring that the stories they have loved for years are now trash. That everything is ruined and tarnished. I remember people declaring that those Star Wars EU books they had spent decades collecting and loving were going to be sold and tossed, because now they aren't "canon".

I get continuity. I get investment. I don't understand the idolization of "canon". It just... isn't that important. FR lore from 1e til 4e can be your personal "Original Canon" it just isn't "the new canon" or "the current canon" and I don't understand how that is such a big deal.