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]

I don't recall Wizards previously forcing anyone to research every relevant scrap of pre-5E lore before running a game. Seemed to me they were pretty good about including anything necessary in the actual 5E books; the use of any additional lore already seemed pretty optional.

Besides, the current rule still renders all of 5E canon. Surely no one thinks that levies a requirement that DMs running Candlekeep Mysteries must go back and read every Realms-based adventure since 2014... right?

That some people might have feel pressured to meticulously follow lore, whether or not they wanted to, is unfortunate... but hardly canon's fault. Nor does this announcement really change anything, except shrinking the size of the reading list.

Based on what little context for the comment we have, the issue probably has more to do with the canon of ongoing films and video games. I have seen people try to argue on the forums here that there is a canon ending to Descent into Avernus or Sky King's Thunder because of Baldur's Gate 3 or some other game. Now, they are not part of the picture, so there is no "canon" outcome for any Adventure book at all.

 

[Hussar]

I don't know if I've ever heard a more cynical take on this message board. I am seriously impressed! I suspect the reason most people find canon important is because they like the setting. When I first played WEG's Star Wars back in 1987, I was excited about the prospect of playing in a galaxy far, far away where the Rebel Alliance struggled against the evil Empire. It's been a long time and memories fade, but I don't think I ever recall wanting to play Star Wars because I had a strong desire to tell other people why they were wrong about the setting.


Most of us wouldn't be using the setting in the first place if we hadn't judged it had merit of some sort.

Liking the setting is FANTASTIC. Love liking a setting. And if it stopped there, I'd be a lot less cynical.

But, the canon stick bludgeoning everyone who wants to see some new element added to the setting or some old element changed is far, far beyond simply judging something to have merit of some sort. And that's what happens every single time. It starts out innocently enough - I really like this setting. This setting is cool. Then time passes and new writers (or possibly old writers) come in and add or change this or that piece and very soon you have the canon police screaming from the rooftops about sellouts, and destroying their childhood and how people just don't understand and so on and so forth.

So, no, I have zero patience or sympathy for anyone who chooses to die on the hill of "canon". If a concept cannot survive on its own, it doesn't deserve to survive. If a new idea comes along, "Well, we can't do this new thing because it contradicts this old thing" is the weakest argument that can be made. It's intellectually bankrupt. It's saying that this idea that we had in the past is perfection and cannot EVER be changed, removed or otherwise altered. Nothing is that good. "Because we did it yesterday" is never justification enough.

 

[Hussar]

You might think so, but the 1999 data that WotC shared about purchasing habits showed each age cohort's purchasing increasing substantially, though they also arbitrarily truncated the data at an earlier cohort than the 40+ range. How that translates to their cohorts on the pie graph now is anybody's guess outside of WotC. But the main point I have is that the eldest age cohort in the earlier survey data could have been expected to have a ton of gaming books on their shelves too and it didn't stop them from buying more and at a much higher rate. It's almost like older gamers have more disposable income...

That's not what the old data said at all.

The old WotC market survey showed that the older the gamer was, the less they spent on the hobby. That's the specific reason why they excluded the 40+ range because they found that 40+ year old gamers didn't spend money. And, yes, the justification was that because the older gamers are, the more material they have and the less likely they are to buy new stuff.

 

[Hussar]

The Rebel Alliance struggling against the Empire isn't canon? If I were to show up for a game of Star Wars and the GM says, "Oh, by the way, in my version Luke died attacking the first Death Star, Vader killed the Emperor and rules the galaxy, and Darth Hermana (Princess Leia) is Vader's apprentice now" I wouldn't be interested in playing.

I think we just see this from fundamentally different points of views.

This just proves my point.

You wouldn't play because they are playing the game "wrong". Your interest is because of canon. That this idea is potentially a very cool take on the setting doesn't matter. It's not following the "right" path, so, it's not worth playing. You are judging the idea, not based on whether or not it's an interesting or fun idea, but, entirely on how well it toes the line of canon.

 

[JEB]

Though I would like to note, While it says those novels, game products, and digital games are assumed to take place, it does not specify whether they're referring to new content, old content, or all content. So it could be read in several different ways. One of which lines up with their current public sentiment and tracks, specifically, with the "Mirror Universe" aspect of home-campaigns not being the "Real" Canon.

I think you're right. The DMG has always called out the TTRPG portion of their IP as an alternate reality/mirror universe of what happens in their games, books, etc.

Eh, not really. Again, as stated in the 2014 DMG, page 4:

Even if you're using an established world such as the Forgotten Realms, your campaign takes place in a sort of mirror universe of the official setting where Forgotten Realms novels, game products, and digital games are assumed to take place.

Breaking it out:

• Home campaigns set in worlds such as the Realms are the "mirror universe" of the "official" version of the setting.
• The "official" version of the Realms (and probably other settings, but only 100% the Realms) included game products (RPG material), novels, and digital games (computer and video games).

Whereas Crawford's recent statement was that anything outside 5E game products was non-canon, which excludes novels and digital games (and comics and presumably everything else). They're not the same policy - even if you ignore everything else, the difference on novels is clear. (Which is one reason why I suspect novels had something to do with this.)

 

[Umbran]

The 40 year old will probably spend for 20 years more and a lot more during that time than the 18 year old.

You can believe what you want, I guess. I expect there's a pretty steep drop-out rate well before the players hit 60. That segment is going to have the "long tail" of smaller and smaller numbers of gamers as you go up.

 

[Maxperson]

You can believe what you want, I guess. I expect there's a pretty steep drop-out rate well before the players hit 60.

I think most of those that are are going to drop out do so in their 20's and maybe early 30's. Those that I have talked to D&D about that "used to play," did so in high school and college. I've yet to talk to someone who quit playing in their 30's or later. People don't change much and by their mid 30's they are pretty set in their ways, and if those ways include D&D and other roleplaying games, they will probably play into their 40's, 50's and 60's if they can find players, which at this point are pretty easy to find.

 

[Umbran]

I think ...

Okay. So, we disagree. Not much more to discuss.

 

[Hussar]

/snip

I also keep seeing gatekeeping being used, and used irresponsibly in my opinion. Lore doesn’t gate keep. It attracts, it entices. It offers something to say about a creative work and it’s vision. For many things, it’s literally the appeal. Why read lord of the rings or Harry Potter or whatever takes your fancy over any other book? They offer a rich world, a sense of verisimilitude, a new place to explore with a history. Lore doesn’t gate keep, people do. People who abuse their knowledge of the lore as a metric to measure others. Remove this and these same people who would gate keep will just find another way.
/snip

Well, I started reading Harry Potter when the first book came out. So, no, there was no "canon" appeal whatsoever. Same as all the millions like me who made Harry Potter an absolute phenomenon long before the series had anything like a "world" or canon. And, I read LotR because it was a really good book. The canon parts of it? Could not care less. I've read LotR several times and not once have I ever read the appendices or the songs. Never cared.

Will people gate keep a different way? Possibly. But, instead of worrying about potential problems that aren't a problem right now, I'd rather point to the incredibly toxic cesspool that "fandom" turns into as soon as canon gets invoked. When every single change is something to be guarded against and resisted, not because these are bad ideas or whatnot, but, just because they're different ideas from what that "fan culture" has decided is the "true setting" of the fiction.

Having watched the fandoms of pretty much every single property that I grew up loving turn into toxic wastelands of constant sniping and aggression, I have no love at all for anything that smacks of "canon". Anyone that has the authority to come along and sweep canon into the dustbin is a hero as far as I'm concerned.

 

[JEB]

If they were smart, they'd target both groups. Only picking one or the other is very shortsighted and will cost them money.

While I generally agree on a "big tent" strategy, I imagine that Wizards would say they are targeting both groups. That's likely why they're including Easter eggs like the action-figure characters in the upcoming Feywild adventure, and Dragonlance nods in Fizban's, and so forth - it's a way to convince older fans to spend money on products that aren't really aimed at them anymore. You see basically the same strategy with most reboots...