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.

 

[JEB]

All WotC is doing is being more open - they reserve the right to deliberately or accidently contradict things that happened in obscure episode 27.4b. All content creators do this, WotC are just making it explicit.

That's my point, though - they already could make changes. They already did make changes. And canon fans were sticking around, assuming most things were still canon, or trying to rationalize the retcon, etc.

But now there's an official stance: 5E is canon, the rest is non-canon until we say otherwise. Which just asks some canon fans to choose: do I accept that, or do I reject 5E itself as non-canon?

Now, instead of fans who buy new books and express displeasure about changes in them, they'll have fans who express displeasure about changes without buying the books.

I saw some people on Candlekeep raging that they were never going to buy another 5e product again.

See?

 

[TheSword]

That's my point, though - they already could make changes. They already did make changes. And canon fans were sticking around, assuming most things were still canon, or trying to rationalize the retcon, etc.

But now there's an official stance: 5E is canon, the rest is non-canon until we say otherwise. Which just asks some canon fans to choose: do I accept that, or do I reject 5E itself as non-canon?

You can’t take a fork in the road, until you actually reach it. There is no choice to make between 5e and earlier editions so far.

Now, instead of fans who buy new books and express displeasure about changes in them, they'll have fans who express displeasure about changes without buying the books.


See?

Well let’s be honest. Jem said that we (himself and the writers) don’t consider the previous stuff cannon. Not that the fans have to. What I’m saying is that by Ed Greenwood’s contract stuff is Cannon for everyone else until they write otherwise.

So from our point of view it still is the official viewpoint until they change it. They haven’t changed it yet, so what’s the problem?

 

[Keldryn]

Fans are awfully conveniently forgetful about what is and is not canon. After all, anthropomorphic rabbits are canon in Star Wars. The Star Wars Christmas Special is canon in Star Wars. But that sort of stuff gets rather conveniently forgotten whenever we talk about canon.

The Star Wars Holiday Special is not canon. It shared the same fate as the Ewoks and Droids cartoons and the live action Ewok TV movies.

When they hit the reset button on the "Expanded Universe" in 2012, the official continuity was comprised of Episodes I to VI (the films, not the novelizations) and The Clone Wars (the CG series, not the earlier Tartakovsky series from 2003-2005). Everything else was retroactively given the "Legends" designation.

All of the new material has been designated canon, but of course with a property as massive as SW, inconsistencies will creep in (so I've heard; I don't read the novels or comics).

Just wanted to clear that up. ;-)

I think that Jaxxon may have appeared in a comic in the new continuity, so I guess he is canon. Not really any more ridiculous-looking than Ben Quadrinaros, TBH.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

There's WotC-tangential Forgotten Realms stuff like the Border Kingdoms at DMs Guild. If you wanted to send a message about whose FR vision you support, focusing on those works might be the way to do it. If enough folks who felt like you followed suit, it might be noticeable that WotC's FR stuff wasn't gaining the same kind of traction.

I already bought it. I plan on buying the PoD version this Winter.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

That's my point, though - they already could make changes. They already did make changes. And canon fans were sticking around, assuming most things were still canon, or trying to rationalize the retcon, etc.

But now there's an official stance: 5E is canon, the rest is non-canon until we say otherwise. Which just asks some canon fans to choose: do I accept that, or do I reject 5E itself as non-canon?

Now, instead of fans who buy new books and express displeasure about changes in them, they'll have fans who express displeasure about changes without buying the books.


See?

So you are complaining that WotC are being too honest, and should lie to fans?

I think the difficulty is, the people who can't tell the difference between "not canon" and "never happened". Most of the stuff that "isn't canon" (which is everything, actually) still "happened", for the purpose of future stories.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The Star Wars Holiday Special is not canon.

This is true. However, things introduced in the Holiday Special, such as the wookiee language, homeworld and Life Day are. Which makes the point, "not canon" is not the same as "not true".

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Spoiler: Rime of the Frostmaiden Spoiler

Making the shards of the Cryshal Tirith from The Crystal Shard instrumental to several parts of the adventure for instance.

There is also contradictory lore about this in the Icewind Dale computer game. Which is not a problem now WotC have said computer games aren't canon.

 

[TheSword]

There is also contradictory lore about this in the Icewind Dale computer game. Which is not a problem now WotC have said computer games aren't canon.

What was the contradiction? That the Crystal tower melted away?

 

[Hussar]

Changing canon poorly makes the world incoherent. For example, sudden decisions that a popular storyline (or entire continuity) no longer happened, or retcons that require popular characters to behave out of character. And such "damage" to canon is usually, eventually, routed around (i.e. ignored by fans and creators alike) or itself retconned, restoring that sense of coherence for most fans. The majority of canon fans are perfectly fine with changes if they're either explained in-universe, or make sense with what came before.

And there's the rub. "Poorly". Judged poorly by whom? By the majority of folks that really don't care that much but enjoy the property, or by the tiny slice of hardcore fans that pore over details, post on message boards like this one and then shout from the rooftops for anyone who will listen?

Most canon fans, when faced with inconsistencies, either a) ignore them as insignificant while still appreciating the rest of canon b) pick the answer they like best, since there's no one "true" answer or c) partake in the great fan pasttime of explaining the error away. For example, Doctor Who famously has multiple Atlantises... but it's just left unresolved, as one of those things. They didn't have to wipe out The Underwater Menace to make The Time Monster work, or vice versa; most fans would agree that both adventures "really" happened, the Atlantises are a continuity error. Such mistakes haven't kept generations of Whovians from enjoying the series canon, or required them to treat every story in a vacuum; they find a happy place somewhere in-between that may differ from fan to fan.

Again, you're talking about episodes that aired before I was even born, and I'm not that young. New Who does not reference Atlantis at all, AFAIK. And, given that the Time War wiped out all the continuity of old Who, I'd say Who has pretty much scorched earth it's entire continuity when it rebooted.

Sure, but most long-running franchises adapt in various ways - retcons, distant sequels to get some breathing room for major changes, treating things in broad strokes after a certain distance has been achieved, or even in-universe reset buttons. And those franchises - assuming they remain valuable properties to someone - usually survive just fine, still retaining fans who regard their canon as having value, despite whatever changes were made

Mistakes in canon are fixed all the time. Out of character moments are explained (mind control! clone!), embarrassing portrayals are reimagined in later works (the superhero actually treated their minority sidekick with respect, what are you talking about?), and occasionally a work is just plain ignored while the rest of the canon chugs along with fans (what are The Goliath Chronicles again?). You can find examples of such things on basically any fan wiki. (I could also link you to TV Tropes, but that would be cruel.) 5E itself retconned elements of Curse of Strahd in Van Richten's Guide, yet both books are to be taken as canon under the current policy...

I'll take your word for it.

Most fans of canon Trek (eventually) accepted Enterprise as canon, even if there's still griping about specific plot points. Discovery, too (though there's more griping, it's still on Memory Alpha). Most canon Trek fans accepted explanations, or suspended disbelief, and did so without rejecting all of Trek canon as incoherent and valueless. Others may ignore Enterprise or Discovery specifically, but haven't rejected the rest of Trek canon up to that point. None of that required them to decide that canon itself had no value. They just found a way to accept the largest segment as "true" that they could.

You are kinda ignoring the massive amount of invective and the toxic cesspit that fandom devolves into when these changes are brought about. It would be fantastic is what you were describing here was how it worked but it's not. It's a small number of EXTREMELY loud trufans and canon police screaming from their soapboxes as loudly as they can to try to force their visions onto everyone else.

I expect most D&D fans who had treated 5E as part of the larger canon will react to this announcement in a similar way. They'll either embrace 5E as "true" and the old stuff as optional, or reject 5E as "false" and stick with the canon up to 3E. Or come up with some other combination that works for them, still without deciding that canon no longer matters to them. (Fans who never cared about canon will be as they always were; they're unaffected.)

I just think it's a shame that Wizards would encourage such a split, when they could have just said nothing, done whatever retcon they're planning anyway, and let canon fans ignore it (or rationalize it) while still treating the rest as part of the bigger story. But it's done now. (Unless they backtrack when the official blog post comes out...)

Me, as I said, I could kiss Crawford for this. Now, when someone whinges about how you can't possibly make succubi into devils, because that's what some out of print supplement said thirty years ago, the proper response is to blow raspberries. Fantastic.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

What was the contradiction? That the Crystal tower melted away?

There is an origin story for how the artefact was created and came to be lost in Icewind Dale that contradicts the later novels. RotFM goes with the later novel version rather than the CRPG version.