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.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

While I get salty sometimes about how the MCU has so many great villains as one-shots that come and go with a single movie (Killmonger for example), I get that they don't have the decades to tell their stories across thousands of comic book issues.

I've heard so many good things about the Fraction Hawkeye run, I really need to pick up a copy next time I'm at my local comics store.

I have a friend who complains after every MCU how it doesn't match up with the comics. He'd rather it took 40 movies, rather than 10, to set up Infinity War, for instance. Everyone -- and we go with a big cadre of comics super-fans to see the movies together -- all roll our eyes collectively.

It is, as you say, its own continuity and for the most part, it's a great streamlined improvement over trying to slavishly adhere to decades of Marvel/Timely continuity. (I do think they dropped the ball with Hawkeye, since Matt Fraction's run on the character showed you can tell a compelling modern tale with him, as opposed to the MCU version, which they seem very unsure of what to do with. Looking forward to the Kate Bishop show ushering him off-stage.)

Since no one has invented an MIB flashy thing, yeah, these works are still there. The copy of Old Empires I'm currently reading didn't suddenly turn blank. And I'm sure that there's a copy of that same book on file at WotC headquarters that they'll refer to if they were ever to do something with Unther or Mulhorand.

And for generations, D&D players have been ignoring canon. How many people killed off Elminster or Drizzt? How many PCs ended up on Waterdeep's Council of Lords? How many claimed land of their own in The Shield Lands, or rebuilt the Moathouse as their base of operations? In my Waterdeep, there's a small shop where a very old dwarf named Ralif Redhammer (one of my earliest characters) will turn out some very fine weapons and armor, when he's not taking a nap at the front desk. He's been there across different campaigns, different groups of players.

This is the right direction for overall D&D continuity as well. I don't personally love that Acererak and Vecna now belong to D&D canon as a whole, rather than Oerth, but "my" versions still exist back where they started and if their new versions bring enjoyment to other players, so be it.

 

[Deset Gled]

Something I've been thinking about a bit since the second quarter earnings report was released.

Even if they kept all the canon content, the books aren't going to be what drives the story lines in the future. If you want to continue following all the lore moving ahead and treating everything like canon, it doesn't mean you'll get more numerous or more meaningful novels. It means everyone reading the novels will be forced to play the video games to get the full story. The video games are a bigger part of the long term plan the the novels now, and increasingly tell more (and more complicated) of the critical plots. They have complete arcs for that affect multiple characters, locations, and timelines.

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Someone wake me up when Jeremy Crawford puts up a post detailing their full plans on this.

 

[TheSword]

Something I've been thinking about a bit since the second quarter earnings report was released.

Even if they kept all the canon content, the books aren't going to be what drives the story lines in the future. If you want to continue following all the lore moving ahead and treating everything like canon, it doesn't mean you'll get more numerous or more meaningful novels. It means everyone reading the novels will be forced to play the video games to get the full story. The video games are a bigger part of the long term plan the the novels now, and increasingly tell more (and more complicated) of the critical plots. They have complete arcs for that affect multiple characters, locations, and timelines.

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

Urgghhh. I’m getting flashbacks to FFXV and Kingsglaive.

Painful.

 

[RFB Dan]

Something I've been thinking about a bit since the second quarter earnings report was released.

Even if they kept all the canon content, the books aren't going to be what drives the story lines in the future. If you want to continue following all the lore moving ahead and treating everything like canon, it doesn't mean you'll get more numerous or more meaningful novels. It means everyone reading the novels will be forced to play the video games to get the full story. The video games are a bigger part of the long term plan the the novels now, and increasingly tell more (and more complicated) of the critical plots. They have complete arcs for that affect multiple characters, locations, and timelines.

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

I have around 150 figures to paint, including a pirate ship, thanks to Reaper's Bones V Kickstarter. I have books I haven't read yet. Music I want to listen to. And I still need to finally finish up LoZ: Skyward Sword. So no, I do NOT want to play a video game between two books to get the whole story.

 

[a.everett1287]

Something I've been thinking about a bit since the second quarter earnings report was released.

Even if they kept all the canon content, the books aren't going to be what drives the story lines in the future. If you want to continue following all the lore moving ahead and treating everything like canon, it doesn't mean you'll get more numerous or more meaningful novels. It means everyone reading the novels will be forced to play the video games to get the full story. The video games are a bigger part of the long term plan the the novels now, and increasingly tell more (and more complicated) of the critical plots. They have complete arcs for that affect multiple characters, locations, and timelines.

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

Personally, no.
My sense of schadenfreude? Absolutely wants this.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Of the people clamoring to keep the old novels canon, how would you feel if you had to play a video game in between two books to get the whole story?

The inverse of this is Blizzard's historical insistence on putting World of Warcraft lore in novels and other books, and not just in the game. While some of the books are good (I think the novels are terrible, myself, but the guidebooks are really good), the general consensus among WoW fans is that this is a terrible system and it gets hated on constantly. (If they showed a limited version of all the big lore news in the game and then expanded it in a novel, that would be one thing, but there have been times when in-game events have been incomprehensible if you didn't either read a novel or a fansite summary of it.)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

I have around 150 figures to paint, including a pirate ship, thanks to Reaper's Bones V Kickstarter.

That ship and related piratical mini sets are so sexy. If I actually used miniatures with any sort of consistency, I would have gone broke. (I actually downgraded my pledge when I realized I wouldn't even use the great Dungeon Denizens boxed set that was part of that campaign.)

 

[Dire Bare]

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.

They won't even release the Holiday Special on Disney+, they just cut out the good part, the animated Boba Fett story, and gave us that. Disney+ has both Ewok movies, the Droids cartoon, and the Ewok cartoon. The Holiday Special is almost anti-canon at this point. However, they did release a LEGO Star Wars Holiday Special, which was an homage/satire of the original . . .

 

[Dire Bare]

See... I'd be more willing to believe you if it wasn't for two things.

The Time of Troubles
The Spell Plague.

Both are consistently mentioned as horrendous attempts to address the lore in a wide sweeping manner, and generally hated.

In fact, I think the only major shift in Canon I have not seen utterly panned is The Sundering (and this includes me seeing discussions of the Dark Sun Prism Pentad thing, the Greyhawk Wars, the Time Wars, ect ect ect) and I think that the reason the Sundering isn't hated is because it was a single moment that reversed a lot of things hated about the Spell Plague and Time of Troubles. It was less a change and more a single use reset button.

So, actually... no, I don't think it has pretty much ever been better to address these things in-universe. Every attempt that has been made is generally met with derision.

Heh, by the time The Sundering came about, we were so many RSEs in (Realms Shaking Events) that one more didn't seem far out there . . . .