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.

 

[Hussar]

Sure, but this canon policy won't make folks like that go away. It might just make them more upset and more likely to complain...

True. But it completely undercuts any appeal to authority they could make. When you can’t appeal to canon, the meat of their arguments vanish.

 

[Hussar]

So we all agree that no table’s game is ever canon.

So what function does canon serve?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

To give a bit of insight as to why people are so passionate about canon in general, I follow a blog that reviews the old Archie Comics licensed Sonic the Hedgehog series issue-by-issue because I read the first 125 or so way back when and they eventually got shockingly bizarre. At one point they established that the Sonic characters exist because a race of aliens called the Xorda mutated Earth's life forms with "gene bombs" over 1000 years prior as an intended genocide against humankind in retaliation for the vivisection of the Xorda ambassador led by an ancestor of Dr. Robotnik.

People are sending the author of the blog questions and comments about the canon of those comics despite them ending in 2016. Which isn't as surprising as it sounds, as the lead writer of those comics from issues 160 (in 2006) to 294 (2016) loved reintroducing characters and elements that had been introduced and abandoned in the issues prior to his joining the team as lead writer. Perhaps the most surprising instance was when he brought back a character who only appeared once in issue 16 as a major recurring character in issue 233, 18 years after the character's single prior appearance in the comics. He also once bothered to explain a single reference way back in the early days of the comics of Sonic's world having "1000 moons" as actually being about ancient human-built space colonies.

To tie this back into D&D, some people just find digging up obscure old lore and either utilizing it as is or expanding upon it fun, as this guy clearly did.

Personally, though I hadn't started playing D&D until around 2006, I find the old lore I've learned about the War of Law and Chaos, the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, the Rod of Seven Parts, the Queen of Chaos, Miska the Wolf-Spider, the Obyriths, the invasion of the Abyss by celestial eladrin, and the battles between the Princes of Elemental Good and Evil fascinating. If I had free reign to make an official D&D book I'd probably make a planes-spanning adventure heavily based on that lore with the goal of stopping the return of the Queen of Chaos and Miska the Wolf-Spider with the aid of the Princes of Elemental Good and the celestial eladrin.

 

[TheSword]

To give a bit of insight as to why people are so passionate about canon in general, I follow a blog that reviews the old Archie Comics licensed Sonic the Hedgehog series issue-by-issue because I read the first 125 or so way back when and they eventually got shockingly bizarre. At one point they established that the Sonic characters exist because a race of aliens called the Xorda mutated Earth's life forms with "gene bombs" over 1000 years prior as an intended genocide against humankind as vengeance for the vivisection of the Xorda ambassador led by an ancestor of Dr. Robotnik.
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People are sending the author of the blog questions and comments about the canon of those comics despite them ending in 2016. Which isn't as surprising as it sounds, as the lead writer of those comics from issues 160 (in 2006) to 294 (2016) loved reintroducing characters and elements that had been introduced and abandoned in the issues prior to his joining the team as lead writer. Perhaps the most surprising instance was when he brought back a character who only appeared once in issue 16 as a major recurring character in issue 233, 18 years after the character's single prior appearance in the comics. He also once bothered to explain a single reference way back in the early days of the comics of Sonic's world having "1000 moons" as actually being about ancient human-built space colonies.

To tie this back into D&D, some people just find digging up obscure old lore and either utilizing it as is or expanding upon it fun, as this guy clearly did.

Personally, though I hadn't started playing D&D until around 2006, I find the old lore I've learned about the War of Law and Chaos, the Wind Dukes of Aaqa, the Rod of Seven Parts, the Queen of Chaos, Miska the Wolf-Spider, the Obyriths, the invasion of the Abyss by celestial eladrin, and the battles between the Princes of Elemental Good and Evil fascinating. If I had free reign to make an official D&D book I'd probably make a planes-spanning adventure heavily based on that lore with the goal of stopping the return of the Queen of Chaos and Miska the Wolf-Spider with the aid of the Princes of Elemental Good and the celestial eladrin.

To be fair it’s all used in the Dungeon Magazine campaign Age of Worms. Well worth a read if you haven’t seen it.

Wouldn’t it be even better though if WOC could release a campaign book where the PCs could be involved in these things because they hadn’t already happened. That the PCs could assist the Vaati and help defeat Miska and the Queen of Chaos. Why prevent the return when you can be part of the main event?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Sure, but this canon policy won't make folks like that go away.

It might make some of them go away, there have been some threats even on this (unusually mature) forum. Frankly, there are some fans IP owners would prefer not to have.

It might just make them more upset and more likely to complain...

Better get the complaining out of their system now than when a new product comes out.

 

[Hussar]

Someone upthread mentioned the idea of canon being official when it comes from the IP holder. But, what about examples where there is no IP holder?

A perfect example of this would by the Mythos stories. Cthulhu and whatnot are public domain. And, the Mythos stories are one of the first examples of a shared universe. Thing is, there is zero canon in the Mythos stories. Or, very close to zero anyway. You can find Mythos stuff being used in a thousand different ways and there is not even the merest hint that there is any need for canon. And we've now got a hundred years of Mythos stories, movies, video games, heck pretty much an entire genre dedicated to Mythos stories.

Or, look at the other shared world writer - Howard. Conan stories passed into public domain years ago. We've got several decades of Marvel comic Conan, a rather shocking number of writers have done Conan novels, a couple of movies, at least two TV shows I can think of and I'm sure there's more. Again, nothing is particularly canon about the universe. Characters are used, reused, reinvisioned and whatnot all the time. Never minding that Conan himself is probably busier than Jack Bauer on a bad day. Conan has at least three origin stories that I know of, all of them "canon". So on and so forth.

The idea that canon is needed to have shared universes is easily disproven. There are already properties that have far, far exceeded their initial success where canon is largely a matter of Easter eggs, nods and winks.

I'd be pretty happy if in 2084 people are still writing Forgotten Realms stuff and banging out the newest version of the setting guide.

 

[Mirtek]

So we all agree that no table’s game is ever canon.

So what function does canon serve?

It drives the metaplot and ensures novels and supplements acknowledge and build on each other.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

It drives the metaplot and ensures novels and supplements acknowledge and build on each other.

So, none, then.

 

[Mirtek]

So, none, then.

For you maybe, for others it's one of the if not the reasons for chosing a setting.

My interested in Eberron died the moment I learned that it's a "dead" setting that will never move, never resolve the current issues in favor or progress and new issues, etc.

 

[CapnZapp]

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.

Did I miss something or can I ask why he thinks DMs needed to read Dragonlance just to run the game if he didn't speak up...