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]

One of my biggest regrets of the 3e era is skipping Living Greyhawk. I was just getting back into gaming and was too nervous about joining in organized play then. I can't imagine the work that must have gone into maintaining all the regional storylines and keeping the world somewhat coherent across the regions.

Living Greyhawk was a beautiful disaster. It was some of the best D&D experiences of my life. It was uneven, overpopulated with Oerth Shaking Events and too many fragile egos, but had some of the most awesome inclusive community world-building and detailed background of a shared world. It depended heavily on where the player physically lived. The East coast had The Sheldomar Valley and a decent intermixing of story lines between Keoland, Geoff, Bissel, and Gran March.
The less said about the poor initial Triad of the Bone March and battling beholders in a tier 1 adventure, the better.

Same. The first half of that stuff hit right around when I was making the dive into AD&D from D&D. When Forgotten Realms came on the scene, it was such a strong push.

My copy of Waterdeep and the North is a well-loved, ratty thing.

That list was like having a bucket of nostalgia thrown over my head lol damn it!

Lords of Darkness has an amazing cover, too. Easley's skeletons are absolutely the best (see also The Magister's cover).

Not sure whether to thank you or shake a fist at you. I sure own an awful lot of those products even though my first FR purchase was FRA. I still use Lords of Darkness like, probably once a year at least, because those like, underdeveloped, undead-centric adventures are both atmospheric, and incredibly easy to quickly adapt to other fantasy RPGs when I want to run something in a hurry.

 

[Alzrius]

One of my biggest regrets of the 3e era is skipping Living Greyhawk. I was just getting back into gaming and was too nervous about joining in organized play then. I can't imagine the work that must have gone into maintaining all the regional storylines and keeping the world somewhat coherent across the regions.

I'd recommend checking out BDKR1 The Unofficial Living Greyhawk Bandit Kingdoms Summary (affiliate link), by Casey Brown. It's a fascinating look into what sounds like one of the most exciting areas of the Living Greyhawk campaign.

 

[Mirtek]

One of my biggest regrets of the 3e era is skipping Living Greyhawk. I was just getting back into gaming and was too nervous about joining in organized play then. I can't imagine the work that must have gone into maintaining all the regional storylines and keeping the world somewhat coherent across the regions.



Same. The first half of that stuff hit right around when I was making the dive into AD&D from D&D. When Forgotten Realms came on the scene, it was such a strong push.

My copy of Waterdeep and the North is a well-loved, ratty thing.



Lords of Darkness has an amazing cover, too. Easley's skeletons are absolutely the best (see also The Magister's cover).

Back then you had a lot of volunteers who cared to take charge of and coordinate this and then had WotC actually also spend company ressources on overseeing their coordinated drafts

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's as logical as chosing the dish with mushrooms, because you enjoy eating mushrooms. It's a matter of taste.

And while it isn't the current business model of D&D, up until the announcement there was still the hope that it could once again become the business model of D&D come 6e or 7e.

It would not have been the first time that the fiction line had the longer breath and just outwaited the newest fad of the game side of things (cough world tree cough world axis).

You know... this is where I end up just scratching my head.

Let us pretend for a moment. Go on a journey.

WoTC decides to make a new line of novels. They have an author who is excited to write a story... the story of a group of people dealing with the cult of the dragon, the rise of Tiamat and then the fallout of the Giant Ordning being broken.

Personally? I think those make for great potential stories, seeing a half-dragon who defied Tiamat then goes to negotiate with the Storm Giant King? That's some good drama there, an author could do a lot with that. But... it couldn't be canon, could it? Because the Rise of Tiamat and Storm King's Thunder are major DnD adventures, and they don't have canon endings. They don't have canon groups who complete them.

So, here is a potentially good novel line and if we worry about canon it is dead in the water. So, what do we do with these ideas? Either we make it non-canon novels... or we try and make canon novels that have big stakes between multiple realms shaking events.

 

[Mirtek]

Because the Rise of Tiamat and Storm King's Thunder are major DnD adventures, and they don't have canon endings. They don't have canon groups who complete them.

But only because WotC decided that they no longer have those. In the past they used to have them. In fact until this thread I assumed the 5e adventures still have them.

Actually now that I think about it, even with this thread the adventures must still have them. Because adventures taking place after RoT don't happen in a world ruled by Tiamat.

So her failure is the canon outcome implied by the other printed stuff that comes after it

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I mentioned the 20+ year Archie Sonic comic canon earlier but neglected to include this image of Knuckles the Echidna fighting a beholder knock-off (before being subject to dominate person by a rabbit lady mage and saved by a man horse paladin).

Honestly you could probably take the background lore for the first 100 or so issues of the Sonic comics and scrub all the Sonic characters from it to have a pretty detailed RPG campaign setting. Since the Sonic games themselves were new and had next to no story at the time the original stable of writers threw in all kinds of crazy details, often ones more fitting for a fantasy setting. One of the main recurring villains was even a wizard who banished his king to a plane called the Zone of Silence, prolonged exposure to which drove the king half-mad (and half-crystal) before being restored by a legendary sword forged from a (secretly evil) all-knowing pool of living liquid metal called the Source of All.

 

[Parmandur]

But only because WotC decided that they no longer have those. In the past they used to have them. In fact until this thread I assumed the 5e adventures still have them.

Actually now that I think about it, even with this thread the adventures must still have them. Because adventures taking place after RoT don't happen in a world ruled by Tiamat.

So her failure is the canon outcome implied by the other printed stuff that comes after it

But WotC have maintained for years that the Adventures are potential events that only happen at tables. There is no canon resolution to any of these stories, and they have been clear about that for a long time. Even Sky King's Thunder doesn't assume a canonical ending to Rise of Tiamat, it openly discusses how to integrate them in several possible arrays.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

But only because WotC decided that they no longer have those. In the past they used to have them. In fact until this thread I assumed the 5e adventures still have them.

Actually now that I think about it, even with this thread the adventures must still have them. Because adventures taking place after RoT don't happen in a world ruled by Tiamat.

So her failure is the canon outcome implied by the other printed stuff that comes after it

Not really.

I think it is assumed that the rise of Tiamat or other big plots for the different campaign are not all happening. So the breaking of the Ordning or the Death Curse dont have a canonical ending and each new campaign isnt built on the premise of the previous ones, because they are optional and potential events to shake YOUR Realms up a little.

I mean, in a version of the Realms where all those things all happened at nearly the same time, I feel pity for the Realms; they sure had a rough couple of years

 

[Mort]

Not really.

I think it is assumed that the rise of Tiamat or other big plots for the different campaign are not all happening. So the breaking of the Ordning or the Death Curse dont have a canonical ending and each new campaign isnt built on the premise of the previous ones, because they are optional and potential events to shake YOUR Realms up a little.

I mean, in a version of the Realms where all those things all happened at nearly the same time, I feel pity for the Realms; they sure had a rough couple of years

It would be interesting to have the PCs trigger something where they suddenly start experiencing ALL the different versions of the realms as they could happen (as in first different versions of themselves, then different versions of the PCs as other characters at other tables experiencing other Realms events from different campaigns) - essentially a riff on the TNG episode Parallels.

Kind of shows how cannon in a game medium has to change/evolve and twist unlike in an authored medium (such as books or movies).

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

I have read that one! It's a really interesting window into a different time. Like, there's some stuff that hasn't aged well, some stuff that seems like it was a nightmare to coordinate, and some really amazing, player-driven moments that became history.

I'd recommend checking out BDKR1 The Unofficial Living Greyhawk Bandit Kingdoms Summary (affiliate link), by Casey Brown. It's a fascinating look into what sounds like one of the most exciting areas of the Living Greyhawk campaign.

It must have been such a lot of work, and relied a whole lot on the passion (and quality) of individuals.

Back then you had a lot of volunteers who cared to take charge of and coordinate this and then had WotC actually also spend company ressources on overseeing their coordinated drafts