D&D Novels, Video Games, Spin-Offs Declared Non-Canon By WotC

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I'm less worried about canon that comes from novels, or gaming supplements, and more about that which comes from other games in the setting. That's one reason I've never attempted to gm Star Wars, to be honest. It seems likely to me that there are a lot of potential players who would be expecting to find things they'd encountered (or been, for classes, etc.) in computer games related to the franchise. I have no knowledge of those whatsoever. It seems easier to say to players that they won't find things they've encountered in novels, comics, etc. than things that are part of their experience of playing in the setting.
 
Lofgeornost said:
I'm less worried about canon that comes from novels, or gaming supplements, and more about that which comes from other games in the setting. That's one reason I've never attempted to gm Star Wars, to be honest. It seems likely to me that there are a lot of potential players who would be expecting to find things they'd encountered (or been, for classes, etc.) in computer games related to the franchise. I have no knowledge of those whatsoever. It seems easier to say to players that they won't find things they've encountered in novels, comics, etc. than things that are part of their experience of playing in the setting.
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Yeah. I don't think I will run a Star Wars game again. It was clear that my idea of what Star Wars is (a basic aesthetic) and my players (a Canon) was completely out of sync.

My players all wanted to play specific kinds of aliens I had to look up. If I did run it again I would only have three types of characters. Human, costumed alien and puppet alien.
 
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TJS said:
Yeah. I don't think I will run a Star Wars game again. It was clear that my idea of what Star Wars is (a basic aesthetic) and my players (a Canon) was completely out of sync.

My players all wanted to play specific kinds of aliens I had to look up. If I did run it again I would only have three types of characters. Human, costumed alien and puppet alien.
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Ravenswing, running his own setting, since 1978.

Alas, that means I've never gotten to smack down a chowderhead who dared to try to tell me that I was "running it wrong."

The only times I've run someone else's setting are when:

* I've done Firefly. But pretty much the only canonical setting elements were (1) the Browncoats lost the war; (2) the Alliance won the war; (3) the Black exists, (4) the Battle of Sturgis happened, and (5) Alliance Cruisers pretty much are as huge as all of that.

* I've done Scarlet Pimpernel. (Which, to some extent, I can claim a small bit of co-authorship with the good Baroness Orczy.) To the degree that anyone owns the canon on the French bleeding Revolution. Fnord.
 
The last time a Lore Lawyer hit me with a, "Well, actually ... " I replied with, "Oh, that story? That was all the rage with the bards a few years ago. It's all bullshit. You can't trust any of the wandering bastards to actually tell the truth."

If it happened on camera then the PCs can assume it's real. If it didn't happen on camera then it's just something their PC heard in a crowded tavern some evening.
 
ReluctantGM said:
The last time a Lore Lawyer hit me with a, "Well, actually ... " I replied with, "Oh, that story? That was all the rage with the bards a few years ago. It's all bullshit. You can't trust any of the wandering bastards to actually tell the truth."

If it happened on camera then the PCs can assume it's real. If it didn't happen on camera then it's just something their PC heard in a crowded tavern some evening.
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So you never picked up any of the source books? Cuz, most of the novels used to affect the world books for certain lines.
 
Chris Brady said:
So you never picked up any of the source books? Cuz, most of the novels used to affect the world books for certain lines.
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Oh, sure I picked them up. I read a whole lot of them and even used bits here and there. But I freely altered them as I wished. In general, the BIG events stayed mostly as written but the fiddly details got changed as I saw fit.

Like the rumour tables in the front of a module that have some true, some false, and some halfway between the two. That's how I interpreted the "canon" books. It's all adventure seeds that I can mold to fit my version of the world.
 
ReluctantGM said:
The last time a Lore Lawyer hit me with a, "Well, actually ... " I replied with, "Oh, that story? That was all the rage with the bards a few years ago. It's all bullshit. You can't trust any of the wandering bastards to actually tell the truth."

If it happened on camera then the PCs can assume it's real. If it didn't happen on camera then it's just something their PC heard in a crowded tavern some evening.
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Yeah. While this is slightly tangential, I've often found that gamers have a hard time wrapping their heads around fiction in gameworlds. My (OOC) retort in a bardic competition in a MMORPG to "But there aren't any dragons in Elanthia!!" was there aren't any on Earth either, but that doesn't stop there being a hundred thousand tales, songs and books referencing them ... idiot.

Granted, "lore lawyering" has been around a long while: I tend to save forum posts, and the earliest discussion of canon I have goes all the way back to the Bostongamers Yahoo group in 2003. One cementhead opined "But screwing with the core of the setting without any good reason, like getting rid of kender from Dragonlance, or making Darth Vader a good guy, is just betraying the players."

I was too mild in my response, which started with "Let's get a grip," and probably should have stated flat out that the great majority of the "lore lawyers" are metagamers who resent the cheat codes being taken away.
 
Ravenswing said:
Yeah. While this is slightly tangential, I've often found that gamers have a hard time wrapping their heads around fiction in gameworlds. My (OOC) retort in a bardic competition in a MMORPG to "But there aren't any dragons in Elanthia!!" was there aren't any on Earth either, but that doesn't stop there being a hundred thousand tales, songs and books referencing them ... idiot.

Granted, "lore lawyering" has been around a long while: I tend to save forum posts, and the earliest discussion of canon I have goes all the way back to the Bostongamers Yahoo group in 2003. One cementhead opined "But screwing with the core of the setting without any good reason, like getting rid of kender from Dragonlance, or making Darth Vader a good guy, is just betraying the players."

I was too mild in my response, which started with "Let's get a grip," and probably should have stated flat out that the great majority of the "lore lawyers" are metagamers who resent the cheat codes being taken away.
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I think one of my big WTF moments is the fact that there aren't any gods in Dark Sun in a D&D sense...and apparently this is an absence that needs to be explained!
 
A friend of mine called me to laugh about this and got an earful. Apparently, he forgot that I'm an author who hates Hasbro with the disgust and loathing of someone who knows how companies treat their tie-in artists.

This is another way to reduce the influence of people like Hickman and Weis over products so they don't have artistic input or more room to leverage better pay.

Because before at least they could be assumed to be able to have some ownership over the IP's development.

Once again, I say fuck Hasbro.
 
CT_Phipps said:
A friend of mine called me to laugh about this and got an earful. Apparently, he forgot that I'm an author who hates Hasbro with the disgust and loathing of someone who knows how companies treat their tie-in artists.

This is another way to reduce the influence of people like Hickman and Weis over products so they don't have artistic input or more room to leverage better pay.

Because before at least they could be assumed to be able to have some ownership over the IP's development.

Once again, I say fuck Hasbro.
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I don't understand this. Surely, the fact that WotC can do this proves that such an assumption was always a wrong one?
 
TJS said:
I don't understand this. Surely, the fact that WotC can do this proves that such an assumption was always a wrong one?
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I'm not sure what you mean because declaring all of this non-canon is just another slight at authors and more sign of how little they respect spin off material.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman made Dragonlance the detailed wonderful campaign setting it was with their novels.

Ed Greenwood tried to influence the campaign setting he built with the novels he wrote. To give a sense of how they felt and how he saw them.

Keith Baker too.

The novels are an important and beloved part of the IPs that Hasbro/WoTC bought. Don't think for a second this isn't related to the fact that they lost their legal suit with Weis and Hickman over that cancelled trilogy.
 
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Why canon is important

Because it's fun.

A shared setting and story bible for players and Storytellers is a thing that people absolutely love in fandom. Part of the eternal love of Forgotten Realms and Dragonlance is the fact that the books were a world you could explore continually as well as over and over again. The continued publication of material for it is certainly something that benefits the people selling the product and the authors too (hopefully--Hasbro hates them) but it is also a shared language as well as enjoyment for the players as well.

Perhaps I'm merely noting that I have spent 35 of my 40 years of life memorizing facts about fictional worlds ranging from Middle Earth to Krynn to the World of Darkness but I don't see this as anything less weird than sports trivia enthusiasts or other hobbyists. I love the joy of debate and discussion with my fellow fans about subjects both obscure as well as popular.

"Canon" doesn't mean anything inherently but it's a roadmap for understanding what is currently going on in a story as well as what isn't so you know what to expect in the future. It's certainly important in basic storytelling because if you're doing BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES then the history of Harley Quinn, the Joker, and Poison Ivy might actually have relevance in a later episode while not applying in, say, the comics.

To use the Star Wars example, I have like 40 books of the old West End Games Star Wars novel. I've done alternate universes of Star Wars, Star Wars games from the Empire's side, Clone Wars, Tales of the Jedi, and Dark Empire games that have utterly destroyed "canon" because the players are the stars and I am who determines who is right at the first tale.

But I also know how corporations can routinely use this to exploit and destroy IP for their own greedy benefit. TSR screwed over Weis and Hickman by seizing Krynn away from them and destroying the world they put twenty years into by creating the Fifth Age. It was "canon" but their artistic desires about what it should be meant the setting ended with DRAGONS OF A SUMMER FLAME.

What is "true" became muddled and hurt the lines business as well as the future of the IP. So there's a financial and artistic reason for canon, especially if it can be kept consistent.
 
Fenris-77 said:
What if I fired a bunch of left and right handed sabers out of a cannon at RA Salvatore?
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A combination between slash and sick burn, methinks:thumbsup:!

ReluctantGM said:
Oh, sure I picked them up. I read a whole lot of them and even used bits here and there. But I freely altered them as I wished. In general, the BIG events stayed mostly as written but the fiddly details got changed as I saw fit.

Like the rumour tables in the front of a module that have some true, some false, and some halfway between the two. That's how I interpreted the "canon" books. It's all adventure seeds that I can mold to fit my version of the world.
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Exactly, man!
But I've also noticed a lot of gamers have an issue with there being unreliable narrators (just try discussing Exalted without running into this, I double-dare you).
They're in for an awakening in my games.

I remember how in Fates Worse Than Death the party had split. And after a couple of in-game days, I told them "word on the street is..."
What followed was a completely overblown retelling of the other PCs exploits, which exaggerated their combat ability, downplayed their planning, and didn't represent the events faithfully at all. OTOH, it sounded much closer to a B-movie action script. One where the scriptwriter had written over it "And here Dolph shows off his muscles".

Said PCs: "But it didn't happen that way at all! We saw how it went! (It had happened in-game, so yes, they have)."
Me: "But that's what they're telling you. And they seem sincere. Of course, they heard it from completely reliable sources - their friends in another gang."
Players: "There was nobody from said gang around!"
Me: "And you think that'd stop them from talking about it?"
The faces, they were priceless. I no longer remember what the PCs had done - captured a Collin, I suspect - but I remember them:grin:!

Well, at least the new players' faces. The ones who knew me just seemed to enjoy the show as much as me:tongue:!

CT_Phipps said:
I'm not sure what you mean because declaring all of this non-canon is just another slight at authors and more sign of how little they respect spin off material.

Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman made Dragonlance the detailed wonderful campaign setting it was with their novels.

Ed Greenwood tried to influence the campaign setting he built with the novels he wrote. To give a sense of how they felt and how he saw them.

Keith Baker too.

The novels are an important and beloved part of the IPs that Hasbro/WoTC bought. Don't think for a second this isn't related to the fact that they lost their legal suit with Weis and Hickman over that cancelled trilogy.
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That's true, but you forget:
When you start GMing, the setting becomes your bitch:shade:!
So what if the author imagined Glorantha differently from my vision? On my table, my vision wins.
What of it that Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman imagined all the other races would tolerate kenders? I decide they've been annihilated so long ago that only human and dwarven scholars know they existed, and only elven elders have a chance to remember them. And of those that do, most won't talk...because they participated in the eradication.
What of it that MARB imagined Tekumel existing in a world after a world war has killed off most people on Earth? On my Tekumel, it didn't happen that way. And some of the places are actually different because of it.
And I'd say that this is me following MARB's own advice on the matter: "Make the setting your own".
Which, let me remind you, is contained in the first setting published for an RPG, ever:devil:.

Now, is that WotC espousing the above philosophy, or the result of a corporate grab to reduce the influence of the creators? I'd say it's either both, or the latter.
But I prefer to consider it "both", and to foster said approach whenever I can. Because in the end, it reduces the influence of WotC itself over said settings, too:evil:.
And just like I can make my settings completely different, I can also hew as close as I can to the author's original vision:gunslinger:.
 
AsenRG said:
A combination between slash and sick burn, methinks:thumbsup:!


Exactly, man!
But I've also noticed a lot of gamers have an issue with there being unreliable narrators (just try discussing Exalted without running into this, I double-dare you).
They're in for an awakening in my games.
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The only NPCs in my world who are not unreliable narrators are the PCs themselves. Commoners have no idea and believe all the rumours they hear. The real movers and shakers might know the truth but they DEFINITELY have an agenda - so they certainly aren't telling the whole story.

In one long time D&D campaign (three years running) I'm playing an 18th level bard. Whenever we get downtime I write up a few songs about our exploits accenting the cool bits and burying the dumb things we did. Then I hire a bunch of other bards to go and sing the songs all over the place. I've been doing that since around level 5 or so. Our heavily curated story is what the world knows.

Of course, because I'm a devious bastard I did NOT tell the other players what I was doing. When our paladin suddenly began getting the heroes' welcome everywhere we went I had a hard time keeping mum. Our wizard had to keep telling off all those would-be students. Our priest was treated as if he had the wisdom of Solomon. I mean, we also had every baddie around gunning for us ... but that just kept things INTERESTING.


AsenRG said:
That's true, but you forget:
When you start GMing, the setting becomes your bitch:shade:!
So what if the author imagined Glorantha differently from my vision? On my table, my vision wins.
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QUOTED FOR TRUTH
 
As an aside: I'm, like, HELLA ADHD and I simply can't focus enough to keep current on all the numerous source books, novels, and adventures out there. The one source for Greyhawk I use is the original map folio released in the early 80's. It's just the right amount of specific mixed with the right amount of ambiguity.

Bottom line, anyone who suggests that I'm somehow doing it wrong for not cleaving to the canon can go piss up a rope.
 
ReluctantGM said:
As an aside: I'm, like, HELLA ADHD and I simply can't focus enough to keep current on all the numerous source books, novels, and adventures out there. The one source for Greyhawk I use is the original map folio released in the early 80's. It's just the right amount of specific mixed with the right amount of ambiguity.

Bottom line, anyone who suggests that I'm somehow doing it wrong for not cleaving to the canon can go piss up a rope.
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It seems like some of the feeling here is motivated by annoying players versus the corporate shills at the start of this. From my end, virtually every game has always said, "The Storyteller is always right."

At the end, it's always been the ST's game as there's never been "canon" RPGs except those done at conventions.

However, canon is important for keeping a straight line for future products. So this only affects corporate media and authors.
 
Multiple things can be true at the same time.

The existence of canon in most properties is laughable, because there is no intent to create canon and no setting consistency. That’s why comics settings get completely nuked and rebuilt every few years. However, it’s also true that there can be canon if it is created with such consistency in mind, like the MCU movie series (so far).

It can be true that WotC declaring all non-gaming media non-canon frees GMs from Uber-fans toxic expectations, while also being true that this effect is totally accidental, as the primary intent was to eliminate author’s influence over their own creations.
 
I guess I'm just lucky. I GMed a licensed property game for many years, and a good, solid 10 years of that was an open table. I never had anyone come in and try to lecture me on what was canon.

I don't mean for it to come across like this, but maybe its people who are in love with the fiction more than they are with the actual idea of playing. I've been universally lucky to have players more interested in playing their own stuff rather than worrying how many pimples are canonically on Maximillian Sterling's butt, even when they were being disruptive little shitheads.
 
CRKrueger said:
It can be true that WotC declaring all non-gaming media non-canon frees GMs from Uber-fans toxic expectations, while also being true that this effect is totally accidental, as the primary intent was to eliminate author’s influence over their own creations.
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... if that's actually the case. For which no evidence has been proffered except speculation.

Seriously, guys, Hasbro is a multinational corporation with several billions in annual revenue. The degree to which the corporate board gnashes its teeth over whatever Weis and Hickman might think or conceive is somewhere between nil and derisive laughter.

Two more observations. First off, Weis and Hickman started the series when they were TSR employees. While I don't know for a certain fact, I would be astonished if they actually owned the property; that's not how this thing is usually done.

Another is this: aren't there something like 200+ Dragonlance books? Haven't Weis/Hickman written just a fraction of that total? This doesn't necessarily have to be the Hasbro Sooper Sekrit Mafia being Out To Get W&H. This could be corporate executives saying "Dudes, there are a heap of authors and a crazy lot of books, many of which contradict others, and restrain us from putting more stuff out. We need to clean this up."

Because one thing I know from writing for a bunch of licensed properties is that the licensers are very bitchy about things being created. There's a REASON that MERP set many of its adventures over a thousand years before the events of LotR: the Tolkien estate didn't want them creating contemporaneous stuff. Writing for DC Heroes was another bitch and a half: DC didn't want us creating ANY setting detail for the LSH Sourcebook, which is a bit of a laugh, given that the series has been rebooted seven times since we wrote it.
 
Black Leaf said:
This is why I won't run Star Wars, tbh.
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Any time I run Star Wars I straight up tell people I run my canon and things in no way are guaranteed to go the way they did in the movies/books/comics/games/etc.

If they can't, then fuck them.

(The game I've wanted to run the longest was Post-KotOR2, but completely pretending that the MMO never happened (I really really hate how the MMO "concluded" the things going on in the first two games). Also the Revan and Exile are my Revan and Exile, not necessarily the "canon" ones).
 
Hey, I finally read the whole article, and I don't really think this is at all about novels or canon-lawyers at the game table.

Instead, I think this whole thing is really just a variant of Gygax's old "OFFICIAL AD&D" rants. A key point of this is the statement that "nothing since the 2014 launch of D&D 5e is canon. If it hasn't appeared in (one of WotC's) books since 2014 then it isn't canon." I'm paraphrasing a bit there, but read down through the article and you'll see what I'm referencing.

This is basically a statement against third party support. Kind of like, "we're not responsible for damage to your Atari 2600 if you choose to use bootleg games like those created by Activision on it." And don't let players force you to bring that stuff into the game. Only OFFICIAL AD&D PRODUCTS are supported.
 
My impression is that WotC has little interest in being in the fiction business. Since 5e launched they've only put out novels by Greenwood, Salvatore and Erin Evans. Comparatively a handful.

This seems less a decision from suits and more one from the designers who don't want to deal with the crushing level of lore the FR and DL have accumulated.

Rather than cutting Hickman out, who they already brought in to consult on Curse of Strahd, seems more likely this is a clearing of the deck before they reboot DL.
 
I'm going to proffer a different reasons why all of this is happening. Most of the more offensive content predates 5e. If you officially drop all of that from canon you're cutting a whole lot of problems off your plate.
 
Bunch said:
I'm going to proffer a different reasons why all of this is happening. Most of the more offensive content predates 5e. If you officially drop all of that from canon you're cutting a whole lot of problems off your plate.
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I see this as numerous things; wanting to get TSR products off their site after the recent issues, pulling a Disney where they don't want to pay old authors anything deemed problematic to the new audience, & not getting into any more entanglements similar to the Weiss/Hickman issue. Even though I don't agree w/how Disney did it, I see why they did and WotC is as well.
In the end my 87 Grey Box says, "...Who gives a +^@#?" But he's rude like that.

That being said; I am usually the most Star Wars Legends versed in any SW group I've been in and constantly had to hide my 'hmm' when something didn't follow the lore. My biggist issues were creating a small character backstory with a little easter egg that GMs had to look up for reference.
 
Bunch said:
I'm going to proffer a different reasons why all of this is happening. Most of the more offensive content predates 5e. If you officially drop all of that from canon you're cutting a whole lot of problems off your plate.
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Possible but with no real evidence to back it up, I think that is assuming Hasbro suits pay attention to some minor Twitter drama to a far greater degree than they do.

The minor changes to the ruleset and settings that get some worked up online are far more likely to be getting pushed by the younger creatives on the team than the suits who are more likely focused on returns and probably have to be roughly corralled to pay attention to these kind of details.
 
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