Dungeons & Dragons Lore Wiki talk:Canon

Comments

Presuming this is still a work in progress, but advise you specifically address, for clarity's sake:

• Wizards' official streaming games (Acquisitions Incorporated is canon now thanks to the sourcebook, but what about the others?)
• Dungeon Masters Guild products (presume they're obviously non-canon and non-notable... but Ed Greenwood and Keith Baker have made that complicated, with specific products for the Realms and Eberron that they wrote and/or endorsed)
• Paizo's Monster Ecologies and Dragon Compendium, which were produced while they still held the official D&D license. (I assume they're as canon as Dragon Magazines from the era were, but the current policy as written would suggest they're not.)
• AEG's d20 Rokugan products published under the "Oriental Adventures" license. (Non-canon but notable? Not sure since Wizards did feature Rokugan in OA 3e, and these products were supporting that.)
• Other third-party products produced under the D&D license, but not featuring official D&D settings. This includes Judges' Guild material and Kingdoms of Kalamar. (I advise non-canon but notable, but they were licensed...)
• Non-RPG D&D products produced by TSR or Wizards. This includes the trading cards from the early 1990s, the Spellfire and Blood Wars card games, the D&D Miniatures line, the various D&D board games, etc. (I presume these are canon, though often won't provide a lot of additional info.)
• Non-RPG D&D products produced by third parties. This includes LJN's toy line, the Icons of the Realms minis, D&D Attack Wing, etc. (I presume these are non-canon, but notable, but I can see letting them in.)
• Comic books, such as TSR's promo comics from the 1980s and 1990s, DC's AD&D comics from the 1980s and 1990s, and the current IDW comics. (I advise making them canon, as some have been referenced in RPG products; for example, the DC Forgotten Realms characters appeared in Dragon Magazine.)
• The 1980s D&D cartoon and the D&D films. (I assume non-canon but notable... though the 2000 film almost had a product based on it. And AFAIK there's no wiki for the 1980s cartoon, if that matters.)
• Magic: The Gathering. (I'd actually be fine with making those products non-canon, but they're official D&D products, and Wizards includes Ravnica and Theros as settings on the DM Guild, and I assume we'll only see more integration in years to come.)
• Official D&D products based on non-Wizards licenses. This includes Lankhmar, Diablo II, the Stranger Things boxed set, and the Rick & Morty boxed set. (I assume non-canon but notable.)

Also, some thoughts on what you have so far:

• Since Wizards put the Dragonlance and Ravenloft d20 products in with their other official products, I think they're intended to be canon. In general, I think if it's set in a canonical D&D setting, and Wizards officially endorses the product, it should be treated the same as official material. (That said, I'm not sure about Goodman Games' Original Adventures Reincarnated line, which meets the same criteria.)
• I understand why you want to keep Critical Role non-canon... but between the Wildemount book and Arkhan's cameo in the Avernus book, I think it's hard to deny that Wizards is going to treat that world as part of the D&D multiverse from here on. Besides, it's far from the first home campaign to make the leap to an official D&D setting. Why not just treat it like we do the other campaign settings with dedicated wikis? We shouldn't turn this wiki into a mirror of the Critical Role wiki, but summary articles and interwiki links seem pretty harmless. (And if some Critters look up Grog Strongjaw or Jester on Google, then find this wiki instead and take an interest in D&D official canon... is that a bad thing?)
• I think novels should be canon. I'm less sure on video games, but the Forgotten Realms wiki doesn't seem to object.
• I don't think Unearthed Arcana should be canon, as it's officially playtest material and usually gets changed before publication. But it should probably be treated like Living Greyhawk and the like; not canon, but notable. (We should also at least have an article that summarizes all the releases and their contents.)
• I don't think notable but completely unofficial third-party works should have articles, as you know. But I'm happy to see them referenced in articles that are themselves relevant to official D&D material (for example, Monte Cook or Kobold Press).
• I think adventure endings should remain open-ended and undefined. However, if a later work makes a particular outcome canon, this should be noted (perhaps in the influence section). JEB1981 (talk) 07:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Overall, though, I'm glad you made this article and am basically on board with your policies. JEB1981 (talk) 07:30, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Comments 2.0

Some follow-ups on your latest revision:

• So to be clear, we should include material from Lankhmar and Diablo II as D&D canon? I can see including articles on the works themselves, but to declare the material in them canon is rather different, even if it doesn't extend to the rest of the fictional universe. This means, for example, that the article on skeletons should include the many Diablo variants from the 2e and 3e sourcebooks, and there could potentially be articles on each one. If this is your preference, fine, but wanted to make sure...
• Sounds good on non-RPG D&D games! (Expect more Spellfire! That Reference Guide has some neat obscure lore, especially in conjunction with the trading cards.) Though you may want to specify first-party games only. (Or, if you intend all officially authorized D&D game works to be canon, even WizKids products like D&D Attack Wing, you may want to say that instead. But I think first-party only is a good limit.)
• The Dragon Compendium does NOT consist entirely of reprints of Paizo's Dragon Magazine material; it also updates material from a number of older-edition articles to 3.5, such as the tibbit race, the jester and savant classes, the bleeder beholder by Ed Greenwood, etc. Omitting it from canon, when it was listed as a Wizards "official licensed product" at the time and is the only source for 3.5 updates for certain things, seems like a real shame. I also can't be sure there isn't further original material in those other books Paizo produced back when they had the license; at bare minimum, there might be updates worth noting. I don't think they should be non-canon; perhaps just as a specific exception to your general rule. If you're worried folks will use that as an excuse to include Pathfinder stuff like Rise of the Runelords, I think you already made it clear they're not allowed...
• Fair decision on Judges Guild/Kalamar/AEG. But as written, that wording also definitively excludes the Dragonlance and Ravenloft products, which I thought were an open question? Perhaps something like "Third-party products released under license from TSR or Wizards of the Coast, but based in settings owned by those third parties, are not canon. This includes Judges Guild publications, the Kingdoms of Kalamar setting books, and AEG's Oriental Adventures d20 products."
• Also a fair decision on DM Guild (and good idea to head off questions about the Greenwood and Baker works).
• Fair enough on Critical Role, perfectly reasonable stance. But I suspect it's only going to become more canonical as time goes on... I also assume, of course, that Critical Role notes are fine in the reception & influence section (say, noting Vecna's prominent role in the first campaign, or that Jester is a popular tiefling character).
• Under Non-canon continuities mentioned in a canon work, you should probably cite a different example from David Bowie. Preferably someone from Lankhmar or Magic: The Gathering, to make it absolutely clear what you mean. (Bowie's a fun example, but I'm being boring and practical here.)
• Glad my phrasing of "non-canon, but notable" caught your eye! (And good section to add.)
• Most of the older D&D comics are available from IDW, albeit in digital form, if it matters. Also, out-of-print doesn't keep us from referencing, say, pre-Paizo issues of Dragon Magazine...
• However, I do kind of like the idea of making novels, comics, and video games a sort of "lesser" canon. I've also never gotten the impression that D&D sourcebooks consider them non-canon (outside of a few very specific cases). Making them canon only when they don't contradict a RPG source seems fair.
• Beyond novels, BTW, there are also short stories from Dragon Magazine and Wizards' web site; I assume those would be treated the same.
• If it helps on Dragonlance d20, they were also produced by a company owned by Dragonlance co-creator Margaret Weis. Again, though, I think Wizards including Dragonlance and Ravenloft d20 with other official 3e/3.5 products on DM Guild - something they did NOT do for the AEG OA material - is a pretty clear statement.
• I advise you should account for official livestreams, like Force Grey, Dice Camera Action, and Nights of Eveningstar; Acquisitions Inc. is a little different, so people may not have a clear idea where they fall. Can always toss into the as-yet-undecided section. JEB1981 (talk) 05:02, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Oh yeah, two more works you may want to make a declaration on:

• Necromancer Games' Tome of Horrors, which got Wizards' OK to use a bunch of official D&D monsters (and as a result, made them OGL content that Pathfinder later used).
• HackMaster 4th edition, which used AD&D 2nd edition material (again with Wizards' OK) but was required to use it humorously.

I think both should be non-canon but notable, personally. JEB1981 (talk) 05:22, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Good points.

I've decide to exclude the outcome of adventure modules from canon. I recently watched Puffin Forest's video review of Pathfinder 2E, where he complained that it canonized the outcome of 1E-era plot threads, with the result that it described a world where all the cool and interesting stuff described in adventure modules had been done already. My hope is for this wiki to inspire DMs by presenting interesting settings and characters as they would be described by a sourcebook; here is the character, monster or whatever as they might appear in your campaign. It would be awkward to end every villain's entry with "...and then he was killed by adventurers." Besides, the guidelines have already stated that events of a campaign are not canon. Living Greyhawk actually tallied up the results of adventure modules and wrote those into the following season's canon, but I don't think we can do that.

Critical Role and other adventure series, I wouldn't consider them canon outside of their appearances in sourcebooks and such.

Novels and comics, one of my concerns in that regard is that this wiki's scope is already huge, covering something like 1,269 sourcebooks (of which around 500 or more are not already covered by a campaign setting specific wiki) and 822 magazine issues. The wiki has a phenomenal amount of work ahead just with those. Most D&D novels are also set in a specific campaign setting, meaning that they're already covered by an existing wiki. I'm also thinking of the Star Trek wiki Memory Alpha, which relegates novels to a separate wiki as they're considered a secondary means of experiencing the property. BeardWizard (talk) 20:05, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

Looked over the current draft, overall looks pretty good! This gives everyone a much clearer idea of what we should and shouldn't add in terms of future articles.

I think that's the right move on adventure modules; you're also right that it makes for a more appealing wiki for DMs (and players too!).

As for novels and comics, you raise an excellent point on scope. There's already a lot to cover with only the official RPG products (plus scattered spin-off material like trading cards). The only concern I have on leaving out novel and similar info is that certain articles may look a bit odd without it, such as Drizzt Do'Urden... but then I considered your second point, about novels generally being tied to campaign settings. You're absolutely right! So pragmatically, that's not likely to be much of a problem, so long as other wikis are including novel/comic/etc. info. If it does become a problem later, then the matter should be revisited... but for now, leaving it as an open question is probably safe.

It also occurs to me that, like Memory Alpha, we can always contain some lightly summarized info on events of novels, comics, etc. in the articles for their works. (A similar approach might be good for notable information on Critical Role, official livestreams, etc.) Though of course that should take a backseat to articles based on RPG material. JEB1981 (talk) 02:49, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Indeed, as most articles have a "creative origins" and "publication history", where it would be entirely reasonable to talk about, say, the Acquisitions Inc live streams in the articles on their relevant books. Articles on books could also have a section detailing the history of development, where discussion of origins may be relevant. BeardWizard (talk) 16:24, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

White Dwarf

Just asking for an official ruling: White Dwarf material isn't to be treated as canon, right? We should have an article on the magazine, of course, because many of the monsters wound up in the Fiend Folio (1e)... but I assume it shouldn't be treated as a source for articles? JEB1981 (talk) 07:51, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm thinking White Dwarf isn't canon. IIRC they had permission from TSR to print D&D content, but they weren't first-party or official content. BeardWizard (talk) 13:11, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Could we please treat the 3e Dragonlance and Ravenloft material as canon?

Having just had a near miss in the aarakocra entry, I can foresee some articles being awkward to write if I'm obliged to treat all that material as non-canon. And they're really treated just like all the other 3e products on the DM Guild site, with full product histories and even being listed as "Wizards of the Coast" published. What reason do we have to NOT treat them as canon? JEB1981 (talk) 03:36, 8 October 2020 (UTC)

The primary reason for not incorporating the 3e Dragonlance and Ravenloft material is that nearly all such content was originally written and published by someone other than Wizards of the Coast. Digital reprints are now sold by Wizard of the Coast, but I feel this doesn't change the essential character of the works as third-party licensed works. I don't want to extend the wiki's scope; it's also monumentally large already, and Dragonlance and Ravenloft already have their own wikis. BeardWizard (talk) 19:00, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Just wanted to note that I am also the Wiki Manager for the Dragonlance Wiki and the Ravenloft Wiki (and Eberron, Baldur's Gate, Spelljammer, D&D 4th Edition, and Forgotten Realms...I may have a problem...) so if you need any technical assistance on those wikis, give me a holler. Both wikis have seen an uptick in activity lately, and they have templates to crosslink between other wikis that might have an article about the same subject but cover it differently (Baldur's Gate <--> Forgotten Realms is a good example. Family ties help us all). New editors are always welcome! —Moviesign (talk) 20:35, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

@BeardWizard: Several points. One, the Dragonlance and Ravenloft material for 3e represented official, canonical settings being produced with Wizards of the Coast's official approval. Two, several folks who worked on TSR or Wizards material for those settings worked on the 3e material as well. Three, Dungeon and Dragon were produced by third parties for much of 3e's run, and those aren't being treated as unofficial. Four, clearly Wizards' stance at this point is to treat 3e Ravenloft and Dragonlance as part of the 3e canon, since otherwise we wouldn't have seen their products integrated into the 3e line on DM Guild. Five, there are articles from both settings which have multiversal scope and should be detailed here in full, such as Strahd von Zarovich or Draconian; leaving out several years of reference material as non-canon seems problematic.

I'd like to hold off on making a ruling on this issue for the moment. The reason is that Wizards of the Coast is said to be releasing a 5e version of a major campaign setting soon. If this turns out to be Dragonlance or Ravenloft, then WotC may find themselves taking an official policy on the canonicity of the third-party 3e material for that setting, and that may inform this wiki's policy. BeardWizard (talk) 09:18, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

As you wish, but you're also basically telling me not to create or edit any article that has significant overlaps with Ravenloft or Dragonlance canon until a decision is made... JEB1981 (talk) 09:33, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

Interwiki links

@MovieSign: Hey, while I have your attention, we have two minor technical issues that have been bugging me. One, is there any way to override the behavior where if I link to Eberron: Rising from the Last War, it links to Eberron Wiki's "Rising from the Last War" article rather than creating a link to an "Eberron: Rising from the Last War" article on this wiki? Two, when they upgraded us it changed our ampersands in the search field and in categories to "& amp;", is there any way to switch it back to an ampersand? Thanks. JEB1981 (talk) 22:00, 10 October 2020 (UTC)

Someone has set up an interwiki link to Eberron. It can be removed or modified, but that will break any intentional links there may be on the wiki. So the question is, is this interwiki link being used anywhere? It can be replaced by

[[w:c:eberron:Rising from the Last War]] --OR--
[[w:c:eberron:Rising from the Last War|Rising from the Last War]]

for example.

As for the ampersand in search and categories, I'm not seeing any problems. The category Category:Basic D&D publications looks fine and searching for Spelljammer I see Spelljammer: AD&D Adventures in Space in the auto-suggest and search results. All ampersands look like they should. Please be more specific on how to reproduce the problem that you see. —Moviesign (talk) 00:24, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@MovieSign: I think you misunderstood my first problem. I want a way to create an article on THIS wiki titled Eberron: Rising from the Last War, without such a link or article automatically redirecting to the Eberron Wiki. If that's not possible, that's fine, can always do something like

[[Eberron - Rising from the Last War|Eberron: Rising from the Last War]]

instead, but I was hoping there was some way to just get around the interwiki link.

As for the second, perhaps these screenshots illustrate the problem: search bar category at bottom of articles

Thanks! JEB1981 (talk) 00:37, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

@MovieSign If I understand you correctly that someone has set the "Eberron:" prefix internally to redirect to the Eberron wiki, then I'd recommend disabling that feature. I don't think we're using "Eberron:" wikilinks anywhere on the wiki. We have a template called {{eb}} to make it easy to link to Eberron wiki.

Regarding the ampersand issue, ampersands show correctly in most places, but not at in the Categories bar at the bottom of article pages. See Rules Cyclopedia for an example of this.

There's also an issue regarding links to the Pathfinder wiki. Links to Paizo's pathfinderwiki.com are automatically rewritten site-wide to link to pathfinder.fandom.com. This is something of a problem as Paizo's official wiki is now much more complete and better supported, and editors who'd like to link to pages on that wiki aren't able to.

There's also a minor bug with the new editor; the "show changes" icon incorrectly shows the mouseover text "Go back". BeardWizard (talk) 09:13, 11 October 2020 (UTC)

I have removed the interwiki prefix as requested. It will take some time for the change to percolate, so I'm guessing tomorrow that link above will turn red and you may then create the page with the exact title. I'll see what I can find out about the ampersands. Can you give me a link to a page that has the pathfinder link on it? —Moviesign (talk) 00:27, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

I can't find a current link, but I have added one below. BeardWizard (talk) 06:41, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Looks like that fixed the Eberron interwiki link problem, thanks! Fingers crossed you can help with these other problems... JEB1981 (talk) 18:38, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Example of a Pathfinder wiki link

• This is an example of a link to pathfinderwiki.com: Xill. BeardWizard (talk) 06:41, 12 October 2020 (UTC)

Apparently, Fandom (then Wikia) had control of that URL, but it is now owned by someone else. Does that ring a bell? Do you know any of the history behind this? They are willing to fix it, but would like any historical context you can provide. —Moviesign (talk) 20:49, 13 October 2020 (UTC)

Pathfinderwiki.com appears to have been originally a separate wiki founded in 2008, which moved to Wikia in 2009. From 2009 to 2010, pathfinderwiki.com redirected to Wikia. In October 2010, the site's users left Wikia after the theme update (a similar thing happened when dungeons.wikia.com left to make dnd-wiki.org). From 2011 onward pathfinderwiki.com was an independent wiki.

My guess is that the domain pathfinderwiki.com was always owned by the wiki's founder rather than Wikia/Fandom, and just redirected pathfinderwiki.com links to pathfinder.wikia.com to ensure old links worked. After the community left and took their URL with them, the redirect must have remained in place because nobody thought to remove it when the domain left Wikia. BeardWizard (talk) 06:22, 14 October 2020 (UTC)

A bug ticket has been filed to get this removed (and to check on other such links that they found). No ETA, of course—there are many more higher-priority bugs I'm sure. —Moviesign (talk) 19:54, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for your help! BeardWizard (talk) 21:15, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

Just to note that links to pathfinderwiki.com now work just fine. Thanks to Moviesign and the Fandom staff for resolving this issue. BeardWizard (talk) 20:19, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

Canon revisited

Thought this might be of interest: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/dungeons-dragons-canon-roleplaying-game-novels/

On the one hand, this is a statement that only RPG material is considered canonical. Nothing from books, video games, comics, etc. is canon unless it also pops up in a RPG product. (This implicitly closes off other types of products as well, such as Spellfire.)

On the other hand, it also says that the official stance is that canon starts from the launch of 5th edition, and anything earlier is non-canon until it appears in a new book... JEB1981 (talk) 21:32, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

Just realized - this means that officially, 5E lore does outrank older-edition lore. JEB1981 (talk) 21:53, 21 July 2021 (UTC)

It makes sense for Wizards of the Coast to officially exclude pre-5e works from 5e canon. It would be unreasonable for WotC to expect writers to read over 1,000 sourcebooks from over 40 years, let alone expect DMs to do the same.

That said, I don't think this wiki can adopt the same policy. The wiki's purpose is to present the lore of all editions, especially past editions. It's precisely because most D&D content isn't current that it's important to include. BeardWizard (talk) 10:52, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

Presenting the lore of all editions is one of the great things about this wiki, but trying to treat all editions with the same canonical weight might become a challenge, if 5E products don't feel any obligation to follow past lore. Eventually, this wiki may essentially become a fanfic exercise, if its reconciled version of a given subject no longer resembles what Wizards has in 5E products.

If only for practical reasons, you may want to strongly consider treating 5E lore as the primary lore, and all other editions' lore as secondary. If Monster X is only described as being a ferocious carnivore in 5E, but it was a peaceful herbivore in 2E, don't claim they could be either; just accept the new lore as "true" and place the old lore in a non-canon sidebar. (This is the way parts of the gargoyle entry had to be written anyway, due to edition contradictions... but it would have been much easier to write if 5E had been the default.)

If you want to stick with the current threading-the-needle approach, more power to you - but I think it's a gamble when 5E has signaled that lore departures are likely to become more common, and reconciling them is likely to become tougher. JEB1981 (talk) 02:30, 23 July 2021 (UTC)

I do see the logic here. By combining lore originally written by independent authors, we're essentially creating a gestalt definition that was not necessarily intended by any one author. Editors find themselves with the additional challenge of resolving conflicting lore, and a rule of precedence based on edition or chronological date of release would certainly make resolution simpler.

However, this is an issue that pre-dates D&D 5e. D&D 4e lore diverged significantly, with a great example of this being nature and origin of tieflings. A new-beats-old or 5e-beats-earlier precedence rule would erase Planescape's tieflings from D&D canon since they conflict with the 4e/5e Asmodean tiefling. Planar tiefling characters like Byrri Yarmoril would either cease to exist or be retconned as Asmodean, neither of which would be true to the source material.

The solution, then, is to assert that planar tieflings canonically exist (as attested in canonical Planescape and 3e works) and that Asmodean tieflings canonically exist (as attested in canonical 4e and 5e works), and that these are not mutually exclusive. Player's Handbook (5e) (2014), p.5-6 asserts that different worlds within the overall D&D multiverse have differences, including distinctive monsters or races having different traits. An example cited, the cannibal halflings of Dark Sun, do not supercede the halflings of the core rules, nor are they superceded by it; they coexist within the same multiverse. Tasha's Cauldron of Everything (2020), p.106, Traveling to Other Worlds, canonically attests a formal multiverse theory which asserts that every D&D world is a reflection or distortion of a First World, again allowing for different lore in different worlds within the bounds of the canonical D&D multiverse.

Now, the Forgotten Realms setting offers D&D canon a convenient method of reconciling many lore conflicts, which is that 5e-era Realms content is canonically set chronologically later than 3e-era. This allows conflicting lore to coexist separated by time in at least one official world, It might often be stated, quite reasonably, that some 5e-era lore is the truth, and that some conflicting earlier lore is something that was either true in the past, or was more widely believed in the past. BeardWizard (talk) 20:19, 23 July 2021 (UTC)