Firing the Canons - What is and isn't canon in D&D?
Hullo, Gentle Readers. This week's Question from a Denizen is a bit of an experiment. Since I've run out of questions to answer, I wanted to turn to a question of my own (And then answer it). What is "Canon" in D&D?
This article was inspired by a recent debate on one of the Facebook D&D groups I follow. With the impending release of Dungeons & Dragons vs. Rick & Morty, a discussion came up as to whether or not the material was "canon". Some people were absolutely horrified at the idea that this material might be "official", especially since it's available through D&D Beyond. This sparked off further debate. Was the Acquisitions Incorporated material canon? What about Ravnica? The campaign world of Exandria from Critical Role was recently mentioned in Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus. Is all of Critical Role canon?
From an official standpoint, I'm going to go out on a limb here and say absolutely all of the above is canon, as is Blackmoor, Greyhawk, my campaign world, and every campaign world that has ever been created...even the ones you made when you were eight that have Gumdrop Mountains.
The reason I feel comfortable making that statement is because of the concept of the D&D Multiverse. In short, there are many worlds, and they can be similar, or they can be very different. Your D&D world might be completely cut off from the others, or it might be highly connected. If we go back through D&D history, it's a fair bet that the base assumption is that Oerth (the world of Greyhawk), Krynn (the world of Dragonlance), Toril (the world of the Forgotten Realms), and our own Earth are all connected. Using magic, one can travel from place to place. This was very much established by Ed Greenwood's Wizard's Three articles in Dragon Magazine. If the original author of the Forgotten Realms isn't proof enough for you, or if those articles are too much in the past, then consider that Mordenkainen, a wizard of Oerth, has appearances in two very official 5E adventures.
If you do accept that Ed Greenwood is a pretty good authority on canon, then I have to point you towards the novel Death Masks. In this book, Omin Dran, one of the characters from Acquitions Incorporated, appears as one of the Masked Lords of Waterdeep - something established in a Chris Perkins AI session. So the game is at least somewhat taking AI as canon. I myself have just recently planted the seeds of the AI Verdan race appearing in my own campaign.
As previously mentioned, Exandria is specifically called out in Descent into Avernus, and Joe Mangianello's character Arkhan the Cruel appears in that adventure with the Hand of Vecna, which he acquired when Joe guest appeared in an episode of Critical Role.
Although Ravnica references have not, to my knowledge, snuck into other official material, the Guildmaster's GuIde to Ravnica Was definitely an "official" product in 5e D&D. I love the races in it, and I have found them all homes in my own campaign, although only a few of them are known to my players as of yet.
As a DC comics fan, the idea of what is canon is one I have learned to be flexible about. Take Batman, for example. In the old comics, Bruce Wayne's parents were killed during a robbery by a criminal, Joe Chill, who was later killed by other criminals. In the 1989 Tim Burton film, the Waynes were killed by Jack Napier, who later became the Joker. In more modern comics, Joe Chill was arrested that same night. In the Batman series by Telltale Games, Chill killed the Waynes on the order of Mayor Hamilton Hill. In the movie Joker, an unnamed criminal, possibly Joe Chill, kills the Waynes during the night of the Joker riot. So just one event in the life of one character has a very loose canon indeed!
This all feeds back to a much more important point. What is canon for D&D is constantly changing, and I can argue that anything ever made for D&D is canon thanks to the Multiverse. The more important point for you is what is canon for your campaign. In my own campaign, I sort of vaguely assume that Oerth, Krynn, Toril, Eberron, and all those other worlds exist, but they're alternate material planes. Maybe they could be reached by magic, but it's not something I'm currently interested in exploring, so it simply doesn't come up as an idea.
Likewise, if you don't want those elements to be part of the canon of your campaign, then you simply assume they are not. Unless anyone asks you for permission to play a Simic Hybrid, it's probably not important to know exactly how Ravnica does, or does not, fit into your campaign world. In the end, the answer is that everything might be canon, but only you are the final word on what might be canon in your campaign.
