D&D 5E Legends & Lore 3/17 /14

[ExploderWizard]

The core books are supposed to be the rules for playing the game. Modules are things the DM does with the game. If the rules for playing the game include "Jackalweres are loyal to Grazz'zt," and that is just stated as an assumption that the game has, that's a lot different from an adventure saying the same thing.

In your opinion do you think that players need to know ALL the rules including those used in running the game? MM entries and magic item descriptions are world elements that have no form and no objective reality until they are encountered in play. They are some of the building blocks used to to construct adventures. They are not game rules in the same way that spell descriptions or class abilities are.

While anything in a rulebook is subject to change as the participants desire, things such as PC abilities are the type that would need to be discussed and agreed upon prior to the game starting but monsters and magic items would not, as they are DM guideline tools and not exactly "rules for playing the game".

 

[ambroseji]

As [MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION] just said, the whole point of this week's L&L was that the printed lore will be presented in a format that can be easily ignored. Additionally, the snippet we are looking at is just a small excerpt from one entry. I feel safe assuming there will be several other entries for jackalweres that provide alternate lore soundbites.

There are a lot of people in this thread who are talking as if their game will be severely inconvenienced if they don't use the printed lore. Personally, I run into players who make lore assumptions while playing 5e now, pulling from 3.x, 4e, or even earlier editions. I almost exclusively run games in homebrews, so my lore is modified at least, but I have never been inconvenienced by it.

There are dozens of folks in this thread who have stated that they like having detailed lore in the monster manual and they are not hindered the use of proper nouns. Obviously, WotC cannot publish a book with lore that works for everyone unless they withheld it completely. Every DM here will probably ignore one piece of lore or another, but I would rather have more lore than less. More lore means more points of inspiration for all DMs, and will make it easy for new DMs to put monsters into their game and create their own scenarios.

Another point: I have no problem with players reading the MM; when I was a player I loved reading it just for fun. But ultimately, the MM should be published for DMs. The information should not be tailored for player consumption. It's a DMing tool.

 

[bogmad]

How hard is it for a game to go like this:

DM: You see a pack of jackelwares

Player: Are they conducting a ceremony to Graz'zt?

DM: Don't assume what you read in the MM is true....

This exchange doesn't even need to happen. The DM can right out announce when the game starts that the players shouldn't assume what is in the MM is true. Here's what you know about common monsters, and the others you don't know much about. Maybe the MM stuff is rumors among the common folk that may or may not be true.

How more rewarding is it to have a game go like this:

DM: You see a pack of jackalweres

Player: Are they conducting a demonic ceremony? I read something about that in their MM entry. Is Graz'zt in this campaign? I haven't heard any demons mentioned by name yet.

DM: [Shrugs] I guess we'll just have to see...

Not a very fine distinction, I'll admit, but by revealing monster connections hierarchically you can open up number of different possibilities without adding more pagecount or providing a number of possibly conflicting options to cherry pick from.

 

[Hussar]

So if space was at that much of a premium, I'd just advocate for a diversity of worlds being represented in the MM.

So the Mariliths are from Planescape and the Halflings are from FR and the Roper is from Greyhawk and the Aarakocra is from Dark Sun or whatever. Takes up no more space than a traditional MM, but gives accurate representation of the variety of D&D and doesn't pretend that D&D has default lore because it honestly doesn't, it just has example lore.

I think that this is the worst of all options. Now each lore entry becomes a mini advert for whatever setting. And how far do you go? Is every undead tied to Ravenloft? Every outsider must be Planescape?

 

[I'm A Banana]

So you basically think all new players are morons and you want to idiot-proof the books is what you are saying.

I agree assumptions matter in design, but they matter in predictions as well. And you have a whopper of one in yours. I know 3e called out a general "all rules are optional" but I think that's a terrible analogy to be making for 5e in light of them saying they're working on intentionally separating this optional thing from mechanics so you don't feel forced to use it (WOTC's words).

Sure. Like I said in post #1, it might be OK, if they're smart about it. But it would be reversing the trend of the last 15 years, and telling people that they can change the defaults is not enough. So people making assumptions based on what they read that the play experience won't support is a legit concern that WotC could solve in a number of ways, one of which would be abandoning the concept of default lore.

Daring to suggest that is apparently like whacking a bee's nest, which is curious...

In your opinion do you think that players need to know ALL the rules including those used in running the game?

Man, this is D&D, no one NEEDS to know ANY of the rules. But some of the most passionate fans of the game will be those folks who rip through the core books and find a group or form their own group around themselves. Those are people I don't want assuming that D&D lore is a certain way automatically.

I think that this is the worst of all options. Now each lore entry becomes a mini advert for whatever setting. And how far do you go? Is every undead tied to Ravenloft? Every outsider must be Planescape?

Nah, you mix it up. Banedead are FR stuff. Maybe you grab Strahd and put him in. Mariliths can be Blood War generals and Balors can be servants of (insert appropriate evil Dragonlance deity here).

And I dunno why it would seem like an advert any more than "Jackalweres are made by Grazz'zt" seems like an advert for whatever inevitable book/adventure with the demon lords 5e comes along with. Or any more than having centaurs and succubi and mummies and aquatic elves share a book means that it's advertising a Greek setting and a medieval monotheistic setting and an Egyptian setting and an undersea setting. MM lore isn't trying to sell you anything, it's giving you something you can use out of the box. Use them all at once and you've got Bane making skeletons and Strahd looming over the town and Mariliths fighting devils and Balors serving some deity of evil, and man, that sounds like a lot of interesting stories to me. Kind of like your typical D&D world with mummies and dragons and aquatic elves and centaurs and succubi. All interesting stories.

The point here being that lore is modular, and should be treated as such. There is no bit of lore that is true about any creature in D&D at every table. That's the functional reality of the game as it is played. A book that denies that reality and tries to present a lore that people can just presume to be true fails to be as useful a book as it otherwise could be. And the benefit of that is still something pretty vague to me.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

The point here being that lore is modular, and should be treated as such. There is no bit of lore that is true about any creature in D&D at every table. That's the functional reality of the game as it is played. A book that denies that reality and tries to present a lore that people can just presume to be true fails to be as useful a book as it otherwise could be. And the benefit of that is still something pretty vague to me.

It may not be useful to you, but that's precisely what I'm looking for. I want there to be One True Lore across the multiverse of D&D settings. I really liked the idea of Planescape and Spelljammer that ALL D&D worlds were just alternate Prime Material planes with a common history and creation. Gods were shared between them, monsters were shared between them. People could travel from one to the other. Elminster, Raistlin, and Mordenkainen meet regularly.

I understand a lot of people don't like that idea. But to me, D&D is a universe that contains various campaigns. Since the beginning the people I knew have couched every change in their home campaign based on the common lore:

"Elves in their world were savages who didn't use magic because when they originally arrived in this plane from elsewhere all of their mages were killed early by the nasty creatures who live on this world."

"The Orcs in this world are red because of a ritual the early Orcs attempted to cast that changed them to red."

But no one I knew would just say "Orcs are red. Deal with it." because we all knew Orcs weren't red, it said so in the Monster Manual and I could planal travel to Oerth or any number of other places where they'd be green. The same gods created Orcs in every world so if they were a different colour it was because something happened to them on this world that was different than the others. There was a reason they didn't follow standard D&D lore.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It may not be useful to you, but that's precisely what I'm looking for. I want there to be One True Lore across the multiverse of D&D settings. I really liked the idea of Planescape and Spelljammer that ALL D&D worlds were just alternate Prime Material planes with a common history and creation.

Part of the thing with modular lore is that "everything is in the same multiverse" is one of the possible modules. I don't think it's smart to make that the assumed default (talk to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] some time about how much the idea of "The lore from setting X is everyone's lore" can be obnoxious!), but it's totally something that fits within that framework.

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Part of the thing with modular lore is that "everything is in the same multiverse" is one of the possible modules. I don't think it's smart to make that the assumed default (talk to [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] some time about how much the idea of "The lore from setting X is everyone's lore" can be obnoxious!), but it's totally something that fits within that framework.

It was the default assumption in 2e and I think it worked quite well. From my reading of the article this thread is about, that is precisely what they are doing for 5e as well. They are giving one default story to tie all the monsters together using lore with the assumption that DMs can ignore that lore and create their own if they don't like it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

It was the default assumption in 2e and I think it worked quite well.

I don't know that it did for everyone...I mean, I'm a big PS fan, but lawd knows I didn't exactly enjoy having important NPC races described in some obscure supplement for an out-of-print campaign setting I never picked up or worried about. It worked for you, which is cool, but one of the things about D&D lore that is absolutely true is that it never works for everyone.

From my reading of the article this thread is about, that is precisely what they are doing for 5e as well. They are giving one default story to tie all the monsters together using lore with the assumption that DMs can ignore that lore and create their own if they don't like it.

It's certainly what they did for 4e...and to much controversy. They can be smarter in 5e about making the One True Story work well for more groups, but it's never going to work for everyone. So I hope they're not tying themselves too tightly to something that cannot be all things to all people.

 

[Hussar]

And I dunno why it would seem like an advert any more than "Jackalweres are made by Grazz'zt" seems like an advert for whatever inevitable book/adventure with the demon lords 5e comes along with. Or any more than having centaurs and succubi and mummies and aquatic elves share a book means that it's advertising a Greek setting and a medieval monotheistic setting and an Egyptian setting and an undersea setting. MM lore isn't trying to sell you anything, it's giving you something you can use out of the box. Use them all at once and you've got Bane making skeletons and Strahd looming over the town and Mariliths fighting devils and Balors serving some deity of evil, and man, that sounds like a lot of interesting stories to me. Kind of like your typical D&D world with mummies and dragons and aquatic elves and centaurs and succubi. All interesting stories.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?353664-Legends-amp-Lore-3-17-14/page12#ixzz2wTW700Jd

I was assuming that Grazz't would be in the Monster Manual and not relagated to another book. If they are bringing in proper nouns into the MM without even having those proper nouns IN the book, I would be dead set against that.

I have no problem with Orcus being the lord of undead so long as Orcus is actually in the MM. Asmodeus is the lord of Hell? Cool. So long as I can turn to the right page and see who this Asmodeus guy is. But, as soon as you start referencing elements that aren't included in the book, now it's just an advertisement to buy that setting guide. "Hey, Aarococra are like this in Athas." Well, what's an Athas and why should I care?

Now, let's not get too carried away though. I don't think it's too much of a stretch to think that a new player might know real world mythologies. If you reference Greek Myths with a centaur (something D&D hasn't actually ever done) it's not a huge stretch to think that someone might know what those myths are. But, I certainly wouldn't presume that anyone who hasn't been a D&D fan for a long time would know what a Domain of Dread, Krynn or Lady of Pain are.

It was the default assumption in 2e and I think it worked quite well. From my reading of the article this thread is about, that is precisely what they are doing for 5e as well. They are giving one default story to tie all the monsters together using lore with the assumption that DMs can ignore that lore and create their own if they don't like it.

Yeah, KM pegged me right on this one. I loathed 2e for this. And, yup, I had to take a big old black marker and redact swaths of the MM every time I ran a campaign for a new player. It was sooooo annoying. And, because 2e tried to shoehorn everything into the same universe, I constantly had players asking to play (Setting specific class/race) in my campaign, because, "Well, the rules say that everything is in one universe and accessible from everywhere else. What's wrong with your game?"

I'd much, much rather that the core game focused on a fairly generic overview of the races - tying them to elements within the same book is fine - and keep all the setting specific stuff contained to that setting. Stop trying to shoehorn everything together. It never works for one thing - the cosmologies are just too different. And the balancing elements don't export either.