D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Neonchameleon]

D&D has always been a game that needs a group to tell a story.

D&D has, however, outside 2e and 3.5 not been a game that was about lore. The original reason for just about all the lore in D&D was, to quote Mike Mornard, "We made up some we thought would be fun." The only two editions of D&D that have drifted away from this before 5e have been 2e and 3.5. The rest? oD&D, B/X, 1E, BECMI, RC, 3.0, and 4e? None of them tried to pickle their lore, freeze dry it, mummify it, then store it in amber. 2e was literally producing five books per month.

D&D has always been a game that had a story emerge from the group. 2e in particular was when the game told you what that story should be. Complete with scripted events and events in which the PCs followed the canon NPCs around and watched them do all the cool stuff.

Tieflings being orphans who don't know their true origins might just be a poetic flourish you ignore, or it might serve as the basis for an entire character's motivation as they seek to understand the forces that produced them, and why they are outcasts in a diverse multiverse.

Alternatively Tieflings being an entire race of special snowflakes who are orphans but all have the same experience might be something that other people consider loaded with irony. If you want to be an anomaly that doesn't understand the forces that produced you play a genuine anomaly. Not Anomaly #96,284 in the same way as all the other Tieflings - that merely undercuts the theme you wish to draw out. If you want to be someone who doesn't know where they come from, play a Thri-keen in a setting that isn't Athas. Play a Dragonborn in a setting without them. Play a Shardmind in ... just about any setting. Something that isn't even in the PHB - or even something you made up. After all, you are storytelling as a group. You aren't simply playing through the stories imagined by the game designers

In fact, at the core of this "disrespect" is the hubris a designer must manifest when they deign to tell people what is "really" important about a given creature, what is "worthy" of being the Official Theme, what is "petty" and what is somehow higher in authority, by deciding that whatever pet theme they enjoy the most is the "true core" of the fictional game element and that thus of course no one will really miss those other unimportant bits of lore. The truth is that the diverse players of this game have used almost any random element as an important building block in their stories.

The core of this "disrespect" is people thinking that everything must cater to them. And also that catering to them means pickling the settings and the themes, then fossilizing them in amber. What you are asking for is the Star Wars Extended Universe.

Star Wars (episodes 4-6) are a great story. A triumph of hope, and things changing, and bringing down The Evil Empire. The Star Wars Extended Universe of course mirrors those themes. Most of the stories are stories about hope, about things changing, and of a plucky band of underdogs overthrowing a corrupt dominant power. This means that the Star Wars EU is a complete crapsack world. Because to reproduce that theme there needs to be an even bigger Evil Empire to overthrow next time. Instead of being about hope and change, the Star Wars EU is therefore about a crapsack universe that's turtles all the way down. And overthrowing one evil empire is nothing more than peeling an onion, layer by layer, to look for the seeds. It always still looks like a peeled onion until you get rid of it.

5e is being more careful about that (though they aren't getting it perfect...because TIEFLING! ). The 5e salamander doesn't pretend that your 2e salamander experience was somehow flawed or invalid by presenting a new story based on what some designer thought was "really" important.

Neither does any other edition of D&D. WotC aren't sending ninjas round to steal your old Monstrous Manual. The Nentir Vale is not Sigil is not Athas is not the Realms is not Eberron is not Greyhawk is not Mystara.

My two favourite published D&D settings are Eberron and the Nentir Vale. I'm not remotely upset when the dinosaur riding halflings of Eberron don't appear in the Nentir Vale. Indeed if they were to do so I'd consider it would have made the Nentir Vale cookie-cutter, derivative, and boring. Because we've already done that. My prototype Warforged who found himself on the streets of Sharn with no papers, and the only thing he remembered being escaping from Merrix d'Cannith's creation forge (he doesn't even know the name) doesn't suddenly become invalid if the creation of Warforged is no longer prohibited and secret, but instead Warforged are created by individual sorcerers in their back rooms.

What you see as "being more careful" I see as ruthlessly suppressing almost all the sparks of creativity and of joy within the setting.

It presents more information, additional context, it builds on the lore without contradicting it.

And once more I say that "builds on the lore without contradicting it" is something I read as a request for more cookie cutter lore and less creativity. Lore is setting-specific. I don't want Bael Turath in Planescape. It doesn't fit. Give me continuity, not canon. The main effect of canon is setting fans at each others' throats.

That additional context may or may not be welcome or interesting, but at least it honors the experiences of those who really loved some little detail about the salamander as it was used in the past.

Honoring the experiences would be little call-backs. The way that New Who has Clara teaching at Coal Hill School (and for that matter Ace and Seven going there). Not Changing Anything is going waaaay beyond that.

See, "the best" is a judgement call, a bit of subjectivity that reasonable people can disagree with. And it's inherently judgmental and more than a little egotistical to MAKE that judgement call

And as I've said, there are no ninjas going to your house to take away your old books. If you want to use the old lore and ignore the new one do so. But complaining that new authors are arrogant enough to have their own take on things is merely complaining that new authors are arrogant enough to produce anything at all. The only way they could be following through with what you are asking for is to not produce any material at all.

And asking them not to produce anything for D&D because you liked some of the old stuff is far more arrogant and egotistical than anything that is being done.

Arranging all those elements into that One True Story is saying that every group that follows some other story is doing it wrong, is doing it "not the best," is somehow not getting what is "really" important.

Then STOP DOING THAT. There is more than one possible take on Tieflings. But you are declaring that the 4e ones are anathema because they don't follow the section on Tieflings that makes no sense with them being a race.

The basis of D&D, according to Mike Mornard (who was in both Gygax' original group and Arneson's) is "We made up some we thought would be cool."

Why do you want the D&D writers to stop writing what they think would be cool in favour of some fossilised version of D&D that isn't allowed to make things up and have their own takes.

But that's bass-ackwards: groups determine for themselves what is really important, because the best group experiences are customized to that group and not decided from on high.

Which is why the 2E MM with defined tribal organisations and ecologies for cookie cutter worlds is the worst MM ever, but I digress.

WotC's job is to support what we say is important, to empower DMs to make that call themselves, not to tell us what should be important.

Can we cancel 5e then? (And 4e and 3.5 and 3.0). Every time someone produces a game it is about what the game designer considers important.

The IMMENSELY IMPORTANT bit you're missing here is that all X-men stories are passively consumed as told by other people. They can be good or bad, but they are not our stories to tell.

And by your complaints about there being a new take on Tieflings you are consuming the Monstrous Manual far more passively than I consume X-men.

D&D is our story to tell. It isn't Mearls's, or Wyatt's, or Craword's. People determined long before this One True Story was written down what they liked and didn't like about a given rules element, and it is disrespectful to those stories that have come before to imagine that you have the authority to determine for others what their stories should be.

And it is anathema for the very idea of storytelling to fossilise the story in such a way that nothing can be changed. They aren't removing your old books. They are writing new ones.

You are a consumer every bit as much as everyone who watches the X-men and then talks about them. You are consuming the lore produced by Gygax, by Zeb Cook, by Jonathan Tweet, by Monte Cook, by James Wyatt, and by many more. And unlike the average fan-fic writer you can't even be bothered to write a fix-fic and move on.

The very second you talk about the game's historical lore as if it's something sacrosanct you are a consumer and you have lost all rights to look down on other people for being such.

5e's more cautious approach doesn't suffer from that disrespect as much as 4e's did, for sure. The 5e cosmology, like the stories of 5e monsters, seems to make a concentrated effort not to invalidate what came before, but to try and build on it. Of course, there's places where they ignore this -- for some reason everyone uses the Weave now which is just *facepalm*.

Which is about how I feel about the 2e MM.

That might just be because you agree with the designers when they chose thematic elements to make central. My point is that it is not up to the designers to choose those thematic elements for us, it is up to each group to use the elements that they find the most thematically resonant for their own group in the moment, and the designers merely need to help us do that.

It absolutely is up to the designers to choose the thematic elements that make it into their design. If they don't do so then they are not designers. It is up to you to then try to decide how to use those elements and any other elements you care to name. If you don't like them don't use them.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Gonna try to pick out some themes here...

D&D has, however, outside 2e and 3.5 not been a game that was about lore....oD&D, B/X, 1E, BECMI, RC, 3.0, and 4e? None of them tried to pickle their lore, freeze dry it, mummify it, then store it in amber. 2e was literally producing five books per month....2e in particular was when the game told you what that story should be.

So your view is that 2e and 3e were "about" lore and tried to set it in stone and no other edition did?

I don't really know how you reconcile that with things like Eberron's unique cosmology and 4e's One True Story.

But regardless, the point I was making was that, say, 4e's narrative about dwarves and 2e's insistence that everything be part of the One True Cosmology and 5e's apparent assumption that the Weave is Always True are all part of the same, problematic, pattern: telling people what they should think is fun rather than helping them decide for themselves what's fun. Heck, toss 1e's "all druids are members of the same circle and must fight each other to gain levels" into this, too. It is an edition-agnostic problem.

If you want to be an anomaly that doesn't understand the forces that produced you play a genuine anomaly.

Tieflings were a genuine anomaly.

The core of this "disrespect" is people thinking that everything must cater to them....But you are declaring that the 4e ones are anathema because they don't follow the section on Tieflings that makes no sense with them being a race.

This is simply false.

The truth is that the core of this "disrespect" is WotC (and TSR before them) telling people that the way they like to play the game is not the way WotC wants them to play the game.

Your years of dwarves not being slaves to giants or demons and devils cooperating for The Greater Evil or fat halflings or magic not being part of the Weave is something WotC has rejected because they have this better idea that everyone should do and so they're going to act like everyone is doing it for the next decade. Tieflings get hit with that, too -- years of enjoying them as a race of diverse mutants gets ignored because now they are only this One True Thing.

Nobody is talking about a sacrosanct lore set in stone that is beyond being touched, I am merely humbly suggesting that game designers give me a fun D&D play experience, which means supporting the experience I want to have, not insisting that I have this experience that they want me to have.

Neither does any other edition of D&D. WotC aren't sending ninjas round to steal your old Monstrous Manual. The Nentir Vale is not Sigil is not Athas is not the Realms is not Eberron is not Greyhawk is not Mystara.

My two favourite published D&D settings are Eberron and the Nentir Vale. I'm not remotely upset when the dinosaur riding halflings of Eberron don't appear in the Nentir Vale.

Sure. But when the Blood War comes to the Eberron? Or when the Abyss isn't the sucking evil at the center of the Elemental Chaos anymore but just another plane in a wheel? When everyone in Sharn is talking about the Weave?

What you see as "being more careful" I see as ruthlessly suppressing almost all the sparks of creativity and of joy within the setting.

I don't know how you can look at that salamander entry and not see sparks of creativity. Their rivalry with the azer that borders on jealousy?

Can we cancel 5e then? (And 4e and 3.5 and 3.0). Every time someone produces a game it is about what the game designer considers important. ...You are a consumer every bit as much as everyone who watches the X-men and then talks about them. You are consuming the lore produced by Gygax, by Zeb Cook, by Jonathan Tweet, by Monte Cook, by James Wyatt, and by many more...It absolutely is up to the designers to choose the thematic elements that make it into their design. If they don't do so then they are not designers.

What the designers of D&D should consider important is my game (collectively, all of our games), not their stories. Their lore is a launching point for my games, not a goal my games should aspire to.

That's what it means to support your players in D&D. You give them the power to make their experience great. You don't tell them what kind of experience they should have.

 

[Desdichado]

But regardless, the point I was making was that, say, 4e's narrative about dwarves and 2e's insistence that everything be part of the One True Cosmology and 5e's apparent assumption that the Weave is Always True are all part of the same, problematic, pattern: telling people what they should think is fun rather than helping them decide for themselves what's fun. Heck, toss 1e's "all druids are members of the same circle and must fight each other to gain levels" into this, too. It is an edition-agnostic problem.

Where I'm really struggling is in the notion that if designers design, then they are telling you what they think should be fun and what you should do. How is making a "lore" suggestion a dictate that you must follow? It's a suggestion. It's a tool (not a rule, to echo the old 3e mantra.) If they say druids belong to a circle of druids and have a global organization, well, cool. I can use that or not.

The jump that I simply can't see is where you call this a "problem." Or that this is arrogant. Hubris? Really? That's a bit much for a designers saying, "here's a cool idea I had. Thought I'd share."

What the designers of D&D should consider important is my game (collectively, all of our games), not their stories. Their lore is a launching point for my games, not a goal my games should aspire to.

That's what it means to support your players in D&D. You give them the power to make their experience great. You don't tell them what kind of experience they should have.

To quote Luke Skywalker, "You want the impossible." Designers don't know anything about your game. Or mine. Your game and mine likely have completely competing and mutually exclusive needs on some issue of lore. To say that designers shouldn't give us their ideas, but somehow cater to the needs of everyone who ever games--nevermind the fact that they couldn't possibly know that or do that, even if that was desirable--makes no sense.

Give me your lore ideas. I like 'em. As I said earlier (although maybe it was in the other thread on lore that Hussar started) I love the Monsternomicon's, specifically because it provided new context. That doesn't mean that I'm forced to use it, but it's nice that I have it. I can't choose to use someone else's context if they don't make it available to me, so the more potential contexts, the more ideas that the designers share with us, the better. So the skorne from Iron Kingdoms reminds me a lot of hobgoblins in baseline D&D, but they have this all new context with this empire and this culture and whatnot--that's useful to me. Darguun from Eberron is useful to me. Why? Because they did something else with the concept.

Likewise, the World Axis is useful to me. Why? Because I don't need the Great Wheel anymore. I've already got it. I've got Manual of the Planes. I've got some Planescape products. If you give me 3e or 4e or 5e stats for the same monsters, the lore is interchangeable. So, what's the benefit of merely repeating the lore? Of merely adding a bit more nuance? Of merely adding more detail? I'd rather see a totally different idea proposed as a tool I could use.

For the same reason, I've always thought that the Paizo series of XYZ monsters Revisited oversold itself. It didn't revisit anything. It retreated the same ground, when it implied that it was doing something else instead.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Where I'm really struggling is in the notion that if designers design, then they are telling you what they think should be fun and what you should do. How is making a "lore" suggestion a dictate that you must follow? It's a suggestion. It's a tool (not a rule, to echo the old 3e mantra.) If they say druids belong to a circle of druids and have a global organization, well, cool. I can use that or not. The jump that I simply can't see is where you call this a "problem." Or that this is arrogant. Hubris? Really? That's a bit much for a designers saying, "here's a cool idea I had. Thought I'd share."

"All magic is part of the Weave" isn't a presented as a suggestion, it' just presented as a Fact About D&D. The 5e cosmology isn't presented as an option, it's just The D&D Cosmology. Salamanders being a slave race of efreeti isn't one possible story, it's just What Salamanders Are.

Up above in this thread we had someone saying "halflings worship Yondolla" is a generic halfling trait. Because "Halflings worship Yondolla" is just What Halflings Do in a lot of D&D lore. It's not presented as an option or a suggestion, it's presented as The One Truth. So people accept it as the one truth.

In 2e, the Blood War wasn't presented as an option, it was A True Thing About All D&D. In 4e, the tale of dwarves being slaves to elemental giants wasn't contextualized as a thing that might be true if you want it to be, it was The One True Story about dwarves in D&D.

Default Effects, man. Give people a choice of one option that the game assumes and some hypothetical possible anything else, and you're just defining the thing for them as the thing that the game assumes more often than not.

To quote Luke Skywalker, "You want the impossible."

And much like Luke at that time, your view of possibility is too narrow here.

Designers don't know anything about your game. Or mine. Your game and mine likely have completely competing and mutually exclusive needs on some issue of lore. To say that designers shouldn't give us their ideas, but somehow cater to the needs of everyone who ever games--nevermind the fact that they couldn't possibly know that or do that, even if that was desirable--makes no sense.

For me, the thing that changes how much sense this makes is that I believe the designers SHOULD give us their ideas...but that they shouldn't be precious about those ideas. I want as many different kinds of kobolds and cosmologies as D&D has ever come up with and then some! But that means that you don't presume that any one type of kobold or any one cosmology is what all tables are using.

If the designers don't know anything about anyone's game, then they shouldn't write their game like everyone is of course using their own favored little cosmology or whatever.

Give me your lore ideas. I like 'em. As I said earlier (although maybe it was in the other thread on lore that Hussar started) I love the Monsternomicon's, specifically because it provided new context. That doesn't mean that I'm forced to use it, but it's nice that I have it. I can't choose to use someone else's context if they don't make it available to me, so the more potential contexts, the more ideas that the designers share with us, the better. So the skorne from Iron Kingdoms reminds me a lot of hobgoblins in baseline D&D, but they have this all new context with this empire and this culture and whatnot--that's useful to me. Darguun from Eberron is useful to me. Why? Because they did something else with the concept.

Likewise, the World Axis is useful to me. Why? Because I don't need the Great Wheel anymore. I've already got it. I've got Manual of the Planes. I've got some Planescape products. If you give me 3e or 4e or 5e stats for the same monsters, the lore is interchangeable. So, what's the benefit of merely repeating the lore? Of merely adding a bit more nuance? Of merely adding more detail? I'd rather see a totally different idea proposed as a tool I could use.

Exactly. I want multiple competing and mutually exclusive lores. This isn't what "all magic uses the Weave!" or "here is the D&D cosmology!" or "salamanders are slaves of the efreet!" is. It's just one story.

 

[Desdichado]

"All magic is part of the Weave" isn't a presented as a suggestion, it' just presented as a Fact About D&D. The 5e cosmology isn't presented as an option, it's just The D&D Cosmology. Salamanders being a slave race of efreeti isn't one possible story, it's just What Salamanders Are.

Up above in this thread we had someone saying "halflings worship Yondolla" is a generic halfling trait. Because "Halflings worship Yondolla" is just What Halflings Do in a lot of D&D lore. It's not presented as an option or a suggestion, it's presented as The One Truth. So people accept it as the one truth.

In 2e, the Blood War wasn't presented as an option, it was A True Thing About All D&D. In 4e, the tale of dwarves being slaves to elemental giants wasn't contextualized as a thing that might be true if you want it to be, it was The One True Story about dwarves in D&D.

Default Effects, man.

And I'm sure I can find--in the core books of each edition of each game--statements saying that all of this stuff is just there for you to interpret, and the DM trumps whatever is in the books.

In other words, this perception of One True Wayism and dictates from On High and all that... I think that's an artifact of how we read the books and how we (collectively) interact with each other as gamers moreso than an artifact of the material itself.

Exactly. I want multiple competing and mutually exclusive lores. This isn't what "all magic uses the Weave!" or "here is the D&D cosmology!" or "salamanders are slaves of the efreet!" is. It's just one story.

There's really only ever been a handful of RPG products (of any game line) that expressly and overtly did this. 3e Unearthed Arcana being one of the best that I can think of off the top of my head. But every single one of them covertly (invertly? subvertly?) implies it, at least.

In any case, I'm not sure what you're proposing anymore. When you say that you don't want One True Story, but at the same time, the 4e designers showed tremendous arrogance and hubris by changing the One True Story of the past... I'm getting pretty confusing mixed messages here, I suppose.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So your view is that 2e and 3e were "about" lore and tried to set it in stone and no other edition did?

Yes. 2e and 3.5 buried you under sourcebooks in a way no other edition did. To borrow from Wikipedia (blame them for the formatting):

[h=3]Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 1st edition[/h]

• The Forgotten Realms Campaign Set was written by Ed Greenwood, with Jeff Grubb and Karen Martin, and published as a boxed set in 1987.​
• City System (1988)​
• Lords of Darkness (1988)​

[h=3]Advanced Dungeons & Dragons 2nd edition[/h]

• Aurora's Whole Realms Catalog (1992)​
• The Code of the Harpers (1993)​
• Demihuman Deities (1998)​
• Draconomicon (1990)​
• Drizzt Do'Urden's Guide to the Underdark (1999)​
• The Drow of the Underdark (1991)​
• Elminster's Ecologies Appendix I: The Battle of Bones / Hill of Lost Souls (1995)​
• Elminster's Ecologies Appendix II: The High Moor / The Serpent Hills (1995)​
• Faiths & Avatars (1996)​
• Forgotten Realms Adventures (1990)​
• The Forgotten Realms Atlas (1990)​
• Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting (1993, 1996)​
• Heroes' Lorebook (1995)​
• The Horde (1990)​
• Maztica Campaign Set (1991)​
• The North: Guide to the Savage Frontier (1996)​
• Pages from the Mages (1995)​
• Pirates of the Fallen Stars (1992)​
• Player's Guide to the Forgotten Realms Campaign​
• The Ruins of Myth Drannor (1993)​
• The Ruins of Undermountain (1991)​
• Ruins of Zhentil Keep (1995)​
• The Seven Sisters (1995)​
• The Vilhon Reach (1996)​
• Villains' Lorebook (1998)​
• Volo's Guide to the Dalelands (1996)​
• Volo's Guide to Waterdeep (1993)​
• Warriors and Priests of the Realms (1996)​
• Wizards and Rogues of the Realms (1995)​

[h=3]Dungeons & Dragons 3rd edition[/h]

*More than a dozen entries (mostly 3.5) snipped because the boards broke on a Wikitable*

[h=3]Dungeons & Dragons 4th edition[/h] Wizards of the Coast released the Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide in August 2008, and the Forgotten Realms Player's Guide in September 2008. (Neonchameleon note: Neverwinter as well)



The two editions I called out bury you under sourcebooks.

I don't really know how you reconcile that with things like Eberron's unique cosmology and 4e's One True Story.

Eberron and 4e work together IMO better than Eberron and 3.5 - as for 4e's supposed One True Story, I don't remember Bael Turath or The Raven Queen showing up in Eberron. But there's a total of two source books for Eberron in 4e - the players' guide and the campaign guide (and one adventure). 3.5 gave me a dozen books (plus a screen, character sheets, and adventures) after the setting book.

But regardless, the point I was making was that, say, 4e's narrative about dwarves and 2e's insistence that everything be part of the One True Cosmology and 5e's apparent assumption that the Weave is Always True are all part of the same, problematic, pattern: telling people what they should think is fun rather than helping them decide for themselves what's fun. Heck, toss 1e's "all druids are members of the same circle and must fight each other to gain levels" into this, too. It is an edition-agnostic problem.

And the point I'm making is that this simply isn't so. 2e's One True Cosmology (about which I've ranted elsewhere) and the Weave are part of a parcel. I'm not aware that 1e's Druidic Circles applied to Dragonlance - and 4e's dwarf narrative doesn't apply to Eberron or Athas.

Further the 4e lore, like most of the 1e Lore, and the Basic Lore is almost always phrased sketchily and as hooks rather than something that is so.

Tieflings were a genuine anomaly.

Which is why they were one of the most common PC races in Planescape. "I'm an anomaly. Just like all the rest of my race who are also anomalies."

This is simply false.

The truth is that the core of this "disrespect" is WotC (and TSR before them) telling people that the way they like to play the game is not the way WotC wants them to play the game.

I'm very glad you scare-quoted "disrespect" again - as if even you don't believe it to be such. Because to me there are three fundamental weaknesses of 5e. The first is Mearls' Math Mangle (if he's going to call it the Math Wringer I'll use the British term for the same device) and being the sort of designer who thinks that you can add the math at the end. The second is how everything interesting or powerful is magic, and not just magic but a spell. The third and relevant one is how lukewarm the game is. How little of the author's voice I feel - and how little reason I see to play it as opposed to a game that sets out to be something.

If anything, had WotC followed through on not doing what you call "disrespecting" people I'd have found it patronising.

Your years of dwarves not being slaves to giants or demons and devils cooperating for The Greater Evil or fat halflings or magic not being part of the Weave is something WotC has rejected because they have this better idea that everyone should do and so they're going to act like everyone is doing it for the next decade. Tieflings get hit with that, too -- years of enjoying them as a race of diverse mutants gets ignored because now they are only this One True Thing.

And when WotC breaks into my house and steals all my old books that will be relevant. I am not an uncritical consumer of WotC products. I'll take whichever lore I like.

Sure. But when the Blood War comes to the Eberron? Or when the Abyss isn't the sucking evil at the center of the Elemental Chaos anymore but just another plane in a wheel? When everyone in Sharn is talking about the Weave?

It'll happen outside my games. The Blood War has no place in Eberron. Sharn can have the weave and fundamentally I won't care. Sharn's already a technomagical setting - if magic comes through "The weave" that won't be a problem. As long as Mystra stays away.

What the designers of D&D should consider important is my game (collectively, all of our games), not their stories. Their lore is a launching point for my games, not a goal my games should aspire to.

That's what it means to support your players in D&D. You give them the power to make their experience great. You don't tell them what kind of experience they should have.

Indeed. But the concept of Mike Mearls bugging my table to find out what we actually play is something that makes me shudder. There are ways designers can support me playing. Variously:

1: Give me a game that is playable out of the box. (5e seems to do decently here).
2: Give me a game that doesn't have a lot of landmines especially at higher levels (5e seems to fail here especially as the Math Mangle was at the end)
3: Give me something that inspires me. I want raw creativity and enthusiasm in the writing. Callbacks are things I don't care about.

Their lore is a launching point. But old, unchanged lore is a launching point I already have. Trying to sell me all the old lore again would just, to me, be patronising. It wouldn't be inspiring in the slightest because I've already gained the inspiration from that. New takes on old concepts can be.

 

[Aldarc]

ETA: Saw on another thread that the person I was responding to should be ignored.

 

[I'm A Banana]

And I'm sure I can find--in the core books of each edition of each game--statements saying that all of this stuff is just there for you to interpret, and the DM trumps whatever is in the books.

In other words, this perception of One True Wayism and dictates from On High and all that... I think that's an artifact of how we read the books and how we (collectively) interact with each other as gamers moreso than an artifact of the material itself.

Sure, that might be the stated intent. But the actual design of the game, and the play of the game in practice, belies this. What with this thread seeing examples of "halflings worshiping Yondalla is generic!" and "the Blood War was an unwelcome intrusion into my games!", etc.

Intentionally or not, this is how the game is designed and how it plays out at many tables. And this is a negative thing that is avoidable.

There's really only ever been a handful of RPG products (of any game line) that expressly and overtly did this. 3e Unearthed Arcana being one of the best that I can think of off the top of my head. But every single one of them covertly (invertly? subvertly?) implies it, at least.

That implication is entirely unnecessary.

In any case, I'm not sure what you're proposing anymore. When you say that you don't want One True Story, but at the same time, the 4e designers showed tremendous arrogance and hubris by changing the One True Story of the past... I'm getting pretty confusing mixed messages here, I suppose.

So the thread that might help you understand is that I think any instance of One True Story is problematic. 4e's arrogance wasn't in coming up with another story, it was insisting that this new story should be the only story -- in being precious about its fiction. My problem isn't with the idea that all dwarves were once the slaves of giants, it's with the a game that only accepts that one idea as true in its design and presentation.

2e had the same problem. All demons and devils know of and participate in the Blood War all throughout every D&D setting. Hence this thread.

3e had the problem too, but it was significantly lessened. The Manual of the Planes, Unearthed Arcana, truly different settings (like Rokugan and FR and Eberron) and even the d20 STL and the OGL and Deities and Demigods (for all that books' conceptual flaws) all spoke to the idea that there wasn't One True Way. It could have (should have!) gone even farther with this, IMO -- it certainly isn't a flawless example, either. There was the Blood War, but there was also a Pharonic Cosmology and there were gypsy halflings but there were also dinosaur-riding halflings and settings without halflings.

5e seems to be starting off with this problem, too, just maybe to a less severe degree than 4e because of the caution used in developing the new stories. There is still only one acceptable story. It's just a story that respects the existing stories, by and large. Which makes it less "disrespectful," but still traffics in the problems of One True Way.

 

[Neonchameleon]

So the thread that might help you understand is that I think any instance of One True Story is problematic. 4e's arrogance wasn't in coming up with another story, it was insisting that this new story should be the only story -- in being precious about its fiction. My problem isn't with the idea that all dwarves were once the slaves of giants, it's with the a game that only accepts that one idea as true in its design and presentation.

2e had the same problem. All demons and devils know of and participate in the Blood War all throughout every D&D setting. Hence this thread.

Nope. The two are not comparable. 4e's supposed arrogance was in changing the default setting (and nuking the Realms as the Time of Troubles had before it). Settings are explicitly different. 2e on the other hand did have the Blood War (and the Great Wheel) crossing settings.

(I've fixed my truncated post above).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Nope. The two are not comparable. 4e's supposed arrogance was in changing the default setting (and nuking the Realms as the Time of Troubles had before it). Settings are explicitly different. 2e on the other hand did have the Blood War (and the Great Wheel) crossing settings.

The difference isn't my problem.

My problem is that neither setting is designed with alternate interpretations in mind.

Which is exactly comparable. 2e preseumed that everyone use the 2e cosmology, 4e presumed that everyone use the 4e cosmology, 5e looks to be presuming that everyone use the 5e cosmology and all of these are a problem for exactly the same reason: not everyone's going to want to use that cosmology.

3e's presumption of people using the 3e cosmology was quite a bit lighter (the Manual of the Planes has all sorts of advice for adapting your game to places with different planar structures, Deities and Demigods had variant cosmologies, each setting has its own cosmology). Not that this was perfect, either, but it's a better way forward. And 5e might still turn out to have a lighter touch than it seems so far.