Explain to whom?
I was talking about new players.
New players will
always need to learn what a D&D troll is like, because there are too many variants of troll in fantasy.
Changing what a troll does not help them in any way, shape, or form. Changing trolls
only hinders existing players who need to relearn what a troll is, how to fight it, and the like.
Try doing a Google image search for "troll". What comes up? Picture after picture unrelated to D&D. Even if you try "troll fantasy" or "troll rpg" there's a lot of very non-D&D trolls (which often look a lot more like giants and ogres).
Changing what a troll is would be fun for a campaign setting, for a
Dark Sun world that takes D&D and turns everything on its head. It's less appealing from a generic D&D perspective. The DM shouldn't have to invent lore, backstory, and flavour for every monster.
Beyond that, there was a time when all monsters were new. When surprising players with new monsters was considered a standard tactic in the GM arsenal. The idea that gaps between player expectations and the GM's secret lore is a problem rather than a good thing isn't as old as the hobby. If I had to hazard a guess, I'd date its origin to the mid-to-late 80s. I think MotP, in particular, is one published marker of the transition from the lore/story elements serve a gameplay function to the lore/story elements, and their continuity, have a value in themselves. OA is earlier than MotP, and takes the same approach, but it is self-consciously a supplement. Whereas MotP presents itself as dealing with the "core" D&D world. (Whatever excactly that is.)
D&D's lore started immediately. Even in OD&D you had notes like blue dragons living in arid areas and breathing lightning. The lore in OD&D only increased in the later books, with monsters recieving more and more flavour. With AD&D and the
Monster Manual, and just grew with
Deities & Demigods as things like monstrous and demihuman deities were introduced.
D&D was NEVER a generic fantasy RPG devoid of assumed flavour. It shouldn't start now.
Is that actually true? 3E changes lore (eg orcs go from LE to CE, just to pick one easy example). Does that make it just as easy to switch from 2nd ed AD&D to Rolemaster as to 3E?
The alignment of orcs was changed to fit how they typically were portrayed. How orcs had developed in D&D no longer matched their classical alignment, in any setting. They had evolved. LE was never a particularly good fit for orcs
It was still annoying to many people. The fact that a decade and a half both you and I are aware orc alignment changed is evidence of that.
It's actually a very good example, because continuity shouldn't be impossible to change. It just shouldn't be something done on a whim.
D&D orcs, being LE, they were too different from what people expected orcs to do, based on other fantasy games and Tolkien, which became reflected in the D&D worlds as well. The common knowledge of orcs shifted and D&D orcs followed suit. It was a reaction to a widespread change, to what most people were doing anyway. It wasn't just a couple people on the monster design team going "Hey, orcs should be CE. Let's change them."
Change should be deliberate, not the result of carelessness. And it should be done to reflect a genuine need in the game or in response to the fanbase, not a personal desire.
For game designers writing official material. You can do whatever you want in your game.
I mean, why not just update the mechanics but keep the old lore?
There's not a hard line between lore and mechanics. Your troll is the perfect example of that, as their lore is they regenerate but are vulnerable to fire and acid. If their hook changes, it can affect their mechanics. If the mechanics of trolls drops their regeneration and instead has them turn to stone in sunlight, you can't just keep the old lore.
I think this is just hyperbole. Familiarity with the mechanical tropes of D&D makes it much easier to update from an older to a newer version of D&D, than to change to T&T.
I honestly have never played Tunnels & Trolls, so I have no idea how similar it is. But it's pretty easy to shift from D&D to
13th Age or
Shadow of the Demon Lord, because those are kindred games that have a lot of shared heritage.
If D&D stopped being D&D, it'd be easy to go to
13th Age instead for a much more familiar feel than try to make a new version of D&D feel like an old version.
The rise of OSR during 3e and 4e is testament to that. Because, when people found it too hard to tell the D&D stories they wanted to tell with the current D&D rules, they made their own. And likely kept all the lore.
I don't agree.
The lore of 5e and the lore of OD&D overlap on almost no points. (Chainmail and OD&D still use LotR categories, like the Red Eye and the White Hand, to classify orcish tribes.) Yet there is clearly recognisable continuity from one to the other - in the monster and spell lists; in the class names and functions; in the races available to players; and in the core mechanics (ability scores; to hit vs AC, followed by a damage roll that subtracts from hit points). That's what makes D&D recognisable.
You might as well say "it's D&D when you roll a d20" or "it's D&D when there's a dragon" because those are generic as eff. Virtually every RPG has some version of a to-hit roll, and "AC" is equally common.
The core six ability scores are also found in numerous games. Including others published by WotC (Gamma World, Star Wars) and other companies under the OGL.
