D&D 5E D&D Lore Changes: Multiversal Focus & Fey Goblins of Prehistory

WotC's Jeremy Crawford revealed a couple of the lore changes in Monsters of the Multiverse.

• The big shift is toward the multiverse as the game's main perspective rather than a specific setting. The game is shifting towards a multiversal focus, with a variety of worlds and settings.
• Universe-spanning mythical story beats, such as deep lore on goblinoids going back to 1st Edition, and the gods they had before Maglubiyet. Prior to Magulbiyet unifying them, goblinoids were folk of the feywild in keeping with 'real-world' folklore.
• Changelings aren't just Eberron, but they've been everywhere -- you just don't necessarily know it. Their origin is also in the realm of the fey.

D&D 5E - A Compilation of all the Race Changes in Monsters of the Multiverse

Over on Reddit, user KingJackel went through the video leak which came out a few days ago and manually compiled a list of all the changes to races in the book. The changes are quite extensive, with only the fairy and harengon remaining unchanged. The book contains 33 races in total, compiled and...

www.enworld.org

 

[JEB]

Mechanics. Rules. More races/classes. (As I already wrote in the post before).
In the worst case art. (Which can tell you more than words).
Or do you think they fill it up with whitespace?

Removing large amounts of lore and replacing it with rules is only appealing to those who prefer rules to lore. If lore was part of the core books' appeal to a buyer - or if it was the primary appeal - they're definitely getting much less value than what they paid for in 2014.

Meanwhile, artwork is great, but adding more artwork in place of removed lore means both rules and lore fans are getting less usable content.

 

[JEB]

There's an assumption about a reduction in lore, but it seems to be based on tenuous evidence. Mordy Presents has less lore, yes. But that's because you can't fit every race and monster from both Volo's and Mordenkainen's and include lots of fluff, too. So, is there any actual solid evidence that the 50Ae PHB, et al. and everything from here on out are actually going to have reduced lore or is this just more sky is falling crap?

As I said upthread, the next two years will tell us which is going to happen. I certainly hope you're correct that the massive cutbacks were a space-saving necessity. But the design trend for races and monsters in other recent books hasn't been very far off from the MOTM presentation, so it certainly seems like a path they're considering.

 

[Parmandur]

I don't remember Astral Elves being in Spelljammer, and those sound very planar to me. I tend to think it will be more of a Planejammer setting.

Star Elves.

 

[Parmandur]

I prefer to go with Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is that they aren't being super tricky and that the Astral Elves, along with their current multiverse push, means that Planejammer is likely coming.

My Occam's Razor reading would be that they are for the Elven Star Empire. As well as a stealth playtest for the future base Elf.

 

[Maxperson]

Star Elves.

Those were different. They weren't a Spelljamming race, and they weren't from the astral plane. There are no astral elves in Spelljammer and they are from another plane, making them a planar race. The mithril(star) elves would also be from another plane, but are not yet in 5e that I am aware of.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Removing large amounts of lore and replacing it with rules is only appealing to those who prefer rules to lore. If lore was part of the core books' appeal to a buyer - or if it was the primary appeal - they're definitely getting much less value than what they paid for in 2014.

Meanwhile, artwork is great, but adding more artwork in place of removed lore means both rules and lore fans are getting less usable content.

But it is still the same amount of content, but different content. If you personally don't value rules less than fluff, that is your good right, but writing that wizard is ripping you off because they put less in the same book os factually wrong.

 

[Maxperson]

My Occam's Razor reading would be that they are for the Elven Star Empire. As well as a stealth playtest for the future base Elf.

The elven imperial fleet were just elves. They weren't even Mithril(star) Elves, which had nothing to do with actual stars and were instead from a twilight area of the Feywild. They certainly weren't Astral Elves.

Occam's Razor does not back up that theory. It would require a change to the elven imperial navy, a change to star elves, and instead change into a race of elves that lives on the Astral plane, not in space or on planets. The simplest explanation is that the explanation given in the UA is correct and not a tricksy lie. These are planar elves that live on the Astral Plane, making them a planar race.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

My Occam's Razor reading would be that they are for the Elven Star Empire. As well as a stealth playtest for the future base Elf.

I would go mostly on the stealth playtest. The "astral" elf only differs from the high elf lineage only in it's cantrip selection.

 

[JEB]

But it is still the same amount of content, but different content. If you personally don't value rules less than fluff, that is your good right, but writing that wizard is ripping you off because they put less in the same book os factually wrong.

I guess it depends on whether or not half a page of removed lore text has the same objective content value as one extra stat block or a larger illustration. That's likely going to a completely subjective judgment, admittedly.

I can certainly tell you, however, that some folks who liked the amount of lore in the 2014 core rulebooks are going to feel like they're losing something if the 2024 version cuts lore back radically. Getting a bonus statblock for each monster might feel like pretty cold comfort if you now have to buy one or more extra $50 books for inspiration on how to use them in adventures.

And if you're a brand-new D&D player who likes fantasy lore, a 2024 core book that's mostly statblocks and thin on roleplaying ideas is likely to be a less appealing product than its 2014 predecessor.

 

[Larnievc]

On the plus side, you are now fully legitimized to say that your own Greyhawk/FR/Nenthil Vale/etc exist tangentially to the other 'verse and that in your version, things work like this instead.

Hasn’t that always been the case?