D&D General Joe Manganiello: Compares Early 5E to BG 3 . How Important is Lore?

[MGibster]

Neither Cyberpunk nor Star Wars changed existing lore to any significant extent. Both advanced and added to it.

Any addition to lore is a change in lore.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

But the original plays aren't replaced. No one sees West Side Story as straight-up replacing Romeo and Juliet.

Neither are 2nd edition D&D books. You can go and play 2nd edition right now if you want.

On the other hand, rereleasing Romeo and Juliet for 5e could not possibly be the original text, because it's 5e, the rules are different.



I mean, if we want to be pedantic, NONE of Shakespeare's original playscripts survive. The versions of Shakespeare we have today are pieced together from several different early-generation copies, and it is possible to find quite different versions of some of the plays, with just as strong a claim to be the original version.

Those plays wouldn't have been written then set in stone in any case. There would have been revisions for just about every performance. And if you see any modern performance of Shakespeare, you can be sure the director will have made tweaks to reflect their vision.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Any addition to lore is a change in lore.

You see no difference between changing existing lore and adding more? I...don't know how to respond to that.

 

[Distracted DM]

Where's the full video interview of this? The comicbook link I found just has maybe a minute clip from the interview.

 

[MGibster]

You see no difference between changing existing lore and adding more? I...don't know how to respond to that.

The most basic definition of change is to alter something or make different. It's true, Cyberpunk Red didn't go back and change the lore of 2020 as it existed back in 1994, but the lore had advanced and the setting is no longer the same as it once was. i.e. It's changed. The setting of Cyberpunk Red might be in the same city as it was in Cyberpunk 2020, but it's a very different animal today than it was back then.

 

[Micah Sweet]

The most basic definition of change is to alter something or make different. It's true, Cyberpunk Red didn't go back and change the lore of 2020 as it existed back in 1994, but the lore had advanced and the setting is no longer the same as it once was. i.e. It's changed. The setting of Cyberpunk Red might be in the same city as it was in Cyberpunk 2020, but it's a very different animal today than it was back then.

But the history of the setting in-universe hasn't changed. To me that makes all the difference. You can do all sorts of things if you don't mess with the history.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The RPG Cyberpunk is a good example of how changes shouldn't be stopped. When Cyberpunk 2020 1st Ed was published in 1988 by R Talsorian Games they imagined our current 2024 in a way. And we know what happen when predictions from sci-fi fail. Cyberpunk RPG can't be published today without a "technology update". It is not only the social revolution of the mobiles and internet, but also the new materials as the graphene. There are now some "cyborgs" but these are relatively rare.

We are talking about TTRPGs, where the canon is not words written on stone.

Cinematographic franchises may be good examples of how changes can be positive. What "Hawai 5-0" do you like more, the old or the new version?

 

[Remathilis]

But the original plays aren't replaced. No one sees West Side Story as straight-up replacing Romeo and Juliet.

Your old books are still there too. They are still for sale on DMs Guild. You're upset the 5e books don't repeat verbatim what the old books said. You want Shakespeare to always be doublets and iambic pentameter and boys in the female roles because that's always how it's been.

 

[Minigiant]

The RPG Cyberpunk is a good example of how changes shouldn't be stopped. When Cyberpunk 2020 1st Ed was published in 1988 by R Talsorian Games they imagined our current 2024 in a way. And we know what happen when predictions from sci-fi fail. Cyberpunk RPG can't be published today without a "technology update". It is not only the social revolution of the mobiles and internet, but also the new materials as the graphene. There are now some "cyborgs" but these are relatively rare.

And the part missing is often missing is that you don't have to change the setting. You just can't make real money on it.

Due to real tech advancement, selling Cyberpunk 2020 straight up would not be very profitable.
If you want to make real money with it, it has to change.

 

[the Jester]

Your old books are still there too. They are still for sale on DMs Guild. You're upset the 5e books don't repeat verbatim what the old books said. You want Shakespeare to always be doublets and iambic pentameter and boys in the female roles because that's always how it's been.

You're not actually addressing the concern. It's not about "repeating verbatim" what has come before, it's about not overwriting, invalidating, and discarding the old lore.

The 5e beholder lore overwrites, invalidates, and discards the previous lore on beholders. They had a reproductive cycle in earlier editions that had nothing to do with dreaming, to give one example. This might not matter in your game, but there is someone out there who has had beholder reproduction as a plot point or an adventure element in their game, and now the official lore not only doesn't support that but actively contradicts it.

You could say the same thing about the apparent incoming shift in 5e's gnoll lore vs. 2e lore. Gnolls are, from various comments that the designers have made, going to shift to Fiends. But in older lore, they weren't created by Yeenoghu, and in fact he's an interloper who muscled his way into gnoll society, pushing the old gnoll gods out of his way in the process. Making all gnolls Fiends completely invalidates that lore.