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

[Morrus]

As the IP holder, WOTC legally has to do things to make more consumers become customers of their product or they lose the IP.

Whut?

 

[Remathilis]

I'm sorry, but that is ridiculous.

"Verbatim" means to repeat the exact words. You can add lore to things without overwriting, invalidating, or discarding old lore. For example, 2e added a ton of new lore to basically every monster- their ecology, their habitat/society- without discarding or invalidating anything (or at least, vanishingly little).

4e Forgotten Realms went and explained every change from 3e to 4e via the Spellplague. Everything that happened up to 3e still happened. Things changed due in continuity and an elf could have been born during 1e and recall every change that happened between 1e and 5e in character.

And that's why nobody had any problems with the 4e Forgotten Realms. Wait...

Even when lore is added to, it must remain stagnant or people will still find fault. They want THEIR version of the lore looking back at them in the book. Frozen, stagnant, ever unchanged. Only the changes they approve of added. A pipe dream that no media outlet can live up to.

 

[Minigiant]

Whut?

If WOTC doesn't try to make more D&D customers, D&D will lose its standing in the market, lose value in the industry, and possibly be shelved or sold.

 

[MGibster]

No one is denying that WotC has the right to change things however they want. I just wish they wouldn't. Changing the history of an imagined world offends my sensibilities.

Your point of view is perfectly valid. I share it to some degree, but I might be a bit more flexible in regards to changing established lore.

 

[Morrus]

If WOTC doesn't try to make more D&D customers, D&D will lose its standing in the market, lose value in the industry, and possibly be shelved or sold.

That’s a very different statement to “ WOTC legally has to do things to make more consumers become customers of their product or they lose the IP.”

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

D&D needs a perfect lore if it is wanted it to become a multimedia franchise but the lore is too "one-shot" to sell sourcebooks. When I bought my books of World of Darkness...it had got a fabulous fluff, but after I read once... I was only interested into the crunch part.

I liked my book of Volo's guide of monsters, but the pages about lore were to be read only once. I enjoyed more my book of Moderkainen's monster of multiverse because it was mainly PC species and monsters.

We are in the age of internet, where we can get lot of lore from different fandom wiki pages, and not only about TTRPGs but also videogames, comics or novels.

Some changes are wellcome, but others not. In the Batman videogames of Arkhan saga the look of Harley Quinn was redesigned and this became very popular, more than the original style from the cartoon, but today lot of players aren't happy with the "fate" of the members of the League of Justice.

 

[the Jester]

4e Forgotten Realms went and explained every change from 3e to 4e via the Spellplague. Everything that happened up to 3e still happened. Things changed due in continuity and an elf could have been born during 1e and recall every change that happened between 1e and 5e in character.

And that's why nobody had any problems with the 4e Forgotten Realms. Wait...

I'm not an expert on FR, but I'd argue- from what I heard- that the problem wasn't that there was new lore. There was new lore in 3e's treatment, but it was widely regarded as the best treatment that the Realms had seen. The problem was more that the changes were massive, wholesale, and fundamental. They didn't make a new version of the Realms that was in tune with the old version; they blew up the Realms (as innumerable people put it). They forced 4e's revisions into the Realms with no regard for what had gone before (again, so I have heard argued over and over again).

Even when lore is added to, it must remain stagnant or people will still find fault. They want THEIR version of the lore looking back at them in the book. Frozen, stagnant, ever unchanged. Only the changes they approve of added. A pipe dream that no media outlet can live up to.

Yeah, I don't agree. Again, I will point to the additions that 2e made to prior edition lore for monsters, and for most of the various campaign settings; and to a lot of the stuff added in 3e. The difference is when you discard old lore and pretend it wasn't there, or when you make massive changes that alter the tone, themes, and fundamentals of something. Changes that invalidate previous lore are not the only type of change that can be made, but they are the type of change that people are most likely to dislike. "Here's a new cosmology, your old one never was and doesn't count, even if it came up in your game" is a far cry from "Here's more information and expansion about the cosmology".

 

[Minigiant]

That’s a very different statement to “ WOTC legally has to do things to make more consumers become customers of their product or they lose the IP.”

In context it goes with my statements WOTC wants to make money. Making product that few want loses WOTC money and devalues their IP.

 

[Morrus]

In context it goes with my statements WOTC wants to make money. Making product that few want loses WOTC money and devalues their IP.

You said that legally they had to or they’d lose the IP. That statement was not true. What you’re saying now is something very different.

Never mind.

 

[Minigiant]

I'm not an expert on FR, but I'd argue- from what I heard- that the problem wasn't that there was new lore. There was new lore in 3e's treatment, but it was widely regarded as the best treatment that the Realms had seen. The problem was more that the changes were massive, wholesale, and fundamental. They didn't make a new version of the Realms that was in tune with the old version; they blew up the Realms (as innumerable people put it). They forced 4e's revisions into the Realms with no regard for what had gone before (again, so I have heard argued over and over again)

They likely blew up FR because

1. Quite frankly there were way too many high level NPCs sitting around by late 3e for your PCs to have anything to do. People needed to be killed off.
2. The magic mechanics changed too much with a lot those NPCs and warbands sitting around to make sense nor convert.

There were 2 choices for Forgotten Realms, blow up or discontinue. Even if 4e didn't come, FR was too overused to continue as is