D&D 5E 2024 Monster Manual has better lore than 2014 Monster Manual

[Incenjucar]

There is probably an interesting study or two that could be derived from the changing role of story in RPGs over the years. Media saturation and commoditification of fantasy, attention span and time changes, the changing levels of interest in history and mythology, the shift from invention to experimentation to corporate planning, changing writing traditions, cultural sharing, changing perspectives on story ownership, and hyper-exposure to what was once novel, all fascinating things to explore.

I generally feel like monsters are becoming more like game assets rather than story elements, but I think they may have started more like assets too, but with the novels and magazines and splats they all got fleshed out and by 2E story was expected.

For intelligent creatures, I do prefer a lighter hand to minimize the "these are the sentient people you can kill on sight" bit, but some elements derived from or explaining abilities helps. You also cannot subvert something that has no existing story elements.

I do however wonder what the reasons are behind these directions. How much is money and how much is sincere preference.

Long-term, I see a lack of story positioning D&D as disposable or interchangable. It doesn't have anything to say anymore, it's just a toy without even the little story cards. Certainly usable, and ubiquitus, but if it wasn't the Kleenex of the industry, would it stand out anymore?

 

[Sulicius]

Hmmm, interesting take. I recently finished reading the whole 2025 MM and I like it. I can't say it improves on the lore. When there is space for a table and two or three paragraphs of lore, it's great. Sadly, that isn't the case for quite a few monsters. Cylcopes and Merfolk come to my mind. Both barey get more than a couple sentences.

The MM25 improved a lot of things, but not necessarily on lore.

 

[zottel]

That take is just wild to me. The tables are very good and useful, of course, but the lore is dearly missed.
I often feel inspired while reading through a monster book, and the lore is a big part of that.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I spent some time going through the lore changes in the first chunk of the 2025 Monster Manual. From what I saw, the biggest losers in terms of lore between it and the previous Monster Manual were the aarakocra, azer, basilisk, bulette, bullywug, and centaur. Of these, all but the basilisk had an extra statblock, with the basilisk entry being instead taken up by one of the less-inspiring random tables. The lack of lore for the azer is worst of all, IMO, because it completely strips out the information about how they view the efreet as their enemies and how they might ally with PCs against them.

Other entries more or less had an equivalent amount of lore, sometimes described more succinctly. The barbed devil actually gained a good bit of lore that was written in a way to inspire maybe using one as the main villain of a lower-level adventure.

As it stands, I can't full-throatedly endorse the 2025 Monster Manual as an all-around improvement like I could the 2024 PHB and DMG. It's better, but the removal of lore means I still find myself wanting to keep the 2014 Monster Manual handy to fill back in what was removed. Plus it just feels weird that Animated Plants now have more text devoted to describing them than many of the monsters I mentioned before do.

 

[Sulicius]

It looks like the page space prio was as follows:

1. Stat block
2. Art
3. Lore

So lore pulled the shortest straw if there was too much of the others.

I never really read the lore, so I'm not that worried.

 

[humble minion]

Setting specific lore will be in the individual setting books.

I wish I believed that. WotC has been paring down the amount of lore in all their products for some time now.

 

[npick03]

As someone who has little interest in stat blocks, I do find the brevity of the lore disappointing.

The art is beautiful though.

 

[DragonLancer]

I like my monsters to be setting agnostic but I want full lore as to what they are, they do, their societies (if any), interactions...etc. I'm the same with campaign settings. Don't give me a ran down and leave stuff up to me. If there is something then give me the information so I can work with it.

 

[Reynard]

Wouldn't someone capable/interested in doing their own world building be able to do so with the lore there? I mean if your into world building, stripping a stat blocks from lore filled descriptions seems to be a no brainer. Where as someone with no interest in world building having to create lore for a monster in a book full of pictures and statblocks seems to add unwanted work. Just seems counter intuitive to remove something not easily replaced for those who want it when it is already there and so easy to ignore for those that won't use it.

I guess it comes down to which audience they want to cater to, the world builders or the people that want to play a game with out creating the lore. Obviously I'm in the lore camp.

If someone has no interest in world building, what do they need the lore for?

 

[Hexmage-EN]

If someone has no interest in world building, what do they need the lore for?

I liked using duergar because of their included lore, which was evocative enough to make me choose using them over anything else I might have chosen. I didn't add much new world building when using them in my campaign, mostly using what I had read in the Monster Manual and Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. Without the lore I don't have any pre-built hooks or idea on how to slot them into a world, but with the lore I did.

I'm afraid that by taking away lore and adding contextless statblocks people will be less likely to actually use those statblocks because there's no context for what an aarakocra or azer or bullywug's deal is and why they are interesting enough to use.