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

I used to own a bunch of FR booklets(?) from 1st edition that filled in info that the box set missed. Honestly they kinda nuked the realm needlessly three times. I personally think the time skip wasn't bad, R A just wasn't done having drizzle beat a dead horse. 3rd edition ravenloft was the best version.5th edition ravenloft is a really bad when you compare the two.

Micah Sweet said:

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

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Can't speak for Cyberpunk. But Star Wars? "I am your father"? The Clone Wars being clones of stormtroopers? Midichlorians? Greedo Shot First? For that matter I'd say that even the Massacre of the Younglings (a.k.a. Vader was a primary school shooter) changed a lot.

That said the Sequels were pretty respectful of the lore.

Paul Farquhar said:

Take away the red lines and this could easily be interpreted as a fairly static or very slightly upward trend at around 12K, with a grouping of anomalous highs around the COVID lockdown period.

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you can keep the lines and use that as your explanation too (no idea whether it is accurate though), that does not change what the lines highlight

mamba said:

you cannot point to overall sales to show that a specific product is selling well…

The only thing we have at the individual product level is the bookscan data, and there we do have an indication of declining sales

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I'm not sure why you are scrawling on the sections you are. The second highest total 8 week sales number is during the period you say is declining by Bookscan. And one of the lowest is during what you consider the high period.

And to be honest I expected that the March 2020-December 2021 period would be the high point for obvious reasons that have nothing at all to do with the actual game.

I am so uninterested in 3E Ravenloft but I love 5E Ravenloft. The idea of the core was so nonsensical to me. The idea of nightmare realms you can mistrun through is a lot more interesting to me.

There's nothing wrong with enjoying lore from old products. That's why most of us keep all our old books and material, so we can read it and draw from it when we want. And nowadays we can even buy more of that old material as we feel we need it or want it from DMs Guild, Amazon, your Friendly Neighborhood Game Store, etc.

But to think we need that lore material re-printed more or less as-is in a new format for a new edition is just not necessary if you ask me. (General) you already own the material. Why do you need it re-packaged in a book that has the current D&D logo on it?

I mean I have to assume it's because (general) you just don't want to put in the work to translate the old material's mechanics to 5E and have it all together in one shiny book. But there's no requirement that WotC has to make (general) your life easier for you by doing that. They're writing books for the general populace, not you specifically. So while I can certainly understand the desire for a pretty 5E book that re-prints the old lore as it's always been (with just mechanical updates)... I also understand why WotC wouldn't have a desire to do so. After all... that'd be like them deciding to re-print the 5E14 PHB, DMG, and MM for the 50th Anniversary just with new cover, new art and the pages re-organized a bit, without actually updating rules that everyone has been saying have not worked for the last 10 years. While I'm sure some people would be perfectly happy having just having that... more people than that would wonder what exactly would be the point.

JEB said:

One other thing I will add about my personal experience. It was engaging lore - specifically, 2E's monster lore connected to various settings - that first interested me in D&D, and in turn encouraged me to learn the rules and run games. That certainly isn't the only on-ramp, but lore shouldn't be discounted as a way to attract players (especially future DMs).

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Same. Monster lore and setting lore to enhance the novel experience when I was a kid (the Dragonlance novels were the first non-Tolkein fantasy I ever read) were what kept me interested and engaged with the hobby. I connected with D&D from a lore and story perspective before I ever really got into the gameplay, and the gameplay, for me, has always been a way to gamify the fictional world (mine or theirs). Lore books about fictional settings have always been my favorite books to read, and messing with that story, in particular rendering invalid parts of that story, without in-universe explanation, is quite frankly personal to me. I don't regularly complain about Van Richten's Guide just to annoy you all.

Shardstone said:

I am so uninterested in 3E Ravenloft but I love 5E Ravenloft. The idea of the core was so nonsensical to me. The idea of nightmare realms you can mistrun through is a lot more interesting to me.

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Would it have made a difference to you if 5e Ravenloft wasn't called Ravenloft?

Paul Farquhar said:

There is no evidence that early 5e stuff was any good, I mean, Dragon Queen? Good? Really!?

The success of 5e was down to the simplicity and accessibility of it's rules, combined with streaming showing how it could be used for collaborative story-telling. It had nothing to do with adventures or lore.

The most creative made-for-5e adventure content is recent - Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel.

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One of the things I liked about 5e when it started was that it allowed for earlier lore to still work, largely by not talking about it, but still. As time went on, they started changing that, and my interest in WotC waned.

Neonchameleon said:

Can't speak for Cyberpunk. But Star Wars? "I am your father"? The Clone Wars being clones of stormtroopers? Midichlorians? Greedo Shot First? For that matter I'd say that even the Massacre of the Younglings (a.k.a. Vader was a primary school shooter) changed a lot.

That said the Sequels were pretty respectful of the lore.

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Did any of those things make the previous history not have happened? No.