They do. Using the Study action, you would roll Arcana for information on Aberrations, Constructs, Elementals, Fey, and Monstrosities, Nature on Beasts, Dragons, Oozes, and Plants, and Religion on Celestials, Fiends, and Undead
It shouldn't be too hard, since, although the timeline did advance, it didn't advance by a lot (compared to the disaster of the 4e timeskip), so most of the NPCs and locations are still valid. The 3e FRCS also had a history section that focused on recent years, which helped bridge the gap a bit.
It's rather interesting to see arguments over something that the Study action was explicitly designed for.
"Can I use the Study action to recall if a troll has any weaknesses?"
"Roll a History check, since trolls are Giants. And since one particular weakness is well known, roll with...
The Dalelands were always my go-to spot for 2e and 3e campaigns. I was quite annoyed that 5e sidelined the region, and was conversely quite happy that will be featured in the upcoming books.
I was about to bring up McCaffrey's Pern books as well. Although all the dragons breathe fire, the jobs of each dragon type are well-defined and thus color coded. And of all her dragon colors, only brown wasn't later replicated in D&D base dragon type. People nowadays probably don't realize just...
It's not a mystery at all - it's simply because it's much more recent, and most of the writers were from the US. In the '90s, while better than previous decades, writers still weren't always terribly nuanced, and often wrote what they and their audience knew best.
Curse of the Azure Bonds (Part 43): The Mulmaster Beholder Corps (Part 3) - The Mulmaster Beholder Corps completed!
So, there was a lot of discussion in the thread after the last post on how I would proceed with this battle.
Yeah, I'm opting for the easy way out. Simply because trying it...