D&D 5E 5e isn't a Golden Age of D&D Lorewise, it's Silver at best.

[JEB]

Some however, feel like they're not giving you very much, at all, for your money. That, for me, is the real problem here. If you provide so little detail that I'm essentially not paying for anything, you raise the question of why I'm giving you money at all.

A friend of mine, new to the hobby with 5E, has been raising this point as well. I believe I've seen similar sentiments on Reddit. A risk of Wizards' push to focus more on selling rules than selling lore is that some folks might decide they're better off without the official stuff.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Oh yeah I forgot Wildemount was first-party, I was thinking of it as 3PP. Re: MtG settings, I didn't know enough about Theros/Ravnica to spot those issues, that sounds a little unfortunate, though I feel like getting the entire tone "wrong" (or at least very different) with Strixhaven was a much bigger miss (basically making a Slytherin/Ravenclaw-ish setting into pure Hufflepuff).

My issue with Strixhaven getting a book was the setting it's in didn't have a chance to be fleshed out yet, it was too early it needed some return sets to flesh out the broader world to provide context to Strixhaven, which really doesn't have broader context in which it exists. Also while interesting, having none MtG D&D races in it without explanation leaves a lot of questions unanswered.

And it could be too much bland in reguards to extra circulars.

Theros & Ravnica were tonally correctvI agree.

 

[Mind of tempest]

A friend of mine, new to the hobby with 5E, has been raising this point as well. I believe I've seen similar sentiments on Reddit. A risk of Wizards' push to focus more on selling rules than selling lore is that some folks might decide they're better off without the official stuff.

that of course depends on third parties making settings that the lore lovers want.
I have yet to find any myself.

 

[delericho]

WotC should be the gold standard for their edition, its not even close in 5e. I see no reason WotC can't do as well as Southlands for its settings.

They should be the gold standard for production values, and art budgets, and editing, and anything else that can be improved simply by the application of money. But for subjective things like lore, there's no guarantee of the same.

In fact, I think I'd go further: when it comes to lore, WotC basically can't be the gold standard. The thing is, any art worth the name is going to offend someone. And WotC's need to pitch to the mass market, and to do that for every product, basically means that they can't risk that - they will necessarily have to play it fairly safe. Which means there will never be a "Game of Thrones"-like setting from WotC, or even something as 'mature' as the 3e "Book of Vile Darkness". Indeed, with things as they are, they would never have originated "Dark Sun", or "Birthright", or even "Dragonlance".

(And yes, I'm aware "Dragonlance" is on the schedule. There's a difference between dusting off an IP you own and originating a new one. Besides, every second conversation about DL seems to feature a major subthread about what problematic material they're going to excise.)

If you're wanting new and exciting lore, you're probably better looking elsewhere.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

They should be the gold standard for production values, and art budgets, and editing, and anything else that can be improved simply by the application of money. But for subjective things like lore, there's no guarantee of the same.

In fact, I think I'd go further: when it comes to lore, WotC basically can't be the gold standard. The thing is, any art worth the name is going to offend someone. And WotC's need to pitch to the mass market, and to do that for every product, basically means that they can't risk that - they will necessarily have to play it fairly safe. Which means there will never be a "Game of Thrones"-like setting from WotC, or even something as 'mature' as the 3e "Book of Vile Darkness". Indeed, with things as they are, they would never have originated "Dark Sun", or "Birthright", or even "Dragonlance".

(And yes, I'm aware "Dragonlance" is on the schedule. There's a difference between dusting off an IP you own and originating a new one. Besides, every second conversation about DL seems to feature a major subthread about what problematic material they're going to excise.)

If you're wanting new and exciting lore, you're probably better looking elsewhere.

As far as I can tell WotC has had no problem offending/upsetting someone.

By Gold Standard I'm mean just deep, well written lore, not in some kind of artsy fartsy kind of way.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

that of course depends on third parties making settings that the lore lovers want.
I have yet to find any myself.

I recommend the Midgard/Southlands setting.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

They should be the gold standard for production values, and art budgets, and editing, and anything else that can be improved simply by the application of money. But for subjective things like lore, there's no guarantee of the same.

In fact, I think I'd go further: when it comes to lore, WotC basically can't be the gold standard. The thing is, any art worth the name is going to offend someone. And WotC's need to pitch to the mass market, and to do that for every product, basically means that they can't risk that - they will necessarily have to play it fairly safe. Which means there will never be a "Game of Thrones"-like setting from WotC, or even something as 'mature' as the 3e "Book of Vile Darkness". Indeed, with things as they are, they would never have originated "Dark Sun", or "Birthright", or even "Dragonlance".

(And yes, I'm aware "Dragonlance" is on the schedule. There's a difference between dusting off an IP you own and originating a new one. Besides, every second conversation about DL seems to feature a major subthread about what problematic material they're going to excise.)

If you're wanting new and exciting lore, you're probably better looking elsewhere.

This rather poorly squares with the overall positive take on most of the new lore in 4e. FR specifically was at least a bit hit or miss, as I understand it, but thr World Axis did enough good things that WotC included several elements as 5e canon despite their otherwise pervasive fear of anything that smelled even remotely like 4e. Feywild and Shadowfell, The Raven Queen, Bahamut as a greater deity, and various other bits and bobs.

You can totally write new lore and have it go over well. You just have to actually do things that are interesting and not relying on tired cliches, ugly stereotypes, or shock bait.

 

[Oofta]

What WotC is currently providing isn't even at that standard, though. It's simply cursory in a lot of cases.

You present a false dichotomy of course, too, and I know people love a good false dichotomy they can pretend is a real problem, but that doesn't make it any less false. It's not "hundreds of pages of coma-inducing lore" or "utterly cursory". There's a middle-ground which WotC had shown itself capable of producing in books like Theros, Eberron, or most of 3E's setting material. But WotC have been moving away from that middle ground more recently to an extremely cursory approach, as I noted.

VRGtR is much lighter on lore than it really should be. Two things caused this - lower page count overall, and dedicating a lot of the book to stuff which doesn't really help lore (I'd particularly call out the mediocre adventure which takes up a fair chunk of the book). But that's not the worst. Strixhaven has even less lore, and is the first MtG setting to get a poor treatment lore-wise (it's not only cursory, but it's tonally very different to the MtG version, and significantly less interesting). Now we have Spelljammer upcoming with 64 pages total dedicated to all the rules (presumably including all the ship rules) and all the setting/lore. That's a drastic, hideous drop from anything we've seen before.

So I'd suggest strongly that 5E needs to head back to the middle ground lore/setting-wise.

EDIT - There is also Critical Role to consider at least. They've produced solid middle-ground lore stuff for 5E, and are extremely popular, so there is that.

What false dichotomy? If you look at all the documentation produced for FR over the years, it's easily hundreds of pages. Throw in the canon novels and it's thousands. Most people I've played with don't care. Give them a map, a few sentences about the different regions and they're good to go. As long as they know the difference between the flaming fist and the red wizards, it's all good. The wiki entry for just the harper organization is over 3,000 words. If I paste the entry into a word document (to get word count), it's 7 pages of dense text. It's too much lore for most people, all they care about it is that the harpers are the good guys.

I made no comment about how much documentation is enough, just that too much is not needed for most people who only care about high level stuff. Some people love thousands of words describing every major organization but in my experience they're the minority. That's all.

 

[jdrakeh]

Personally, for me, more lore never equaled better. From the standpoint of a DM, tens of thousands of pages of conflicting, poorly organized lore (which is what we had in FR by the time D&D 3.5 rolled around) was a complete PITA. IME, nobody could agree upon what should or shouldn't be canon and canon-Nazi players would throw absolute tantrums if their personal vision of FR wasn't catered to 110%. This is a huge part of why I stuck to the original grey box set and a few supplements only. I'm much happier with how 5e has handled things.

 

[Yaarel]

D&D 1e - Gold Age
D&D 2e - Silver Age
D&D 3e - Bronze Age
D&D 4e - Iron Age
D&D 5e - Classical Age