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

[Micah Sweet]

5E Ravenloft isn't a continuation of the old setting, it's a reboot. Spelljammer is looking to be much the same, based on previews. Any further content we get for those settings will be for the new version, not the old.

The Realms has been presented as a continuation of the old setting for most of 5E... but the announcement of the current canon policy last year, and the lore changes creeping in through errata and books like MOTM, might suggest changes are coming there as well. I would be surprised if they do a total reboot as they did with Ravenloft, though.

(Dragonlance is going to be interesting, and probably instructive. My bet is they'll deal in broad strokes and work around the details of the old canon, avoiding any potential fan backlash.)

I don't think I've ever read a post i 100% agreed with before, point for point. Neat!

 

[Micah Sweet]

I Love playing in FR in The well trod areas cause there’s so much lore and previous lore and history. Wherever you are, if you need something in This Swamp, there probably is something already written. My players are in The Mere of Dead Men, and with official and Dungeon adventures it is loaded with stuff to look through and play with or also disregard and ignore. WotC has made a point of being much less specific on lore recently, because their goal is to make things more open. I don’t really care for it, but unless you’re fixated on true To official published for some reason, all that detail Is still available, in my world the last 500 years of FR history is just yesterday when I need it.

but to OP point. Yep, they’ve gone vague...because it’s all fictional history so it doesn’t matter and you can do whatever the fork you want. They are very much trying to empower DMs by implying that these are not fixed real places, these are just helpful ideas of places you could run a game.

If you don't treat fictional history seriously, it really is meaningless.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Of course beholder gains some really cool new lore in the process, so YMMV obviously.

Absolutely YMMV. I hate the 5e beholder lore.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Throw in cat people who were created by a heretofore unheard of "cat lord". But if I get to play the tabaxi Antonio who wears a hat with a feather in it and boots? It's all good.
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The Cat Lord appeared in 1e.

 

[Oofta]

The Cat Lord appeared in 1e.

Well, you know, cats. Sneaky little bastards, I didn't see him.

Still a pretty obscure reference, and just an example of skimpy lore. Basically boils down to "Created by a being that almost no one knows, tabaxi are humanoid cats. Except when they aren't."

Yet people don't care, they're just happy to play a purring furry.

 

[MGibster]

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.

Whenever I set up my own homebrew campaign, I don't give my players more than about a paragraph of information. And that's because I know they're not going to read it. The same is true if we decide to play a new game. I ran Vampire 5th edition in 2019 (maybe 2018), and I had two players familiar with the lore, one player who wasn't but ate it all up as fast as she could, and two others who weren't interested at all. And to be fair to my players, it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to spend a lot of time getting into the lore. They have other things to do in their lives.

It's nice when everyone's familiar with the lore though. If I run a Star Wars game, I don't have to explain who the Sith are or what an X-Wing is.

 

[Smackpixi]

Whenever I set up my own homebrew campaign, I don't give my players more than about a paragraph of information. And that's because I know they're not going to read it. The same is true if we decide to play a new game. I ran Vampire 5th edition in 2019 (maybe 2018), and I had two players familiar with the lore, one player who wasn't but ate it all up as fast as she could, and two others who weren't interested at all. And to be fair to my players, it would be unreasonable for me to expect them to spend a lot of time getting into the lore. They have other things to do in their lives.

It's nice when everyone's familiar with the lore though. If I run a Star Wars game, I don't have to explain who the Sith are or what an X-Wing is.

People only need to know what they need to know is the whole of lore. This goes the same for both DMs and players. New York City is big vast and full of life times of stuff to do. But you’re only going to be there for a week. You could get a 500 page guide book, you could get several of the competing 500 page guide books and compare and contrast, or you could just Google top 10/20 things to do in NYC and pick 5. Lore may be fun to read and daydream about but most people just need the 5 things they’re actually going to get a chance to run/do. Or rather, they need 10 so they can pick 5 favorites.

 

[teitan]

Are you kidding? I had to look up to see whether Chult was in the Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk because I didn't remember off hand. To me, Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms are pretty much interchangeable because they're both just so generic and I don't really have strong feelings about the lore in either.

Which demonstrates ignorance. They aren’t interchangeable at all. Greyhawk definitely has its own flavor as does FR and your assumption is based on a lack of knowledge (the definition of the word).

While FR is a kitchen sink setting, one could easily think it’s a fantasy Europe, based on looks alone, it’s more Canada and that’s very hard to put a finger on why. It doesn’t really have a France or Germany or Norway etc. you could make an argument for an England with Cormyr and Moonshae is definitely an Ireland and Cormyr has those Arthur Celtic influences they’re so far apart that they have distinctive cultures that fall apart but the whole thing is blasted apart as you look at the broad expanse of the continent of the main part of the Forgotten Realms. In its fringes to the south and south east you get into the more Earth like cultures but the rest, particularly the original OGB parts of the Realms, are what the concept of generic fantasy would grow from, not because it was generic but because FR would dominate fantasy fiction after its release. It’s not even Tolkienesque. That is Dragonlance.

Greyhawk on the other hand is very different. It’s as generic as the DM wants to make it or your imagination makes it. It has some very ripe and imaginative cultures but very humanocentric so the elf, dwarf, etc cultures are barely surface scratched. The setting is very sword & sorcery but with chivalric and heraldic traditions proudly on display. The Great Kingdom is very much a Holy Roman Empire divorced from the Church kind of vibe because that is over in Veluna I think. The city of Greyhawk is very Lankhmar and in general it’s a very Wild West, Conan the Barbarian, Fafrhd and the Grey Mouser kind of setting. They would feel very at home there. It’s not Tolkienesque. It could be argued that it is Eastern European and bits of France and Italy meet Fritz Lieber. Basically… The Witcher if you accelerate GH to the Wars era.

 

[teitan]

I recommend the Midgard/Southlands setting.

It’s so good.

 

[teitan]

Matt Mercer is an Old School AD&D guy, makes Grognard grumbling about CR pretty funny.

He sure does use a lot of 4e lore though don’t he? Lol seamlessly.