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

[Parmandur]

I agree.

Not necessarily. WotC is a business, and making money is their primary concern. Our happiness is secondary to that, though still important to it. If their information tells them that we want more lore, but not so badly that it's worth the extra expense on their part to put in more pages, then they won't write it. If it were hurting their bottom line, they would change it.

Well, exactly my point: customer satisfaction and enjoyment for a luxury product like D&D books is directly tied to their profit, since people won't buy books they don't like.

 

[a.everett1287]

4E was the golden age of D&D lore. It was the one time in D&D's history when they sat down and refashioned the random hodgepodge of accumulated cruft into a cohesive, well-thought-out, evocative world. And then they threw most of it out with 5E, which was a damn shame.

2E was the golden age of D&D lore output. TSR in its fading years cranked out mountains of the stuff. The gems--and I won't deny there were quite a few--were the result of sheer quantity occasionally lucking into quality. But the average quality of 2E lore was pretty low.

Monkeys and typewriters was basically all of second edition lore, except instead of Shakespeare they got Max Brand or equivalent.

 

[Parmandur]

Indeed, based on the personalities and tastes of WotC staff like Crawford and Perkins, it seems most likely thst they would do more Lore if they could, but their interests as a business (i.e. making what people will pay for) militate against their tastes.

 

[Lojaan]

I don't get people's fascination with lore. For a TTRPG lore is just "if you cannot think of something cool yourself, use this".

It's mostly irrelevant, and I'm always surprised how a section of the community puts it on such a pedestal.

I mean if you enjoy it - that's great! Have fun. Just don't go around pretending that it is, or should be, important for everyone else.

 

[Steampunkette]

See... the thing is: All the old lore is still there.

And just like it has always been, it's there to pick and choose.

You wanna run a 5e game in the Time of Troubles? Go right ahead. No one's gonna stop you. Update Ruins of Myth Drannor for your home game while you're at it.

They certainly haven't ADDED a boatload to the body of lore that D&D has across it's various settings. And the changes made (Ravenloft for example) haven't always been met with resounding cheers... but it doesn't really matter.

Because it's all out there. Every book still exists. And WotC sells more and more of them every day on the DMs Guild and stuff.

You want the Dark Sun Boxed Set? Here y'go.

Dark Sun Boxed Set (2e) - Wizards of the Coast | AD&D 2nd Ed. | Dark Sun | AD&D 2nd Ed. | Dungeon Masters Guild

Dark Sun Boxed Set (2e) - Amid the barren wastelands of Athas lie the scattered city-states, each in the grip of its own, tyrannical sorcerer-king

www.dmsguild.com

PDF or soft-cover. Your choice. Shipped or downloaded however you like it. It's still there.

Does that mean they're not going to make more content for old settings? CLEARLY that's not the case as Ravenloft and Spelljammer and Forgotten Realms and more continue to trundle down the pipeline to us.

But it's a trimmed down version great for introducing new players and DMs to the setting, with old soldiers like ourselves able to say "You're wetting your toes, but if you look here you can swim." and hand them the old books.

They're just not -glutting- the market like they used to.

 

[JEB]

Does that mean they're not going to make more content for old settings? CLEARLY that's not the case as Ravenloft and Spelljammer and Forgotten Realms and more continue to trundle down the pipeline to us.

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.)

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I didn't claim it did. You claimed that it was an opinion held by most players and I wondered where you got that from is all.

This is what's known as a False Dichotomy. You can really like an edition for X, Y and Z, while at the same time not like A and B. There's plenty of room for 5e to be a huge success while having a majority of players wanting more lore.

There is also the possibility that at this point the vast majority of players have no other experience then 5e and others only have experience with 4e & 5e. So it's not a matter of preferring 5e's approach to, it's having too little experience with anything else, so they could be open to more lore, we just don't know.

 

[JEB]

One phenomenon I find interesting in D&D lore videos on Youtube is how many of them use 5E as a starting point, but try to fill in the gaps using lore from older editions - even from 4E, the least compatible of the lot with the others. And how that's continued even as Wizards' willingness to retcon and reboot older lore has become more obvious. Even when Wizards' current policy is explicitly telling them anything from before 5E (and possibly anything outside the current core rules!) isn't canon.

So I guess some modern D&D fans must like having deep lore, even when Wizards is going the opposite way.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

See... the thing is: All the old lore is still there.

And just like it has always been, it's there to pick and choose.

You wanna run a 5e game in the Time of Troubles? Go right ahead. No one's gonna stop you. Update Ruins of Myth Drannor for your home game while you're at it.

They certainly haven't ADDED a boatload to the body of lore that D&D has across it's various settings. And the changes made (Ravenloft for example) haven't always been met with resounding cheers... but it doesn't really matter.

Because it's all out there. Every book still exists. And WotC sells more and more of them every day on the DMs Guild and stuff.

You want the Dark Sun Boxed Set? Here y'go.

Dark Sun Boxed Set (2e) - Wizards of the Coast | AD&D 2nd Ed. | Dark Sun | AD&D 2nd Ed. | Dungeon Masters Guild

Dark Sun Boxed Set (2e) - Amid the barren wastelands of Athas lie the scattered city-states, each in the grip of its own, tyrannical sorcerer-king

www.dmsguild.com

PDF or soft-cover. Your choice. Shipped or downloaded however you like it. It's still there.

Does that mean they're not going to make more content for old settings? CLEARLY that's not the case as Ravenloft and Spelljammer and Forgotten Realms and more continue to trundle down the pipeline to us.

But it's a trimmed down version great for introducing new players and DMs to the setting, with old soldiers like ourselves able to say "You're wetting your toes, but if you look here you can swim." and hand them the old books.

They're just not -glutting- the market like they used to.

I get that, but having access to previous editions work doesn't make THIS edition have more depth or make it a Golden Age, it doesn't improve the quality of the writing, or the page count or fix the poor paper quality etc...,

 

[Henadic Theologian]

One phenomenon I find interesting in D&D lore videos on Youtube is how many of them use 5E as a starting point, but try to fill in the gaps using lore from older editions - even from 4E, the least compatible of the lot with the others. And how that's continued even as Wizards' willingness to retcon and reboot older lore has become more obvious. Even when Wizards' current policy is explicitly telling them anything from before 5E (and possibly anything outside the current core rules!) isn't canon.

So I guess some modern D&D fans must like having deep lore, even when Wizards is going the opposite way.

They are right to ignore that nonsense likely born over the conflict with Tracy Hickman and Marget Weis.