D&D 5E (2014) 5e isn't a Golden Age of D&D Lorewise, it's Silver at best.

[Agametorememberbooks]

Honestly, lore is low on my list of what makes an edition the "golden age" edition.

Same. I change and use things so liberally for how it’ll fit into my games that the lore aspects of the game mean quite little to me.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Alternative take, 5E lorewise is more streamlined and useful than the metaplot bloat of 2E. What counts as a "Golden Age" in lore quality is entirely subjective, unlike sales or player activity.

I think that's kind of a half-truth. Subjectivity definitely applies more to lore than sales or player activity, but it's obviously not correct to say it's "entirely subjective". It's also not correct to suggest people playing 5E prefer 5E lore to the lore of previous editions - in many cases, in fact, 5E's lore is simply a recapitulation of earlier editions (as one might expect) and people are often using previous-edition lore or their own settings or the like.

5E's lore has a few issues which are worth discussing.

1) The amount of lore in 5E books has been steadily declining, particularly recently. This obviously has nothing to do with "streamlining", because we're not seeing elegantly streamlined, well-summarized lore. The writing is no better than previous editions, no more streamlined, no better summarized. There's just less of it.

2) 5E's non-MtG-derived lore has, I would suggest, more often been self-contradictory than previous editions.

3) There's the issue of the value of MtG settings. Most of them have lore fundamentally incompatible with D&D, which has to be worked and hammered into shape to try and achieve some level of compatibility. The success with which this has been achieved is debatable, but certainly a huge amount of 5E's "lore/setting" output, particularly by page/word count, has been dedicated to recapitulating Magic: The Gathering lore, rather than adding new D&D-specific lore, or recapitulating/updating D&D lore.

4) In part due to the objectively decreasing page-counts and word-counts dedicated to lore/settings (whilst the page-counts for monsters and adventures increase), even within supposed setting-books, a lot of 5E lore is simply very shallow/cursory.

5) There's also been an issue where lore-writing has been fundamentally ill-conceived, in part due to 5E starting out as an "Apology Edition" designed to regain grogs, before realizing maybe that wasn't such a great idea and having to engage in a fair amount of retcon within the edition. I don't think any edition has actually had to do that before.

6) Compared to all previous editions, 5E has been severely lacking in terms of "original" lore. Virtually all of 5E's lore has either been from Magic: The Gathering (which again, is not highly compatible with D&D, lore-wise), or from earlier editions. 1E and 2E added a ton to D&D lore/settings, for better or worse, because they originated tons of settings and lore. 3E at least added Eberron and a bunch of races and their associated lore. 4E completely redid a lot of D&D's fundamental lore (and featured classes which were more lore-heavy than 5E's ones, I'd suggest), and many of those changes found their way into 5E. This obviously may change. We've been told 5E is going to have 1-2 original settings in the next 1-2 years. But we've also been told that it simply might not, and we've been given the impression that WotC has cancelled at least one, possible multiple original 5E settings.

None of this is a disaster.

But the OP is flatly right, objectively. 5E is a "Silver Age" rather than a "Golden Age" in terms of lore. I came in ready to disagree with the OP, note, but unfortunately they are simply correct. Attempts to say "Oh it's all subjective!!!" fail because well, it isn't all subjective. There are some facts involved, and even where subjectivity is involved, subjectivity doesn't negate or invalidate criticism. It's not a magic shield you can hide behind. Especially not if you don't actually provide an alternative to the criticism. Merely saying "subjectivity" is in fact a non-argument. It's the prelude to an argument. If you don't actually provide said argument, though, you're just raising your hands for the orchestra to play, then running out of the building trailing music sheets!

5E or 5.5E/6E could easily redeem itself here. Turn around the increasing tendency for setting books to not actually have much setting in them (which is reaching a shocking new low with Spelljammer only managing 64 pages of lore/setting & rules combined), and add a couple of actually-novel and cool (even if niche) 5E settings, and we could easily say 5E was the best edition lore-wise since 2E.

Will that happen though? It already looks like they're gearing up to gut Planescape, based on the most recent UA, and to go for the unintended (if we believe Monte) disaster that was his post-Faction War-take on Sigil. That's not a good sign.

 

[DarkCrisis]

Who killed Gorion?

Sarevok.

What can change the nature of a man?

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think some of overestimate the value of lore for most people. Having a lot of details is cool for some, but I think the majority are far more casual. Do we have a general picture,? Maybe a map and the big picture? That can be preferable to hundreds of pages of coma inducing lore that can have the adverse effect of making DMs feel like they can't make the setting their own.

Sometimes broad brushstrokes and a light touch is preferable.

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.

 

[MNblockhead]

I think any lore should be in separate setting guides, like SCAG, Ravnica, Eberron, etc. and kept to a bare minimum in core books.

Lore heave systems turn me away. I don't want to deal with the weight of canon when I run games. This allergic reaction to canon has kept me from buying and trying to run TTRPGs based on Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, etc. Yeah, you can use what you want and throw out/change anything you want, but that isn't the general expectation of players who, generally, want to play in such settings because they know and enjoy the lore. I'll happy play in those games as a player, but I just don't want to have to turn my game prep as a DM into a fantasy-history homework on top of everything else.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I think any lore should be in separate setting guides, like SCAG, Ravnica, Eberron, etc. and kept to a bare minimum in core books.

Lore heave systems turn me away. I don't want to deal with the weight of canon when I run games. This allergic reaction to canon has kept me from buying and trying to run TTRPGs based on Star Trek, Star Wars, Doctor Who, Lord of the Rings, etc. Yeah, you can use what you want and throw out/change anything you want, but that isn't the general expectation of players who, generally, want to play in such settings because they know and enjoy the lore. I'll happy play in those games as a player, but I just don't want to have to turn my game prep as a DM into a fantasy-history homework on top of everything else.

Definitely agree re: setting guides and not core books.

The issue 5E has is how poor a number of the setting guides are as setting guides (not all of them to be clear, some are pretty great), and how it seems to be getting worse (though perhaps that is a blip).

Also, by mentioning LotR/Star Trek/Star Wars etc. you remind us that these are actually pretty successful as RPG settings, and indeed that licensed settings from stuff with fairly heavy lore are pretty popular, so I feel like 5E is doing itself and its players a disservice by having no apparent strategy re: lore and just seeming to be almost randomly putting out setting information. I think a more ideal situation for 5E would have been to give players a choice of lore-light and lore-heavy official settings and to actually reason why certain settings were lore-heavy or lore-light, as well as to produce stuff which was a bit more tightly designed. SCAG is a particularly sad example. On one level maybe I shouldn't fault it too much because early-edition books can be hard to do, on the other hand, 2E had amazing setting/lore-work coming right out the gate (c.f. Taladas, for example). But SCAG is a poor resource on a number of levels, and is particularly bad because it's neither fish nor fowl, in that it's an incredibly cursory guide to the FR, but also doesn't really cover the Sword Coast in the kind of detail you might expect from a Sword Coast focused book. Picking a lane would have been better, but I think a Sword Coast focus was sacrificed because WotC thought the blowback from setting 5E in the FR (essentially) but not having coverage of the great FR setting might have been a problem.

 

[Scott Christian]

I think some of overestimate the value of lore for most people. Having a lot of details is cool for some, but I think the majority are far more casual. Do we have a general picture,? Maybe a map and the big picture? That can be preferable to hundreds of pages of coma inducing lore that can have the adverse effect of making DMs feel like they can't make the setting their own.

Sometimes broad brushstrokes and a light touch is preferable.

This.
Lore matters to a few. To most, from what I have seen in public spaces, means very little. If allowed, lobster people, anime heroes, and devil touched are just as popular player choices as elves, dwarves, and halflings. The former of which have no real lore.

 

[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.

If people want lore, there's plenty of options between old publications, DmsGuild and the FR wiki. Whether there "should" be more is personal opinion or whether a lighter touch is "hideous" is personal opinion. Personally? I disagree. Get too much lore and you run into the issue that there's no room for DMs to fill in the blanks to make it their own. It also leads to DMs feeling like they have to provide that much detail if they create their own setting. That and there will frequently be that one person at the table that will correct the DM because the proprietor of the Stinky Feet Tavern & Inn is really a one eyed tiefling named Brazzit who is secretly a member of the purple cloak gang that has a limp. The DM didn't include the limp and said they were missing their left eye instead of their right, which is a major continuity issue which must be corrected post haste! Oh, and their PC obviously knows about their super secret affiliation.

Obviously I'm exaggerating a teensy bit on that last part, but I think there's a middle ground. Where that middle ground should be is something I'm not going to speculate on, all I can say is that I don't need or want a 200 page book of lore. It sounds cool, but keeping it all straight, adding value with it all? Not easy. A publication like the CR based ones have the advantage of having the creator of the world actively involved and a clean slate but even then I think it's a niche market in a niche hobby.

 

[Helldritch]

Sure, lore in 5ed is a bit shallow on the abysmal side. But...

1) Lore has been and still is available on wiki. Especially Realm lore. I suspect that the wiki for the Realm is as big if not bigger than LoTR and probably on par with GH and DL.

2) Old books are still available to buy from DMGuild. Believe it or not, it can be cheap to buy and print yourself. The PDFs won't go away. Maps, however, are another matter entirely.

3) New lore is not necessarily good. At least the MTG (until Strixhaven) had been consistently good.

4) The main point of a setting is to explain itself. I think that for the moment, they are well understood by the majority. What people want, is adaptation of old settings to the new edition. But which setting(s) should be adapted is open for very heated debates as everyone have their preferences. Ultimately, adaptations would be fun, but hardly a must. Even I, a proponent for the adaptation of GH, would not mind a simple buy of maps. If they could offer print on demand maps of their "old" setting, I would buy some right now (mine are showing their age).

5) What do we truly want? Settings or more adventures and source books? Of that most people will agree that adventures and source books (such as new MMs) are what people want.

 

[Oofta]

This.
Lore matters to a few. To most, from what I have seen in public spaces, means very little. If allowed, lobster people, anime heroes, and devil touched are just as popular player choices as elves, dwarves, and halflings. The former of which have no real lore.

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.