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

[CapnZapp]

I happen to be dyslexic. You think dyslexic people shouldn't be allowed to be dungeon masters?

This attempt at creating controversy and making me out to get you is completely fabricated. Please take your outrage and stick it somewhere else.

You wrote "walls of text and piles of useless statistics" which frankly is dismissive to the efforts of all those 2E and 3E authors, not giving any inkling towards any personal condition. I replied, providing an explanation why people wrote all those words and came up with all those numbers. Just crapping on their efforts and surfing to youtube or whatever just wasn't an option back then.

This is not about you.

 

[Paul Farquhar]

This attempt at creating controversy and making me out to get you is completely fabricated.

No, you are out to get a whole category of players who might find it difficult to access information in a text format.

walls of text

Walls of text are particularly hostile for dyslexics.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I could be off the mark here, but you do realize people want to be given suggestions as to why monsters are evil and monstrous?

They're not misunderstood, they're not mistreated, they don't do it for logical or forgivable reasons, they're not redeemable; they're simply ugly, horrible, smelly and in need of a good killin'

Whose a better villain, Lex Luthor, The Joker, or Hillbilly Bob the big ugly smelly guy?

I get that there should be some enemies like this, but... seriously, I think most under CR 8 humanoid monsters are disgusting or ugly in some manner. Trolls, orcs, gnolls, goblins, ogres, hill giants (which are frankly identical to ogres), ettins, cyclops, Fomorians, Bugbears, grimlocks, troglodytes, jackalwere, wererat, Meazel, ect ect ect

Honestly, take the Ogre, The Cyclops, The Ettin, the Hill Giant and the Troll. All of them are big and strong. All of them are ugly and stinky. The Troll is the most interesting one because it regenerates, lives in the most interesting environment (not a cave like all the others) and has variants. The Hill Giant and Ogre are identical looking except one is bigger and stronger. Cyclops are exactly like ogres only with one eye. Ettins are exactly like Ogres except two-heads. It just feels.... like if they tried to introduce another large sized, strong creature that is stupid, ugly and smelly, what would be the point, we've farmed that ground to death. There is nothing left here. Move on.

 

[Chaosmancer]

This attempt at creating controversy and making me out to get you is completely fabricated. Please take your outrage and stick it somewhere else.

You wrote "walls of text and piles of useless statistics" which frankly is dismissive to the efforts of all those 2E and 3E authors, not giving any inkling towards any personal condition. I replied, providing an explanation why people wrote all those words and came up with all those numbers. Just crapping on their efforts and surfing to youtube or whatever just wasn't an option back then.

This is not about you.

You are right, Youtube wasn't an option back then.

But this? "with a large influx of less hardcore gamers." This is equally dismissive and reeks of gatekeeping to me. Just because the information is being accessed differently doesn't make them less "hardcore" (Do you know how many DAYS of videos there are on DnD lore? Not hours, DAYS). Just because they have different priorities doesn't make them less "hardcore"

Frankly, the idea of "hardcore" vs "casual" gamers annoys the crap out of me. Just because you spent two hours reading all the lore you could get for Silverymoon doesn't make you more hardcore than the person who spent five hours drawing and designing their DnD character, because they are artistic instead of lore focused.

Some of my most troublesome players have been "hardcore" DnD players, and they were a pain in the neck to deal with compared to the "casuals" who weren't bugging me about this custom homebrew class that they can take that ties into the lore of city of blank and allows them when they take the yadda yadda yadda.

 

[Hussar]

Rolling this back around to the idea of golden age lore. It’s interesting to me that people would go to YouTube to learn lore. Very much not my bag. I just don’t learn that way and I’m endlessly frustrated by product developers who think a twenty minute YouTube video is a replacement for proper documentation that is SEARCHABLE!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

But in any case, I look at things like the Spell Plague combined with the real world rise of searchable wikis and whatnot as the primary reason I have finally started getting into FR. To me, for years I just bounced off the massive opaque bubble that was FR lore. Massive info dumps buried across multiple products with no indexes or proper references? Bugger that.

Now? Now I can actually dumpster dive into the lore, chasing down all sorts of stuff without faffing around with all this extraneous information that I will never use.

That’s golden age enough for me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Rolling this back around to the idea of golden age lore. It’s interesting to me that people would go to YouTube to learn lore. Very much not my bag. I just don’t learn that way and I’m endlessly frustrated by product developers who think a twenty minute YouTube video is a replacement for proper documentation that is SEARCHABLE!!!!!!!!!!!

That's fair. For me, it is mostly so I can passively learn about new subjects while driving or grocery shopping. Then if I want to hit something deeper, I start using the wikis and search engines to find what I want.

 

[Parmandur]

Rolling this back around to the idea of golden age lore. It’s interesting to me that people would go to YouTube to learn lore. Very much not my bag. I just don’t learn that way and I’m endlessly frustrated by product developers who think a twenty minute YouTube video is a replacement for proper documentation that is SEARCHABLE!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry. I’ll get off my soapbox now.

But in any case, I look at things like the Spell Plague combined with the real world rise of searchable wikis and whatnot as the primary reason I have finally started getting into FR. To me, for years I just bounced off the massive opaque bubble that was FR lore. Massive info dumps buried across multiple products with no indexes or proper references? Bugger that.

Now? Now I can actually dumpster dive into the lore, chasing down all sorts of stuff without faffing around with all this extraneous information that I will never use.

That’s golden age enough for me.

To be fair to the OP, the intention was to talk about a golden age of production of new lore. But the situation you describe does explain why 5E simply cannot take a 2E style high-quantity approach: it would be competing directly with 2E stuff posted for free on fan wiki. Fool's errand.

But that doesn't mean what is being put out in books like Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel or what have you isn't still quality.

 

[Hussar]

Oh, absolutely. I mean, look at Candlekeep Mysteries. There's a TON of FR specific lore there. Lots of stuff to delve into. And, as an added bonus, it's actually in a usable form, rather than pages of info dump that I then have to figure out how to turn into an actual adventure.

I mentioned the Cloister of St. Ramedar as an example. The 2e writeup is thorough as heck, but, it's not an adventure. It's just the location and a couple of stat blocks. Sure there's a couple of adventure hooks, but, if I actually want to use it as a location for my adventure, I have to do almost all the actual work to make that into an adventure.

I much prefer they simply present us with complete adventures. Funny thing is, this totally isn't new. Greyhawk was presented almost entirely this way. Sure, you have the Boxed Set, but, 99% of the actual lore for Greyhawk comes from the adventures and monster books.

There's a reason Paizo's Adventure Path series are so popular. It hits both aspects so well. Well written, interesting adventures (hey, let's be fair, Paizo does set the standard for D&D adventures and has done so for a VERY long time) coupled to big chunks of setting lore. It's really the best of both worlds.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Mod Note:

Hook baited

If you couldn't handle this, you simply weren't a D&D dungeon master.

Bait taken

Gatekeeper much?

Zapp, you made a very gatekeepery, personally denigrating comment, and got called on it. Have a permanent holiday from the thread.

Paul, your displeasure is justified, but next time, just report stuff like this,