D&D 5E D&D Lore Changes: Multiversal Focus & Fey Goblins of Prehistory

WotC's Jeremy Crawford revealed a couple of the lore changes in Monsters of the Multiverse.

• The big shift is toward the multiverse as the game's main perspective rather than a specific setting. The game is shifting towards a multiversal focus, with a variety of worlds and settings.
• Universe-spanning mythical story beats, such as deep lore on goblinoids going back to 1st Edition, and the gods they had before Maglubiyet. Prior to Magulbiyet unifying them, goblinoids were folk of the feywild in keeping with 'real-world' folklore.
• Changelings aren't just Eberron, but they've been everywhere -- you just don't necessarily know it. Their origin is also in the realm of the fey.

D&D 5E - A Compilation of all the Race Changes in Monsters of the Multiverse

Over on Reddit, user KingJackel went through the video leak which came out a few days ago and manually compiled a list of all the changes to races in the book. The changes are quite extensive, with only the fairy and harengon remaining unchanged. The book contains 33 races in total, compiled and...

www.enworld.org

 

[Parmandur]

The thri-kreen they listed were almost certainly supposed to be the xichil, a Spelljammer mantid race of extreme body-modders and transhumanists (transmantidists?). But people who haven't been exposed to Spelljammer would be confused at the inclusion of the xichil if they weren't called thri-kreen.

True, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it was a stealth test for Dark Sun, but time will tell.

 

[Weiley31]

Keith Baker still publishes original Eberron material on DMs Guild. I have a physical copy of Exploring Eberron, it's easily the best 5e setting book made thus far. If you want to support a creator that's actually passionate for their setting and a highly talented game designer I'd suggest trying out some of the stuff he's made for the system.

It's a great book. I have a physical copy too. And I love Baker's blog entries on various things as well. Thanks to those, I have lore I can use for 5E playable Gnolls from Exploring Eberron. And now due to a recent article, I learned about how I can have Lawful Good Yuan-Ti in my 5E Forgotten Realms via the Shulassakar

 

[Bayushi_seikuro]

If it was not the last book in whatever deal CR has with WotC, wouldn't Tal'Dorei Reborn have been published by WotC also?

I figured it had to do with any kind of legal deal CR had with Green Ronin when they released Tal'dorei originally, and this is an updated version.

 

[humble minion]

I rather hate this whole multiversal focus. TSR did it in 2e and it sucked then too. You end up with random poorly-suited bits of setting A shoehorned into setting B for the sake of 'crossover easter egg OMG', and you dilute the uniqueness and flavour of every setting. The Feywild is simply a bad fit in Athas and shouldn't be there, for instance - and neither do planes-travelling multiversal great wyrm dragons, any more than they fit in Krynn. We've continually heard from WotC that most campaigns don't make it past the level 10 mark or so, and at that point gameplay is still very local. So why the obsessive multiversal focus, given it'll only start to matter at high levels once Plane Shift etc comes into play? But the mega crossover always a popular angle with the sort of manager who hears the words 'synergy', 'leverage' and 'cross-promotion' and salivates like Pavlov's dog, and who refers to settings as 'properties' rather than 'settings'.

Plus, not every world SHOULD be in a multiverse. It always dilutes a big epic 'save the world' campaign when at some point the PCs just casually bop over to Sigil and everyone there is 'what, you're on a quest to save your tiny insignificant Prime world from a local Dark Lord, yaaaawn, big deal, there's an infinite number of other Prime worlds where that came from, and besides, the Outer Planes are where the action is anyway'.

Yeah, i hate this. It was a bad idea when TSR did it, and it's a bad idea now. The devs should know better, but I guess when you have the sort of staff turnover that WotC seems to, learning from the past is a bit hard.

 

[Faolyn]

True, but it also wouldn't surprise me if it was a stealth test for Dark Sun, but time will tell.

Sure. They may have subraces, or it just might be different cultures for each of those settings.

 

[Parmandur]

Yeah, i hate this. It was a bad idea when TSR did it, and it's a bad idea now. The devs should know better, but I guess when you have the sort of staff turnover that WotC seems to, learning from the past is a bit hard.

Whether this is a good idea or bad seems a matter of taste, but...what turnover? The D&D team has been extremely stable for the past decade, and the designer of the next Setting book has been there for 25 years.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Every single setting in D&D has been connected to every single other setting since the very beginning. The Multiverse is just naming what's already been here.

That's why every single setting has the exact same Classes... every single setting has predominantly the exact same Races, all of which have the exact same abilities and the exact same focus on what those Races do and behave and believe... the settings all have the exact same spells that are called the exact same names that produce the exact same results... they all have the exact same types of monsters that all have the same skills and the same combat abilities and almost always the same basic lore... every setting has predominantly the exact same magic items that have the exact same names and do the exact same functions... they all produce the same types of combat, with weapons that do the exact same damage and combat abilities that all are triggered the exact same way and have the same back-and-forth action that results in people falling down and dying in the exact same manner... they almost all have the exact same types of planes and names of planes and alignments to those planes and extraplanar beings * in * those planes... so on and so forth.

When we look at all our games through the prism of how much of our stuff matches what is and what is happening in every other D&D game out there... every single world both published and created by every one of us is practically a mirror image of each other. Why? Because we all are using the exact same books and the exact same rulesets to produce the exact same game experiences. Like it or not, all our worlds and games are connected because we are all using and playing D&D.

And thus the designers calling that phenomenon the "D&D Multiverse" is just identifying it for what it already is.

 

[Scribe]

And thus the designers calling that phenomenon the "D&D Multiverse" is just identifying it for what it already is.

I believe there is a difference in intent, or feel, in having a baseline for mechanical reasons, applied across multiple settings, and an interconnected, 'multiverse' approach, where an Elf in Setting A, could go and visit Setting B, and be perplexed at how backward it appears in relation to its own Setting.

I hope for the sake of the well (singular, sadly) supported distinct setting (Eberron) that it remains unimpacted by what appears to be a change at a high level.

 

[overgeeked]

I wasn't complaining, but please Morrus, you are smarter than that. Two small paragraphs that are generic is not what that person, or what other people who want lore, are asking for. Adding it all up and saying there's a lot of text is a meaningless gesture and only serves to invalidate the desires of other people. This doesn't mean their desires are worth more, and isn't a commentary on the text in question, but what you replied with me was basically like trying to use a loophole to proven argument.

So...stereotypical gamer behavior.

 

[overgeeked]

The tealeaves suggest that straight, gonzo Spelljammer is incoming.

We can only hope. Oh my stars.