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

 

[JEB]

I don't remember Astral Elves being in Spelljammer, and those sound very planar to me. I tend to think it will be more of a Planejammer setting.

I think someone else on the forums first suggested this, but the Astral Elves could have just been a sneaky way to playtest their new trance mechanic for elves. I wouldn't necessarily take that as evidence of an Astral focus for 5E Spelljammer.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Both Teleport and Plane Shift are 7th level spells - and you need to know something about where you're teleporting to. I don't see this as a meaningful difference in difficulty.

I am amused at the fact that you ignored the rest of the post, including the fact that in D&D, getting information about other worlds is totally doable, and so getting a teleportation circle sequence is more likely to even be possible at all, than acquiring a physical object from a world in a wholly separate cosmology from your own, that no one in your entire cosmology, even the gods, is likely to have ever been to.

Accusations of nit picking aren't a valid response in reply to a rebuttal that destroys one of your claimed premises.

Also it’s funny that you think your pedantic snipe “destroyed” any part of my explanation to someone of why different cosmological models have practical impacts on the game.

 

[Maxperson]

I think someone else on the forums first suggested this, but the Astral Elves could have just been a sneaky way to playtest their new trance mechanic for elves. I wouldn't necessarily take that as evidence of an Astral focus for 5E Spelljammer.

I prefer to go with Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is that they aren't being super tricky and that the Astral Elves, along with their current multiverse push, means that Planejammer is likely coming.

 

[JEB]

I prefer to go with Occam's Razor. The simplest explanation is that they aren't being super tricky and that the Astral Elves, along with their current multiverse push, means that Planejammer is likely coming.

Fair enough, but keep in mind the "Hobgoblin of the Feywild" from UA became just "Hobgoblin"...

 

[ChaosOS]

I think someone else on the forums first suggested this, but the Astral Elves could have just been a sneaky way to playtest their new trance mechanic for elves. I wouldn't necessarily take that as evidence of an Astral focus for 5E Spelljammer.

Print schedule doesn't make sense. MotM went to print before Witchlight, and thus far before the UA.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

The current buy-in for the core game is $150, which gets you enough lore material to run many campaigns. If the core rules now cut that lore down to a minimum, you're getting vastly less material for the same cost. Then you have to add a minimum of one setting book for $50 more to get the same amount of material you originally got for $150. And if you don't like that lore, you have to go buy more $50 setting books... or you're left to your own devices.

As for the "cheap" argument: $50 books add up in a hurry for someone on a limited budget. Let's not just think about the wealthy when we consider these decisions.

I would agree with you, if you actually got less for 50 bucks. Which could be possible, because everything is more expensive today than 10 years ago. But what I expect is that you get more core material instead of the fluff left out. So no, you won't get less. Some people might say you actually get more. But that is all personal preference.
Still: 200 bucks will make 4 to 6 (average 5) people happy for 10 years. This is still only 4 dollar per person per year.
I still don't see how that is an expensive hobby by any standards.

 

[JEB]

Print schedule doesn't make sense. MotM went to print before Witchlight, and thus far before the UA.

True, so that does rule out a test for Trance. It doesn't rule out a test for something other than an "Astral" Elf, though. But I guess we'll see.

 

[JEB]

I would agree with you, if you actually got less for 50 bucks. Which could be possible, because everything is more expensive today than 10 years ago. But what I expect is that you get more core material instead of the fluff left out. So no, you won't get less. Some people might say you actually get more. But that is all personal preference.

If the amount of lore is reduced by half or more, and not replaced with new lore options, what are you getting more of?

 

[UngeheuerLich]

If the amount of lore is reduced by half or more, and not replaced with new lore options, what are you getting more of?

Mechanics. Rules. More races/classes. (As I already wrote in the post before).
In the worst case art. (Which can tell you more than words).
Or do you think they fill it up with whitespace?







Do you really think so?

 

[Azzy]

If the amount of lore is reduced by half or more, and not replaced with new lore options, what are you getting more of?

There's an assumption about a reduction in lore, but it seems to be based on tenuous evidence. Mordy Presents has less lore, yes. But that's because you can't fit every race and monster from both Volo's and Mordenkainen's and include lots of fluff, too. So, is there any actual solid evidence that the 50Ae PHB, et al. and everything from here on out are actually going to have reduced lore or is this just more sky is falling crap?