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

 

[Zaukrie]

Very much agree with the idea that this is counter productive. I suppose it makes some level of sense from a branding perspective, but it's a terrible choice in terms of storytelling.

A "multiverse" cosmology can provide an expansion of storytelling possibilities when starting from a single setting baseline. Combining existing settings into such a framework, though, does the opposite, reducing independent and unique settings to mere subparts of a single setting. This is especially important in D&D where differences in cosmology (and degree of certainty about such cosmology) can be some of the key features distinguishing settings from one another.

I read it 180 degrees from you two. Saying this means that there are worlds where goblins are like X, some like Y and some like Z. That implies that they can be like 1987320 also.....before, there was "only one" type of goblin (not true, see Eberron)......

I mean, we have worlds from WotC with different cosmologies already, I really don't understand this post.

 

[Jer]

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.

My hope for all existing campaign settings right now is:

• Release a 5e version.
• Open them up on DM's Guild.

They can step back and never touch them again after that and I'd be perfectly happy. The creators who are passionate about them will support them.

Arguably they don't need the 5e version, they could just open them up for publishing on DM's Guild and I'd be happy. But Wizards doesn't seem to want to work that way so bring on the 5e version of the remaining settings and let's get this ball rolling...

 

[darjr]

Another video focusing on changes to the player Race options:

Note the comment about how long ago they made this book.

 

[Morrus]

I'll say it plainer then.

It being 66 paragraphs doesn't mean anything. You said it like it was a lot of text, but it isn't. I'm not commenting on if the 2 paragraph model is good or not, but you basically tried to spin it into being a lot of text, when it isn't.

You clearly care deeply about this particular topic. I'm afraid I'm not invested enough to argue about it.

 

[Mistwell]

I love how WOTC appears to be drifting more and more towards enfolding more settings in the unified lore.

IE the odds of any particular setting seeing some level of support, like Greyhawk, increase the more it can "fit" into a multiverse perspective.

 

[Shardstone]

You clearly care deeply about this particular topic. I'm afraid I'm not invested enough to argue about it.

Its not that I care a lot, I was trying to be clear. Do you enjoy quoting people and riling them up or something? I don't know why you're responding to me with so much hostility for. Quite frankly, it feels like you just bullied me and ran away by doing this.

 

[Von Ether]

The tealeaves suggest that straight, gonzo Spelljammer is incoming.

Hmmm. I think it's going to be a partial Spelljamer with the gonzo coming more from 'jammers being planar-style craft (planeships? planejammers? Spellplanes?) than brining back crystal spheres and all that.

 

[Parmandur]

Note the comment about how long ago they made this book.

Yeah, and that makes sense given that all of the books since Theros (which came out about the time he says they were writing this) follow the same monster and race formstting.

 

[Parmandur]

Hmmm. I think it's going to be a partial Spelljamer with the gonzo coming more from 'jammers being planar-style craft (planeships? planejammers? Spellplanes?) than brining back crystal spheres and all that.

I see no partireason to suspect that Crystal spheres wouldn't be involved, since they are already a thing in 5E.

 

[Jer]

Another video focusing on changes to the player Race options:

Not just that - Crawford states in the video that Ability Score Adjustments at character creation is no longer a part of the choice of race - Ability Score Adjustments are now a part of assigning ability scores. That's a shift that I was expecting, but I didn't realize it was in this book (I figured it would be in whatever they're planning for the anniversary release).