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

 

[Argyle King]

Must have been the second video about PC races they put out today with that info then. They specifically talk about stripping culture out and putting in only the basics of the race, leaving culture to the setting and/or DMs.

That very well could be.

Honestly, other than the few things which pop up here on Enworld, I haven't followed much else.

As I understand it, the entire game is getting an overhaul which will be out in a few years.

What's being said today may no longer be true then.

 

[overgeeked]

That very well could be.

Honestly, other than the few things which pop up here on Enworld, I haven't followed much else.

As I understand it, the entire game is getting an overhaul which will be out in a few years.

What's being said today may no longer be true then.

Though if they stick with their pledge of backward compatibility, this is what it will look like going forward. I mean…why revise and reprint this stuff if they’re going to make it obsolete in two years. I’m cynical, but not that cynical.

Here’s the other video I mentioned.

 

[overgeeked]

Yup. I’ve already told group if/when I DM again it’s AD&D or nothing. Someone else can run 5E if they want. I’ll play it but I’m done running it

Yeah. That’s tough. We played AD&D up until 4E so the draw for 1E is definitely there. Since we skipped 2E it still has that new and different allure. But there’s all those clones. OSE. Ugh. Spoiled for choice.

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Yeah. That’s tough. We played AD&D up until 4E so the draw for 1E is definitely there. Since we skipped 2E it still has that new and different allure. But there’s all those clones. OSE. Ugh. Spoiled for choice.

I played plenty of AD&D 1E and plenty of AD&D 2E and a good chunk that combined them together as we transitioned from one to the other.

 

[Argyle King]

Though if tgey stick with their pledge of backward compatibility, this is what it will look like going forward. I mean…why revise and reprint this stuff if they’re going to make it obsolete in two years. I’m cynical, but not that cynical.

Here’s the other video I mentioned.

It wouldn't be the first time.

What was the amount of time between Book of 9 Swords and 4th Edition?

...Essentials and 5th?

My memory is fuzzy, but I think 9 Swords was somewhere around 05-06; with 4E first hitting shelves in 2008.

Being "backwards compatible" is also something which is vaguely defined (for D&D) right now.

Does it mean that things can be converted, like can be done now between editions with some work?

Does it mean something more like how 4th Edition and Essentials were different but still sorta the same game?

Maybe that's explained in a video I haven't seen.

 

[Kurotowa]

Being "backwards compatible" is also something which is vaguely defined (for D&D) right now.

Does it mean that things can be converted, like can be done now between editions with some work?

My best guess is it means they won't change any of the core game mechanics; how skills and actions work, universal mechanics like spell concentration and conditions, how your proficiency bonus scales and interacts with other things. Basically, nothing that would change how older material is run.

What we will see is changes to the material that runs on those core mechanics. You know how Tasha's did a light patch job on some PHB classes with the bonus or alternative class features? Like that, but more so. You can run original flavor Warlocks and Monks, or you can play the 2024 version with the short rest dependency removed, but they're both running on the same game engine and you can even have both in the same campaign without rules conflict.

There will be no conversion because there's nothing to convert. Instead of a new game it'll be more of a DLC pack that offers a new set of options. And yeah, maybe finding a group willing to run an all original release campaign might be hard, because people love the newest version. Especially when it fixes a lot of their complaints. But it's a lot less invalidating than a whole new edition.

 

[Andrew Anderson]

a multiverse campaign/adventure path that takes you to very different worlds seems like fun.

D&D Sliders edition?

 

[Azzy]

I'm not a big fan of the multiversal approach, but as long as the lore and ruIes don't get in the way of how I play my elf games, I'm good.

 

[JEB]

So from the first video, I'm supposed to believe that:

a) Because they're trying to emphasize the wide array of options in the multiverse and open up story possibilities, they... stripped out all but a limited amount of lore rather than presenting a baseline alongside options reflecting different worlds?

b) They really wanted to include lore like the goblinoids' fey origin in earlier books, but it simply wasn't "appropriate" to do so at the time. Why, exactly, was it not "appropriate"? They were happy to alter gnolls' origins in 5E, what was different about goblins?

c) Their idea of "deep" lore is a paragraph or two per creature/species? What were the pages of lore in earlier books, then?

Now, don't get me wrong: I'm actually fine with the new goblin lore as described, since he's explained that it incorporates ideas from older lore rather than being completely out of nowhere. One hopes that the new lore for the others is similarly thoughtful and combines old with new. (This approval is based on it being reflected in the actual sourcebook text, however; is it?)

But honestly, I smell a lot of spin here. If they want me to believe that this is really just about selling "the multiverse" or opening up options, they need to demonstrate that in products. The "one or two paragraphs" approach isn't going to cut it, that's a bare minimum of material that will leave all but the most creative novice players and DMs largely on their own.

(Side question: How likely is it that there will be continued support for playing Maglubiyet's goblinoids, once 2024 edition hits and Volo's inevitably goes out of print?)

As for the second video...

That explanation for the new elf trance is neat! So, is it all reflected in the new lore? Or just the designers' justification for the new rules? (A mistake they made in early 4E is thinking that mechanics with fancy names are themselves inspirational, and require no lore backing. I still don't know what the banshrae's "mantid dance" was, for example.)

And again with the claims that they never intended ASIs to reflect characteristics of the races themselves. If they didn't, then why was applying ASIs part of the suggested way to reflect races in NPC stat blocks? And why did they even have fixed ASIs in the first place? (Seriously, Wizards, is it really so hard to admit you changed your mind?)

 

[Charlaquin]

If so, the video doesn't express that very well.

I'm of the impression that the "multiverse" itself is being approached as a setting (with whatever setting-specific approaches come with that). I think that's different.

The multiverse is a sort of meta-setting, in which all other settings exist as “worlds.” This has technically been the underlying assumption WotC’s writers have been operating under for all of 5e, they just haven’t been explicit about it until now. You can kind of see it in the PHB, in the way it casually drops references to elements from various D&D settings, or the way it talks about “the worlds of D&D.” That stuff isn’t them being setting-neutral, it’s them writing about D&D’s default setting, the multiverse.

They’ve gradually been getting more explicit about this since at least Tasha’s. For example, the spell Dream of the Blue Veil allows the caster to travel to a different “world,” which is to say a different setting. And you could say the First World stuff first teased in Tasha’s and later expanded upon in Fizban’s is one of the first pieces of setting lore we’ve gotten about the multiverse. Goblins being fae in origin is another, new piece of lore for the setting.