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

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Except that's not quite true, at least in book 3 of the Stormlight Archive series.

In all Sanderson's previous work that I'd read (Mistborn series, previous Stormlights), I hadn't really been aware of the "Cosmere" elements. What you are saying here was true in those books. The Cosmere didn't get in the way, or take centre-stage. It was simply something that informed the lore. Maybe you recognised a character-name or something but it wasn't huge.

In Book 3, Oathbringer, that changed. One of the main plots of the book, a very lengthy one, involving absolutely core characters to the story, completely revolves around Cosmere elements, and frankly, makes very little sense if you don't know the Cosmere stuff. Two characters are introduced, and immediately given major roles, who turn out to be from other universes, and I dunno if this was intentional or Sanderson just stuffed up, but he didn't manage to justify why they were so major or weave them into the book like he did with previous Cosmere stuff. Instead you have this long weird plotline where you're wondering what the heck is going on, and it basically seems to be a "Cosmere showcase". Once I learned and read about the Cosmere stuff, it made a lot more sense, but until then, it just seemed confusing, boring and weird. Not great.

But why do I mention this?

Because I think it's a concern with multiverse stuff generally, including potentially in D&D. It's not an inevitable problem, as Sanderson himself showed. He managed to weave previous stuff in well enough that I didn't notice or noticed in a "Hah, cute!" way and it wasn't disruptive or distracting, and I could read the books without needing to know anything about it.

That's how it should be, and I hope D&D 5E/DND2024 can keep it that way.

But I think with Sanderson's own example, we certainly have a warning that it can, in fact, go wrong. What Sanderson did with the plot in Oathbringer would be equivalent to say, a future, say, Dragonlance setting book deciding to devote like an entire chapter to spelljammers/Krynnspace and/or portals/planescape-y stuff, or worse, WotC deciding all future setting books had to have such a chapter. So let's hope that they manage to keep it as something optional, like earlier Sanderson, not jam it in as a big deal, like Oathbringer.

I read Words of Radiance and Oathbringer before reading Warbreaker, and while those sections of the books definitely do make more sense after reading Warbreaker, I wouldn't say that it's necessary to the plotline.

I do agree that there is a pitfall in this style of writing, but D&D is far less prone to these types of problems than the Cosmere or other shared universes are. Unless a setting-specific book explicitly states "buy this other book in order to use this part of the book" (which hasn't happened in any 5e book), there's really no problem.

My point still stands. Your (general your) campaign's stories and worlds are not invalidated by a D&D Multiverse.

 

[RoughCoronet0]

Honestly all this talk of multiverses just makes me wish they would release more high level content and creatures so you can have big multi-world adventures and galactic level conflicts and the ability to battle world destroyers.

Am I to assume that is what Planescape and Spelljammer would entail (I know a bit about both settings but not much)?

 

[Azzy]

Are there changes to the PHB and DMG included in the box set?

No.

Are the races in the PHB treated the same way as those in the Monsters of the Multiverse? or will that come with the next edition?

The best guess is that will come with the next edition.

 

[Azzy]

WotC made a billion in profits, they don't need to increase prices.

Those CEO's yachts aren't going to buy themselves. Expecting a corporation to do something other than maximize its profit is setting oneself up for disappointment.

 

[Azzy]

I find it humorous that every update/change to D&D in the future is automatically considered "better than before" by all the diehard loyalists or the new people.

That cuts both ways, though. As someone that thinks the changes aren't really as big as anyone else is making them out to be and that the sky isn't falling (and there's a lot of people that are letting their imaginations run wild in regards to some of these changes—for good or ill), it's rather frustrating.

Newsflash, not every progress is a step forward. There's so many aspects of D&D 5e that's worse than previous editions.

Correction, not every change is a step forward. Progress generally infers positive change. Worse is in the eye of the beholder, as it were. IMO, 5e is not perfect (I can nitpick it to death), but it's the best D&D has ever been (as a whole). It's certainly what 3e should have been. Could use some improvement, sure. Are the incoming changes all improvements? Nope. Are the majority of the incoming changes really as big as everyone is making them out to be? Nope.

I'm just waiting for the day the DMs Guild finally allows content creators to write books of other editions. At least Paizo was smart and allowed Pathfinder Infinite to allow creators to write either 1e or 2e products.

That way everyone is happy playing in their own editions and edition lore and also receiving new content for their edition. And WotC makes an even larger profit

Newsflash! Hasbro is an evil megacorp. And water is wet.

 

[CleverNickName]

Newsflash! Hasbro is an evil megacorp. And water is wet.

Are they, though?

I mean yeah, sure, "no ethical consumption under Capitalism" and all that, but are they any more or less evil than, say, Fisher-Price or Barbie?

 

[Parmandur]

Are they, though?

I mean yeah, sure, "no ethical consumption under Capitalism" and all that, but are they any more or less evil than, say, Fisher-Price or Barbie?

They are less evil than most, according to corporate ethics watch dogs. Heck, they win awards for corporate ethical behavior.

 

[Amrûnril]

This is from 2e’s Complete Book of Elves (1992):

View attachment 150940

EDIT: As an aside, I didn’t realise that Taladas had been part of the DL setting so early on. I had previously thought it was a 3e addition.

Multiverse considerations aside, as a biologist, that figure is just painful.

• If the elves of Ravenloft and Spelljammer come "from all worlds", why are they shown as independent branches from the "Nomadic High Elves" common ancestor?
• Among the other settings, why is there no attempt to assemble an actual tree structure instead of drawing a separate line for each one?
• In Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms, which branch points among the populations are intended to be nested, and which are intended as 3+ way branch points like the base of the tree?

I get that there are complications introduced by working with a) fantasy settings and b) populations that may still be capable of interbreeding. But this doesn't look like someone made deliberate alterations to a cladogram for specific purposes. It looks like someone tried to draw a cladogram without understanding how a cladogram actually works.

 

[Azzy]

Are they, though?

I mean yeah, sure, "no ethical consumption under Capitalism" and all that, but are they any more or less evil than, say, Fisher-Price or Barbie?

I mean, they're not General Dynamics, Lockheed-Martin, etc..... but I think you know what I mean.

 

[Faolyn]

The elven imperial fleet were just elves. They weren't even Mithril(star) Elves, which had nothing to do with actual stars and were instead from a twilight area of the Feywild. They certainly weren't Astral Elves.

In fact, they were specifically Gray/High elves.