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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ibrandul" data-source="post: 8127612" data-attributes="member: 6871736">D'oh! Yes, typo. Fixed.Lore: sure. My standard examples of 5e lore-fidelity come from the first two adventures from 5e:- Lost Mine of Phandelver. This whole adventure is heavily based around on info from Volo's Guide to the North. Everything in that module is based on prior lore. Wave Echo Cave, Phandalin, Conyberry, Old Owl Well, etc. It's all very true to what these places could look like in the late 15th century DR. Every one of them is described in that older book, and to my memory nothing from the older lore is contradicted.- Tyranny of Dragons. I've seen so many people complain about how this adventure tramples on lore regarding the Cult of the Dragon. The complaint runs like this: WotC wanted an adventure focused on Tiamat because of the cartoon, so they should have used the Church of Tiamat, but "Cult of the Dragon" just sounded cooler so, even though the Cult is dedicated to creating dracoliches and has nothing to do with Tiamat, they just reinvented the Cult to be like the Church, out of nowhere.But ToD is actually based around the idea that the Church of Tiamat has successfully infiltrated the Cult of the Dragon, which was previously a loose network of independent cells united in goals and doctrine but not in leadership; the Church has transformed the Cult's dogma and unified the Cult. There's a whole aspect of that campaign about how old-schoolers from the dracolich-oriented days aren't entirely committed to the current Tiamat-oriented leadership and doctrines, and the party can potentially turn some of those older cultists against the new ones.And this isn't at all out of nowhere but is actually set up perfectly in the older lore. Here's a passage from Cult of the Dragon (1998, p. 61–62; 1370 DR):"The Church of Tiamat, little known in the western Realms, venerates (Tiamat). . . . The Time of Troubles convinced Tiamat that she had to quickly acquire greatly increased power if her presence in the Realms was to survive the collapse of the Untheric pantheon. The Cult of the Dragon, composed of powerful but godless cultists predisposed to worship dragons, was just too tempting a target for the Dragon Queen to resist absorbing into her faith. The Dark Lady (an alias of Tiamat) expects strong resistance from the more powerful Cult cells' leaders, but she feels that the fractious nature of the Cult actually plays into her plan. She can conquer the smaller cells easily enough, she feels, most often from within by proselytizing to the Cult members. Then, with numerous cells under her wings and the benefits additional worshippers give her, she can overcome the powerful cells. . . . In the years since the Time of Troubles, Tiamat's faithful have begun to infiltrate and co-opt the Cult's vast network of followers. . . . Tiamat has been warmly received by a significant minority of the lesser-ranking, disillusioned Cultists and Cult supporters."Moreover, the whole Castle Naerytar section is a plausible development from lore presented in the 2e-era Dungeon magazine "Mere of Dead Men" adventure path. Etc. It's all quite consistent and respectful.- Another book that catches flak is Dungeon of the Mad Mage. For example, people complain that the Promenade of the Dark Maiden is gone from Level 3. I guess if you think that changing anything is disrespectful, then OK, sure. But this is addressed in two ways: first, it's explicitly said that this was destroyed, and that worshippers are rebuilding it elsewhere in the dungeon (the campaign book covers only a portion of each level, not the entire megadungeon, so this is happening "off-screen"); they also give themselves a lot of latitude (admittedly a little too much, perhaps) on things like this by making Undermountain a magically reshapeable place.But really, take a look at what they've done with the three levels from Ruins of Undermountain II; not only are they very plausible 100-years-later versions of those levels as presented in the earlier box set, they're also infinitely more usable, because in the earlier box set, maps of two of those levels were pervasively mislabeled and/or the descriptions simply don't match the rooms. But rather than toss out that garbled earlier lore, the 5e book tries to make sense of it and make it into something coherent.Contrast all this with things that happened in the supposedly halcyon lore days of 1e–2e. Take a look at a box set like The North—this material tramples on lore that was only a few years old, for no real reason other than sloppiness.Similarly, the city of Baldur's Gate was substantially reinvented by the video game, departing from its description in Volo's Guide to the Sword Coast; the whole idea of an Upper and Lower City separated by a big wall running through the city is totally absent from the map and description prior to the video game. It was invented out of whole cloth to suit the game's story, contradicting all previous descriptions, and of course immediately after the game's release the lore is silently retconned to match the CRPG. This kind of thing happened in the 2e era, and nothing remotely like this has happened in 5e lore, not without providing an in-world explanation for it, anyway.I actually like most of the 1e–2e stuff very much, so I don't want to denigrate it too much. But I don't find 5e to be any more contradicting of earlier materials than the earlier materials themselves were, actually less so—and much, much more internally consistent (granted, an easier task given that there are so many fewer 5e releases, but still).</blockquote>

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