D&D (2024) How Important Is The Lore

[grimmgoose]

Generally speaking (and I say this for every TTRPG I buy), but I do not care about your lore. Best case, I'll steal 15% of it. Worst case, it'll actively prevent me from building a campaign, and then I just won't use it.

Part of the fun for me as a GM is world building, so I'll just create my own lore.

(it's a pet peeve of mine when a TTRPG system is intrinsically tied to its lore; in that regard, 5E is pretty nice, because aside from it being firmly high magic, nothing is super tied to the lore presented in the books.")

 

[Remathilis]

D&D has a complicated relationship with the lore. On the one hand, it's hard to have any sort of unified lore in D&D because most of the worlds of D&D are so radically different. What do you say about elves, wizards or goblins that is true for Athas, Eberron and Faerun? On the other hand, you gotta say something. You gotta explain what a beholder is after all. So I tend to like my lore as A story of the D&D world, but not THE story. That is to say, a default answer to who and what and where, but one that can be changed to suit the needs of the setting.

An example: a long time ago they playtested a subclass for warlocks called Raven Queen patron. They filled it with lots of cool darkness and winter themed stuff, and if it had been a generic Darkness Patron, I would have loved it. But the Raven Queen is too narrow. She doesn't exist on all worlds and settings. In that case, the lore is a detriment. As a more generic Darkness Patron through, it could represent all types of entities appropriate to the setting.

Thus, I generally like my lore light enough to be replaced but strong enough you don't need to replace it if you don't want.

 

[TiQuinn]

I want the lore to be there even at least in part. I think it’s creative fuel and I’m fine with discarding what I don’t like, and keeping what I do like. That said, I think lore can also become overwrought and dull, making a product less useful as were many a 2e Forgotten Realms accessory in the day. I think lore can be baked into the design and written in a way that helps me understand the vibe that the designers were going for with a monster or magic item or subclass. I think it’s great to finally learn something about Tasha or Bigby, for instance. I thought the Volo’s and Mordenkainen’s guides were very useful for making me think about origins of various species came about - it all sparks creativity for me.

 

[Maxperson]

Has anyone here had a session ruined because players used the lore against the DM? I'm curious since we're talking lore impact.

No. Okay. Probably yes, but it wasn't me.

 

[Maxperson]

Worst case, it'll actively prevent me from building a campaign, and then I just won't use it.

How could it possibly do that? You can change lore with the snap of your fingers.

 

[grimmgoose]

How could it possibly do that? You can change lore with the snap of your fingers.

Ha! Some games make it significantly harder than just snapping your fingers.

Like, Legend of the Five Rings is pretty intrinsically tied to its setting. Could you use it to play a game in feudal Japan? Sure, but you'll spend so much time ripping out Rokugan that you might as well just play GURPS.

Same with Heart. The game directly revolves around you being in that game world. There's basically no way to change the lore without rewriting the majority of the game.

 

[dave2008]

I voted: "I'm glad it is there." However, that is really depending on the amount, the depth, and the book.

IMO, a setting book should have a lot of lore and good depth of lore.

IMO, a generic monster book should have some lore, but be fairly shallow, and geared mostly for use at the table

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Lore is meant to inspire. For monsters, it’s meant to inspire combat encounters, NPCs, and adventures you could include in your campaign. For player options, it’s meant to inspire what you could play and how you could roleplay your character. WotC chose to trade some lore in the monster section for more art and monster stat blocks.

And I don’t think the lore in the original 5e rulebooks was very interesting or inspiring. And most of it is unnecessary. Everyone knows what Elves, Dwarves, Hobbits, and Humans are. Even for the more exotic races, people know what Dragons, Devils, Angels, and Giants are. Do we need over 2 pages of lore per race that just reinforces traditional tropes about Dwarves if most people already know what Tolkien-esque Dwarves are like? I don’t think we do. It’s better to just have a few short paragraphs giving the basics for the players and DM to build off of.

Not to mention that the original PHB wasted a page on a ton of Human names from the Forgotten Realms. That’s not lore that inspires people to make adventures or characters. I’m glad that was cut.

But for monsters, the lore should be harmony with the mechanics and written around their intended function in campaigns. Mind Flayers reproduce via implanting tadpoles in the brains of captured victims, so they should have abilities that allow for them to non-lethally neutralize enemies (stun, paralyze, mind control). Death Knights command armies of undead, so they should have abilities that allow them to control undead and buff their minions. Giants are big, prideful human-like monsters that throw rocks and squash people. You don’t need to have multiple pages of lore explaining their culture, just a general idea of how their mechanics are based on and inform their behaviors as creatures.

Even though there’s roughly the same amount of lore for the Empyreans, I can say the new lore inspires me more than the original 2014 lore ever did. The inclusion of Iotas and change in art made me go from completely uninterested in Empyreans to brainstorming how I could integrate this with the world I’m currently working on. For me, the trade off of more art and monsters is overall worth it. A picture is worth a thousand words, and alternate versions of monsters can often inspire in ways that paragraphs of lore can’t. And sometimes less is more, and you should take the time to write a shorter letter. I think the 2024 Dwarven lore section is as useful at informing players what Dwarves are about as the 2014 section, it’s just more efficient and doesn’t take 2 pages to say “yep, they’re Dwarves, like Gimli, you know what they’re like.”

Also, you can find basically all the D&D lore you need for free in wikis and YouTube videos. And WotC will presumably keep making the Fizban’s/Bigby’s type books for other creature types to expand upon lore for the more interesting/iconic monsters.

 

[delericho]

Has anyone here had a session ruined because players used the lore against the DM? I'm curious since we're talking lore impact.

Yes.

I was running SWSE in the days prior to the Disney buy-out (so the old Expanded Universe was in play), and my campaign featured a recurring villain - the many clones of a Dark Jedi. I had a player absolutely insist that Jedi could not be cloned and that therefore my campaign made no sense. Curiously, my ability to point to multiple examples in the lore didn't persuade him otherwise.

 

[DragonLancer]

My group stopped with D&D when 4th was launched. We moved to Pathfinder and have been there for the last 15 years. Coming back to D&D now, a lot has changed. So much of the D&D lore that was part of 1st through 3rd, and even then 3rd did fiddle a little bit with things, has changed. Some of the changes in the new monster manual have me a little confused. Goblins, for example, have always been goblinoids. Goblins, hobgoblins, orcs, bugbears and so forth. Now, goblins are another fey race, like gnomes, that have been booted from the Feywild. Why was that needed? Gnolls are now fiends? While it may seem irrelevant in the scheme of things, but it feels like, as a decades long DM/player, that these changes on a very subtle level change the lore of settings and the game. I don't understand why it's been done.

Lore is unique to each table out there but the changes will have an effect. It doesn't feel right. I will adapt and as I'm writing my own setting for my campaigns, I can easily use what we have from D&D these days. But the "lore" as established in classic D&D onwards being changed just feels weird.