D&D General Influence of official D&D lore on your home games?

[J.Quondam]

(This is just about home games, not official gaming contexts like AL and whatnot.)

Q: For your D&D games, how much is your table guided by the official lore?

Since different people play in different modes*, just choose a response that applies generally to your game/s or preference. Pick just one if you can (though the poll allows two, for those who need it).

And yes, the options are very vague, so you can decide for yourself what exactly constitutes "official" lore, and what degrees of "influence" mean. Feel free to leave a comment explaining your vote!


* By "modes" I just mean that different people play in different circumstances, like playing in one group versus in many groups; running short campaigns versus multi-decade campaigns; groups with high player turnover versus committed groups; and so forth.

 

[overgeeked]

I went with "none" and "a lot". Pre-4E the official lore didn't matter. During 4E we went with the official lore. With 5E we've stuck with the official lore from 4E.

 

[J.Quondam]

I voted "Just a little."

If/when I use a published adventure, I'll more or less stick to what it says in that publication, but generally don't make any effort to stretch that lore so it consistently matches lore in another campaign or adventure. And for homebrewing, anything "official" typically doesn't enter into it at all-- at least not consciously.

If I played long intertwined campaigns, that might change, but for the short unrelated campaigns I prefer, this works great.

 

[Parmandur]

I coted "a fair bit." It's hit or miss, depending on what I want to use.

 

[R_Chance]

Little when I first started. Because there was none in 1974 A bit with 1E and 2E, but less after that. Mainly because I maintained the things I used from 1/2E through 3E and beyond. I still use the age categories for "races" from 1E for example. I have alignment languages for liturgical purposes, not daily communication. It's little things like that that are built into my campaign / world (I have used my own home brew setting from the beginning) that are pretty much permanent. I have built my world around some of the peculiarities of D&D and worked to explain them.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

To summarize, I use the lore when it doesn't contradict the story or adventure I'm planning to tell. But if a player has a character concept that contradicts lore, then I'm changing that lore to make it work, it's not very important.

 

[Parmandur]

View attachment 140635

To summarize, I use the lore when it doesn't contradict the story or adventure I'm planning to tell. But if a player has a character concept that contradicts lore, then I'm changing that lore to make it work, it's not very important.

So you use them...like a game??

Crazy.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Just a little. I've been playing a long, long time, so there are elements of old lore that are embedded in the bedrock of my campaigns, some stuff I don't even remember lifting decades ago, and other stuff that I look at and say "nah, I've got it covered." But even then, I might repurpose a lot of the good stuff.

For instance, I think the return of Vecna and his eventual ascension to godhood were, frankly, kind of cheesy. He's not a god in my world. However, my setting does have a very nasty goddess of secrets, and I have lifted a lot of the stuff from New Vecna and given it to Kran, fleshing her out nicely. I do a lot of that with TSR/WotC gods and organizations.

Other stuff gets added as needed, if it serves a need. Stuff like the Serpent and the Weave have never come up in my game, so it's neither lore nor not at this point.

 

[Urriak Uruk]

So you use them...like a game??

Crazy.

I am indeed completely, incurably insane.

I'm also a prolific module user, and really enjoy adapting Pathfinder modules as they're are a ton of them and are very well-producted. That's led to me adapting certain lore from Pathfinder into my Forgotten Realms and Ravenloft games, just to make the modules work.

So for example, I took the last module from Extinction Curse, and stuck it in Lantan. So the wilderness around Lantan's city has these saurian-giants running around, which definitely is NOT canon.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

I generally use prewritten adventures and as just just the lore that comes with that. So FR but only what I need and the players characters interact with.