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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Remathilis" data-source="post: 9262272" data-attributes="member: 7635">Not overwriting, invalidating, or discarding the old lore IS repeating verbatim.So, let's take gnolls. In earlier editions, they were just hyena headed humanoids, not much different than a dozen other humanoids in the game. So, they decided to make humanoids more unique and gnolls were redesigned to be bestial and fiendish. Now, that leaves us three options.1.) Retcon gnolls to always be savage fiends in origin. It is the cleanest lore-wise, but obviously invalidates everything before it.2.) Create a scenario where gnolls are suddenly corrupted into savage fiends (a Gnoll-shaking event) to explain the change. Some players will accept this status quo shakeup, some will reject it (but mah campayne!) and some will have no idea because the first time they heard of a gnoll was in the 5e MM. 3.) Never change gnolls. Leave them as another generic hyena-headed humanoid tribe. Reprint what is already there again verbatim. Each option has its downfalls. Option 1 invalidates the lore. Option 2 does also, through it does it via a convoluted explanation that some players STILL will reject, and 3 keeps the game stuck firmly in the lore created 40 years ago when having one more hit dice was sufficient to differ humanoid monsters apart from one another. (And gnolls are far behind goblinoids, kobolds and orcs in the "humanoid monster" popularity contest). Which was my point. If you change the lore, people will complain. If you create a convoluted explanation in game to explain the change, slightly less people will complain. If you leave it exactly the same, people will complain they are buying the same thing over again. There is no win solution.Me, I'm still waiting for Tolkien to rewrite Lord of the Rings that takes into account the original and TRUE version of Riddles in the Dark...</blockquote>

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