In my mind, there are two scenarios that are about equally better than the current version of how WotC treats crunch-books like Volo's Guide to Monsters or Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes. These are the two options:
- From now on, all crunch-books have basically no setting-specific lore at all. There can be some about how the genetic identities of certain creatures/races would influence their behavior (Harengon are twitchy herbivores like Rabbits, people dislike/distrust Dhampir because they drink blood, Tabaxi are every stereotype of cats ever rolled up into an intelligent humanoid race, etc), but nothing specific, like the gods that created the various races, the lands that they come from in specific settings, or their religion/specific culture.
- From now on, when a book like Volo's Guide to Monsters or Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes presents information about the specific culture of any player race from any setting that contains that race, it has to do the same for every other (or, at least, most other) variant version of that race's culture in an official D&D 5e book, and maybe even some others that the writers feel like including (like how Fizban's Treasury of Dragons mentions how the dragons act on different worlds, like Eberron, Dragonlance, and Tarkir).
Two would be infinitely more manageable if WotC wasn't binging on settings like a guy on a two-week free trial of Netflix.
Classically, D&D settings could be divided into those who hewed close to the default lore (Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk), those which were transitive between worlds and didn't contradict the default lore (Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft) and those who deviated greatly from the lore (Eberron, Dark Sun, Dragonlance). Considering there has never been a time where ALL settings were in print at the same time, it was feasible to present "default" lore that was 100% compatible with Faerun/Oerth, 90% compatible with the transitives, and then address the deviations either separately in their own book or in a small sidebar.
Of course, right now WotC is supporting as many settings as they did at any one time in 2e (Faerun, Eberron, Ravenloft, Theros, Ravnica, Strixhaven, Exandria, and to a lesser degree Oerth) with promises or teases of even more (Spelljammer, Planescape, Krynn, Athas) plus whatever other crossover settings or new settings they want to yet add. There is no possible way they can address (for example) elves on all the settings mentioned, and it would be obsolete anyway the moment they added a new setting to the pile.
Which really leads us back to option one, which presents its own perils. Much of D&D's major elements aren't unique to D&D, elves, dwarves, dragons, orc, etc. are all generic. D&D has very limited specific imprint they have placed on these to say
Our Tropes are Different and stripping what little there is to make them more generic runs the risk of losing anything that is identifiable as "D&D". Without Corellon, elves lose the Blessing of Corellon and its reason for existing. A setting like Athas has no need for Tiamat, so she becomes world-specific lore. (Unless you create some madeup explanation why she remains important, like the First World). Taken to its extreme, you run the risk of Mordenkainen, Bigby, Tenser and Tasha losing their names on spells or Vecna's relics disappearing from the DMG.
I don't know what the answer is, to be honest. I don't know what you say about elves that aren't setting specific, except "they have pointed ears and don't sleep". I fear D&D will become GURPs, a Generic Fantasy Simulator d20 that doesn't feel the need to be its own world and instead offloads all of the worldbuilding to setting guides and DMs to do. I don't know could possibly be true of all D&D elves from Athasian to Zakharan. And as D&D keeps adding settings, I imagine the core identity will dilute further. What is an elf? A collection of mechanics.
A function.
www.enworld.org
