D&D 5E Lolth in D&D Next and Setting Hopping

[SkidAce]

Guess this means my dreams of Lolth being reverted back to a potent demon lord, and not being a god at all, are dashed for at least one more edition.

Ah, well. It's not too late for Vecna to be just an ancient, legendary lich again, or Tiamat the queen (but not goddess) of chromatic dragons.

I agree, with the exception of Tiamat, I've always used a mother of monsters, primordial sea, Babylonian vibe for her so goddess is fine.

Actually, I use her as a fundamental part of the cosmos, above the disturbingly mortal like gods with flaws.

 

[Savage Wombat]

I'm actually running a campaign right now, centering around Tiamat as the creator of the world and all life. Poor misunderstood goddess.

 

[Alzrius]

It's nice to see even the idea of campaign-hopping being brought up in some sort of in-game context, something that has been seriously downplayed ever since 2E ended.

Personally, I like the idea of working within an existing meta-setting, and having firm rules for moving between campaigns, rather than just hand-waving "they're separate universes," or even worse "it works however you want it to."

Will this be a big part of 5E? I doubt it, but even the specter of that sort of meta-cosmology is a nice bit of nostalgia.

 

[Mercule]

So much is wrong with that "news".

1) Lolth is a Greyhawk goddess. I'm still not sure how she got to the Realms.
2) There's an official "plot" to the new edition?
3) The Realms are the default setting? Shouldn't they be in the old-folks home, keeping Greyhawk and Krynn company? Please never publish anything for these three settings ever again -- they're done. The Realms might have enough life in them to warrant a one-off article in Dragon, but that's about it.

#1 is a bit tongue-in-cheek. #2 and #3 would be very likely to keep me from even bothering with 5e, depending on how ham-handed it's handled.

 

[Janaxstrus]

So much is wrong with that "news".

1) Lolth is a Greyhawk goddess. I'm still not sure how she got to the Realms.
2) There's an official "plot" to the new edition?
3) The Realms are the default setting? Shouldn't they be in the old-folks home, keeping Greyhawk and Krynn company? Please never publish anything for these three settings ever again -- they're done. The Realms might have enough life in them to warrant a one-off article in Dragon, but that's about it.

#1 is a bit tongue-in-cheek. #2 and #3 would be very likely to keep me from even bothering with 5e, depending on how ham-handed it's handled.

Lolth is in almost all the settings to some extent. When the great wheel existed, she touched them all.

I think the "plot" is someone not understanding things.

I would love for the Realms to be the default setting (retcon-ed to pre-Spell Plague), but I doubt that happens. It should be *A* viable core setting, but not THE only world by default by any means. As much as I love the Realms, it certainly doesn't match everyone's games.

 

[Kaodi]

I think it likely that "plot reveals" simply means "metaplot advancement in the D&D Next setting revisions" .

 

[grimslade]

I wonder if they are getting signals crossed with the D&DNext 'meta-plot" and the next Dungeon Encounters 'Rise of the Underdark' campaign. I don't think the next edition will have a meta-plot anymore than any previous editions have. IGN has never been a bastion of journalistic or editorial excellence.

 

[gyor]

FR already had a series of novels that were a FR-Planescape-Dragonlance cross over. I even think I read somewhere that a small village of kinder moved to Faerun. Also the lead character of one of the recent novels originally came from the POL setting and was reborn (deva) on Faerun. Its apart of the Abyssal Plague series.

It does make sense for FR because many races immigrated to Toril from othet worlds.

 

[gyor]

Many most FR gods immigrated to Toril with permission from AO, the latest being Zehir. Shar, Selune, Chauntea, Sseth, Sune are native Gods, Zehir, Sharess, Lolth, the Seldarine, Tyr, Lovitar are immigrants. For more info see Powers and Pantheons.

 

[Walker N. Waistz]

Though the Eberron/FR DDO crossover thing is pretty silly, even if they try to pseudo-canonize it in the 5e stuff, I can't imagine that 5e's "plot" will have much bearing on the 5e game.

Forgotten Realms has always been a setting that crossed over with the others. Always. From the beginning, it was explained that pretty much all of its gods and many of its races had migrated here from other worlds. That's why Lolth is in FR at all, as she came from Greyhawk with the drow. This is also why gods from so many real world pantheons (Loviatar, Tyr, Tiamat, Silvanus, Set and all the Egyptian gods in Mulhorand, etc.) have been such a huge part of the story as well. Jeff Grubb-- who is second only to Ed Greenwood in terms of creating the Realms-- even wrote a novel where FR characters went to Planescape and Dragonlance, and some Dragonlance characters ended up in FR. In the original 1E boxed set, it suggested that when the gods of Krynn kicked high-level characters off their world (as was the rule back then), FR should be where they ended up. And of course, there were the Wizards Three columns in old issues of Dragon, where Dalamar, Mordenkainen, and Elminster would get tea together and talk about magic on their worlds. Even without getting into Spelljammer and Planescape, the crossover is an element intrinsically woven into the Realms.