D&D 5E Making sense of D&D's Lore, History and Cosmology

[Marc_C]

A lot of the iconic stuff in D&D comes from Gary Gygax's AD&D 1e, his Greyhawk campaign world and what his players did. Many famous characters (Tasha, Tenser, Mordenkainen) were player characters. The magic items, artifacts (hand of vecna) and many monsters, like the drow, originate from that setting.

Greyhawk Wiki:

Portal:Geography

Oerth (pronounced 'Oi-th'[1]) is an Earth like planet, one of five 'Alternative earths' (Earth, Oerth, Aerth, Yarth, Uerth[2]). It differs to Earth in that its axial tilt is 30 degrees, has different weather and seasons, and is geocentric. Oerth has a circumference of 25,200 miles and a surface...

greyhawk.fandom.com

 

[dave2008]

Couple differences.

1 Are demons alignment outsiders or corrupted elementals?
2 Are devils alignment outsiders or corrupted angels?
3 Are elementals generally one element or mixes?
4 Are angels good alignment outsiders or servants of any god?
5 Are succubi demons or devils?
6 Are metallic dragons at base paragons of good or not?
7 Are undead immune to mind-affecting effects or not?
8 Are tieflings descended from any fiend or just devils?
9 Are archons LG alignment outsiders or elemental soldiers.
10 Are eladrin planar outsider elves or high elves.

In general that is what I meant by "...change a few things..."

However, I will point out a few issues with your comments:

1. in 4e demons were both corrupted elementals and just plain demons. After the initial corruption, the Abyss spawned demons all on its own. And some "demons" were already there when it formed (at least that was the 4e Dagon lore).
2. Similarly, not all devils in 4e were corrupted angles. The rank and file devils came from the same source, primarily, as in every other addition - mortal souls. Also, the idea of corrupted celestials becoming devils pre-dates 4e. Zariel for example.
3. 4e had standard 1 element elementals (water, fire, earth, air); and 1e-3e had "mixed" elementals: para & quasi-elementals.
4. Angels, that was definitely a change. But not a big one to reconcile in terms of the lore. Lots of easy ways to reconcile the editions on this one. The 5e response to archons (see #9 below) is a good example.
5. 1-3e succubi are demons, 4e devils, 5e neither. Yes that was a change in 4e (a good one IMO), but they mixed the two in 5e just fine.
6. I honestly don't remember the official lore, but I took it as the ones the PCs are likely to fight in 4e would be "unaligned," but the typical 5 metallics would be good alignment. Though to be honest I don't care about alignment much, and this is trivially easy to reconcile lore wise.
7. I don't know which editions undead are immune to mind-affecting effects, but it is not 1e, 4e, or 5e. So 4e is part of the majority on this one.
8. Honestly I don't know about this, didn't care much for tieflings in any edition. But I don't think they existed in 1e, so they barely count in my book
   
9. I agree this one is a change, but I would say the 4e "archons" are simply not archons at all with respect to the LG celestial version of previous versions. In fact, they got repurposed as elemental myrmidons in 5e, which seems like a great way to blend the lore of 4e with other editions.
10. No idea about eladrin, how was it reconciled in 5e? I don't see this as a big lore issue overall, but I am really not familiar with eladrin.

To be clear, I don't mean to say there aren't differences. My point is that despite what @Sword of Spirit said, I think you can use all editions lore, not just 4e or everything else. In fact, 5e often shows the path of how to combine them.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

So many replies!

I think conventional wisdom is to use the stuff you think is cool, ignore the stuff you don’t, and don’t worry too much about what continuity it’s from.

I agree. That's also my approach. But I was looking for some of the universals to build a solid frame of understanding on the core elements of the lore so I could pick left and right or build my own. It just feel like it's hard to find the start or end of it...

@TheAlkaizer , to answer your question on resources... the D&D Lore Wiki, that I contribute to, is cataloging official, general D&D lore. We usually leave the setting-specific stuff to other wikis, and take an edition-neutral approach otherwise. It's a tricky task at times, but D&D fandom seems to lack any other similar resource, so hopefully it can become something that helps folks like you out. (And if anyone reading this is interested, we could really use some help...)

This wiki never came out in my research. Bookmarked. I'll definitely look into it. Thank you.

Mod Note:

Please watch your language. Thanks.

My bad, I didn't know it was a sensitive word. Sorry.

First, you basically need to decide between 4e and not-4e. There is minimal compatibility between 4e lore and the rest. You can always insert bits of lore you like from the option you don't choose, but you do need to choose.

I'm assuming you chose "not-4e" because if you chose 4e it's all one tightly connected edition so the issues aren't really going to arise.

Now lets go on to the basics of how the lore fits together in the rest of the editions.

1e was the foundation of the multiverse and general continuity of D&D lore.

2e expanded and zoomed-in on that lore. It contradicted it in places, but it mostly attempted to expand it rather than overwrite it. For instance, a lot of 2e lore material basically assumed you had access to the 1e stuff and were using it alongside it, or re-printed the important portions to make sure you did. 2e created a huge body of lore. Spelljammer placed all the Material Plane campaign settings in the same Material Plane, and Planescape connected everything else, building on existing 1e lore with a lot more flavor.

3e kept much of the lore from 1e and 2e--except when it didn't. It kept the same basic structure of the Great Wheel, but it gutted the Inner Planes, rearranged how the Astral and Ethereal worked, and placed every campaign setting at the center of its own multiverse rather than in a shared Material Plane and/or multiverse. At the same time, it added plenty of more or less compatible material that could be used to expand on the 2e lore in the same way it expanded the 1e lore.

5e rebuilt a multiverse somewhere between 2e and 3e, with some 4e inspiration. It put the settings all back into one Material Plane and multiverse. It put the astral and ethereal planes back to pre-3e. It didn't restore the lost Inner Planes, although it expanded on the Inner Planes with some 4e inspiration. With the Forgotten Realms, they tried to do a soft reset of most of the 4e changes, by having actual things happen in the world to put them back. With everything else they mostly assumed the 4e stuff was another multiverse (though they came up with some interesting thoughts in the DMG of how to interpret things in different ways).

[...]

So far, I think I'm sticking to what 5e says as a base, and I've been picking elements from 3rd edition when I can to make it fit. I've also mostly stuck to the Dawn War Pantheon for simplicity sake. But 1e and 2e are very hard to get into lore-wise.

Making sense of the decades of lore would be no small task. Generally, I don't think most players even delve deeply enough to notice the contradictions (unless they're really into the lore of ages past, in which case they likely also understand that it's a snarl). Most people aren't going to care that if you go back far enough, the Blood War wasn't even a thing, for example.

Now, if someone tasked me with making it all make sense in the game, the approach I'd do is a mixture of things changing over time and an imperfect understanding of the world. We as players and DMs have the benefit of reading the books, whereas the people within the world do not. The idea that even the wisest of sages isn't sure whether Gruumsh had always been missing an eye or that Corellon took it out in battle, isn't that farfetched.

Yeah, I definitely don't have the intention of internalizing all that lore. I'm just looking for the core elements around which to build. But it's not easy to find.

 

[Dire Bare]

In general that is what I meant by "...change a few things..."

However, I will point out a few issues with your comments:

1. in 4e demons were both corrupted elementals and just plain demons. After the initial corruption the Abyss spawned demons all on its own. And some "demons" were already there when it formed (at least that was the 4e Dagon lore).
2. Similarly, not all devils in 4e were corrupted angles. The rank and file devils came from the same source, primarily, as in every other addition - mortal souls. Also, the idea of corrupted celestials becoming devils pre-dates 4e. Zariel for example.
3. 4e had standard 1 element elementals (water, fire, earth, air); and 1e-3e had "mixed" elementals: para & quasi-elementals.
4. Angels, that was definitely a change. But not a big one to reconcile in terms of the lore. Lots of easy ways to reconcile the editions on this one. The 5e response to archons (see #9 below) is a good example.
5. 1-3e succubi are demons, 4e devils, 5e neither. Yes that was a change in 4e (a good one IMO), but they mixed the two in 5e just fine.
6. I honestly don't remember the official lore, but I took it as the ones the PCs are likely to fight in 4e would be "unaligned," but the typical 5 metallics would be good alignment. Though to be honest I don't care about alignment much, and this is trivially easy to reconcile lore wise.
7. I don't know which editions undead are immune to mind-affecting effects, but it is not 1e, 4e, or 5e. So 4e is part of the majority on this one.
8. Honestly I don't know about this, didn't care much for tieflings in any edition. But I don't think they existed in 1e, so they barely count in my book
   
9. I agree this one is a change, but I would say the 4e "archons" are simply not archons at all with respect to the LG celestial version of previous versions. In fact, they got repurposed as elemental myrmidons in 5e, which seems like a great way to blend the lore of 4e with other editions.
10. No idea about eladrin, how was it reconciled in 5e? I don't see this as a big lore issue overall, but I am really not familiar with eladrin.

To be clear, I don't mean to say there aren't differences. My point is that despite what @Sword of Spirit said, I think you can use all editions lore, not just 4e or everything else. In fact, 5e often shows the path of how to combine them.

I think one can look at that list and say, "Huh, not really all that different" while others will look at the same list and say, "WOW! So many changes! It's completely different!"

To me, many of the changes 4E made were minor, and easily retconned back to earlier ideas. And it isn't like there weren't plenty of inconsistencies before 4E, just the changes in 4E were more systematic than organically changing over time.

#10 does frustrate me a little, as I really liked the initial elf-eladrin-drow split in the 4E core, then felt like they screwed it up when applying it to the Realms. How 5E has adapted these elven races has made it more confusing, IMO. In 4e, eladrin were changed from the earlier "elfy celestials" of 3E to essentially high elves with different racial abilities, most notably the misty step. Now in 5E they are an elfier subrace of elves, not really in line with their 3E or 4E portrayals.

 

[Dire Bare]

My bad, I didn't know it was a sensitive word. Sorry.

Really? Dropping the F-Bomb didn't strike you as possibly inappropriate?

 

[Warpiglet-7]

The past few threads that I've created reflect the fact that in the last few months, I started diving in D&D lores. In all my years of DMing I mostly just borrowed the monsters from the manuals without reading too much of their stuff, and I would interpret them in my own settings. However, I've got interested in some of D&D's lore and as mentioned, I'm now trying to get a good understanding of it. I'm making good progress, but I have a few issues:

1. The information is split between editions. This include the 4th edition and its different cosmology, so I tend to be selective about that edition. There's some cool stuff in the 2nd edition, but a lot of it is never referred to again in further editions or often contradicts stuff from the 3rd or 5th edition.
2. It's hard to separate what's the general cosmology and lore of D&D and what's tied to the Forgotten Realms. I have no interest whatsoever in the Forgotten Realms and I'll often read some information about some character or event only to realize later on that that's only relevant in the story or timeline of the Forgotten Realms.
3. Some topics are especially hard to look into. The origin story of races and stuff like that is pretty easy to find and separate between editions. But everything that relates to the outer planes, the demons, the devils, the deities is such a clusterfuck. I've been doing some notetaking and I keep having to go back and erase stuff.
   Greater Deities, Intermediate Deities, Lesser Deities. How godhood works? I've read stuff about having to have a divine spark, or that it's just related to the devoutness and number of your followers. I'm unsure what characterizes each level of divinity and how one ascends. What are primordials? This is an example.

So, I'd say that my question is something close to: how do you make sense of that humongous clusterfuck that is D&D's lore? What do you prioritize; the most recent edition, the most complete one? Do you mix and match the material of different editions, which one works well together? Do you have any reliable websites, sources or wikis that are not too influenced by the Forgotten Realms and pertain more to very general D&D lore?

Thank you.

Man. I don’t. Planes and gods are mysterious. They exist but I don’t want to know how it works.

remember the force in Star Wars? Before it was reduced to something analogous to blood type? Mysterious, cool...right to clinical and mundane.

same for me with D&D. I don’t want to understand the “weave” or the exact way things work together.

I like hints, suggestions, maybes....legend that might be right is good enough.

hell is scary and exactly how it connects to another plane is important if the adventure explores such a connection. Otherwise, I prefer connections to be likely, uncertain and hard to know.

I don’t want it all clicking together like clockwork.

 

[TheAlkaizer]

Really? Dropping the F-Bomb didn't strike you as possibly inappropriate?

No, it didn't! It never was an inappropriate word to me, just a word that you don't use in formal settings. But again, English is not my mothertongue and I sometimes get lost in the subtleties. I could gladly open up a little bit on the history of french in Canada and the socio-linguistic relationship we have to swear words if you want, but it might be a bit off-topic.

 

[Sword of Spirit]

In general that is what I meant by "...change a few things..."

However, I will point out a few issues with your comments:

1. in 4e demons were both corrupted elementals and just plain demons. After the initial corruption, the Abyss spawned demons all on its own. And some "demons" were already there when it formed (at least that was the 4e Dagon lore).
2. Similarly, not all devils in 4e were corrupted angles. The rank and file devils came from the same source, primarily, as in every other addition - mortal souls. Also, the idea of corrupted celestials becoming devils pre-dates 4e. Zariel for example.
3. 4e had standard 1 element elementals (water, fire, earth, air); and 1e-3e had "mixed" elementals: para & quasi-elementals.
4. Angels, that was definitely a change. But not a big one to reconcile in terms of the lore. Lots of easy ways to reconcile the editions on this one. The 5e response to archons (see #9 below) is a good example.
5. 1-3e succubi are demons, 4e devils, 5e neither. Yes that was a change in 4e (a good one IMO), but they mixed the two in 5e just fine.
6. I honestly don't remember the official lore, but I took it as the ones the PCs are likely to fight in 4e would be "unaligned," but the typical 5 metallics would be good alignment. Though to be honest I don't care about alignment much, and this is trivially easy to reconcile lore wise.
7. I don't know which editions undead are immune to mind-affecting effects, but it is not 1e, 4e, or 5e. So 4e is part of the majority on this one.
8. Honestly I don't know about this, didn't care much for tieflings in any edition. But I don't think they existed in 1e, so they barely count in my book
   
9. I agree this one is a change, but I would say the 4e "archons" are simply not archons at all with respect to the LG celestial version of previous versions. In fact, they got repurposed as elemental myrmidons in 5e, which seems like a great way to blend the lore of 4e with other editions.
10. No idea about eladrin, how was it reconciled in 5e? I don't see this as a big lore issue overall, but I am really not familiar with eladrin.

To be clear, I don't mean to say there aren't differences. My point is that despite what @Sword of Spirit said, I think you can use all editions lore, not just 4e or everything else. In fact, 5e often shows the path of how to combine them.

I'd consider a lot of those things as major changes. The appropriation of the name "eladrin" and erasure of their existence still rankles me (and 5e still hasn't put them back; I don't care what name they use, I just want those traditional CG outsiders).

It's just a matter of point of position. I tend to look at settings from a big picture position as if I'm floating outside of the Multiverse looking at it and everything in it as a complicated orrery. If you change fundamental assumptions, like the arrangement of the planes (World Axis instead of Great Wheel), the nature of species of afterlife beings of cosmic significance (all of the traditional Major Planar Races (ie, alignment exemplars) were either removed or underwent what I'd consider major conceptual, historical, or other lore changes), and the origins of the multiverse (introduction of the Dawn War and Primordials), those changes ripple out and influence everything else, and lead to a variety of smaller changes--both in published products and your own campaign, that are incompatible with older lore. Even more minor changes can often act together to create major changes.

Many people are probably looking at it from a position more like an adventurer standing on the ground in Faerun. From that perspective, many of the changes are invisible or relatively minor, and you can just reinterpret individual changes that you come in contact with and don't care for.

In the real world, you see this sort of thing within many major religious traditions. At the ground level their religious observances might look very similar, but at the theological and cosmological level they may have pervasive and significant differences that transform the meaning and significance of what's going on.

I'm sure you are just looking at it from a different point of positioning. For me, even coming from the perspective of how messy I described making sense of all of the other settings combined is, I see 4e as so much of a change that it's a whole new level of messiness trying to integrate, and won't really contribute as more than some interesting tidbits for inspiration. From my viewpoint 2e was an expansion, 3e was an expansion and limited revision, 4e was a ground up rebuild inspired by previous material. 5e is mostly a restoration of 2e, with inclusions from all of the other editions, along with some omissions and some innovations.

Fortunately it's all fantasy so as high as the stakes get are people's ability to communicate about elves and dragons from a shared perspective (which isn't nothing, and if I could go back in time I'd take over TSR and implement an "expansions, but no contradictions" approach so everyone could be on the same page with regards to official lore).

So far, I think I'm sticking to what 5e says as a base, and I've been picking elements from 3rd edition when I can to make it fit. I've also mostly stuck to the Dawn War Pantheon for simplicity sake. But 1e and 2e are very hard to get into lore-wise.

That works.

There are two issues you'll want to watch out for.

The first is that it's going to be harder to make use of standard lore that happened to be presented in 3e Forgotten Realms material, because 3e Forgotten Realms used its own unique cosmology which is incompatible with 5e.

The second is that the Dawn War pantheon, as it is a 4e exclusive (presented as an option in the 5e DMG, because the 5e DMG is pretty awesome--you should definitely review its section on creating your multiverse if you haven't already), just straight up doesn't "fit" with a lot of standard D&D lore.

 

[dave2008]

I think one can look at that list and say, "Huh, not really all that different" while others will look at the same list and say, "WOW! So many changes! It's completely different!"

Yep, it is highly dependent what is important to the viewer.

 

[dave2008]

I'd consider a lot of those things as major changes. The appropriation of the name "eladrin" and erasure of their existence still rankles me (and 5e still hasn't put them back; I don't care what name they use, I just want those traditional CG outsiders).

Yep, as @Dire Bare noted, some see them as minor - others as major. Using your eladrin example, I couldn't care less about them. I've never used them in a game and never cared about their lore or how they fit into various cosmological persectives.

It's just a matter of point of position. I tend to look at settings from a big picture position as if I'm floating outside of the Multiverse looking at it and everything in it as a complicated orrery. If you change fundamental assumptions, like the arrangement of the planes (World Axis instead of Great Wheel), the nature of species of afterlife beings of cosmic significance (all of the traditional Major Planar Races (ie, alignment exemplars) were either removed or underwent what I'd consider major conceptual, historical, or other lore changes), and the origins of the multiverse (introduction of the Dawn War and Primordials), those changes ripple out and influence everything else, and lead to a variety of smaller changes--both in published products and your own campaign, that are incompatible with older lore. Even more minor changes can often act together to create major changes.

I tend to look at settings from a big picture perspective as well. However, I come from the assumption that all the default cosmologies are all wrong or perhaps only partially right. Then I look at interesting ways to blend them and get to the "true" cosmology. Therefore, I like there to varied concepts and approaches to the cosmology as it gives me more material to work with. In this way I have no issue with combining the world-axis perspectives and the great wheel perspective or the MtG perspective.

However, TBH, I don't get to tied up with racial origins and stuff like that. I pretty much stick to the planes, fiends, gods, elder evils, primordials, etc.