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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.