D&D General Rules vs. lore preferences in D&D sourcebooks?

[jasper]

There is enough rules. More lore. but to me a source book would be the "Workings and history of Waterdeep" Not Chapter 7 or 8 from Waterdeep Heist.

 

[Reynard]

You would be wrong.

Just by way of example: the majority of supplements for Earthdawn were almost 100% lore and they were glorious, full of adventure hooks and ideas for both players and GMs.

 

[Lyxen]

Just by way of example: the majority of supplements for Earthdawn were almost 100% lore and they were glorious, full of adventure hooks and ideas for both players and GMs.

Exactly, someone mentioned the gazetteers which are usually in the same vein, I think the hooks and intrigues are the core of what I expect in a supplement. After that, if it's an adventure supplement, of course the adventure itself (and that probably with stats, but not necessarily), but otherwise I'm happy.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I need rules to play with but lore feeds the hunger within me.

 

[The-Magic-Sword]

Lore can be cool, but I actively embrace worldbuilding as a GM activity, so other than mining cool ideas, I much prefer rules to let me simulate my own world. Special mention goes to 4e's PoL, which featured a great way of writing its default setting that offered plenty of lore and flavor, but constructed it in a piecemeal way, where most of it was intentionally self-contained or only linked through implication, which left me as the GM an immense amount of room to worldbuild and curate which pieces they wanted to use-- as well as a convenient suite of 'fantasy land' elements to fall back on when I didn't want to overburden myself.

 

[Weiley31]

I would call that a novel.

Also a system Agnostic book.

 

[Weiley31]

You know I'm just looking at Larry Elmore's art for the first major time right now, as I missed out on that generation of DND when I got into it during 3.0/3.5 edition, and man does that fantasy art look pretty great.

 

[Reynard]

You know I'm just looking at Larry Elmore's art for the first major time right now, as I missed out on that generation of DND when I got into it during 3.0/3.5 edition, and man does that art look pretty great.

Elmore is an amazing artist but it does suffer from tropes of the era: boob armor, hawt poses for the female characters, and more than a little cultural appropriation (looking at you, Goldmoon).

 

[Weiley31]

Elmore is an amazing artist but it does suffer from tropes of the era: boob armor, hawt poses for the female characters, and more than a little cultural appropriation (looking at you, Goldmoon).

Eh shrugs

 

[Umbran]

I find the idea of considering a sourcebook, as a generic object, to be flawed.

I want the ratios of material to vary depending on the purpose of the book. A setting book can be heavy on lore. A book on how to generally do mass combat and war probably needs less lore, more mechanics.