D&D (2024) The future of edition changes and revisions

[JEB]

Well, then explain to me how people can complain about this change? It may not have always been consistent, but this could be a bridge too far for some.

Speaking personally, I could live with this retcon, but it's definitely a change from the past 48 years of goblinoid lore, and more significantly, one that's represented explicitly in rules as well as lore. So I can see why it bugs some people. I think it would have been better to have the Feywild goblinoids exist alongside classic goblinoids, rather than asking folks to either go with the new lore if they want to stay official, or move to homebrew.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Well, then explain to me how people can complain about this change? It may not have always been consistent, but this could be a bridge too far for some.

Old=Crotchety

Not a lot of teens and young adults lamenting modern 5e changes.

In my case I am old...but I adopted "every being can max any stat and adopt every motivation" before 3e rolled around so most changes aren't activating my crochety sensors.

I do find myself not interested in the direction 5e is taking with less gritty storylines and anything goes plotting, but I'm mature enough to realize this game isn't being designed for me anymore. It's not ruined, it's just evolved to something different.

I'd prefer the game stayed the way I like it to be but I completely understand why it isn't.

 

[Parmandur]

Speaking personally, I could live with this retcon, but it's definitely a change from the past 48 years of goblinoid lore, and more significantly, one that's represented explicitly in rules as well as lore. So I can see why it bugs some people. I think it would have been better to have the Feywild goblinoids exist alongside classic goblinoids, rather than asking folks to either go with the new lore if they want to stay official, or move to homebrew.

The main thing it has going for it, though, is bringing Goblins more in line with standard pop culture tropes of what a Goblin is, and differentiates them from Orcs or Kobolds.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Speaking personally, I could live with this retcon, but it's definitely a change from the past 48 years of goblinoid lore, and more significantly, one that's represented explicitly in rules as well as lore. So I can see why it bugs some people. I think it would have been better to have the Feywild goblinoids exist alongside classic goblinoids, rather than asking folks to either go with the new lore if they want to stay official, or move to homebrew.

That is exactly what I'm saying. It is a real change to 48 years of lore, that also has a rules aspect.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Old=Crotchety

Not a lot of teens and young adults lamenting modern 5e changes.

In my case I am old...but I adopted "every being can max any stat and adopt every motivation" before 3e rolled around so most changes aren't activating my crochety sensors.

I do find myself not interested in the direction 5e is taking with less gritty storylines and anything goes plotting, but I'm mature enough to realize this game isn't being designed for me anymore. It's not ruined, it's just evolved to something different.

I'd prefer the game stayed the way I like it to be but I completely understand why it isn't.

Yeah, WotC can do what they want, I guess. I have nearly 50 years of good material to play with, and an excellent 3PP to work with in the form of Level Up. I hope there's something worth pulling out of the Spelljammer stuff coming up, but other than that, WotC and I are parting ways.

 

[JEB]

It is perfectly valid for someone not to like the changes to monster in Monsters of the Multiverse, but basing that opinion on a mistaken belief that monsters have ever been handled with any level of consistency in D&D's past doesn't make a lot of sense.

Kind of surprised to hear you, as someone very familiar with monsters throughout the editions, suggest that they've been inconsistent throughout the game's entire history. 2E, for example, practically copy-and-pastes the flavor text for many core monsters from 1E. There have indeed been changes with time, but they're generally minor, additive, or based around rules changes, rather than conceptual reworks. (4E, of course, was a notable exception to this.)

 

[Echohawk]

Kind of surprised to hear you, as someone very familiar with monsters throughout the editions, suggest that they've been inconsistent throughout the game's entire history. 2E, for example, practically copy-and-pastes the flavor text for many core monsters from 1E. There have indeed been changes with time, but they're generally minor, additive, or based around rules changes, rather than conceptual reworks. (4E, of course, was a notable exception to this.)

Some monsters have remained somewhat consistent, but at least as many have not. From 1e to 2e, the approach to monster updates was quite lazy, with much copied flavour text, sometimes even when the underlying mechanics no longer reflected that flavour. The jumps from 2e to 3e, from 3e to 4e and from 4e to 5e had far more extensive changes to many monsters.

Frequently, it is easy to overlook how inconsistently monsters have been presented. Let's take Spelljammer's asteroid spider as an example. If you were to take a quick look at MC7 and the recent Monstrous Compendium Volume One you'd probably conclude that since they are both ten-legged spiders living on asteroids, they hadn't changed much.

A closer inspection reveals that the original was a medium-sized predator that used a paralytic poison and could go into a form of suspended animation, while the new version is a gargantuan spider that weaves webs capable of snaring spelljamming ships, which it can surpress the spelljamming capabilities of. The new version doesn't even explicitly have ten legs, although it is illustrated with ten. A close look at most creature across the editions reveals similar changes.

 

[AnotherGuy]

If this hasn't been mentioned in the posts following the OP I'd be very surprised.
DMs Guild did not exist for previous editions - you want 5e splat - go to DMs Guild. I'm sure if you take DMs Guild, Enworld's 5e pamphlet and Level Up + official published and you'd likely end up with the same or likely even more than what was done/available in previous editions.

 

[Yora]

I do find myself not interested in the direction 5e is taking with less gritty storylines and anything goes plotting, but I'm mature enough to realize this game isn't being designed for me anymore. It's not ruined, it's just evolved to something different.

Maybe not even that. New D&D really just introduce new games, they don't replace existing ones.

I would suspect that AD&D 1st edition and B/X are still being played much more than many recent critics' darlings RPGs.

 

[Echohawk]

Kind of surprised to hear you, as someone very familiar with monsters throughout the editions, suggest that they've been inconsistent throughout the game's entire history.

I was curious about goblins specifically, so I spent half an hour or so skimming through their write ups. It turns out that they are actually one of the more consistently presented races, and yet...

• They have drifted from their original lawful evil alignment (1e/2e) to neutral evil (3e), to just evil (4e), through to 5e's prevarication.
• In OD&D they hated dwarves so much that they would attack on sight. This antipathy gradually faded through editions.
• The 1st Edition Monster Manual implies that they may be related to kobolds. This is a relationship that continues to be mentioned throughout 1st and 2nd Edition, until kobolds became something different in 3e.
• BX and BECMI give goblins eyes that glow red in the dark. They don't seem to have these glowing eyes in any other version.
• Until 3rd Edition, goblin aversion to sunlight is constantly emphasised. Yet from 3rd Edition onward, this seems to have been entirely dropped.
• 4th Edition implies that goblins may have been the magical creations of the hobgoblins when the hobgoblins ran an ancient empire.

The revelation in Monsters of the Multiverse that goblins were originally fey makes it clear that goblins themselves are unaware of this distant history. In that sense, this is "additive" lore, in that it doesn't detract from what was previously understood, it just adds another layer. Mechanically, goblins now gain Fey Ancestry giving them resistance to charm. This is a change, sure, but not something that is likely to have a massive impact on how PCs experience goblins in practice.

Bottom line: I'm not convinced that "but this changes everything we know about goblins" is a reason for disliking the recent changes that stands up to close scrutiny. Would the new goblins be more acceptable if they were glowing red-eyed, sunlight averse, compulsive dwarf killers, who were magically created by hobgoblins before they became fey?