D&D: WotC’s New Lore Changes Raise Questions Among Players

The failure of 4e is/was a combination of many factors; there's no single "gotcha!" to it.  The short release window Erriku mentions is one factor; the alientation/alteration of what many people considered 'critical' elements of D&D-ness was another.  A major factor is Paizo's existence and their ability to offer a viasble alternative product.  Paizo was a big supplier of third-party 3.5 products; when Wizards switched to 4e without giving them a chance to adapt and onboard, Paizo had the knowledge, experience, and corporate resources required to say "we'll make our OWN 3.5e, with blackjack and hookers!", and in the doing they offered a product others found more familiar and comforting that could outcompete the new edition despite the many actual improvements in 4e.  4e's attempt to integrate digital tools could also be perceived as being too soon, before the market was ready to really support a hybrid experience.  In the 4e days, tabletop was still very much a pen and paper game, digital tools were an exotic toy and side thing.  These days?  Many games are starting to come out in which the digital ecosystem is critical to the game, to the point where you cannot play without the tools, and they're doing fine.

Were 4e to be released today, rather than in 20-whenever-it-was?  It might have done significantly better, and represented a real leap forward in D&D.  There's a few arguments I've heard that state that 4e wasn't a "failure", or at least it wasn't a failed game design.  A failed commercial product yes, but not a failed game.  Instead, they just got 4e and 5e backwards - Fifth should have been Fourth, and led into the more nuanced, more interesting Fourth-as-"Fifth" edition.  The market is much more tech-savvy today, Paizo has screwed the pooch themselves with PF2e - which, in a great case of irony, is very much Paizo realizing the issues with 3.5 and trying to catch up to 5e in many ways now that Wizards is kicking their asses black and blue again - and furthermore Wizards has figured out how to run/manage/incorporate a thriving third-party ecosystem with things like the DM's Guild and the open license.  All of which boosts their core product.

Paizo and Pathfinder succeeded on the backs of 3.5e players who hated 4e and wanted to keep playing their original game.  They managed to capitalize very well on a unique opportunity they will not be given again.  That pool of players no longer exists, and Wizards is not going to drop the ball like that again.  Whatever happens in 2024, it will not be as drastic as the 4e to 5e switch, or even the 3e to 3.5e switch, I would presume.  A much, MUCH larger percentage of 5e's audience is new-to-5e players who are not as attached to all the old pre-5e lore, if they have any attachment to it at all.  They will be more welcoming and tolerant towards changes to the lore, especially if made with an eye towards modern issues as Wizards is...trying...to do.  The market landscape doesn't look a thing like it did in the days of 4e and Pathfinder duking it out.  Saying "Wizards will remember who its REAL audience is or they'll fail" is not likely to get you anywhere.
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...also yes, if you've been homebrewing all your species since you started playing and forcing all your players to adhere to the super strict, extremely narrow, rigidly-defined bioessential roles you see for their species, inflicting severe mechanical penalties on everyone who doesn't toe the line and proclaiming that every other species is An Enemy Of Mankind Forever?  I can see where you might be annoyed by Wizards contradicting you, but also maybe stop doing that and see where your players take you?  One of the best characters I DMed for back in the day was a lizardman who ended up serving as the party's chief tactician and one of its anchors; that character almost never spoke, but the player had an absolute gift for describing motions, expressions, and emotions in a way that let Malsvir communicate without words in ways that only ever enriched my game.  To this day, "Awkward Lizard Stare" is a cherished in-joke at my table.  If I'd stamped my little foot and said "NO!  Lizardmen are bad guys!  Play a human or go away from my table!" I would never have gotten to see all the splendid ways in which Mal's player worked with me and with the lore of the game and the world to create a unique experience for everyone there.

Players want to tell awesome stories as much as DMs do.  If you let them have their head, you'll often be surprised by what you end up with.  For every jackass who wants to play a loxodon one-man-band bard because of shitty Internet memes, there's two or three players who will delight you with their excellent take on a lizardfolk Battlemaster struggling with feeling out of place within his own people and caught up in events beyond his kin's ability to swiftly adapt to.

Over $1000 on 3.5? That is a fair-sized investment. However, even if we go ahead and generously estimate you spent $2400 on 3.5 products 12 years ago, surely you can see that WoTC could not make it on your $200/year alone and had to sell stuff to other customers? And that those other customer were and are ok enough with the subsequent lore that WoTC was able to make it by without your patronage so what you think about what drow are or aren’t is history? Like I hate that I can’t pay my dog license in person anymore and my husband is still angry that I got rid of our all but useless landline but that’s just the way things are now because the majority of other paying customers want it that way. This thread has reached old man yelling at the clouds proportions. We get it. You are unhappy. Can we move on now?

This is all fantastic, but let's get back to the topic of current lore changes.  The dynamics of previous editions can be discussed in a different thread.

Shepherd_Hubbard,

I am good, thank you for asking.

Even if this is all the case, it has nothing at all to do with lore changes and how that might drive patrons away. There is a lot of context that you are ignoring in your response that I cannot address here. Suffice to say, I disagree with your reasoning. However, per the recommendation of Sedge, we should get back on topic. Am I understanding that you do not appreciate the lore changes being more generalizable to all D&D games in 5e, a system that you apparently did not use even when the lore was focused on FR? If this is the case, I am at a loss for why you have been such a booming voice in this thread given that you were not invested in 5e to begin with.

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.

I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes.  If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.

What.  Lore.  Changes?

The ONLY 'lore changes' made were "drow are evil when they're evil and not evil when they're not" as opposed to "ALL DROW EVERYWHERE PERIOD are evil sun-hating slavemongering Omega ******* ******bags who are so hilariously over-the-top For-The-Evulz that even Lolth occasionally has to step in and say 'guys.  Guys.  For real.  Dial it back a notch'."

That is not a 'lore change', that is an acknowledgement of reality.  And no, all the folks yelling about how 'there's always been 'good' drow' are wrong - every single edition of D&D except this one has painted the entire species as unrepentantly, irredeemably, overwhelmingly evil and absolutely glorying in that fact no matter how straight-up dumb it is.  Eilistraee is a damn dirty fib that old-school DMs use to detect people that won't treat an entire sapient species as guilt-free murder dolls and then eject them from their table.  Raise your hand if you have ever played, or allowed someone else to play, a drow adherent of Eilistraee?

...nah?  Nothing?  Yeah, I didn't think so either.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

 

 Why? There are real world testimonies from players (linked either here or one of the other threads on this topic) who found these changes very necessary and of personal relevance. Do you not think that these voices are material?

The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?

I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)

But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.

To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and the influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.

I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes.  If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.

So 5e does do a considerable amount of surveying regularly, and they talk a big game about player input.  That said, modern business intelligence or market research isn't simply statical analysis of directed questions (see other posts from folks who've articulated better than I the notion that in game design of all forms the industry needs to think beyond immediate player community impressions to determine ways to improve games or design features for new games).  WotC does not exist in some demi-plane isolated from the TTRPG hobby.  They pay attention to trends seen in social media, the trades (Ennies for example), actual play performances, conventions, outreach from retailers etc.  It's not hard to figure out how people play D&D and hypothesize ways to grow the game.

To your response I think there's a further question what do you mean "necessary?"  Stepping away from the "cultural impact" hypothesis speculation Bell of Lost Souls misrepresented as a factual interpretation of the factors guiding present 5e and future D&D development, let's think in terms of a property trying to maximize sale of game materials.  If the goal of the changes was to free up creative space so the multiverse-leaning iteration of D&D can be played with little "baggage" from prior let's call it "insistent lore", I'd say the language change in Drow as well as the role playing guidance were necessary, but also relatively pedestrian changes.  The system D&D is try to create a system where folks can play the broadest range possible.  Let's put CoS Death House on one side of the spectrum and Wild Beyond the Witchlight on pacifist mode on the other.  Given past statements of WotC as wanting to push "what people can do with D&D" (same press/marketing event where they announced the three classic campaigns revisit, I think it was Celelbration 2020?) into modes and styles of play rarely or to this date never seen in D&D, I see them wanting to enable players to want to push past those "limits" to the game I laid down in a spectrum between Death House and Witchlight. 

And we're seeing this it in current and future products.  There are a lot of debates here and elsewhere in the D&D community about whether a table can really "do horror" with D&D.  I think there's still a lot on that front up for debate, but Van Richten's Guide does make a very strong effort at providing tools to DMs to push horror in D&D past the usual gothic tropes into full on gross out to more subtle psychological games, and done so in way where care is central and the players fears aren't exploited harmfully.  On the WBtW side of things, you have other debates on this forum and elsewhere in the community about whether Critical Role is "really D&D" or whether the tools D&D at hand enable a table to have an authentic CR like experience.  I think we can all say CR is D&D but also realistically a CR experience requires a lot of narrative and storytelling and "doing the voice" side of role playing techniques that aren't in the "basic box" of D&D, at least not in a way that facilitates new players and DMs (honestly the DMG guide to building a campaign world is quite good, but is so often ignored by folks who want to make an Exandria equivalent out of the box).  To address this, we have a Critical Role adventure coming our way and I'd be very surprised if there aren't a lot of Mercer sidebars coaching DMs how to use actual "Mercer effects" (so to speak) in their games.  

So taking that longer and wider view of what I see as going on with D&D, this errata sheet wasn't shocking at all, I was actually surprised it took them over a year after the ability mods errata to add this lair to Volo's and the PHB description, but that may be more about how WotC paces errata writing than any lack of knowledge or ability to do targetted changes to streamline and align the game with where they see the game going.  And when I see "where they see the game going" that does not imply a map where some games are being left behind.  Nothing in the errata dictates a change from the way anyone plays the game.

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?

No, it's not odd. In fact, it's quite common for companies to survey their customer base before making changes to their product.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

Quote from Ophidimancer >>

The idea that a publishing company somehow needs to proactively get the approval of their audience before adding to their body of creative fictions is ... odd?

 

No, it's not odd. In fact, it's quite common for companies to survey their customer base before making changes to their product.

Which they do, a few times a year at minimum.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)

But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.

To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic not to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.

Do you not think that undermines your position that the changes are not necessary? The changes that removed racial alignment specifically?

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

Obviously, in this thread, my opinion is in the minority. However, the majority in this thread, or in this forum for that matter do not necessarily represent the majority of D&D players.

I'd be interested in finding out if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the D&D community before deciding to make the changes.  If they did, and majority responded that they liked the changes, then so be it.

 

So 5e does do a considerable amount of surveying regularly, and they talk a big game about player input.  That said, modern business intelligence or market research isn't simply statical analysis of directed questions (see other posts from folks who've articulated better than I the notion that in game design of all forms the industry needs to think beyond immediate player community impressions to determine ways to improve games or design features for new games).  WotC does not exist in some demi-plane isolated from the TTRPG hobby.  They pay attention to trends seen in social media, the trades (Ennies for example), actual play performances, conventions, outreach from retailers etc.  It's not hard to figure out how people play D&D and hypothesize ways to grow the game.

To your response I think there's a further question what do you mean "necessary?"  Stepping away from the "cultural impact" hypothesis speculation Bell of Lost Souls misrepresented as a factual interpretation of the factors guiding present 5e and future D&D development, let's think in terms of a property trying to maximize sale of game materials.  If the goal of the changes was to free up creative space so the multiverse-leaning iteration of D&D can be played with little "baggage" from prior let's call it "insistent lore", I'd say the language change in Drow as well as the role playing guidance were necessary, but also relatively pedestrian changes.  The system D&D is try to create a system where folks can play the broadest range possible.  Let's put CoS Death House on one side of the spectrum and Wild Beyond the Witchlight on pacifist mode on the other.  Given past statements of WotC as wanting to push "what people can do with D&D" (same press/marketing event where they announced the three classic campaigns revisit, I think it was Celelbration 2020?) into modes and styles of play rarely or to this date never seen in D&D, I see them wanting to enable players to want to push past those "limits" to the game I laid down in a spectrum between Death House and Witchlight. 

And we're seeing this it in current and future products.  There are a lot of debates here and elsewhere in the D&D community about whether a table can really "do horror" with D&D.  I think there's still a lot on that front up for debate, but Van Richten's Guide does make a very strong effort at providing tools to DMs to push horror in D&D past the usual gothic tropes into full on gross out to more subtle psychological games, and done so in way where care is central and the players fears aren't exploited harmfully.  On the WBtW side of things, you have other debates on this forum and elsewhere in the community about whether Critical Role is "really D&D" or whether the tools D&D at hand enable a table to have an authentic CR like experience.  I think we can all say CR is D&D but also realistically a CR experience requires a lot of narrative and storytelling and "doing the voice" side of role playing techniques that aren't in the "basic box" of D&D, at least not in a way that facilitates new players and DMs (honestly the DMG guide to building a campaign world is quite good, but is so often ignored by folks who want to make an Exandria equivalent out of the box).  To address this, we have a Critical Role adventure coming our way and I'd be very surprised if there aren't a lot of Mercer sidebars coaching DMs how to use actual "Mercer effects" (so to speak) in their games.  

So taking that longer and wider view of what I see as going on with D&D, this errata sheet wasn't shocking at all, I was actually surprised it took them over a year after the ability mods errata to add this lair to Volo's and the PHB description, but that may be more about how WotC paces errata writing than any lack of knowledge or ability to do targetted changes to streamline and align the game with where they see the game going.  And when I see "where they see the game going" that does not imply a map where some games are being left behind.  Nothing in the errata dictates a change from the way anyone plays the game.

Thank you for this direct and thorough answer to my question!

Quote from Erriku >>

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I assume you're responding to my post? I was simply calling the changes what someone else referred to them as (See post #394)

But that's not the point of my post. What I would like to know, is if WoTC conducted a statistically valid survey of the changes.

To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic not to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.

Do you not think that undermines your position that the changes are not necessary? The changes that removed racial alignment specifically?

Do the changes make sense, yes. Are they necessary, no. As many people have said in this and other threads, the DM can mold their world any way they choose.

Quote from Erriku >>

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

 

 Why? There are real world testimonies from players (linked either here or one of the other threads on this topic) who found these changes very necessary and of personal relevance. Do you not think that these voices are material?

No, I don't deny their feelings, and I'm sure they are being genuine.

But making changes based on a statistical minority of players can be risky.

Quote from Grunk999 >>>

Do the changes make sense, yes. Are they necessary, no. As many people have said in this and other threads, the DM can mold their world any way they choose.

So, in your opinion the changes do make sense, in your opinion nurture wins out over nature, and I have mentioned that there are actual existing players who felt personally impacted by the implications of the what existed before, yet you maintain your position that the changes are not necessary? How do you define ‘necessary’ then? Because your footing does not seem very solid from what I am seeing.

Quote from Grunk999 >>

 

To respond to your comment. I believe in nurture over nature. Yes, each person is cable of making their own decisions. However, I think it's unrealistic not to overlook cultural influence, peer pressure, and influence of parents and authority figures. If a child sees his parents and peers looting and pillaging, there is strong possibility (no, not a guarantee) that the child will favor looting and pillaging as an adult.

This isn't the place for an extended debate on identity formation and individual agency within a social or cultural system; but your realism assertion is specious in reality, moreso in fantasy.  It's actually essentialist logic.  Now you're free to have essentially "bad" people in your game.  All the recent errata does for the Drow and the monsters in Volo's is saying that sure that possibility is there, but it isn't the only way to play it.  Like the Mind Flayer errata.  In their clarification, they say that Mind Flayers still consume sentient brains and so will likely remain a stock baddie in many games, but the Volo's guidance gives a narrow 'stock' personality for Mind Flayers - which belies its own "deep lore" if you go back to Cordell's Illthiad and Mind Flayer trilogy for 2e, which is an awesome arc, and actually follows some AD&D thoughts on them from Dragon, so so much for stable lore without even getting into Spelljammer.  But speaking of Spelljammer, on the Drow lore, the subjugation of an entire elven race under Lloth or even Lloth's subjugation of a portion of that race is one way Drow can be used in your game with a history to mine for DMs who like idea mining from past iterations of adventure ... but it's not the only way.

My Drow are a lot more diasporic and cosmic.  What's left of them are tied much more to stars and the darkness (and vibrantly volatile phlogiston) of space. They have some facility in the Underdark, because the deeper you dig, well on a practical level there's the resources Drow and other star farers use to touch the stars, but also in a cosmic functional way, the deeper you dig into the world, the more likely you are to find the same cosmic void at the core of your world as the one that envelopes it (because they're one and the same), so Drow simply have the environmental facility with negotiating life on void's edges (which makes them likely trader partners and pact makers with Abyssal and Far Realm type entities, but also very capable agents for Celestial type forces trying to hold back those voids).  So in my game, sure the Queen of the Demonweb pits uses Drow, because she'd be stupid not to, but so don't Dragons of all persuasions, some Fey, etc.  The edgelord trappings of Drizzt and Jarlaxle are perfectly fine coaching for Drow in my game, because those characterizations at the end of the day don't really need the Lloth narrative at all (those personalities could emerged through a number of stories).  It's easy to put lots of colonial or liminal narratives on Drow, and my game leans toward the latter.  And even then I'm always happy to see someone else using Drow differently.       

Quote from Grunk999 >>

Quote from Erriku >>

Quote from Grunk999 >>

I don't think the lore changes are necessary.

 Why? There are real world testimonies from players (linked either here or one of the other threads on this topic) who found these changes very necessary and of personal relevance. Do you not think that these voices are material?

No, I don't deny their feelings, and I'm sure they are being genuine.

But making changes based on a statistical minority of players can be risky.

Why are you assuming that those impacted are a statistical minority? How are these changes risky, in your estimation?

Quote from Erriku >>

Quote from Grunk999 >>>

Do the changes make sense, yes. Are they necessary, no. As many people have said in this and other threads, the DM can mold their world any way they choose.

 How do you define ‘necessary’ then? Because your footing does not seem very solid from what I am seeing.

In this context, I define necessary changes as those that will materially impact sales. If WoTC didn't make the changes, would their sales have materially suffered? Without having the pre and post financial and operational data to assess and measure the impact, those of us external to the company will never know for sure.