Setting book all the way. I'd go as far as to say that the base of D&D should have no lore. At least, no setting-specific lore, like the general alignments of specific versions of the races in the game or how common each race is.
As someone who primarily runs homebrew campaigns, I like having kind of a basic idea of a creature's strengths, motivations, and intended place in the world. Now that we have floating stat boosts and no fixed alignment, there are fewer mechanics to indirectly inform us of these things.
Of course, I may discard that lore completely for my setting, but it does help to have it there as a conceptual anchor. And honestly, this is half of what we pay them for. There's really not that much to the mechanics of a race. Every book should have lore from professional writers because that's part of the D&D brand. Strip away too much of it and the product feels bare and simple in a way that makes you think, "This isn't that hard. I could just do it myself."
Okay . . . but that's precisely what Monsters of the Multiverse did. It still has lore for the races and monsters in the book. About as much as the Monster Manual had for its monsters, and just enough lore for the individual races to give you an idea on how they would work in different settings.
Then, you can cross-reference the explanation for Goblins in MotM with their lore in Explorer's Guide to Wildemount in order to get a better feeling of how they work specifically in that setting. That is exactly how it should be. It shouldn't be like Volo's Guide to Monsters where it goes in-depth to how Goblinoids work in the Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk, making the assumption that they're evil in the base lore, which is then contradicted by Eberron or Exandria's lore . . . it should be barely any lore in the core of the game that then gets more in-depth depending on what setting book you buy.
And, IMO, the lore should make you think "this isn't that hard, I can do it myself", because that encourages homebrewing your own. Which, IMO, is a good thing.
I understand your point, but I also think that have the "generic lore" for something such as a goblin makes sense, while having modifications for different settings.
I think it makes it easier for you as a DM to have the base of how a monster fits into a typical world and be able to change it for your needs. I'd rather have some building blocks to work with than just my imagination.
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I chose settings books, because that, to me, makes the most sense in laying out creatures, specifically, PC type creatures. Not many folks get upset when a Worg, for example, is presented as a bloodthirsty beast, because it's clearly a "monster" so "monster" lore and so forth could easily be a mass collection, added to as required. By having many different settings available, one could very easily provide ASI's that pointed to the "norm" for said species, with the added note, including Tasha's rule allowing players to shuffle them as needed to create THEIR character. It would maintain some form of "standard" for the species in that world and give DM's and players something to work with.
That said, it would eliminate ALL PC creatures from overall collections, because Orcs in setting A are savage beasts, while in setting B they are community driven settlers. Polar opposites, with likely different ASI perks, to indicate how they live. Personally, I see this as the "best" solution for any PC species, along with, if my language wasn't clear, a change from calling them "Races" to calling them "Species" since that to me, seems more accurate.
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Talk to your Players.Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I understand your point, but I also think that have the "generic lore" for something such as a goblin makes sense, while having modifications for different settings.
I think it makes it easier for you as a DM to have the base of how a monster fits into a typical world and be able to change it for your needs. I'd rather have some building blocks to work with than just my imagination.
I'm generally fine with that . . . so long as it's supported in the Goblin's (or other species') racial mechanics. I generally don't like stuff that says "This race is almost always evil" or "This race builds houses out of mud and straw" or "This race lives in the Underdark" (which may or may not exist depending on what setting you're playing in). If it's "This race often lives underground or in dark forests because they have darkvision" or "This race is usually comes from the Feywild - or a similar plane of existence - because they have Fey Ancestry" I'm more fine with that.
The setting book can sort out the specifics, like their specific cultures, dwelling places, and typical religions. "Mind Flayers can only survive off of eating sentient brains and reproduce by planting a parasite in a humanoid's brain" is more than enough to get my imagination running from base lore. I don't need specific details on their weird psychic gods in the core book explaining them.
I understand your point, but I also think that have the "generic lore" for something such as a goblin makes sense, while having modifications for different settings.
I think it makes it easier for you as a DM to have the base of how a monster fits into a typical world and be able to change it for your needs. I'd rather have some building blocks to work with than just my imagination.
I'm generally fine with that . . . so long as it's supported in the Goblin's (or other species') racial mechanics. I generally don't like stuff that says "This race is almost always evil" or "This race builds houses out of mud and straw" or "This race lives in the Underdark" (which may or may not exist depending on what setting you're playing in). If it's "This race often lives underground or in dark forests because they have darkvision" or "This race is usually comes from the Feywild - or a similar plane of existence - because they have Fey Ancestry" I'm more fine with that.
The setting book can sort out the specifics, like their specific cultures, dwelling places, and typical religions. "Mind Flayers can only survive off of eating sentient brains and reproduce by planting a parasite in a humanoid's brain" is more than enough to get my imagination running from base lore. I don't need specific details on their weird psychic gods in the core book explaining them.
That makes sense. I dont like giving races alignment tendencies, but to me, specifiying where they generally live (and a few other factors as well) is important. And yes, I also disagree making a definitive statement of "X race always lives in Y space".
I still prefer to have a basis I can change over one that I have to create.
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BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explainHERE.
Ooh you got me in a jam here because option four "I think dogs should be able to vote" is a solid strategy; I feel the world would be nicer and probably better ran if they were in charge but for praticiality I'll go with Option 2 - adventure book.
Adventure books give you a good taste to work the story you want to run and you can either keep it or ignore it so there's that.
If enough people ask about a specific setting, like Barovia and Strahd for example, then maybe you do a lore of Barovia book but it should be a high number or else any requested area could get something and suddenly the market is flooded with lore books which some may want but others are over here just waiting for a new adventure story from the company instead. If you're going to do a major run of adventure books in the same area, like the Forgotten Realms, then maybe you again put out a History Of X book before the drop of adventures in that world but outside of that they can updated nuggets on the main site. I'm not going to say lore isn't important because it is, but clearly I don't find it as important in this game hobby as others.
Maybe if D&D was more like a Marvel or DC universe where you had set points because you're in one time/on one planet and continuity mattered more (not that comics always focus on continuity mind you) I'd say lore is more important and higher on a priority list so there needs to be more flagship books, but because so much of the popularity now is the customization of elements to make it the most "my game" it can be I just feel lore is down on the list of importance in the game designs. Again lore is important to help give a suggested set tone and rules in the adventures but you can edit it so what's lore for one group might not be the used lore for another who plays the same game (someone the book says is bad might be good in another story because someone sees the character differently but loves the other elements of the story so keeps the rest) so why does it matter now as much as it maybe did in other editions you know? I get the need for lore, but I don't want to see a library's worth of books on each setting for it either, but that's just me.
Setting books. Lore is only really relevant to any given campaign and DM's should not be ostracized for their worlds deviating from 'official lore'.
There's not a "like" option on here for posts that I've seen so I'll go old school and say I love this and agree with it!
5th edition is especially more fannon than cannon compared to older editions of the game so even in settings you can again have one DM run it with lore as written and another run the same adventure book with edited lore so what does "official lore" in that grand scheme really mean?
Publishing a lore book for something like Forgotten Realms or another plane of existence like the Fey Wilds is nice if you're a fan of those areas and want to know more, but it's ultimately as "solid ground" as any book published for the game now - a suggestion more than anything. It might be your cannon but it doesn't mean it's everyone else's. Even the PHB says you can ignore the options before you in some sections and play how you want; they give you a starting tool kit but you aren't beholden to use it if it makes your game more fun. The company can put out books all day long saying "this is the official history and rules of Barovia" but at the end of the day unless it's Adventure League they can't control what a group does and maybe some event in the "official lore book" never happened for the table playing Curse Of Strahd because they as a group decided they didn't care for that bit of lore and so right there you have edited lore so what's the point of worrying about a hardcore lore book for each realm?
Lore is an important building block for a story, but unless you can control the continuity of each play of the adventure it's never going to be cannon compliant.
Again I can see lore being a focus if this was like a Marvel or DC shared universe and so histories and events were kind of set things, but D&D is literally a big "choose your own adventure" game so lore matters for each setting book, but even within it isn't the end all be all I think some wish it was. I never want to see Wizards just phone it in on lore bits in books because quality definitely matters, but I think the story for the adventure book is more important than the lore for it. Give me a focus on the company writing more adventure books than worrying over a realm's lore because that is just too big of an area to manage unless it's you're one universe for the next several years and so what tidbits you will get for the realm right now can arguably fit inside an adventure book anyways.
I realize I'm probably not making sense anymore - it's late here, but yeah bottom line on a RPG there is no way to realistically have a set lore for everyone who's a fan of the franchise. Even video games like MASS EFFECT or DRAGON AGE have varying lore beyond the first game because of choices the player made; true there is an overall lore but again it's like an adventure book here - cannon only up until a point because there's different universes for each game choice. The company isn't going to write a lore book for each group so yeah keep it general like the PHB - there's a suggested path but not a mandatory one.
New players don't really play in "The Forgotten Realms"; they play in Generic Fantasy Tropeland with occasional tie-ins to FR names because none of the existing FR books do any reasonable job of telling people how the Realms work.
As a new player to the franchise this feels like an extremely fair statement to me.
There's no adventure book that I personally know of that takes you all around the realm so really the adventure books could happen anywhere and it changes absolutely nothing. Waterdeep could be in the Forgotten Realms, but it could also be set in any town named Waterdeep on any other plane of existence. The Forgotten Realms means nothing to me beyond it's a name people say when it comes to this hobby.
People make a big deal out of Grayhawk it feels like but I have no idea why because I have yet to hear about adventures based there or what the setting is suppose to be like. Again it's just a name. The larger worlds of these smaller games aren't promoted or factored in as much as other franchises do their lore so as Third_Sundering said it's almost as if "there should be no official lore"; yes it matters for source books but what's the point of worrying over larger scale lore since you aren't really playing in that space or having it matter continuity wise over multiple adventures?
Again even if you did focus on world lore you can't stop players from ignoring the lore if they chose so it makes sense they focus more on what inhabits a space (races, classes, rules) rather than what happened in the space.
New players don't really play in "The Forgotten Realms"; they play in Generic Fantasy Tropeland with occasional tie-ins to FR names because none of the existing FR books do any reasonable job of telling people how the Realms work.
As a new player to the franchise this feels like an extremely fair statement to me.
There's no adventure book that I personally know of that takes you all around the realm so really the adventure books could happen anywhere and it changes absolutely nothing. Waterdeep could be in the Forgotten Realms, but it could also be set in any town named Waterdeep on any other plane of existence. The Forgotten Realms means nothing to me beyond it's a name people say when it comes to this hobby.
People make a big deal out of Grayhawk it feels like but I have no idea why because I have yet to hear about adventures based there or what the setting is suppose to be like. Again it's just a name. The larger worlds of these smaller games aren't promoted or factored in as much as other franchises do their lore so as Third_Sundering said it's almost as if "there should be no official lore"; yes it matters for source books but what's the point of worrying over larger scale lore since you aren't really playing in that space or having it matter continuity wise over multiple adventures?
Again even if you did focus on world lore you can't stop players from ignoring the lore if they chose so it makes sense they focus more on what inhabits a space (races, classes, rules) rather than what happened in the space.
I'm a (fairly) new player that has only been a member of the hobby for about half a decade, so I also know how hard it is to sort through the D&D lore from the past several decades and try to make sense of it. I'll give you a basic rundown of some of the things I've picked up over the past 5 years or so.
Greyhawk - One of the first official D&D settings ever published. It was made by Gary Gygax (the main creator of the game), and is where most of the game's base lore comes from. The many non-Human Pantheons of D&D (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Orc, etc) all come from Greyhawk, and were later stolen by the Forgotten Realms (and Nerath and Exandria later on, but in smaller, more simplified versions). I believe that the Great Wheel Cosmology (5e's base cosmology) was originally made for Greyhawk, too, although it has changed quite a bit over the years. And most of the Archdevils and Demon Lords come from Greyhawk, too. Although there isn't an official setting book for Greyhawk in D&D 5e yet (because it's pretty similar to the Forgotten Realms), there are adventures that take place there. Most notably are the ones from Tales from the Yawning Portal and the Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh is a town from Greyhawk, although the 5e version can be placed in any world fairly easily. Notable NPCs from Greyhawk include Mordenkainen (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Monsters of the Multiverse, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Curse of Strahd), Tasha/Iggwilv (from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight), and Bigby (the creator of Bigby's Hand). Oh, and the world of Greyhawk is named "Oerth".
The main reason that people still talk about Greyhawk like it's a big deal is because there's already a lot of content and characters from it in 5e (the non-Human Pantheons, a few NPCs and spells, about a dozen short adventures), but it hasn't been fully updated to D&D 5e yet, like Eberron, Ravenloft, and the Forgotten Realms have (and Spelljammer and Dragonlance will be by the end of the year).
The Forgotten Realms - Everyone's favorite (or least favorite) kitchen sink in all of D&D! The world with so much lore covering dozens of nations, thousands of years, and hundreds of species spread throughout D&D rulebooks (from several editions), video games, novels, and the wiki from the past 4ish decades that the entirety of its contents cannot be fully learned by any one person. It was made byEd Greenwoodbefore D&D even existed, and has since been added to by dozens of writers and game designers. There are literal hundreds of novels written that take place in the world (most of them average or below), and nearly all of the official, campaign-length D&D 5e adventures take place in it (Curse of Strahd, the Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and Call of the Netherdeep are the only campaign-length adventures that don't take place in the setting). There are several continents that you can visit in it, so long as they're Faerun (because it's the only one fully explained in D&D 5e, with most of the content covering the Sword Coast), and waaaaay too much lore for one person (even the creator of the setting) to learn it all.
And that is the main reason that a lot of people hate the Forgotten Realms. And also the main reason that a lot of people love it. No other setting even comes close to the sheer amount of lore officially published for it throughout D&D's history.
I personally think there's a lot to love about the Forgotten Realms (Netheril, Mythals, Thay, Xanathar and Volo, Icewind Dale, about 1% of the named gods in the setting are pretty cool and interesting, and turnips), but there's also a loooooot of crap. You know Sturgeon's Law? The whole "90% of everything is crap"-saying? Well, it's especially true for the Forgotten Realms. And because there has been a lot of content made for the setting, the small percentage of the setting that is actually good is really drowned out by the deluge of crap that TSR and WotC have/had made for it throughout the decades.
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Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
I understand your point, but I also think that have the "generic lore" for something such as a goblin makes sense, while having modifications for different settings.
I think it makes it easier for you as a DM to have the base of how a monster fits into a typical world and be able to change it for your needs. I'd rather have some building blocks to work with than just my imagination.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.I chose settings books, because that, to me, makes the most sense in laying out creatures, specifically, PC type creatures. Not many folks get upset when a Worg, for example, is presented as a bloodthirsty beast, because it's clearly a "monster" so "monster" lore and so forth could easily be a mass collection, added to as required. By having many different settings available, one could very easily provide ASI's that pointed to the "norm" for said species, with the added note, including Tasha's rule allowing players to shuffle them as needed to create THEIR character. It would maintain some form of "standard" for the species in that world and give DM's and players something to work with.
That said, it would eliminate ALL PC creatures from overall collections, because Orcs in setting A are savage beasts, while in setting B they are community driven settlers. Polar opposites, with likely different ASI perks, to indicate how they live. Personally, I see this as the "best" solution for any PC species, along with, if my language wasn't clear, a change from calling them "Races" to calling them "Species" since that to me, seems more accurate.
Talk to your Players. Talk to your DM. If more people used this advice, there would be 24.74% fewer threads on Tactics, Rules and DM discussions.
I'm generally fine with that . . . so long as it's supported in the Goblin's (or other species') racial mechanics. I generally don't like stuff that says "This race is almost always evil" or "This race builds houses out of mud and straw" or "This race lives in the Underdark" (which may or may not exist depending on what setting you're playing in). If it's "This race often lives underground or in dark forests because they have darkvision" or "This race is usually comes from the Feywild - or a similar plane of existence - because they have Fey Ancestry" I'm more fine with that.
The setting book can sort out the specifics, like their specific cultures, dwelling places, and typical religions. "Mind Flayers can only survive off of eating sentient brains and reproduce by planting a parasite in a humanoid's brain" is more than enough to get my imagination running from base lore. I don't need specific details on their weird psychic gods in the core book explaining them.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
That makes sense. I dont like giving races alignment tendencies, but to me, specifiying where they generally live (and a few other factors as well) is important. And yes, I also disagree making a definitive statement of "X race always lives in Y space".
I still prefer to have a basis I can change over one that I have to create.
BoringBard's long and tedious posts somehow manage to enrapture audiences. How? Because he used Charm Person, the #1 bard spell!
He/him pronouns. Call me Bard. PROUD NERD!
Ever wanted to talk about your parties' worst mistakes? Do so HERE. What's your favorite class, why? Share & explain
HERE.Ooh you got me in a jam here because option four "I think dogs should be able to vote" is a solid strategy; I feel the world would be nicer and probably better ran if they were in charge but for praticiality I'll go with Option 2 - adventure book.
Adventure books give you a good taste to work the story you want to run and you can either keep it or ignore it so there's that.
If enough people ask about a specific setting, like Barovia and Strahd for example, then maybe you do a lore of Barovia book but it should be a high number or else any requested area could get something and suddenly the market is flooded with lore books which some may want but others are over here just waiting for a new adventure story from the company instead. If you're going to do a major run of adventure books in the same area, like the Forgotten Realms, then maybe you again put out a History Of X book before the drop of adventures in that world but outside of that they can updated nuggets on the main site. I'm not going to say lore isn't important because it is, but clearly I don't find it as important in this game hobby as others.
Maybe if D&D was more like a Marvel or DC universe where you had set points because you're in one time/on one planet and continuity mattered more (not that comics always focus on continuity mind you) I'd say lore is more important and higher on a priority list so there needs to be more flagship books, but because so much of the popularity now is the customization of elements to make it the most "my game" it can be I just feel lore is down on the list of importance in the game designs. Again lore is important to help give a suggested set tone and rules in the adventures but you can edit it so what's lore for one group might not be the used lore for another who plays the same game (someone the book says is bad might be good in another story because someone sees the character differently but loves the other elements of the story so keeps the rest) so why does it matter now as much as it maybe did in other editions you know? I get the need for lore, but I don't want to see a library's worth of books on each setting for it either, but that's just me.
There's not a "like" option on here for posts that I've seen so I'll go old school and say I love this and agree with it!
5th edition is especially more fannon than cannon compared to older editions of the game so even in settings you can again have one DM run it with lore as written and another run the same adventure book with edited lore so what does "official lore" in that grand scheme really mean?
Publishing a lore book for something like Forgotten Realms or another plane of existence like the Fey Wilds is nice if you're a fan of those areas and want to know more, but it's ultimately as "solid ground" as any book published for the game now - a suggestion more than anything. It might be your cannon but it doesn't mean it's everyone else's. Even the PHB says you can ignore the options before you in some sections and play how you want; they give you a starting tool kit but you aren't beholden to use it if it makes your game more fun. The company can put out books all day long saying "this is the official history and rules of Barovia" but at the end of the day unless it's Adventure League they can't control what a group does and maybe some event in the "official lore book" never happened for the table playing Curse Of Strahd because they as a group decided they didn't care for that bit of lore and so right there you have edited lore so what's the point of worrying about a hardcore lore book for each realm?
Lore is an important building block for a story, but unless you can control the continuity of each play of the adventure it's never going to be cannon compliant.
Again I can see lore being a focus if this was like a Marvel or DC shared universe and so histories and events were kind of set things, but D&D is literally a big "choose your own adventure" game so lore matters for each setting book, but even within it isn't the end all be all I think some wish it was. I never want to see Wizards just phone it in on lore bits in books because quality definitely matters, but I think the story for the adventure book is more important than the lore for it. Give me a focus on the company writing more adventure books than worrying over a realm's lore because that is just too big of an area to manage unless it's you're one universe for the next several years and so what tidbits you will get for the realm right now can arguably fit inside an adventure book anyways.
I realize I'm probably not making sense anymore - it's late here, but yeah bottom line on a RPG there is no way to realistically have a set lore for everyone who's a fan of the franchise. Even video games like MASS EFFECT or DRAGON AGE have varying lore beyond the first game because of choices the player made; true there is an overall lore but again it's like an adventure book here - cannon only up until a point because there's different universes for each game choice. The company isn't going to write a lore book for each group so yeah keep it general like the PHB - there's a suggested path but not a mandatory one.
As a new player to the franchise this feels like an extremely fair statement to me.
There's no adventure book that I personally know of that takes you all around the realm so really the adventure books could happen anywhere and it changes absolutely nothing. Waterdeep could be in the Forgotten Realms, but it could also be set in any town named Waterdeep on any other plane of existence. The Forgotten Realms means nothing to me beyond it's a name people say when it comes to this hobby.
People make a big deal out of Grayhawk it feels like but I have no idea why because I have yet to hear about adventures based there or what the setting is suppose to be like. Again it's just a name. The larger worlds of these smaller games aren't promoted or factored in as much as other franchises do their lore so as Third_Sundering said it's almost as if "there should be no official lore"; yes it matters for source books but what's the point of worrying over larger scale lore since you aren't really playing in that space or having it matter continuity wise over multiple adventures?
Again even if you did focus on world lore you can't stop players from ignoring the lore if they chose so it makes sense they focus more on what inhabits a space (races, classes, rules) rather than what happened in the space.
(FYI, there actually is. They're called "thanks" and you can do it by clicking the little arrow at the bottom-left of someone else's post.)
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I'm a (fairly) new player that has only been a member of the hobby for about half a decade, so I also know how hard it is to sort through the D&D lore from the past several decades and try to make sense of it. I'll give you a basic rundown of some of the things I've picked up over the past 5 years or so.
Greyhawk - One of the first official D&D settings ever published. It was made by Gary Gygax (the main creator of the game), and is where most of the game's base lore comes from. The many non-Human Pantheons of D&D (Dwarf, Elf, Gnome, Halfling, Orc, etc) all come from Greyhawk, and were later stolen by the Forgotten Realms (and Nerath and Exandria later on, but in smaller, more simplified versions). I believe that the Great Wheel Cosmology (5e's base cosmology) was originally made for Greyhawk, too, although it has changed quite a bit over the years. And most of the Archdevils and Demon Lords come from Greyhawk, too. Although there isn't an official setting book for Greyhawk in D&D 5e yet (because it's pretty similar to the Forgotten Realms), there are adventures that take place there. Most notably are the ones from Tales from the Yawning Portal and the Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Saltmarsh is a town from Greyhawk, although the 5e version can be placed in any world fairly easily. Notable NPCs from Greyhawk include Mordenkainen (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, Monsters of the Multiverse, Baldur's Gate: Descent into Avernus, and the Curse of Strahd), Tasha/Iggwilv (from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything and The Wild Beyond the Witchlight), and Bigby (the creator of Bigby's Hand). Oh, and the world of Greyhawk is named "Oerth".
The main reason that people still talk about Greyhawk like it's a big deal is because there's already a lot of content and characters from it in 5e (the non-Human Pantheons, a few NPCs and spells, about a dozen short adventures), but it hasn't been fully updated to D&D 5e yet, like Eberron, Ravenloft, and the Forgotten Realms have (and Spelljammer and Dragonlance will be by the end of the year).
The Forgotten Realms - Everyone's favorite (or least favorite) kitchen sink in all of D&D! The world with so much lore covering dozens of nations, thousands of years, and hundreds of species spread throughout D&D rulebooks (from several editions), video games, novels, and the wiki from the past 4ish decades that the entirety of its contents cannot be fully learned by any one person. It was made by Ed Greenwood before D&D even existed, and has since been added to by dozens of writers and game designers. There are literal hundreds of novels written that take place in the world (most of them average or below), and nearly all of the official, campaign-length D&D 5e adventures take place in it (Curse of Strahd, the Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and Call of the Netherdeep are the only campaign-length adventures that don't take place in the setting). There are several continents that you can visit in it, so long as they're Faerun (because it's the only one fully explained in D&D 5e, with most of the content covering the Sword Coast), and waaaaay too much lore for one person (even the creator of the setting) to learn it all.
And that is the main reason that a lot of people hate the Forgotten Realms. And also the main reason that a lot of people love it. No other setting even comes close to the sheer amount of lore officially published for it throughout D&D's history.
I personally think there's a lot to love about the Forgotten Realms (Netheril, Mythals, Thay, Xanathar and Volo, Icewind Dale, about 1% of the named gods in the setting are pretty cool and interesting, and turnips), but there's also a loooooot of crap. You know Sturgeon's Law? The whole "90% of everything is crap"-saying? Well, it's especially true for the Forgotten Realms. And because there has been a lot of content made for the setting, the small percentage of the setting that is actually good is really drowned out by the deluge of crap that TSR and WotC have/had made for it throughout the decades.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
I know I don’t say this often, but I agree with Kotath.👆
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