Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer Creatures
Frozen Sick
D&D Beyond Basic Rules
Basic Rules (2014)
Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in- Marketplace
Monstrous Compendium Vol. 1: Spelljammer CreaturesFrozen SickD&D Beyond Basic RulesBasic Rules (2014)Sign in to view your library & saved favorites.
Sign in
You can debate my ideas and disagree without doubt, but these forums allow for criticisms of product and even I believe Wizards themselves (without being obscene, obviously). Do *not* tell me where I can and cannot post, or otherwise imply such. If I believed that 5e was wholly terrible or that it was beyond salvation, I wouldn't be here. It should also be noted that I own every product on D&D Beyond, excepting two adventures and a dice set. Furthermore, don't judge me based on just one post or one thread.
A reminder that all users are expected to
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
The inclusion of the world-building and lore sections for creatures is very useful for those people who don't have to time to build their own worlds, or for newer players who want to run things in the D&D default campaign world.
These books are only available for those who have already purchased them, for anybody else the lore is no longer easily accessible.
I haven't seen anyone ever say "we shouldn't get any more lore in 5e". What I have seen is "Hey, we don't need as much lore as we had in previous editions because they went overboard and super in-depth to the extent that it was harmful to helping new DMs play the game, so can we scale it back a bit and make the base of the game setting-agnostic to support different worlds equally, like Eberron, Exandria, and Dark Sun?"
Look at Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. It came out last year and has quite a bit of new lore and worldbuilding.
Sure, but there is a point where there's so much lore that it's overwhelming to new players.
Also, no one needs to know about how pregnant drow get orgasms from their twin fetuses battling to the death in the womb. There is such a thing as "too much lore".
I mean, no. Take a look at Fizban's Treasury of Dragons. It gives a baseline for the lore about the First World and the behaviors for different types of Dragons but it gives tools to DMs in the form of tables to make Dragons unique to their campaigns/worlds.
First off, where did "WotC is cutting back on hiring writers" come from? They just published Journeys Through the Radiant Citadel which a) had a lot of new lore and b) hired a bunch of new writers for the book. They did something similar for Candlekeep Mysteries.
Second, they're expecting people to use their lore as a guideline to build off of. They don't need to explain the religion, culture, in-depth behaviors and personalities of every new monster they publish, they just give a light guideline for DMs to get inspired by and to pick and choose what they want to use.
And survey feedback has shown multiple times that most DMs run their campaigns in homebrew world and if they do play a pre-written adventure, they almost always change it a bit. They have survey feedback showing that lore doesn't need to be as in-depth as it was in previous editions. They just need to give enough to have a base for the DM and players to get inspired by and they can use the energy necessary to go more in-depth to give more options.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
They weren't. Scatterbraind was asking why you were posting on a 5e forum if you hate the game. They weren't trying to police the content of your posts, they were just asking why you were even here. If I went onto the forums of another hobby and started talking about how much I hated it, people from that site would be justified in asking me why I was even there.
There, you answered their question. No need to get so hostile about it.
Another uncalled for personal attack. People aren't trying to attack you, they're trying to understand your viewpoint (which most of us seem to disagree with at the moment). There really is no need for this. And if that post is "I hate this game", it would be valid to ask for clarification from that person, without that clarification being seen as a personal attack or attempt to police your words.
Please check out my homebrew, I would appreciate feedback:
Spells, Monsters, Subclasses, Races, Arcknight Class, Occultist Class, World, Enigmatic Esoterica forms
Lots of books are unavailable, still doesn't mean that those books have been censored.
Again, nothing that you have mentioned so far has been censored.
Personally, they are hurting their product by trying to filter their content. This is a fantasy based game where you have heroes and villains. To give it flavor for the heroes, then the evil must be as strong otherwise it loses its appeal.
Just glad that I have the majority of my original source books, filled with Lore, etc.
Coming to this topic with the perspective of someone who collected all the 3.5 books and absolutely loved the "Races of" supplements, along with the monster type deep-dive books for Undead, Dragons, Aberrations, Drow, Demons, and Devils. Being exposed to how each of those cultures and societies were written greatly improved my ability to write fantasy cultures of my own, as well as understand how these cultures might interact and clash with each other. A trap that one can easily fall into in worldbuilding is "Planet of Hats" syndrome, where the culture of a group is very close to the societal norms of the writer, save for a single difference. Having these deep dives into every aspect of life lets you understand the interplay between a groups environment, history, and worldview. The key thing is, the more you're exposed to new perspectives on similar topics, the better you get at developing original ideas around those topics yourself.
As far as if WotC should be putting the material into new books versus forwarding people to look into the old material for lore, I do think we should be getting re-releases of the lore for the modern day, simply because some of that old lore can be incredibly hard to access. Just looking at my 3.5 book collection, these aren't digitally available, and second hand hardback copies are even more prohibitively expensive than this hobby usually is. Whatever 3.5 online content existed in the old days was lost when WotC shut down the Gleemax forums, which was already a hard blow for TTRPG historians. This is not all to say the lore needs to be copied wholesale from the old material, but I'd like there to be something in every culture that players can latch onto and want to learn more about these people's unique way of life. It could be something small and wholesome like a gnomish handbinding ritual as part of marriage, it could be hilarious like the fact that Drow society would tear itself to shreds without Lolth's divine intervention, or it could make you question the nature of the world itself such as the many ways dragons pass on or attempt to cheat death. As written, a lot of 5e tells you just enough to know why you're not supposed to like a group of baddies (mental domination, cruelty, greed, world domination), but don't elaborate on how they got to be that way. And it's a true shame! Because once you know the culture of a group, you can create truly unique stories, heroes, and villains all with motivations stemming from how their worldview might clash with that of the outside world or their own people!
For those of you saying WotC haven't censored anything, please explain how removing content they found objectionable from all future printings isn't censorship. And while I'm sure many of you will say it's not censorship because they aren't demanding we replace the older books with the updated ones. All I have to say is here's the definition of the verb censor
to examine in order to suppress (see SUPPRESS sense 2) or delete anything considered objectionable
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
A more useful way to approach discussing removal of lore elements you don't like would be to focus on something that isn't (real world) racially sensitive and then declare that everything is being censored. If the overall premise put forward by various replies (that D&D is being censored somehow) then use examples that aren't things that relate to issues you consider "woke." If you can't, what you mean is "culturally sensitive."
To answer the OP, I don't want any lore at all beyond some basic info about monsters, magic items and that kind of thing to give inspiration on how to incorporate them int my game. I don't read lore about particular worlds because I homebrew everything, so what I want from D&D books is lots of things that can be easily inserted into my own game. This includes monsters, items, spells, subclasses, and adventures that are generic enough that I can easily adapt them to fit into my own setting.
Well, the polite thing to do would be for you to explain your strawman argument that content has been "removed" for being "objectionable. As for the fact that writing a completely new book with similar but different content, we've been over this already. Writing a new version of a race is no more censoring than writing a new version of the Fighter class. The 4E Fighter hasn't been "censored" just because the 5E Fighter has different abilities.
That's a weird thing to assume. Can't you at least wait until you hear what people will actually reply?
And no-one has suppressed or deleted anything so I guess thank you for answering your own question?
Are you conveniently forgetting the alterations made to, I want to say it was xanathars guide and one other book I can't remember off the top of my head but yeah no totally they didn't change anything in any existing books. And my assumption on what the typical response would be is because that has been the typical response this is not a new topic it's been done over to death with and it's something neither side will agree on.
If I can't say something nice, I try to not say anything at all. So if I suddenly stop participating in a topic that's probably why.
This thread is not the place to argue about the definition of the word "censorship" etc. Keep things on topic
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I’m of the opinion that I don’t mind if many of the books like the core books, monster books, and player option books (like Xanatar’s or Tasha’s) are lighter on lore and more setting agnostic. However, I would expect setting books to be chalk full of lore and inspiration as the primary purpose of buying a setting book would be for the setting itself I feel.
I think this would be the best compromise personally. Give use meaty, lore filled setting books and make the other books more setting agnostic so people can use those options regardless of setting (though giving example of how more off the wall creatures and player material could fit into some settings would also be appreaciated, like explains how Warforged can fit in worlds that don’t have the technological level of Eberron for example)
"Meddle not in the affairs of dragons, for thou art crunchy and taste good with ketchup."
Characters for Tenebris Sine Fine
RoughCoronet's Greater Wills
This, 100%. I hope WotC makes purer, more focused books as part of going lore / setting agnostic, with a book being either (and only) a rules book, a setting book, or a adventure book. This lets homebrewers get what they want to the degree that they want it, and IMO, when WotC mixes types, they end up doing both badly. Still looking at you, half-assed one chapter description of Radiant Citadel. And Strixhaven.