With some of the preview stuff of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I've noticed that significant parts of the lore, especially FR lore might be altered. Is FR lore already kinda messy anyway? It kinda worries me because most of the FR lore I work with goes back to 3.5e or 2e material written by Ed Greenwood, and there is already a massive body of novels that take place in FR. It might cause some disputes in later official material, maybe cause a little bit of a problem if I was in Adventure League if my character spoke of the drow origin story the way it was back in earlier editions (Wherein Auranshee and Corellon were married and some Greek mythology type of stuff happened). Typically most people don't even know a lot about FR lore since its massive, or I can just say "We stick with the old lore in which the drow origin story goes like this". I think the most weird and potentially useless retcon was the existence of Aber to justify the arrival of the Dragonborn.
So what do you think? I think in most games it won't matter at all, but still might cause some inconsistencies between what players and DMs understand. I also wonder how it would effect later FR novels and comics. For example, in the Lady Penitent series, certain details about the drow origin story surrounding the demon Wendonai and some other things were important to the plot.
This is one of the reasons I loved PlaneScape. The material the players got to read were either legends or pieces of history retold by a NPC, or something like that. So as a player you could never be certain that the information you were getting from the books were accurate. This got us into loads of messes all the time.
This is one of the reasons I loved PlaneScape. The material the players got to read were either legends or pieces of history retold by a NPC, or something like that. So as a player you could never be certain that the information you were getting from the books were accurate. This got us into loads of messes all the time.
Maybe I'm put off by the tagline of MToF having the phrase "Discover the Truth".
Now that I think of it, to date, most canon changes to Forgotten Realms have been additional rather than retroactive. It usually involved Ao doing some crazy stuff again that shakes the world and Mystra dies and returns again, changing the magic to the new edition (which raises the possibility that maybe liches didn't have to feed their phylacteries until after the Sundering). The addition of the Raven Queen might be a retroactive change as well.
I also just recalled that the Drow of the Underdark supplement for 3.5 presented multiple origin stories but was tailored for Greyhawk.
To be fair FR is a living, evolving setting. I know that a lot of people didn't like the spellplague from 4E but at least things moved along (and cut the deity bloat, and axed the mystra fanservice).
Contrast with say 40k where the lore is a 'setting' as opposed to a 'universe' and it's all but impossible to actually make a change. Despite saving a planet, it might be blown up next week. Hurr durr skullz!
In FR though, if you kill someone important it has knock on effects, characters are rare and important and their epic adventurers have wide reaching consequences.
I only started D&D with the release of 5th edition. Finding out about the forgotten realms is something I'm forever in pursuit of, but I also feel going back to older editions will give me information which is no longer cannon and I only want what's relevant from 5e going forward.
I thought the sword coasts adventurers guide would be useful, but honestly it's the worse D&D book I've bought. I don't want to read the novels, I want a encyclopedia similar to my DC or Marvel comics one.
Yes the SCAG is probably the worst book I've gotten. That combined with the frankly terrible Dragon Queen adventures made me apprehensive of collecting the 'full set' and I've become much more discriminating. I find Xanathars really useful to have access to it's like +0.5 PHB & DMG with generally useful stuff throughout. I'm hoping mordenkainens will be equal or superior.
Yes the SCAG is probably the worst book I've gotten. That combined with the frankly terrible Dragon Queen adventures made me apprehensive of collecting the 'full set' and I've become much more discriminating. I find Xanathars really useful to have access to it's like +0.5 PHB & DMG with generally useful stuff throughout. I'm hoping mordenkainens will be equal or superior.
I've got the core three, VGtM, XGtE CoS, ToA and SCAG is the only one that's been a bit of a dud. I've pre-order MToF and expect it will be great as WoTC are publishing, I think the SCAG is the only one I own which was outsourced to another company.
I haven't read a lot of FR novels lately, but if someone has read plenty of them, I wonder how they are effected by "canon changes".
There are some good YouTube videos of panels with Bob Salvatore and Ed Greenwood's take on Spellplaugue and how they planned for years of how to "fix" the realms.
There are videos out there of Bob talking about the novels that basically say that Icewind Dale, Menzoberranzen, etc in canon were basically what Bob wrote. So it did go both ways...
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--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
I haven't read a lot of FR novels lately, but if someone has read plenty of them, I wonder how they are effected by "canon changes".
There are some good YouTube videos of panels with Bob Salvatore and Ed Greenwood's take on Spellplaugue and how they planned for years of how to "fix" the realms.
There are videos out there of Bob talking about the novels that basically say that Icewind Dale, Menzoberranzen, etc in canon were basically what Bob wrote. So it did go both ways...
So much has been written about the drow in novels and supplements and games etc. especially from Salvatore and Greenwood, that I hope they were consulted if the new D&D team decided to make some retcons, retcons that I think may alter drow and even elven culture significantly. Though one can say that they just don't remember that that was the start of the conflict at all, so their culture doesn't change.
Yeah the Dragon Queen adventure paths were outsourced to Kobold Press I think. There's massive balance issues, problems with references to non-existent rules and so on. It really makes me cautious about buying Kobold Press stuff and I think it was a bad PR move for WOTC since it was supposed to be *THE* starter adventure when in reality lost mines of phalanadndambalalam are a lot better, even if unpronouncable!
Yeah the Dragon Queen adventure paths were outsourced to Kobold Press I think. There's massive balance issues, problems with references to non-existent rules and so on. It really makes me cautious about buying Kobold Press stuff and I think it was a bad PR move for WOTC
First, I have not purchased anything from Kobold, but I think we need a bit of perspective. The Dragon Queen books were outsourced because the WoTC team was VERY small and spending all their time on PHB, DMG, and MM. They would not have had any adventures for 5e without outside help. At the same time, Kobold was constantly having to do rewrites because of results of playtesting changed parts of the core books between first drafts and final publication. The references to "non-existent" rules were actually references to rules that got changed or dropped.
Like I said, I don't know about Kobold Press's quality today, but once the core books were published and sold much better than expected, WoTC was able to add staff and have written some really good adventures. I suggest we consider that we should not read too much into the problems with HotDQ and ToD beyond unfortunate circumstances.
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--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
So much has been written about the drow in novels and supplements and games etc. especially from Salvatore and Greenwood, that I hope they were consulted if the new D&D team decided to make some retcons, retcons that I think may alter drow and even elven culture significantly. Though one can say that they just don't remember that that was the start of the conflict at all, so their culture doesn't change.
First, Ed frequently mentions, in tweets, NDA's he is under. I think that is a pretty good sign he is still heavily consulted.
Second, when you hear Perkins, Mearls, and others talk, they know the lore well and have been fairly respectful towards it in other areas.
Third, your last sentence strikes me as correct. When I have heard Mearls interviewed, he talks "might", etc. It strikes me as this is origin lore that might or might not be true, but sounds like they are taking efforts to provide things for DM's to expand multiple worlds, including the Realms, by using this as backstory. I don't get there will be any retcon, but there will be lots of threads DM's can choose to run with. At least, after listening to the interviews, that is what I hope/guess is happening.
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--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
I definitely will be ignoring the Correlon stuff, but on the other hand, I had absolutely no problem with Abeir and the Dragonborn, since it was a purely additive change.
In AL, you're just going to have to hope for the best, and be prepared to compromise, I think. In home games, obviously it's a matter of using what you like and ditching what you don't like.
For me, that means that the Sundering doesn't happen, the Spellplague happens a bit differently, and a whole different set of events occur that bring back some of the dead deities, but not all of them. Oh, and Netheril "falls", but doesn't go away, becoming a reduced by still powerful nation, and freeing itself from the priesthood of Shar in a rejection of the leaders who brought them to the brink of ruination for (what the common folk see) as religous fanaticism and personal greed. The modern Netheril is untrusting of priests of any gods, and religion in that nation has become a more household/personal matter that isn't brought up in public. The new government is trying to build ties with other powers, who are suspicious of how genuine these apparent changes are, and there is a new organization being built in the Dragon Coast that seeks to bring the nations of the region together by putting the children of the power of the different nations in a school together, as well as forming a knighthood that draws from many nations, that patrol a wide area and report to a council made up of members chosen by each member nation.
Both the school and the knighthood accept Netherese, but socially they have a bit of a harder time than others, but the Netherese know that they must make alliances if they are to survive...as their capital has fallen from the sky, and their other floating city has been carefully grounded and it's magic redirected to the vital task of keeping the desert returning. The leaders of the other nations worry about what will happen if Netheril solves the problem of the magically encroaching desert, and are free to direct their power elsewhere, but for now, the cold war seems to have ended. Netheril needs heroes, the Knights need recruits, the school needs students (and people to help them build resources and such), and Thay, the Zhents, and others are always looking for a chance to bring new trouble to the world.
After reading up on Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I noticed the material is not FR specific but meant to encompass all of the D&D worlds, and so touches on Oerth, Toril, Kyrnn, and Eberron. Yet each of these settings has their own take on elves, and at least the book discusses some setting-specific differences among dwarves and halflings. Eberron especially has a more specific take on the races with a very different culture and history, and such I have heard this complaint about this book on that.
Since this is all-encompassing, perhaps it should be taken as the "generic non-specific AU" of D&D that has seen changes, but how it effects specific settings is up in the air. I think by now, the extremely rich amount of text dedicated to the Realms already is tilted in its own direction with its own canon.
So here are some differences I spotted between this lore and Realms lore.
I am not 100% certain about elves having such a deep relationship with past lives or entering discreet psychological changes determined by this relationship. I do know that elves using trance to review memories has been a thing for some time. Some of the lore here is pretty neat if you choose to use it, but don't feel pressured if it radically alters your existing elf characters.
Lolth's name was always Lolth, she was never known as Auranshee.
No mention of the ritual of drinking the blood of Wedonai.
It seems drow came from the primal ancestor of elves instead of being other kinds of elves at first.
The other gods are all Corellon's children instead of say,Vhaeraun and Eliastaree being the children of Corellon and Lolth. Vhaeraun in previous lore was noted for an association with shadow dragons, having non-drow elven followers, and not liking the in-fighting between drow and supporting more unified alliances, which made his followers potentially more dangerous than Lolth's on the surface. Vhaeraun's worship was also more numerous among surface drow.
Originally, Eliastraree chose to be banished with her mother to be a shining light for drow.
Kiaransalee is no longer an ascended lich.
Labelas is now more focused on old age and mortality.
No mention of Angharradh, Corellon's wife in FR who might be three other goddesses.
Elves feeling like they have left the grace of Corellon would make a huge impact on their culture, one I'm not sure is present in any established FR canon.
Corellon is seen differently, before he was this valiant defender-god of elves but is now some kind of capricious god with a fall from grace narrative attached. I am not sure how I feel about this, and it definitely does not work in Nentir Vale. It makes Corellon somewhat of a ****** more than he was ever depicted before.
Speaking of Nentir Vale, I have a strong feeling that (especially after two popular publicized D&D games) a lot of DMs would disregard that whole section in favor for Nentir Vale/4e's version because she no longer has the aspects that made her popular to begin with.
A question that should be asked at the table is "what lore/setting are we using?" because more than once the assumptions I brought to character creation clashed with the DM. And with drastic differences in lore this might occur more often if say, a player makes an elven cleric of Corellon and uses all that new lore and it totally clashes with the DM who has read a bunch of Forgotten Realms novels and played D&D since 3rd ed. and has a completely different image in mind of Corellon.
The first time I played a game in an FR setting, my DM read the Brimstone Angels series and used a lot of material from it. I played a drow character and then read a crapton of lore to flesh out her story and why and how she got exiled taking into account a lot of detailed lore nobody else cared about.
So the rule of thumb here is "specific beats general". If you want to squeeze in this new lore in an FR game or Greyhawk game go ahead if you can get away with it, and due to the recentness of it-group consensus helps. To be fair the lore does change between sourcebooks, but this new lore deviates a lot instead of dabbling in specifics(such as if elves came from Corellon's blood only or his blood and Sehanine's tears and the relationships between Auranshee and the others). If you can't decide what to do, an option could be that this new lore is an emerging dogma, a separate but clashing beliefs gaining popularity among elves, or maybe there was always this belief around existing along with the others nobody really knows the truth (and Mordenkainen insists he has the answers). The gods should be silent on who is correct, and evidence would support neither or all theories and myths.
I’ll definately ignore nearly all MToF info on the elf gods, tbh. I’ll stick with the excellent info from 4e, and older editions.
For MToF I will definitely be ditching 99% of whats on elves.
Tbh I don't like the elven lifecycle and I will argue with any DM who says I can't play a 600 year old elf because "old elves have no psychological inclination to adventure and all they want to do is hang around some retirement home at that age.".
After reading up on Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I noticed the material is not FR specific but meant to encompass all of the D&D worlds, and so touches on Oerth, Toril, Kyrnn, and Eberron. Yet each of these settings has their own take on elves, and at least the book discusses some setting-specific differences among dwarves and halflings. Eberron especially has a more specific take on the races with a very different culture and history, and such I have heard this complaint about this book on that.
Something interesting to keep in mind. The MToF material actually does resonate with the Eberron material. In Eberron, elves are generally ancestor worshipers... which is how the Tome of Foes frames the Seldarine. Elves are also guided by ancestors of the past... which could very well be the elf's past life.
I personally don't think that there's much issue with combining the Keepers of the Past religion with the material in Mordenkeinen's.
A question that should be asked at the table is "what lore/setting are we using?" because more than once the assumptions I brought to character creation clashed with the DM. And with drastic differences in lore this might occur more often if say, a player makes an elven cleric of Corellon and uses all that new lore and it totally clashes with the DM who has read a bunch of Forgotten Realms novels and played D&D since 3rd ed. and has a completely different image in mind of Corellon.
Why not use all of them? Remember, these are myths from ages past, not historically accurate accounts written by first hand authors giving unbiased views on the matter. I mean, are you really going to go speak to Corellon personally? Is it a problem if various NPCs and PCs all have different views of the same god? That's plot and drama.
Sorry you don't like the Tome of Foes stuff, I personally think its quite interesting method that was used to try and bridge a whole bunch of conflicting material (mostly 4e's fault, admittedly). But its not like the bridge between different settings is as insurmountable as you are making it out ot be.
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With some of the preview stuff of Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I've noticed that significant parts of the lore, especially FR lore might be altered. Is FR lore already kinda messy anyway? It kinda worries me because most of the FR lore I work with goes back to 3.5e or 2e material written by Ed Greenwood, and there is already a massive body of novels that take place in FR. It might cause some disputes in later official material, maybe cause a little bit of a problem if I was in Adventure League if my character spoke of the drow origin story the way it was back in earlier editions (Wherein Auranshee and Corellon were married and some Greek mythology type of stuff happened). Typically most people don't even know a lot about FR lore since its massive, or I can just say "We stick with the old lore in which the drow origin story goes like this". I think the most weird and potentially useless retcon was the existence of Aber to justify the arrival of the Dragonborn.
So what do you think? I think in most games it won't matter at all, but still might cause some inconsistencies between what players and DMs understand. I also wonder how it would effect later FR novels and comics. For example, in the Lady Penitent series, certain details about the drow origin story surrounding the demon Wendonai and some other things were important to the plot.
This is one of the reasons I loved PlaneScape. The material the players got to read were either legends or pieces of history retold by a NPC, or something like that. So as a player you could never be certain that the information you were getting from the books were accurate. This got us into loads of messes all the time.
To be fair FR is a living, evolving setting. I know that a lot of people didn't like the spellplague from 4E but at least things moved along (and cut the deity bloat, and axed the mystra fanservice).
Contrast with say 40k where the lore is a 'setting' as opposed to a 'universe' and it's all but impossible to actually make a change. Despite saving a planet, it might be blown up next week. Hurr durr skullz!
In FR though, if you kill someone important it has knock on effects, characters are rare and important and their epic adventurers have wide reaching consequences.
Southampton Guild of Roleplayers
My YouTube (C&C Welcome!)
I only started D&D with the release of 5th edition. Finding out about the forgotten realms is something I'm forever in pursuit of, but I also feel going back to older editions will give me information which is no longer cannon and I only want what's relevant from 5e going forward.
I thought the sword coasts adventurers guide would be useful, but honestly it's the worse D&D book I've bought. I don't want to read the novels, I want a encyclopedia similar to my DC or Marvel comics one.
Yes the SCAG is probably the worst book I've gotten. That combined with the frankly terrible Dragon Queen adventures made me apprehensive of collecting the 'full set' and I've become much more discriminating. I find Xanathars really useful to have access to it's like +0.5 PHB & DMG with generally useful stuff throughout. I'm hoping mordenkainens will be equal or superior.
Southampton Guild of Roleplayers
My YouTube (C&C Welcome!)
SKT chapter 3 is much better that SCAG...
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
I haven't read a lot of FR novels lately, but if someone has read plenty of them, I wonder how they are effected by "canon changes".
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
So much has been written about
Yeah the Dragon Queen adventure paths were outsourced to Kobold Press I think. There's massive balance issues, problems with references to non-existent rules and so on. It really makes me cautious about buying Kobold Press stuff and I think it was a bad PR move for WOTC since it was supposed to be *THE* starter adventure when in reality lost mines of phalanadndambalalam are a lot better, even if unpronouncable!
Southampton Guild of Roleplayers
My YouTube (C&C Welcome!)
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
--
DM -- Elanon -- Homebrew world
Gronn -- Tiefling Warlock -- Amarath
Slim -- Halfling Cleric -- CoS (future Lord of Waterdeep 😁)
Bran -- Human Wizard - RoT
Making D&D mistakes and having fun since 1977!
I definitely will be ignoring the Correlon stuff, but on the other hand, I had absolutely no problem with Abeir and the Dragonborn, since it was a purely additive change.
In AL, you're just going to have to hope for the best, and be prepared to compromise, I think. In home games, obviously it's a matter of using what you like and ditching what you don't like.
For me, that means that the Sundering doesn't happen, the Spellplague happens a bit differently, and a whole different set of events occur that bring back some of the dead deities, but not all of them. Oh, and Netheril "falls", but doesn't go away, becoming a reduced by still powerful nation, and freeing itself from the priesthood of Shar in a rejection of the leaders who brought them to the brink of ruination for (what the common folk see) as religous fanaticism and personal greed. The modern Netheril is untrusting of priests of any gods, and religion in that nation has become a more household/personal matter that isn't brought up in public. The new government is trying to build ties with other powers, who are suspicious of how genuine these apparent changes are, and there is a new organization being built in the Dragon Coast that seeks to bring the nations of the region together by putting the children of the power of the different nations in a school together, as well as forming a knighthood that draws from many nations, that patrol a wide area and report to a council made up of members chosen by each member nation.
Both the school and the knighthood accept Netherese, but socially they have a bit of a harder time than others, but the Netherese know that they must make alliances if they are to survive...as their capital has fallen from the sky, and their other floating city has been carefully grounded and it's magic redirected to the vital task of keeping the desert returning. The leaders of the other nations worry about what will happen if Netheril solves the problem of the magically encroaching desert, and are free to direct their power elsewhere, but for now, the cold war seems to have ended. Netheril needs heroes, the Knights need recruits, the school needs students (and people to help them build resources and such), and Thay, the Zhents, and others are always looking for a chance to bring new trouble to the world.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
After reading up on Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, I noticed the material is not FR specific but meant to encompass all of the D&D worlds, and so touches on Oerth, Toril, Kyrnn, and Eberron. Yet each of these settings has their own take on elves, and at least the book discusses some setting-specific differences among dwarves and halflings. Eberron especially has a more specific take on the races with a very different culture and history, and such I have heard this complaint about this book on that.
Since this is all-encompassing, perhaps it should be taken as the "generic non-specific AU" of D&D that has seen changes, but how it effects specific settings is up in the air. I think by now, the extremely rich amount of text dedicated to the Realms already is tilted in its own direction with its own canon.
So here are some differences I spotted between this lore and Realms lore.
A question that should be asked at the table is "what lore/setting are we using?" because more than once the assumptions I brought to character creation clashed with the DM. And with drastic differences in lore this might occur more often if say, a player makes an elven cleric of Corellon and uses all that new lore and it totally clashes with the DM who has read a bunch of Forgotten Realms novels and played D&D since 3rd ed. and has a completely different image in mind of Corellon.
The first time I played a game in an FR setting, my DM read the Brimstone Angels series and used a lot of material from it. I played a drow character and then read a crapton of lore to flesh out her story and why and how she got exiled taking into account a lot of detailed lore nobody else cared about.
So the rule of thumb here is "specific beats general". If you want to squeeze in this new lore in an FR game or Greyhawk game go ahead if you can get away with it, and due to the recentness of it-group consensus helps. To be fair the lore does change between sourcebooks, but this new lore deviates a lot instead of dabbling in specifics(such as if elves came from Corellon's blood only or his blood and Sehanine's tears and the relationships between Auranshee and the others). If you can't decide what to do, an option could be that this new lore is an emerging dogma, a separate but clashing beliefs gaining popularity among elves, or maybe there was always this belief around existing along with the others nobody really knows the truth (and Mordenkainen insists he has the answers). The gods should be silent on who is correct, and evidence would support neither or all theories and myths.
I’ll definately ignore nearly all MToF info on the elf gods, tbh. I’ll stick with the excellent info from 4e, and older editions.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Yeah it’s all just silly, IMO.
We do bones, motherf***ker!
Why not use all of them? Remember, these are myths from ages past, not historically accurate accounts written by first hand authors giving unbiased views on the matter. I mean, are you really going to go speak to Corellon personally? Is it a problem if various NPCs and PCs all have different views of the same god? That's plot and drama.
Sorry you don't like the Tome of Foes stuff, I personally think its quite interesting method that was used to try and bridge a whole bunch of conflicting material (mostly 4e's fault, admittedly). But its not like the bridge between different settings is as insurmountable as you are making it out ot be.