For reasons best not discussed here, I've checked out other campaign worlds aside Forgotten Realms/Faerun and the other published D&D worlds. Trying to come back to them, they feel pretty empty and old. By comparison, my favourite is Golarion - even if I continue playing 5e/OD&D, it will there. And here's why.

Right in the core rule book there's a whole chapter of lore including history, background etc, along with different human ancestries from around the area of the inner sea (FR equivalent of Sword Coast, sort of). It also gives a world map, and earlier in the book it gave guidance on how to play disabled characters. Other books expand this so that each race has ethnicities, not just humans, other parts of the world are respectfully explored and we see cultural analogues to Africa, India the middle East etc. Another book is basically just full of items - sounds boring? Casually in the middle of the book, there's a couple of different types of wheelchairs, prosthetic limbs and other assistive items. We're also casually introduced to various LGBTQ NPCs just through things like "his husband helps run the shop) - nothing big made of it. It just is. A non-binary NPC is introduced, but we only know it because they use them/they pronouns telling us about the NPC and so on. You could miss either if you weren't paying attention, other LGBTQ characters are similarly present. All the while there's books on god's, magic, "guns & gears" and more.

Where's all this texture in Faerun? Something to make the world feel lived in & real? Coming back to it, it feels so bland & old fashioned. We basically know about Waterdeep & Phandelver. Where's the rest of the world? We're repeatedly told people come to Waterdeep from everywhere, but never shown where those places are or many of those people's customs. SCAG is all we've really got and it wasn't really great at all.

1 — Give them time. I am fairly certain that they will get around to it as all of those things are stuff that has been asked for.

2 — they have a team of what seems like about 20 people who do all the stuffs. I am a single person and it has taken me five years to generate a lore book (with breaks and work, granted).

3 — they have Eberron, Forgotten Realms, Krynn, and others. Each has its own particular feel and flow. For twenty people who have all of that and a lot more to do, that are still trying to fix one of many social ills problems, patience is key.

4 — Homebrew worlds are all over the place. The one I am finishing (lore book and core handbook this month) has no NPCs, but a ton of lore about the world, and it is taken for granted such things exist. The Handbook has the rules for those things. Is it official? Hell no, lol.

my day job is basically the wokest woke DEI gal. I am a mixed race, bi, disabled, ND,  trans woman over 55 who has worked at city, state, federal, and international levels on this stuff in real life. So I love that there is an option for stuff like that. And I know of others out there — little games, usually not published.  And that WotC is under pressure to fix all of that, so I am glad to see you add a further voice to the chorus calling for it.

”Offer solutions, not just criticism”. Good ideas or bad ideas, they are ideas, and while I personally doubt that the development team spends more than maybe an hour a month here, one never knows what ideas might spark the bit they need to add these fixes in.

well, FR specifically,  its sitting in about 300 novels and probably at least that much more in legacy D&D materials. Wild guess, but I think its safe to say most players don't actually care about detailed lore. At least in my experience, most don't read the tidbits that DM's provide anyway. They don't want a PHB that's a giant lore dump. They want the rules for the game, stuff to make them feel epic, and information on where they're at right now without getting into much detail on what happened in that spot 500 years ago unless its directly relevant to what they're doing...which is the focal point of most of the pubs.

all imo of course

1) I mean 5e has been out since 2014 - they've had a lot of time. Even then, despite all the adventures & source books they've put out, the only places we know about in any depth is a bit of the Sword Coast in Faerun - and to be fair, most of that is pretty vague. I've also not seen much in the 1D&D

2) Do we really think WotC has less resources than Paizo who've put out something like 9 rulebooks, 12 lore books, and a whole load of adventures since they launched 2e in 2019?

3) The fact that they have so many settings is part of the issue, IMO. It means they don't really go into depth and explore any of them properly. Imagine they just stuck to eg. Forgotten Realms & gave us proper lore & adventure books from all around the realms?

4) Yeah, I agree there's loads on the Homebrew scene - I've backed Kickstarters for Asian themed monsters & for various settings books from all around the world. But I really shouldn't have to rely on homebrew to fill out WotC's world into something less bland. 

It's honestly not even a good European fantasy world because the creators are too wary of leaning hard too into that either (contrast it with Warhammer Fantasy's old world which is a good example of medieval European fantasy) - it just feels empty & like WotC have said "go and fill up this blank slate". Much like their adventures, they've basically created worlds as minimally as possible leaving the hard work to DMs to fill in the blanks. And honestly, I've got DM burnout from continually filling in WotC blanks. 

Quote from vjchopra >>

1) I mean 5e has been out since 2014 - they've had a lot of time. Even then, despite all the adventures & source books they've put out, the only places we know about in any depth is a bit of the Sword Coast in Faerun - and to be fair, most of that is pretty vague. I've also not seen much in the 1D&D

2) Do we really think WotC has less resources than Paizo who've put out something like 9 rulebooks, 12 lore books, and a whole load of adventures since they launched 2e in 2019?

3) The fact that they have so many settings is part of the issue, IMO. It means they don't really go into depth and explore any of them properly. Imagine they just stuck to eg. Forgotten Realms & gave us proper lore & adventure books from all around the realms?

4) Yeah, I agree there's loads on the Homebrew scene - I've backed Kickstarters for Asian themed monsters & for various settings books from all around the world. But I really shouldn't have to rely on homebrew to fill out WotC's world into something less bland. 

 

It's honestly not even a good European fantasy world because the creators are too wary of leaning hard too into that either (contrast it with Warhammer Fantasy's old world which is a good example of medieval European fantasy) - it just feels empty & like WotC have said "go and fill up this blank slate". Much like their adventures, they've basically created worlds as minimally as possible leaving the hard work to DMs to fill in the blanks. And honestly, I've got DM burnout from continually filling in WotC blanks. 

1 -- I will whlly give you that point. They should be putting more about about Forgotten realms in the form of more lore books. I mean, they consider it their default.

2 -- Honestly, yes. Tough it depends on how you define resources. WotC is a place that takes two years to work through pretty much anything. Even as a subdivision, they have to deal with all the corporate crap that slows the creative flow down to a drip. Paizo's got more people -- both in house and outside -- and way fewer steps in between start and completion. 

3 -- I have repeated this same thing -- both directly to them and in general.  I also said they need to hire a bunch of people, set up individual teams by setting, and start churning good stuff out for all their IP once a quarter. But I don't work for them and I'm not in charge, and well, I too am little more than a corporate cog, lol. I mean, even if they did have the ability to *start now* on what I suggested, it would be at least two years before we saw that kind of stuff start coming out. I say all of this and I have never used a published setting -- going back to 1979 when I played in my first dungeon.

3A -- Imma add in the point that HeathSmith brought up so I can address it as well. When a lot of folks talk about Lore, they do mean more mechanics in a lot of ways. And for years, it was exactly how it was described by them: you got a PHB that had some lore for one world in it along side the rules.  Well, this is where it gets tricksy -- they are separating rules from Lore. Doing so will help out on the end that vjchopra is talking about, as well, and it will mean that if they are smart (?!?!?) they can start adding in specific rules and elements that are consistent with that specific setting, making it even more unique in its own way from the others, and actually giving them what they want, just not in a way they are asking for it.

4 -- So, there is a subtext here about FR being bland as hell, and well...

Yeah. It is. On purpose. It was never really meant to be a medieval european fantasy in th same way that Warhammer was. It wasn't even supposed to be anything like an attempt to recreate the Medieval Europe plus magic. It was meant to fill in some needs that arose while playing the game by Greenwood, who made most of it up on the fly even after he basically gave it away.

There are a lot of reasons I don't use published adventures, but I do take cool ideas from them on more than a few occasions, and I have never once copped an idea from FR because it is too bland, lol. For me. Others love it. Hell, some adore it. I would not be surprised if somewhere out there is a little mom and pop B&B that has FR as the theme throughout the the whole thing and they package it as an experience. Crap, they probably even have tikToks about it or whatever. And they like it because it is bland.

it has to be -- it has to work with any freaking weird ass homebrew thing someone works up and plays with. Eberron goes off and does some really cool stuff, I am yet another who thinks they should really kick it up a notch with Dark Sun and bring it back, and I kinda deeply resent that they took kara-tur and Maztica and a bunch of all the others and threw them into FR because it watered them down.

And both Dark Sun and Kara Tur's initial versions are a great example of the other problem here: they "changed the rules". The original classes in OE were *replacements* for the normal classes in D&D -- it was, in the words of one reviewer, "essentially a different game using the same rules." New, creative worlds are going to do that -- and I am all for it...

... but how many other people are?  I mean, the OSR stuff, Paizo's complete 3.5 charge as pathfinder, and so forth are all good examples that yes, people want something different, but it isn't the vast bulk of people. 

And if you throw all of those things into the setting, it isn't a European one at all -- and that all happened long before 4e, so it has been a very long time since even the most lenient stretch could have called FR a european setting.

I'd drop the entire link to Earth as a whole in terms of calling it after any area here.

As for fill in the blank slate, well...

Did you ever see Greyhawk? LOL. That was the entire point there. "here's some stuff, go figure out the rest".  It was even more bland, and had some really, deeply nasty stuff in it.

Even though I would never use it, I would love to see them do more books like Sword Coast. Hell, I even bought the dang thing because I was HOPING there would be something cool I could se in it. THere was not. Not their fault. I expected a bit more, lol.

Quote from HeathSmith >>

well, FR specifically,  its sitting in about 300 novels and probably at least that much more in legacy D&D materials. Wild guess, but I think its safe to say most players don't actually care about detailed lore. At least in my experience, most don't read the tidbits that DM's provide anyway. They don't want a PHB that's a giant lore dump. They want the rules for the game, stuff to make them feel epic, and information on where they're at right now without getting into much detail on what happened in that spot 500 years ago unless its directly relevant to what they're doing...which is the focal point of most of the pubs.

all imo of course

The point is that Lore and mechanics don't have to be seperate. As an example, characters should be able to have ethnicities which brings along a language & knowledge of that culture. That's mechanics & lore bundled together. An actual Faerun world map would be nice, so instead of the Sword Coast, I can set my campaign in fantasy Asia or fantasy Africa - & you can publish setting books for those areas with extra subclasses, backgrounds & items etc.

Have a book that's focused on a bunch of new items, divide it by shop & introduce us to the NPC shopkeepers. No need to make a big thing of it, but one shop might have wheelchairs & another might contain other assistive items for disabled characters. Some of the NPC shopkeepers can casually be POC & LGBTQ. Again, a mix of lore & mechanics. 

 Not to mention we're in an area of the forum that's here to discuss lore, so even if players don't care, that's not really the point. You can't really have a story without setting whether players notice it or not.

Quote from AEDorsay>>

Quote from vjchopra>>

1) I mean 5e has been out since 2014 - they've had a lot of time. Even then, despite all the adventures & source books they've put out, the only places we know about in any depth is a bit of the Sword Coast in Faerun - and to be fair, most of that is pretty vague. I've also not seen much in the 1D&D

2) Do we really think WotC has less resources than Paizo who've put out something like 9 rulebooks, 12 lore books, and a whole load of adventures since they launched 2e in 2019?

3) The fact that they have so many settings is part of the issue, IMO. It means they don't really go into depth and explore any of them properly. Imagine they just stuck to eg. Forgotten Realms & gave us proper lore & adventure books from all around the realms?

4) Yeah, I agree there's loads on the Homebrew scene - I've backed Kickstarters for Asian themed monsters & for various settings books from all around the world. But I really shouldn't have to rely on homebrew to fill out WotC's world into something less bland. 

It's honestly not even a good European fantasy world because the creators are too wary of leaning hard too into that either (contrast it with Warhammer Fantasy's old world which is a good example of medieval European fantasy) - it just feels empty & like WotC have said "go and fill up this blank slate". Much like their adventures, they've basically created worlds as minimally as possible leaving the hard work to DMs to fill in the blanks. And honestly, I've got DM burnout from continually filling in WotC blanks. 

1 -- I will whlly give you that point. They should be putting more about about Forgotten realms in the form of more lore books. I mean, they consider it their default.

<Snip>

4 -- So, there is a subtext here about FR being bland as hell, and well...

Yeah. It is. On purpose. It was never really meant to be a medieval european fantasy in th same way that Warhammer was. It wasn't even supposed to be anything like an attempt to recreate the Medieval Europe plus magic. It was meant to fill in some needs that arose while playing the game by Greenwood, who made most of it up on the fly even after he basically gave it away.

<snip>

Sorry for the snip, it was getting long and I think these cover the central points. Honestly, 1) is all I really want - flesh out your default setting, show us what it's like. And 4) is a problem when 1) has become the case. Having your default setting be bland & boring is a major problem. Ideally, it should be a kitchen sink with a bit of everything, so I can play whatever style I like & still place it somewhere in Faerun. And point to it on the map so it feels tangible & real. By not providing that, I'm paying money to various Kickstarters & now their main competition to provide setting instead - there's literally hundreds of £s worth of books I'm sure I'm going to end up buying from Paizo because the writing & world building has been so good, so far. WotC could have had that money from me & more!

Hmmm. Maybe I should let you see my lore book when it is finished this month, lol.

the company is separating lore and mechanics for ip reasons. I agree folks should have an ethnicity (I use homelands for that, and heritage for race), and that it is part of lore — so offer game mechanics on creating one or rolling one up.

they put the core mechanics in Creative Commons. To preserve IP, they have to yank lore.

no worries on the snip.

I always just kinda figured that the books only gave a basic outline of the world specifically so that each DM could build upon that framework to create the textures of cultures and such that they wanted in their game at their table. I guess it just sounds to me like you're asking why all LEGO blocks are such basic square and rectangular shapes. Because that's the point! It's up to you to use those pieces to create your own work of art. We shouldn't have to be spoon fed every last detail of an area to be able to bring it to life at the table. Creating a rich, vibrant, and lived-in world should be a collaborative effort between the official game lore and the individual DM.  

That being said, I would like to see updated framework books of the regions that were previously but maybe not-so-respectfully released, like al-Qadim and Kara-Tur. 

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

I always just kinda figured that the books only gave a basic outline of the world specifically so that each DM could build upon that framework to create the textures of cultures and such that they wanted in their game at their table. I guess it just sounds to me like you're asking why all LEGO blocks are such basic square and rectangular shapes. Because that's the point! It's up to you to use those pieces to create your own work of art. We shouldn't have to be spoon fed every last detail of an area to be able to bring it to life at the table. Creating a rich, vibrant, and lived-in world should be a collaborative effort between the official game lore and the individual DM.  

That being said, I would like to see updated framework books of the regions that were previously but maybe not-so-respectfully released, like al-Qadim and Kara-Tur. 

I agree it's like Lego blocks, the problem is FR is like if Lego only gave you basic square & rectangular blocks & nothing else. In reality, Lego does a whole load of sets of varying levels of speciality, I just want some themed blocks that will let me build things other than blocky square buildings - Lego not only provide those, but they provide everything from wheels for car & & train sets to specialist Star Wars sets, to Lego technic & various robotics sets. I don't expect that from WotC but not everything can be built from basic squares! Faerun needs some more types of building blocks - as you suggest, from fleshed out maps to region framework books for 5e would be a good start.

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Hmmm. Maybe I should let you see my lore book when it is finished this month, lol.

the company is separating lore and mechanics for ip reasons. I agree folks should have an ethnicity (I use homelands for that, and heritage for race), and that it is part of lore — so offer game mechanics on creating one or rolling one up.

they put the core mechanics in Creative Commons. To preserve IP, they have to yank lore.

 

no worries on the snip.

I would absolutely love to see your lore book! 

Separating lore & mechanics makes a fair amount of sense - I've been using Paizo as an example, their lore books are a seperate line of "Lost Omens" books that are mostly lore, but with backgrounds, languages, feats etc. that you might consider using if you play a campaign in that area. All those mechanics are free to access in their online SRD, but the lore sections aren't. They give a lot away for free here, if you're interested: https://2e.aonprd.com/ (this site is the official SRD, so has a license with Paizo that goes beyond the OGL but there's a couple of similar sites out there such as https://pf2etools.com/index.html that rely on the OGL to reproduce the SRD & have basically the same info, minus the art.

I may be wrong, but I've read through a good amount of the sourcebooks and adventure books and there's definitely a solid amount of LGBTQ & disabled representation. I can't speak to your other points, and I actually agree on most of them. That's why I generally only use published settings as a shell that I then fill in with my own ideas and lore. 

Quote from VanZoeren >>

I may be wrong, but I've read through a good amount of the sourcebooks and adventure books and there's definitely a solid amount of LGBTQ & disabled representation. I can't speak to your other points, and I actually agree on most of them. That's why I generally only use published settings as a shell that I then fill in with my own ideas and lore. 

 
for some of the issues around disability, look at three things: the madness table, blindness, and deafness. Then. One that some of those descriptions for effects are literal disabilities, and are portrayed as either being a bad thing or something that can somehow be cured.

lgbtq rep really only arrived in any great degree within the last decade. And if you know the history of the magical device that changes sex, you know it is meant to be a curse that allows for mocking. 

they are getting a lot better, but some stuff remains (and mostly from in community — someone did a combat wheelchair years ago, lol). What are the rules for replacing a limb, or playing a character without them — these things are not inherently bad, and do not make the character less in any way.

I will say it is a lot harder to deal with something like neurodivergence or chronic illness than the more “visible, physical” stuff, but as they say, progress not perfection.

Quote from vjchopra >>

Quote from AnzioFaro >>

I always just kinda figured that the books only gave a basic outline of the world specifically so that each DM could build upon that framework to create the textures of cultures and such that they wanted in their game at their table. I guess it just sounds to me like you're asking why all LEGO blocks are such basic square and rectangular shapes. Because that's the point! It's up to you to use those pieces to create your own work of art. We shouldn't have to be spoon fed every last detail of an area to be able to bring it to life at the table. Creating a rich, vibrant, and lived-in world should be a collaborative effort between the official game lore and the individual DM.  

That being said, I would like to see updated framework books of the regions that were previously but maybe not-so-respectfully released, like al-Qadim and Kara-Tur. 

 

I agree it's like Lego blocks, the problem is FR is like if Lego only gave you basic square & rectangular blocks & nothing else. In reality, Lego does a whole load of sets of varying levels of speciality, I just want some themed blocks that will let me build things other than blocky square buildings - Lego not only provide those, but they provide everything from wheels for car & & train sets to specialist Star Wars sets, to Lego technic & various robotics sets. I don't expect that from WotC but not everything can be built from basic squares! Faerun needs some more types of building blocks - as you suggest, from fleshed out maps to region framework books for 5e would be a good start.

 

 

Quote from AEDorsay >>

Hmmm. Maybe I should let you see my lore book when it is finished this month, lol

 

I would absolutely love to see your lore book! 

Separating lore & mechanics makes a fair amount of sense - I've been using Paizo as an example, their lore books are a seperate line of "Lost Omens" books that are mostly lore, but with backgrounds, languages, feats etc. that you might consider using if you play a campaign in that area. All those mechanics are free to access in their online SRD, but the lore sections aren't. They give a lot away for free here, if you're interested: https://2e.aonprd.com/ (this site is the official SRD, so has a license with Paizo that goes beyond the OGL but there's a couple of similar sites out there such as https://pf2etools.com/index.html that rely on the OGL to reproduce the SRD & have basically the same info, minus the art.

 
I will put a link to the PDF for it in my signature early next month. Shortly after that, the handbook will come out, which will be a bit of a shock to folks who only know 4e and 5e — not quite OSR, but lots of changes. Not sure if magic system will be part of handbook or separate. Full use of the CC SRD, though, for a large chunks, but not the ones people may think, lol (mostly just spells). There will be a horizontal rectangular version of all three for print eventually (6 high, 9 wide) — will be doing a fundraiser to buy art, probably next year for “second edition”, lol,

the Campaign will come later this year, likely November. For a print version I may have to split it — I estimate about a 1200 to 1500 page book for it alone. I plan to cut my sessions down to two or three a month, so I can run the campaign, and one of them will use the DDB system if folks are interested. Core intent isn’t actually money, lol, so when I say print, I am talking maybe a dime a book for me and my players?

but a lot of us use iPads, and so I am capitalizing on that. 

Quote from vjchopra >>

I agree it's like Lego blocks, the problem is FR is like if Lego only gave you basic square & rectangular blocks & nothing else. In reality, Lego does a whole load of sets of varying levels of speciality, I just want some themed blocks that will let me build things other than blocky square buildings - Lego not only provide those, but they provide everything from wheels for car & & train sets to specialist Star Wars sets, to Lego technic & various robotics sets. I don't expect that from WotC but not everything can be built from basic squares! Faerun needs some more types of building blocks - as you suggest, from fleshed out maps to region framework books for 5e would be a good start.

This is really just a matter of opinion.  I don't think D&D's settings are missing brick types, historically.  They just generally come with very sparse instructions.

I'm the sort of person who always bought LEGO sets for the bricks, not the instructions.  Golarion is great; it's also tightly constrained.  Until D&D4, I always avoided running in the Forgotten Realms because I felt the same way about them, although I definitely agree that they represent a much lower degree of detail than Golarion.

Now, if we're talking about D&D5 material, yeah, absolutely, none of the setting lore is really worth a damn.  But I'm okay with that -- I don't need to rebuy information I already own, and I'm happy to fill out my collection from DMsGuild.com.  Frankly, if their idea of a good setting supplement is the Spelljammer boxed set, they need to stop, and focus on more character options and other setting-agnostic material.

As for the "dated" sensibilities, I've been rolling my eyes at them and not using them at my table for 32 years -- I don't need Wizards to do that for me, and I'd rather they didn't.  Their style of managing diversity and inclusion skews too closely to whitewashing for my taste.

Trying to put myself on the side of the writers, I've seen people pounce on anything they didn't like and start all kinds of name-calling and accusations, and someone's always angry about something. It's safer for them to set a basic foundation and, instead, say, "Do what makes you happy."

Trying to make everybody happy often ends up with nobody happy. Yet, it seems that even letting people try to make their own stories has some people upset anyway. There are no right answers for people in their position. Out of all the possible unsatisfactory answers they can give, it's just plain safer to leave it up to players than put in all kinds of effort to craft an extensive lore only for someone to attack them and claim they said something wrong.

I can’t speak for the other worlds from WotC but I’ve never ( in my 40+ years of gaming) found FR to be boring. I suppose if all you ever play is the sword coast then maybe. As for maps and details about other areas and the variety of cultures and their ways there is plenty of that available. While the lore books from earlier editions may be harder and costlier to get most of the info and especially the maps are all available at the FR wiki. I know some wikis can be problematic but the FR wiki is quite good and stays upto date as far as the ongoing time line. It comes across (to me at least) as a real world with multiple different cultures in different locations. Some are friendly to each other, others aren’t. Different groups have different prejudices. Are some of these in need of some updating to meet modern real world standards? Yes but it’s generally easy enough to adapt things if you understand the prejudices and have ideas on how to alter the cultures just enough. The main FR (leaving aside Maztica, Kara Tur and Zakhara) is large enough and with enough space range to establish almost any sort of campaign in if you don’t want to do the whole create a world thing. There is enough history for each region to set backgrounds, there are already social groups and NPCs as well as foods, clothing styles  etc available in the extant lore for each region. Is it all fully updated to 5e and the latest dates in its timeline? No but then neither is any other official setting really. If you don’t want a well known place or you want a specific terrain for a campaign they are (pretty much) all available. I haven’t seen much new stuff from Greenwood in the last couple of years but he is supposedly still producing stuff at least occasionally so it hasn’t fully lost touch with its creator. All in all if you don’t have the time or interest in doing full world building it’s a good place to use as a backdrop to create your own living world to place your main campaign(s) in as well as most one shots. If you do want to do full on world building there is still a lot of ideas you can take, file the serial numbers off of, and use in your homebrew modified as you see fit. It’s an active living imperfect world waiting for your adventurers to either make it less or more perfect as you chose. It’s not for everyone but it’s usable by anyone. The lore is there it just takes some digging through older edition resources to get a lot of it.

Quote from DMZ2112 >>.

I'm the sort of person who always bought LEGO sets for the bricks, not the instructions.  Golarion is great; it's also tightly constrained.  Until D&D4, I always avoided running in the Forgotten Realms because I felt the same way about them, although I definitely agree that they represent a much lower degree of detail than Golarion.

Now, if we're talking about D&D5 material, yeah, absolutely, none of the setting lore is really worth a damn.  But I'm okay with that -- I don't need to rebuy information I already own, and I'm happy to fill out my collection from DMsGuild.com.  Frankly, if their idea of a good setting supplement is the Spelljammer boxed set, they need to stop, and focus on more character options and other setting-agnostic material.

I am only talking about 5e - I've been playing TTRPGs on & off for 20years, but actual D&D I've only played in the 5e era, so I don't have any lore as they've hardly published any in 5e materials. I know a bit more about the Realms from various PC games over the years (eg. The Neverwinter nights series is a particular favourite & I'd love a Neverwinter book), but as for actual 5e TTRPG material I own, it's very lore lite.

I've played lots of other games from Warhammer Fantasy to Vampire to Paranoia to Call of Cthulu over the years & all of them have felt packed with lore & story, whilst FR just feels bland. As I mentioned to before, even as "generic European medieval Fantasy that ignores modern sensibilities", then Warhammer Fantasy's Old World really leans into that & makes it interesting. 

Quote from AEDorsay >

 
I will put a link to the PDF for it in my signature early next month. Shortly after that, the handbook will come out, which will be a bit of a shock to folks who only know 4e and 5e — not quite OSR, but lots of changes. Not sure if magic system will be part of handbook or separate. Full use of the CC SRD, though, for a large chunks, but not the ones people may think, lol (mostly just spells). There will be a horizontal rectangular version of all three for print eventually (6 high, 9 wide) — will be doing a fundraiser to buy art, probably next year for “second edition”, lol,

the Campaign will come later this year, likely November. For a print version I may have to split it — I estimate about a 1200 to 1500 page book for it alone. I plan to cut my sessions down to two or three a month, so I can run the campaign, and one of them will use the DDB system if folks are interested. Core intent isn’t actually money, lol, so when I say print, I am talking maybe a dime a book for me and my players?

but a lot of us use iPads, and so I am capitalizing on that. 

I can't wait to see it! It sounds great! And I'm an OSR fan, so you're making it sound very appealing!

Quote from Wi1dBi11 >>

I can’t speak for the other worlds from WotC but I’ve never ( in my 40+ years of gaming) found FR to be boring. I suppose if all you ever play is the sword coast then maybe. As for maps and details about other areas and the variety of cultures and their ways there is plenty of that available. While the lore books from earlier editions may be harder and costlier to get most of the info and especially the maps are all available at the FR wiki. I know some wikis can be problematic but the FR wiki is quite good and stays upto date as far as the ongoing time line. It comes across (to me at least) as a real world with multiple different cultures in different locations. Some are friendly to each other, others aren’t. Different groups have different prejudices. Are some of these in need of some updating to meet modern real world standards? Yes but it’s generally easy enough to adapt things if you understand the prejudices and have ideas on how to alter the cultures just enough. The main FR (leaving aside Maztica, Kara Tur and Zakhara) is large enough and with enough space range to establish almost any sort of campaign in if you don’t want to do the whole create a world thing. There is enough history for each region to set backgrounds, there are already social groups and NPCs as well as foods, clothing styles  etc available in the extant lore for each region. Is it all fully updated to 5e and the latest dates in its timeline? No but then neither is any other official setting really. If you don’t want a well known place or you want a specific terrain for a campaign they are (pretty much) all available. I haven’t seen much new stuff from Greenwood in the last couple of years but he is supposedly still producing stuff at least occasionally so it hasn’t fully lost touch with its creator. All in all if you don’t have the time or interest in doing full world building it’s a good place to use as a backdrop to create your own living world to place your main campaign(s) in as well as most one shots. If you do want to do full on world building there is still a lot of ideas you can take, file the serial numbers off of, and use in your homebrew modified as you see fit. It’s an active living imperfect world waiting for your adventurers to either make it less or more perfect as you chose. It’s not for everyone but it’s usable by anyone. The lore is there it just takes some digging through older edition resources to get a lot of it.

I mean, this is my fundamental complaint, I'm new to the Forgotten Realms/Faerun as a TTRPG setting - I  don't want to dig around the wiki, not least because I don't know where I'd start.

I want to pay professionals to give me updated rule/lore books with all my world building done in a readable & comprehensible fashion - why isn't WotC taking my money to give me the updated current state & relationships of the various peoples nations of Faerun? I've not been playing in the FR for decades, and the system (and so setting) has boomed since 5e - I was playing other systems before. 

The massive success of settings Kickstarters for 5e shows there's an apatite for published settings information. 

The reason there isn’t one good solid book of lore for you to peruse is that there are at least 35 bound books of lore about the people, places, classes and events of the forgotten Realms over the last 40+ years. In addition there are at least that many other dragon articles and novels set in the realms over that time. The ONLY place that is fully cataloged is the wiki. Yes it takes time to read through, but then you don’t have to know it all you just have to know about the places you’re setting your campaign. Why did 5e lead off with the SCAG? Because that is if not the most used section it is close and it is where they were setting a number of their earlier extended modules/campaign books. Oh, how do I know there are at least 35? Because I just counted the ones in my collection and I know I’m missing at least one or two. Do I remember it all? Of course not - that is why I keep all those books - so I can look stuff up when I need it.

By the way apatite is a mineral - generally greenish and fairly soft; appetite is a hunger for something.

Meanwhile, I just finished the write up for the Gladiatorial games in Wyrlde, and I am burnt for the day, lol.

Rest and relax Dorsay you earned it