On a scale of 1 to 5, how important is the "Official Lore" to you? Just curious about the general consensus on these forums.

I feel there should be a “it depends on the campaign” option for the poll.  I know I alternate between “somewhat important, I use it sometimes” and “completely irrelevant to me, I use my own lore” depending on what campaign I am DMing.

I use it mostly as inspiration/launching point for my own stuff. 

Depends. What IS the lore like? 

Just another setting as far as I'm concerned. No more or less important than any other source of inspiration, except sometimes official stuff is easier to map out because it takes certain aspects of the game into consideration.

I will say that I liked how 4e laid out a default pantheon and cosmology right in the PHB. I used that, or parts of it, more often than not. 5e lore seems built on Forgotten Realms, which is fine but has never been that appealing to me.

I like portions of the official lore and will often dip into it for concepts, but I have no problems with ignoring, modifying or discarding things that don't work with what I'm trying to do. Not sure where that is on this poll.

Quote from scatterbraind >>

 

I will say that I liked how 4e laid out a default pantheon and cosmology right in the PHB. I used that, or parts of it, more often than not. 5e lore seems built on Forgotten Realms, which is fine but has never been that appealing to me.

I also rather liked this. There’s so much lore built up in Forgotten Realms that it can be kind of intimidating to new players (and provides older players a bit of a leg up both in creating their backstory and generally meta gaming). 4e felt a lot like “reset the tables, here’s some gods, go make your own homebrew world”, which was a nice change of pace and, frankly, a better “default” than a world with decades of baggage. 

Quote from Pantagruel666 >>

I like portions of the official lore and will often dip into it for concepts, but I have no problems with ignoring, modifying or discarding things that don't work with what I'm trying to do. Not sure where that is on this poll.

 I would say that would be pretty middle of the road, so 3?

I went with completely irrelevant. With the exception of two ill-fated attempts at Dark Sun, I've only ever homebrewed. I did try to run an FR campaign, back when it first came out in the boxed set. But the first time the players went to some new town, and I found myself needing to read pages of material, I got completely turned off. We kept using that glorious fold-out map for a while (such a great map), which maybe counts, but mostly it was just using the map, where I put my own NPCs and such without looking at who the setting book said was supposed to be there.

I've always liked the cosmology ideas, and big things like the blood war, but neither of them has ever mattered or come up in any campaign I've ever DM'd or played in.

As I'm thinking of it, I guess it also depends on how someone defines "lore." If I like the Vestiges of Divergence from Wildemount, and add them to my game, does that count as using the lore? I'd say no, mostly because I'd use them mechanically, but not the lore behind how they were created. 

Official lore is somewhat important to me, i use it sometimes, especially when using campaign setting and iconic game element such as monsters, magic items, deities etc

It can be a source of inspiration or content, but I tend to play in and run homebrew worlds. Outside of a handful of sessions in a DIA game, I haven't actually played or run in an actual FR adventure. 

I'm running a grim hollow game at the moment, but there I basically use the lore given as a skeleton and make whatever changes I want to for the game rather than strictly adhering to it. I sometimes use lore as a general guideline that I often deviate from. 

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

 

I will say that I liked how 4e laid out a default pantheon and cosmology right in the PHB. I used that, or parts of it, more often than not. 5e lore seems built on Forgotten Realms, which is fine but has never been that appealing to me.

 

I also rather liked this. There’s so much lore built up in Forgotten Realms that it can be kind of intimidating to new players (and provides older players a bit of a leg up both in creating their backstory and generally meta gaming). 4e felt a lot like “reset the tables, here’s some gods, go make your own homebrew world”, which was a nice change of pace and, frankly, a better “default” than a world with decades of baggage. 

Not versed in 4e, and also cognizant of the steep learning curve of any of the official D&D worlds (FR havng the most products associatied with it).  But isn't what you all are praising in 4e basically what they do in 5e's PHB and DMG.  I guess I don't understand why 4e is being singled out in comparison to what 5e does.

The "lore" books in 5e (and this is contra the folks already bemoaning the "loss" of Volo's and MToF from this marketplace) are really watered down compared to past iterations.  And they're written very evocatively rather than definitively.  One of my favorite pieces are what's (literally) the deal between Tiamat and the Githyanki?  I wouldn't be suprrised if there was a 2e Planescape or something in 3/3.5 that dries out all the possiblilities therein into some sort of canonical fact, but in 5e it's just a cool mystery that an individual table can work out for themselves.   And that's all "lore" should be, myths that could be much more or much less accurate in terms of "game world truth" but nevertheless inspire the table to develop real roots to their game on their own.

I love Forgotten Realms, so I like the official lore a lot. But I also homebrew a lot of my own interpretation into it.

The last time the setting I prefer, Mystara, was officially supported, TSR still published D&D. So I don’t care one fig about the official lore today since it’s all FR.

Quote from MidnightPlat >>

Quote from Caerwyn_Glyndwr >>

Quote from scatterbraind >>

 

I will say that I liked how 4e laid out a default pantheon and cosmology right in the PHB. I used that, or parts of it, more often than not. 5e lore seems built on Forgotten Realms, which is fine but has never been that appealing to me.

 

I also rather liked this. There’s so much lore built up in Forgotten Realms that it can be kind of intimidating to new players (and provides older players a bit of a leg up both in creating their backstory and generally meta gaming). 4e felt a lot like “reset the tables, here’s some gods, go make your own homebrew world”, which was a nice change of pace and, frankly, a better “default” than a world with decades of baggage. 

 

Not versed in 4e, and also cognizant of the steep learning curve of any of the official D&D worlds (FR havng the most products associatied with it).  But isn't what you all are praising in 4e basically what they do in 5e's PHB and DMG.  I guess I don't understand why 4e is being singled out in comparison to what 5e does.

The "lore" books in 5e (and this is contra the folks already bemoaning the "loss" of Volo's and MToF from this marketplace) are really watered down compared to past iterations.  And they're written very evocatively rather than definitively.  One of my favorite pieces are what's (literally) the deal between Tiamat and the Githyanki?  I wouldn't be suprrised if there was a 2e Planescape or something in 3/3.5 that dries out all the possiblilities therein into some sort of canonical fact, but in 5e it's just a cool mystery that an individual table can work out for themselves.   And that's all "lore" should be, myths that could be much more or much less accurate in terms of "game world truth" but nevertheless inspire the table to develop real roots to their game on their own.

 
4e felt like the right balance between too much lore and too little. It reset the lore built up from earlier iterations by making a blank slate that could be inserted into a homebrew, while still keeping “this is a D&D world with D&D gods and still providing a few pages of “here’s a pantheon and here’s a paragraph on each of 11 or so good gods and a smattering of evil ones.” All in all, it was two pages of good gods, each with a picture of their symbol, three lines of holy text giving you an idea of both their religion and their voice, and a few quick sentences on who they were and what their domain was.  There was also a page for evil gods.

Five minutes of reading with all the information you would really need to start.

Compare to 5e and Appendix B in the PHB - it’s a long set of tables with scant information and dozens upon dozens of names. All you really get is an alignment (which is a mediocre tool for telling one’s personality), a domain, and what their symbol looks like. If you want to know something actually useful about the god - something that might help a player unversed in the lore know who to have their character worship - the PHB is decidedly useless on that front, effectively forcing the player to just guess… or become mired in looking up the information themselves in sources that likely will have all kinds of “this has been part of the game for decades” baggage.

I use as much of it as I can, it's nice to explore fantasy settings. 

I feel like the official lore is mostly just a guideline, it's useful to not have to create lore and have the info already their for you. Generally, I try to stick with the official lore, after all, it makes things easier to stay consistent. However, if the lore doesn't make sense, or comes at the cost of your players fun, then it's not a big deal, I can just change it slightly.

Important in what sense?

Important as in that ao feel that I must adhere to it, that it is sacrosanct? Not very. I'm quite willing to change things to suit my needs, ignore what I don't like, work with what I do.

Important as in whether I'd care if they got rid of it? Very important. It's one of the main things that actually persuades me to fork over money for D&D books. It's much, much easier to work with a framework already provided than to try and create your own from the ground up and have it feel like a full world. As I said, it is one of the main reasons why I buy D&D books.

I like having it to fall back on it when it fits and making changes when it doesn't.

I use mostly my own lore. Any "official" lore I've used has come from free online sources since I don't own many of the books. I also just enjoy creating my own worlds, so I use my own original lore as much as possible.