With Spelljammer and Planescape, one thing I just desperately wanted were more Stories, Lore, World-Building, etc. These are awesomely crazy settings that break away from the typical village leading to a Dungeon with Dragon. I don't want to have to purchase 5 different adventures to have a clear picture of the societies, politics, and potential for adventures. I get that a relative blank slate allows for creativity, but I am not JRR Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, George RR Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, etc. I need a lot more than a blank slate to start with.
I'm getting worried that in their fear of problematic lore, Wizards gave up on the whole thing and can only create a wholly homegenized tub of curd.
WotC made it very clear that "canon" isn't really a thing in 5e anymore. If you want deeper lore, DMsGuild and wikis are the YouTubers are your best resources.
Be forewarned, if you think 5 adventures is a lot, my Planescape reprints from DriveThru are about two feet in softcover hardcopy ... and I think that's only half of what's out there for 2e. Spelljammer isn't as deep, I don't believe.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Unfortunately: I think WotC has built this trap for themselves. The thing is: what's "offensive" is inherently subjective. I'm Native American and Scottish in terms of my ancestry; Blizzard clearly based a chunk of the Tauren culture/look in Warcraft on one half of my ancestry. And... I think that's actually awesome: because cultures smashing things that already exist together is how we create new things more often than not. Rock and Roll was born out of a fusion of Country and Blues/Jazz, Anime was born out of post-war Japan getting a hold of Disney cartoons and deciding to do their own versions, Star Wars is a Samurai epic, crossed with a Western, by way of WWII in space,, Castlevania is cool because it's the overtly European Gothic Horror setting filtered through Japanese sensibilities where thef ormer is "cool foreign stuff" instead of "traditional", D&D itself was born out of taking the already existing Chainmail and shifting from a war tactics game to a hero-based RPG.
Why did I ramble off all those examples? Well: the problem comes when you're worrying about the subjective offence of absolutely everyone. As a creative; you wind up having to walk a razor's edge whenever you try to include anything. So; you either have to be incredibly bland, incredibly pandering, or throw your hands up and just not play. The inevitable end result of trying to please everyone is that you succeed in pleasing no one. The inevitable end result of trying to build a world with nothing anyone of any sensibility could find offensive within it is a bland world with little conflict and nothing for you to latch onto. You wind up with a world where some of the most famous moments in The Lord of the Rings could NEVER happen; because Dwarves, Elves, and Humans aren't allowed ot have distinctive cultures and inter-cultural rivalries/animus.
Am I saying "Oh WotC should totally stop worrying about anything offensive at all!"? No, not quite: obviously nobody but the truly deranged wants to see "the black and white minstrel show expansion". What I AM saying is that building settings with no conflict, no culture, and no history in is fundamentally a problem for an adventure game, and that it's this sort of hand-wringing that's almost certainly going to prevent us from ever seeing a Dark Sun or say: Kamigawa/Oriental Adventures expansion.
WotC isn't dropping or abandoning canon to avoid offense, though I'd review my histories of cultural production if I had those shorthand references as part of my understanding (rock n' roll grew out of the blues, in many cases being so-called whitewashed blues).
WotC dropped canon because entrenched lore and the notion of needing to be "on top of" one's lore is considered onerous by many folks aspiring to play any number of ttrpgs (plus lessons learned back in the TSR days when they tried to sustain multiple deeply fleshed out worlds). The multiversal model, the present framework for any given tables world building is not about avoiding conflict, it's about enabling people to play without some lore head insisting they're getting it wrong.
I hate to be "that guy" here: but when we're dealing with a fictional setting, the lore isn't a part of the world: it IS the world. "Streamlining it for accessibility!" SOUNDS lovely in theory... but as decades worth of DC comics rebooting itself every 3-6 years can tell you: that is a fool's errand, because once you do that, you inevitably start to stack new lore on top of the new streamlined version and it becomes complicated all over again in no time. Because that is what inevitably happens when you set out to create a setting to tell stories within. A lived-in world with a history is why people fell in love with Star Wars, and why the modern Disney interpretation of same by in large feels small and empty: because they specifically set out to NOT include that element for the exact same reason. People LOVE those "icky complicated worlds that only you neck-beard lore-heads care about!" Why do you think at this very moment D&D Beyond's front page is splattered with a big banner ABOUT one of said worlds?
An elf without lore is just a human with funny ears; equally suited to fairy tales, high fantasy or selling rice crispies. A lightsaber without lore is just "what if a sword but a laser". A Space Marine without lore is just a large man in a very impractical-looking armoured spacesuit. It's the lore that makes him the righteous defender of humanity, or the feared demon of chaos; identifiable by his pauldrons being round or pointy respectively. Lore is what makes metallic dragons in D&D paragons of good and chromatic ones feared agents of evil, versus animal-like beasts in other settings, guardians of good and fortune in others, elemental creatures in Avatar, and feared forces of eldritch horror in Iron Kingdom.
And yet all these "lore thin" products still outsell the lore drenched prior edition products by orders of magnitude....
If you bother to read to the sourcebooks and not just flip through and say "bah this does not align with the concordances!" you'll note that particularly in VRGtR and Fizban's what may be lacking in "lore" is made up for in inspiration. You can be that guy Waiting for a Lore Godot, and claim something is amiss, yet many many people are playing the game, many many more than any prior edition.
Besides, if you want lore, there's a deep well of community knowledge to draw upon. Whether it's some "canon" concept or just world building.
So in my game, when players come across a new culture or see some new armor, and my players ask for some context, as DM I do not say "well, y'see these dusky elves go back to a series of modules with cover art that looked like Prince and Lita Ford tried to collaborate on an album..." (that would be a marriage of funk and glam metal btw) ad naseum. Instead I say, "ok, well you think these are Drow (or Members of the Lordmajor's Remnant, or Bahamut's Inquisitors to throw homebrew concepts into the mix) and this is what you'd all know about them ..." and we build the story from there. Space marine's probably aren't the best example for your case. 40k iconography is pretty iron fisted in your face in its representation of whose what (though your depiction seems to miss the irony in some of the heroism).
WotC I'd say wisely has let go of any notion that D&D need be beholden to any particular system of stories or lore. 5e grants the gift of non servium. If you're attached to the stories of say Drizzt and you want to center that lore in your campaign, good on you, and have fun with that. But don't expect the same Salvatore appreciation society at the next table you may play at.
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Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Lore does not purely require connection to previous editions or modules. Lore is as much an in universe story and background. You want to argue against such, fine, but there's always going to be a minimum required for all the reasons CaptainCorvid pointed out: Lore defines creatures, objects, and locations as more than stat blocks and GPS coordinates.
I find that the 5e books that actually provide lore (at least, the lore you need) are the campaign books. The spelljammer set isn't a campaign; it's the intro to a setting. It just provides the framework. (And before this cues more griping about ship combat: it's not a wargame framework, it's a framework for D&D parties.)
If they end up publishing some spelljammer-specific campaign book (Curse of Strahd in Spaaaaace), it'll be full of locations and peoples and history and all that stuff. And if they publish more than one, then the lore-heads will be able to assemble all sorts of interesting lore by combining them. And spelljammer has the built-in advantage of being a "new" setting that already can automatically connect the lore from, like, every book they've ever done.
I find that the 5e books that actually provide lore (at least, the lore you need) are the campaign books. The spelljammer set isn't a campaign; it's the intro to a setting. It just provides the framework. (And before this cues more griping about ship combat: it's not a wargame framework, it's a framework for D&D parties.)
If they end up publishing some spelljammer-specific campaign book (Curse of Strahd in Spaaaaace), it'll be full of locations and peoples and history and all that stuff. And if they publish more than one, then the lore-heads will be able to assemble all sorts of interesting lore by combining them. And spelljammer has the built-in advantage of being a "new" setting that already can automatically connect the lore from, like, every book they've ever done.
That's bad design because players should know the lore their characters would know but shouldn't be reading campaigns.
I find that the 5e books that actually provide lore (at least, the lore you need) are the campaign books. The spelljammer set isn't a campaign; it's the intro to a setting. It just provides the framework. (And before this cues more griping about ship combat: it's not a wargame framework, it's a framework for D&D parties.)
If they end up publishing some spelljammer-specific campaign book (Curse of Strahd in Spaaaaace), it'll be full of locations and peoples and history and all that stuff. And if they publish more than one, then the lore-heads will be able to assemble all sorts of interesting lore by combining them. And spelljammer has the built-in advantage of being a "new" setting that already can automatically connect the lore from, like, every book they've ever done.
That's bad design because players should know the lore their characters would know but shouldn't be reading campaigns.
As I said in another topic just recently: I'm almost certain that's on purpose. Way more money for WotC if everyone at the table has to buy every book/box-set instead of just the DM.
I find that the 5e books that actually provide lore (at least, the lore you need) are the campaign books. The spelljammer set isn't a campaign; it's the intro to a setting. It just provides the framework. (And before this cues more griping about ship combat: it's not a wargame framework, it's a framework for D&D parties.)
If they end up publishing some spelljammer-specific campaign book (Curse of Strahd in Spaaaaace), it'll be full of locations and peoples and history and all that stuff. And if they publish more than one, then the lore-heads will be able to assemble all sorts of interesting lore by combining them. And spelljammer has the built-in advantage of being a "new" setting that already can automatically connect the lore from, like, every book they've ever done.
That's bad design because players should know the lore their characters would know but shouldn't be reading campaigns.
That's nonsense to me. As a player, I don't read the campaign book, but I get all the lore by playing. The DM doesn't assign homework before I can play. I barely even use the lore; I build a character (with a personality), the DM hooks that character into the world (or not, depending on preferences and scenario), and we play.
Am I saying "Oh WotC should totally stop worrying about anything offensive at all!"? No, not quite: obviously nobody but the truly deranged wants to see "the black and white minstrel show expansion". What I AM saying is that building settings with no conflict, no culture, and no history in is fundamentally a problem for an adventure game, and that it's this sort of hand-wringing that's almost certainly going to prevent us from ever seeing a Dark Sun or say: Kamigawa/Oriental Adventures expansion.
Regarding the last, I should hope not. I found "Oriental" Adventures just as cringe as a minstrel show.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
Canto alla vita alla sua bellezza ad ogni sua ferita ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Lore does not purely require connection to previous editions or modules. Lore is as much an in universe story and background. You want to argue against such, fine, but there's always going to be a minimum required for all the reasons CaptainCorvid pointed out: Lore defines creatures, objects, and locations as more than stat blocks and GPS coordinates.
Yet, as I said, this edition of D&D sells better by orders of magnitude better than previous more "lore bound" eras of the game (though the actual need for lore in those editions I find suspect, having played them and would definitely fail Greyhawk/Forgetten Realms/Krynn etc citizenship exams). Aside from arguably Volo's and MToF (which actually weren't thick lore compared to the iterations of lore in prior editions) 5e has been very thin on lore, so has your complaint you're surfacing been a constant throughout the editions lifecycle?
Recently, as multiverse became the operating word for the game's license to tables for world building, the powers that be D&D, WotC, have explicitly said there isn't _a_ in universe story and background. If the products presently available to you are for some reason inadequate, you're only recourse is to mind the community memory or the reprint market. Homogeneity of story is arguably important for a property on a more war game footing orientation like 40k to support tournament play with a higher demand for consistent rulings. In a more TTRPG leaning game, it's just not necessary if the table has adequate imagination.
I like how many of those that prefer homogenized curd and also supposedly read my comment saying that I am a gamer and not a fantasy writer, are suggesting I purchase my story and Lore elsewhere, thus obviating WotC of any responsibility to creating a complete product. The point of this thread was that a good Campaign is made better by a solid bedrock of lore & myth, and Wizards would serve their whole community better by providing complete products rather than half of the loaf. Simultaneously it's pointless in talking when one side refuses to listen and even belittles you for disagreeing. Polls seem the only real solution sometimes, which is frustrating.
I like how many of those that prefer homogenized curd and also supposedly read my comment saying that I am a gamer and not a fantasy writer, are suggesting I purchase my story and Lore elsewhere, thus obviating WotC of any responsibility to creating a complete product. The point of this thread was that a good Campaign is made better by a solid bedrock of lore & myth, and Wizards would serve their whole community better by providing complete products rather than half of the loaf. Simultaneously it's pointless in talking when one side refuses to listen and even belittles you for disagreeing. Polls seem the only real solution sometimes, which is frustrating.
Unfortunately having the Lore published/sold by a 3rd party appears to be WotCs business model. Which is weird... As they are the only company in the industry whose making bank selling mechanics instead of lore.
Lore does not purely require connection to previous editions or modules. Lore is as much an in universe story and background. You want to argue against such, fine, but there's always going to be a minimum required for all the reasons CaptainCorvid pointed out: Lore defines creatures, objects, and locations as more than stat blocks and GPS coordinates.
Yet, as I said, this edition of D&D sells better by orders of magnitude better than previous more "lore bound" eras of the game (though the actual need for lore in those editions I find suspect, having played them and would definitely fail Greyhawk/Forgetten Realms/Krynn etc citizenship exams). Aside from arguably Volo's and MToF (which actually weren't thick lore compared to the iterations of lore in prior editions) 5e has been very thin on lore, so has your complaint you're surfacing been a constant throughout the editions lifecycle?
I do wish you would stop using "it's more popular so it's better" as though it were some sort of objective point in 5e's favour... because it isn't.
1) Argumentum Ad-Populum ("lots of people believe this, therefore it's correct") is a logical fallacy to begin with. If money alone determined quality then the Transformers series would be among humanity's highest art forms. James Cameron's Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time; but nobody would argue that it didn't come and go like a fart in a stiff breeze; such is the fate of all things "trendy". Which is what the modern wave of D&D's popularity is; a trend. And to quote a video game critic: "the problem with selling shiny objects to magpies is it only works so long as nobody else invents a shinier object." The trend will move on eventually.
2) This particular iteration of D&D happens to be benefiting from ideal circumstances it could not possibly have predicted. Those being: A) the rise of "geek culture" as a popular trend in media generally, B) Popularization of fantasy generally through the wave spawned by The Lord of the Rings films and Harry Potter, and D&D specifically through things like Stranger Things, and C) the popularity of Critical Role and other streamed/videoed TTRPG shows online... Oh; and D) The virus literally locking people in their houses for nigh on 2 years with nothing else to do. ANY version of D&D would be doing gangbusters given these circumstances: this isn't a fair comparison considering it wasn't that long ago that there would be no greater social repellent than saying publicly "yeah I play pretend with other nerds for a hobby".
Question, for lorehounds trying to convince Wizards to cut all the mechanics out of their books and fill them with narrative fluffery instead:
Why does my world have to work exactly like yours?
Why does the background lore in my game have to coincide precisely and exactly wiuth the background lore in yours, with absolutely no room for variance, storytelling, or any adventure that wasn't written out ahead of time in the books? And don't tell me "you don't have to use it if you don't want to, just homebrew your own stuff if you don't like theirs!" That same argument applies to you, and the counter has always been "I don't have time to build an entire world from scratch"
Well, boy ducky whoo - I don't have time to homebrewe an entire game engine from scratch. I can crap out world lore, background, history, and all that basically off the cuff, but I'm a lot less able to refine the mechanical structure of the game and broaden its depth and option set. I don't need Wizards to force-feed me Rich Lore for their world - I need them to give me expanded mechanical systems, options and frameworks I can use to assemble my own games in whatever world I choose, especially given the wealth of third-party lourcebooks out there ripe for the plundering.
Books like Fizban's Treasury of Dragons telling me how dragons have to be in the world, cramming Lore down my gullet with a steam hammer and telling me my own worldbuilding and personal fantasy can go f@#$ itself I'm using the real lore or my game is awful? Yeah, screw those books. I don't need some Dragonlance yaybo telling me dragons exist as multiversal omnipresent super-entities superior even to the gods, that doesn't even bloody make sense. You know what would have been super helpful to get in Fizban's? Ideas for "Titanic Combat" rules that help the players at a game actually feel like they're fighting a gigantic monster beyond the reach of most mortal arms. At no point should you be able to go after an elder dragon with a dagger and accomplish jack-monkey squat, let alone a rogue poking one in the toe for seventy damage on a fancy crit. There is not a six-inch blade in the history of mankind that can accomplish any-damned-thing against a monster larger than my house, and it would've been awesome if we'd gotten some new rules, ideas, and options for making battles against titanic foes truly feel titanic.
Buuuuuuut...well.
Just remember: not everybody wants deep, overdeveloped, highly restrictive and suffocating World Lore, and they don't necessarily not want it because they're offended by everything. I don't want lore because I can make my own at very little cost or effort, I need better rules instead. You don't care about rules, you want lore because to you it requires a lot of cost and effort to do yourself. Incompatible objectives, and yet Wizards has to meet both goals in as many books as it can.
Nobody is asking for GRRM levels of of depth in mythology and society, so you can calm yourself there. The balance I'm looking for were found in 3rd Edition and for me especially in 4th Edition. The issue with 3rd was that it hit it's limit for new things the mechanics could accomplish and so it sort of spiraled. They also put out a LOT of books in a very short period of time. 4e had issues purely relating to it's mechanics and also I feel the perception of those mechanics which created bias. Not to mention that that infancy of digital support didn't help and the rules of 4e became a tangle that REQUIRED a Character Creator like D&D Beyond has. Even lacking DDB's tool anyone can create a solid character regardless of the size of their library.
If it hasn't been understood: the mechanics are generally *fine,* I am not making any dispute there. My argument is that the game could be so much better even, with the inclusion of a healthy bit of lore and story telling. And that lore doesn't require an encyclopedia. You can homebrew around that just as I homebrew around mechanics. There is nothing incompatible there.
With Spelljammer and Planescape, one thing I just desperately wanted were more Stories, Lore, World-Building, etc. These are awesomely crazy settings that break away from the typical village leading to a Dungeon with Dragon. I don't want to have to purchase 5 different adventures to have a clear picture of the societies, politics, and potential for adventures. I get that a relative blank slate allows for creativity, but I am not JRR Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Lloyd Alexander, George RR Martin, Patrick Rothfuss, etc. I need a lot more than a blank slate to start with.
I'm getting worried that in their fear of problematic lore, Wizards gave up on the whole thing and can only create a wholly homegenized tub of curd.
Check out Drive Thru RPG and write your own Lore after getting some inspiration.
Building a world becomes its own hobby.
Cum catapultae proscriptae erunt tum soli proscript catapultas habebunt
WotC made it very clear that "canon" isn't really a thing in 5e anymore. If you want deeper lore, DMsGuild and wikis are the YouTubers are your best resources.
Be forewarned, if you think 5 adventures is a lot, my Planescape reprints from DriveThru are about two feet in softcover hardcopy ... and I think that's only half of what's out there for 2e. Spelljammer isn't as deep, I don't believe.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Unfortunately: I think WotC has built this trap for themselves. The thing is: what's "offensive" is inherently subjective. I'm Native American and Scottish in terms of my ancestry; Blizzard clearly based a chunk of the Tauren culture/look in Warcraft on one half of my ancestry. And... I think that's actually awesome: because cultures smashing things that already exist together is how we create new things more often than not. Rock and Roll was born out of a fusion of Country and Blues/Jazz, Anime was born out of post-war Japan getting a hold of Disney cartoons and deciding to do their own versions, Star Wars is a Samurai epic, crossed with a Western, by way of WWII in space,, Castlevania is cool because it's the overtly European Gothic Horror setting filtered through Japanese sensibilities where thef ormer is "cool foreign stuff" instead of "traditional", D&D itself was born out of taking the already existing Chainmail and shifting from a war tactics game to a hero-based RPG.
Why did I ramble off all those examples? Well: the problem comes when you're worrying about the subjective offence of absolutely everyone. As a creative; you wind up having to walk a razor's edge whenever you try to include anything. So; you either have to be incredibly bland, incredibly pandering, or throw your hands up and just not play. The inevitable end result of trying to please everyone is that you succeed in pleasing no one. The inevitable end result of trying to build a world with nothing anyone of any sensibility could find offensive within it is a bland world with little conflict and nothing for you to latch onto. You wind up with a world where some of the most famous moments in The Lord of the Rings could NEVER happen; because Dwarves, Elves, and Humans aren't allowed ot have distinctive cultures and inter-cultural rivalries/animus.
Am I saying "Oh WotC should totally stop worrying about anything offensive at all!"? No, not quite: obviously nobody but the truly deranged wants to see "the black and white minstrel show expansion". What I AM saying is that building settings with no conflict, no culture, and no history in is fundamentally a problem for an adventure game, and that it's this sort of hand-wringing that's almost certainly going to prevent us from ever seeing a Dark Sun or say: Kamigawa/Oriental Adventures expansion.
WotC isn't dropping or abandoning canon to avoid offense, though I'd review my histories of cultural production if I had those shorthand references as part of my understanding (rock n' roll grew out of the blues, in many cases being so-called whitewashed blues).
WotC dropped canon because entrenched lore and the notion of needing to be "on top of" one's lore is considered onerous by many folks aspiring to play any number of ttrpgs (plus lessons learned back in the TSR days when they tried to sustain multiple deeply fleshed out worlds). The multiversal model, the present framework for any given tables world building is not about avoiding conflict, it's about enabling people to play without some lore head insisting they're getting it wrong.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I hate to be "that guy" here: but when we're dealing with a fictional setting, the lore isn't a part of the world: it IS the world. "Streamlining it for accessibility!" SOUNDS lovely in theory... but as decades worth of DC comics rebooting itself every 3-6 years can tell you: that is a fool's errand, because once you do that, you inevitably start to stack new lore on top of the new streamlined version and it becomes complicated all over again in no time. Because that is what inevitably happens when you set out to create a setting to tell stories within. A lived-in world with a history is why people fell in love with Star Wars, and why the modern Disney interpretation of same by in large feels small and empty: because they specifically set out to NOT include that element for the exact same reason. People LOVE those "icky complicated worlds that only you neck-beard lore-heads care about!" Why do you think at this very moment D&D Beyond's front page is splattered with a big banner ABOUT one of said worlds?
An elf without lore is just a human with funny ears; equally suited to fairy tales, high fantasy or selling rice crispies. A lightsaber without lore is just "what if a sword but a laser". A Space Marine without lore is just a large man in a very impractical-looking armoured spacesuit. It's the lore that makes him the righteous defender of humanity, or the feared demon of chaos; identifiable by his pauldrons being round or pointy respectively. Lore is what makes metallic dragons in D&D paragons of good and chromatic ones feared agents of evil, versus animal-like beasts in other settings, guardians of good and fortune in others, elemental creatures in Avatar, and feared forces of eldritch horror in Iron Kingdom.
And yet all these "lore thin" products still outsell the lore drenched prior edition products by orders of magnitude....
If you bother to read to the sourcebooks and not just flip through and say "bah this does not align with the concordances!" you'll note that particularly in VRGtR and Fizban's what may be lacking in "lore" is made up for in inspiration. You can be that guy Waiting for a Lore Godot, and claim something is amiss, yet many many people are playing the game, many many more than any prior edition.
Besides, if you want lore, there's a deep well of community knowledge to draw upon. Whether it's some "canon" concept or just world building.
So in my game, when players come across a new culture or see some new armor, and my players ask for some context, as DM I do not say "well, y'see these dusky elves go back to a series of modules with cover art that looked like Prince and Lita Ford tried to collaborate on an album..." (that would be a marriage of funk and glam metal btw) ad naseum. Instead I say, "ok, well you think these are Drow (or Members of the Lordmajor's Remnant, or Bahamut's Inquisitors to throw homebrew concepts into the mix) and this is what you'd all know about them ..." and we build the story from there. Space marine's probably aren't the best example for your case. 40k iconography is pretty iron fisted in your face in its representation of whose what (though your depiction seems to miss the irony in some of the heroism).
WotC I'd say wisely has let go of any notion that D&D need be beholden to any particular system of stories or lore. 5e grants the gift of non servium. If you're attached to the stories of say Drizzt and you want to center that lore in your campaign, good on you, and have fun with that. But don't expect the same Salvatore appreciation society at the next table you may play at.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
Lore does not purely require connection to previous editions or modules. Lore is as much an in universe story and background. You want to argue against such, fine, but there's always going to be a minimum required for all the reasons CaptainCorvid pointed out: Lore defines creatures, objects, and locations as more than stat blocks and GPS coordinates.
I find that the 5e books that actually provide lore (at least, the lore you need) are the campaign books. The spelljammer set isn't a campaign; it's the intro to a setting. It just provides the framework. (And before this cues more griping about ship combat: it's not a wargame framework, it's a framework for D&D parties.)
If they end up publishing some spelljammer-specific campaign book (Curse of Strahd in Spaaaaace), it'll be full of locations and peoples and history and all that stuff. And if they publish more than one, then the lore-heads will be able to assemble all sorts of interesting lore by combining them. And spelljammer has the built-in advantage of being a "new" setting that already can automatically connect the lore from, like, every book they've ever done.
That's bad design because players should know the lore their characters would know but shouldn't be reading campaigns.
As I said in another topic just recently: I'm almost certain that's on purpose. Way more money for WotC if everyone at the table has to buy every book/box-set instead of just the DM.
That's nonsense to me. As a player, I don't read the campaign book, but I get all the lore by playing. The DM doesn't assign homework before I can play. I barely even use the lore; I build a character (with a personality), the DM hooks that character into the world (or not, depending on preferences and scenario), and we play.
Regarding the last, I should hope not. I found "Oriental" Adventures just as cringe as a minstrel show.
Canto alla vita
alla sua bellezza
ad ogni sua ferita
ogni sua carezza!
I sing to life and to its tragic beauty
To pain and to strife, but all that dances through me
The rise and the fall, I've lived through it all!
Yet, as I said, this edition of D&D sells better by orders of magnitude better than previous more "lore bound" eras of the game (though the actual need for lore in those editions I find suspect, having played them and would definitely fail Greyhawk/Forgetten Realms/Krynn etc citizenship exams). Aside from arguably Volo's and MToF (which actually weren't thick lore compared to the iterations of lore in prior editions) 5e has been very thin on lore, so has your complaint you're surfacing been a constant throughout the editions lifecycle?
Recently, as multiverse became the operating word for the game's license to tables for world building, the powers that be D&D, WotC, have explicitly said there isn't _a_ in universe story and background. If the products presently available to you are for some reason inadequate, you're only recourse is to mind the community memory or the reprint market. Homogeneity of story is arguably important for a property on a more war game footing orientation like 40k to support tournament play with a higher demand for consistent rulings. In a more TTRPG leaning game, it's just not necessary if the table has adequate imagination.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I like how many of those that prefer homogenized curd and also supposedly read my comment saying that I am a gamer and not a fantasy writer, are suggesting I purchase my story and Lore elsewhere, thus obviating WotC of any responsibility to creating a complete product. The point of this thread was that a good Campaign is made better by a solid bedrock of lore & myth, and Wizards would serve their whole community better by providing complete products rather than half of the loaf. Simultaneously it's pointless in talking when one side refuses to listen and even belittles you for disagreeing. Polls seem the only real solution sometimes, which is frustrating.
Unfortunately having the Lore published/sold by a 3rd party appears to be WotCs business model. Which is weird... As they are the only company in the industry whose making bank selling mechanics instead of lore.
I do wish you would stop using "it's more popular so it's better" as though it were some sort of objective point in 5e's favour... because it isn't.
1) Argumentum Ad-Populum ("lots of people believe this, therefore it's correct") is a logical fallacy to begin with. If money alone determined quality then the Transformers series would be among humanity's highest art forms. James Cameron's Avatar is the highest grossing film of all time; but nobody would argue that it didn't come and go like a fart in a stiff breeze; such is the fate of all things "trendy". Which is what the modern wave of D&D's popularity is; a trend. And to quote a video game critic: "the problem with selling shiny objects to magpies is it only works so long as nobody else invents a shinier object." The trend will move on eventually.
2) This particular iteration of D&D happens to be benefiting from ideal circumstances it could not possibly have predicted. Those being: A) the rise of "geek culture" as a popular trend in media generally, B) Popularization of fantasy generally through the wave spawned by The Lord of the Rings films and Harry Potter, and D&D specifically through things like Stranger Things, and C) the popularity of Critical Role and other streamed/videoed TTRPG shows online... Oh; and D) The virus literally locking people in their houses for nigh on 2 years with nothing else to do. ANY version of D&D would be doing gangbusters given these circumstances: this isn't a fair comparison considering it wasn't that long ago that there would be no greater social repellent than saying publicly "yeah I play pretend with other nerds for a hobby".
Also, Social Media and the Internet are at Peak. Previous editions did not have that advantage.
Edit: By saying the Internet is at Peak, I meant to say there's greater digital access and options than ever before. Sorry, that wasn't clear before.
Question, for lorehounds trying to convince Wizards to cut all the mechanics out of their books and fill them with narrative fluffery instead:
Why does my world have to work exactly like yours?
Why does the background lore in my game have to coincide precisely and exactly wiuth the background lore in yours, with absolutely no room for variance, storytelling, or any adventure that wasn't written out ahead of time in the books? And don't tell me "you don't have to use it if you don't want to, just homebrew your own stuff if you don't like theirs!" That same argument applies to you, and the counter has always been "I don't have time to build an entire world from scratch"
Well, boy ducky whoo - I don't have time to homebrewe an entire game engine from scratch. I can crap out world lore, background, history, and all that basically off the cuff, but I'm a lot less able to refine the mechanical structure of the game and broaden its depth and option set. I don't need Wizards to force-feed me Rich Lore for their world - I need them to give me expanded mechanical systems, options and frameworks I can use to assemble my own games in whatever world I choose, especially given the wealth of third-party lourcebooks out there ripe for the plundering.
Books like Fizban's Treasury of Dragons telling me how dragons have to be in the world, cramming Lore down my gullet with a steam hammer and telling me my own worldbuilding and personal fantasy can go f@#$ itself I'm using the real lore or my game is awful? Yeah, screw those books. I don't need some Dragonlance yaybo telling me dragons exist as multiversal omnipresent super-entities superior even to the gods, that doesn't even bloody make sense. You know what would have been super helpful to get in Fizban's? Ideas for "Titanic Combat" rules that help the players at a game actually feel like they're fighting a gigantic monster beyond the reach of most mortal arms. At no point should you be able to go after an elder dragon with a dagger and accomplish jack-monkey squat, let alone a rogue poking one in the toe for seventy damage on a fancy crit. There is not a six-inch blade in the history of mankind that can accomplish any-damned-thing against a monster larger than my house, and it would've been awesome if we'd gotten some new rules, ideas, and options for making battles against titanic foes truly feel titanic.
Buuuuuuut...well.
Just remember: not everybody wants deep, overdeveloped, highly restrictive and suffocating World Lore, and they don't necessarily not want it because they're offended by everything. I don't want lore because I can make my own at very little cost or effort, I need better rules instead. You don't care about rules, you want lore because to you it requires a lot of cost and effort to do yourself. Incompatible objectives, and yet Wizards has to meet both goals in as many books as it can.
How would you solve that, eh?
Please do not contact or message me.
Nobody is asking for GRRM levels of of depth in mythology and society, so you can calm yourself there. The balance I'm looking for were found in 3rd Edition and for me especially in 4th Edition. The issue with 3rd was that it hit it's limit for new things the mechanics could accomplish and so it sort of spiraled. They also put out a LOT of books in a very short period of time. 4e had issues purely relating to it's mechanics and also I feel the perception of those mechanics which created bias. Not to mention that that infancy of digital support didn't help and the rules of 4e became a tangle that REQUIRED a Character Creator like D&D Beyond has. Even lacking DDB's tool anyone can create a solid character regardless of the size of their library.
If it hasn't been understood: the mechanics are generally *fine,* I am not making any dispute there. My argument is that the game could be so much better even, with the inclusion of a healthy bit of lore and story telling. And that lore doesn't require an encyclopedia. You can homebrew around that just as I homebrew around mechanics. There is nothing incompatible there.