D&D General Joe Manganiello: Compares Early 5E to BG 3 . How Important is Lore?

[Micah Sweet]

Speaking as a long-time comics fan, I like the Marvel Comics approach to lore. Everything that happened, happened... but the timeline can advance and evolve, and past events can be reinterpreted (new context can be added, "true" backstories can be revealed, etc.) Just make sure everything is explained, somehow. This is something early 5E did (see SCAG, which included even 4E's lore in the backstory), but modern 5E does seem to have given up on, favoring reboots instead.

That said, credit where credit's due, they've gotten smarter with their reboots as of Dragonlance and Planescape. Yes, there are changes, but in broad strokes it can work well enough with older material. As opposed to Spelljammer (anything that depends on the old cosmology may be an awkward fit) and especially Van Richten's Ravenloft (which is a completely new setting). It's probably the most that can be realistically expected from Wizards at this point.

Fair enough. I shouldn't expect much of them.

 

[MGibster]

Yes of course, because it took place in that setting. I just don’t think I’ve seen as much talk about the blood war as about whether Astarion is a good guy or a bad guy.

Which is as it should be. The lore exists as a backdrop providing adventure opportunities for characters. If we were more insterested in the Blood War than we were in Astarion that'd be a problem.

 

[Minigiant]

Most of therm were heavily tied to the lore though. Ceremorphoisis, blood war, Gith.

Lots of 2E and 3E lore in there.

Yeah but BG3 has popular aspects that didn't exist or didn't exist in the same capacity at FR's inception.
New classes. New types of magic. New races. New takes on old classes and classes. No lore limits on classes and races. Addition of backgrounds.

The biggest gains in D&D maintaining polarity lorewise was the removal of limitations of races and the integration of new classes, backgrounds, and alignments into the races.

All the NPC and location changes were secondary or tertiary. Saying halflings could be wizards and dwarves could be warlocks was huge.

Heck, D&D 5e had a big stink and then shift on racial interpretation, imagery, and options which caused much grief to lore purists.

 

[Zardnaar]

Yeah but BG3 has popular aspects that didn't exist or didn't exist in the same capacity at FR's inception.
New classes. New types of magic. New races. New takes on old classes and classes. No lore limits on classes and races. Addition of backgrounds.

The biggest gains in D&D maintaining polarity lorewise was the removal of limitations of races and the integration of new classes, backgrounds, and alignments into the races.

All the NPC and location changes were secondary or tertiary. Saying halflings could be wizards and dwarves could be warlocks was huge.

Heck, D&D 5e had a big stink and then shift on racial interpretation, imagery, and options which caused much grief to lore purists.

FR can add that easy enough. Sorcerers are easy add on.

I'm not saying no changed just not stupidly drastic ones to shoe horn in things that don't belong. Or blow up the setting.

Eberron and FR add bew stuff easily enough. Even in things like Darksun Warlocks would be fine as long as you have Athasian ones vs shoe horning in phb ones.

Genasi on Athas make more sense than say Tieflings.

Mostly just respect tge old lore vs blowing it up imho. You run a high risk of alienating the old fans and not getting news ones either (and the old fans are actively dumping on your product to new ones).

 

[OakenHart]

Man his whole take on the Mearls defending a sex pest and outing a bunch of sexual assault victims is so unbelievably naughty word awful that i hope he never works on anything dnd related again.

Nobody has ever shown the "outing" part to be true, the only thing that's ever been linked are accusations of such pointing to each other, all assuming.
Definitely was handled incredibly poorly as a whole and shouldn't be glossed over, but not really keen on throwing on an accusation that has never had any actual proof or a first-hand account of seeing it occurring mixed in to the rest of that as well.

 

[Distracted DM]

5e is the most popular and successful edition of D&D.

5e FR let's you play a dwarven non-elven bladesinger master wizard multiclassed with a godless paladin.

I don't know that that popularity's owed to the edition itself, rather than the popular culture surrounding D&D that catapulted its success.

 

[Minigiant]

I don't know that that popularity's owed to the edition itself, rather than the popular culture surrounding D&D that catapulted its success.

Not the edition itself. It's openness and ease.

If D&D said dwarves could only be fighters and elves fighters and rogues because that's the lore and culture of 10+ D&D settings, new fans would doing the Abe Simpson in the brothel.

Walk in, remove hat, turn around, put on hat, walk out.

 

[S'mon]

Wow. Manganiello has exactly my own view on 2014-18 D&D, Mike Mearls, and current post 2018 D&D. He's more diplomatic than me though.

 

[Sulicius]

Wow. Manganiello has exactly my own view on 2014-18 D&D, Mike Mearls, and current post 2018 D&D. He's more diplomatic than me though.

More diplomatic in that he’s being very vague. “It got worse after Mike’s departure.” And that Baldur’s Gate 3 is more what he envisions D&D to be.

I am not sure what he means by that, but I can see people are already happy to fill in these statements with their own opinions.

Has anyone found out more what Joe is talking about?

For me, about one in four products WotC publishes I actually buy. And I don’t even think that’s a bad thing. Not every product is for everyone, and we have limited time to go through it all.

 

[S'mon]

More diplomatic in that he’s being very vague. “It got worse after Mike’s departure.” And that Baldur’s Gate 3 is more what he envisions D&D to be.

I am not sure what he means by that, but I can see people are already happy to fill in these statements with their own opinions.

Has anyone found out more what Joe is talking about?

For me, about one in four products WotC publishes I actually buy. And I don’t even think that’s a bad thing. Not every product is for everyone, and we have limited time to go through it all.

Manganiello said that the controversy led to Mearls getting pushed out of the 'drivers' seat' for Dungeons & Dragons. "And then the Twitter mob rises up with the pitchforks and the torches and it was right in that kind of weird spot when all of that was at its height and everyone was listening to the mob in that way," Manganiello said. "There are some people within [Wizards of the Coast] that saw their opportunity to try to go for Mike's head and get him out of the driver's seat and they were successful and in the end they were allowed to do it. I told Mike at one point, it was like Jimmy Johnson winning back to back Super Bowls with the Cowboys and kicking him out and replacing him with Barry Switzer and then just dismantling the team. There were a bunch of people that saw the opportunity to take credit for what Mike did, to try to launch and alter the game into a new edition and it just has gone downhill since."

I guess he doesn't detail the specific issues there, though he's clearly not happy with how they treated Dragonlance.