D&D: WotC’s New Lore Changes Raise Questions Among Players
The recent errata from Wizards of the Coast changes what you know about monsters. This leaves the community to wonder– is new lore coming?
Yesterday, Wizards of the Coast released a new set of errata for many of their D&D books, including Volo’s Guide to Monsters. The changes to the book has set off considerable discussion among the community about the future of monsters in Dungeons & Dragons.
D&D Lore Changes to Monster
Here’s a sampling of some of the changes that have different parts of the community up in arms:
In a nutshell, Volo’s Guide to Monsters is being reworked so that it only suggests possibilities for certain monsters. Now, the “lore” established in the book is clarified to be purely from the perspective of Volothamp Geddarm, a fictional character whose fictional opinions are made up by WotC’s writers.
It’s an excuse, however flimsy, to get around having to rewrite whole sections of the book as part of WotC’s quest to move away from racist/insensitive/harmful tropes in their writing:
"You've reminded us that alignment is a suggestion. Does that mean you're not changing anything about D&D peoples after all?" We are working to remove racist tropes from D&D. Alignment is only one part of that work, and alignment will be treated differently in the future. #DnD
— Jeremy Crawford (@JeremyECrawford) June 26, 2020
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Similarly, much of the description in the book has been changed, replaced with “When you’re roleplaying a/an X, the following tables contain possible inspiration. They suggest characteristics that a/an X might possess.”
What is the text being replaced? You can find writeups online or check your own copy of Volo’s Guide to Monsters, but it ranges from text as simple as “Mind flayers are inhuman monsters that typically exist as part of a collective colony mind” to descriptions of orcs that WotC has explicitly identified as problematic:
Moves Toward Diversity & Inclusion
A big part of Wizard of the Coast’s statement on Diversity included a segment of what they were doing to improve. It also outlined some of the new directions that they were headed.
It feels like these changes have been a long time coming. But many are commenting with questions as to what these changes mean for the future. Sure, there’s the usual brigade of people who express their disappointment in D&D getting to be too woke. But we know that changes have been coming for a long time. They just aren’t here yet.
Perhaps a glimpse of what’s in store for the way monsters are portrayed can be found in the recent updates to Drow lore. This introduced new Drow civilizations so that A) the Drow are no longer monolithic, and B) there’s opportunities aplenty for people wanting to play heroic Drow without having to be “the one exception that proves the rule.”
Monsters of the Multiverse
Many commenters on reddit and Twitter have expressed dismay at “chunks of text being removed” without seeing what the replacements are. Where might we see this? Perhaps in the upcoming Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse.
Monsters of the Multiverse was announced back in September. The book promises to rework more than 250 monsters and more than 30 player races.
“Includes the debut of Monsters of the Multiverse, a comprehensive resource for players and Dungeon Masters alike, containing over 30 updated player character races and a massive bestiary with over 250 redesigned monsters and stat blocks, all for use in any D&D world.”
One of the biggest changes in the new book was a reworking of spellcasting NPCs and monsters. It replaces the typical spell slots/lists with “spellcasting actions”. These are spell attacks that mimic spellcasting without using the same rules that PCs do.
In the panel, they gave the example of an NPC having a “Holy Fire” action. It would deal damage instead of the monster casting a spell like fireball. By adding in more specificity, the team can more accurately reflect the CR of a creature. But notably, all of the examples outlined seemed to come from Volo’s Guide.
Is this new book basically a replacement for Volo’s Guide? Well, the release of Mordenkainen’s Monsters is just around the corner. Perhaps this is where we’ll see new or updated monster lore. And a new core set is coming in 2024. So there’s still plenty of room to introduce new facts to replace what once was in Volo’s Guide.
Happy Adventuring
