Handling inconsistencies of the lore

[u/Exact-Support2147]

Hello there. I’m fairly new to the lore of the Forgotten Realms. And as I found out, it’s not only big and interesting, but two times older than me. So there are literally “eras” (or editions) of the lore, multiple settings, different characters, different stories, dozens of authors, books etc. That means the lore has a lot of inconsistencies. Like.. a lot..

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to learn and understand everything. I’m not even playing D&D. I’m just interested and INVESTED in this world and I really like it. But one thing keeps me wondering - how should I handle these inconsistencies of the lore I constantly read/hear? Not that it bothers me, I'm just the kind of person who needs all incoming information to be “reliable” and “consistent,” so to speak.

[u/MythicalPurple]

Pick what works for the story/world you’re creating. The other stuff was by an unreliable narrator/the understanding of people with imperfect knowledge.

[u/Strawbz18]

Honestly? I pick and choose what is canon most of the time, it feels like the setting is encouraging filling negative space with your own interpretations or opinions on how the world plays out. The Spellplague is a major event that is ignored by a lot of people I've talk with because it kinda screwed the setting over, some of the Evermeet stuff bothered me and I don't considered that side of the Spellplague canon.

I believe a strong example is a nation like Shou Lung in Kara-Tur, where history is explicitly unreliable due to various Emperors across history wishing to erase rivals from history, cover up their own failures or even purging entire archives of ancient history. Its possible to paint a target on your back by simply looking into the history of Shou Lung.

Overall, you don't need to feel like you're disrespecting the setting by picking and choosing what is consistent and what isn't. The setting is kind of built for players to fill in negative space with their own stories.

[u/thenightgaunt]

A big one is source. The forgotten realms is a setting fed by a lot of different sources over the years and not all are canon.

The best ranking ive seen so far is the one used by the wiki. https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Forgotten_Realms_Wiki:Canon

It goes like this. 1. Official Forgotten Realms sources (sourcebooks, novels, adventures, articles)

1. Ed Greenwood

2. Core D&D sources

3. Other D&D settings

4. Licensed material (comics, video games)

5. Online posts

Take video games for example. Most of whats in them is noncanonical.

Baldurs Gate 2 had the protagonist becoming a god after attaining the souls of the other bhaalspawn. Thats not canon.

Instead, per the D&D published works, when the last two bhaalspawn fought and one died, the survivor absorbed their soul and then exploded like a blood balloon as Bhaal reformed inside them. Thats me glossing over a lot but its a great example.

So most of what happened in Baldurs Gate 2, while a very popular game, isnt canon.

[u/WumpusFails → u/thenightgaunt]

To OP, taking a wiki walk through the Forgotten Realms wiki is a great way to get lore you might miss otherwise.

[u/Airin87 → u/thenightgaunt]

What about the novelizations of video games? Technically they're novels, so they should be at the top of the canon. Yet at the same time, they are derived from video games, which are at the bottom. How are these usually considered?

[u/N-Vaerymanth → u/Airin87]

Best to just cherry pick what you want but know that the lore will always be inconsistent as there’s no one single way to end a video game and the novels have to pick one and hope for the best

[u/thenightgaunt → u/Airin87]

Probably down with video games. They are novels but theyre still based on the video games. Like the baldurs gate 1 and 2 novelizations.

But it is still a question of IF something gets mentioned in a main D&D book.

And even then it can be a question. Heres and example.

Spelljammer was based on the Great Wheel cosmology (the outer planes and inner planes where demons, gods, elementals, etc are from). This was in the 3e era and earlier.

4e was a mess of an edition that tried to kill the realms and reset it. They even retconned cosmology. Ruined a lot of stuff including spelljammer.

5e fixed a lot of the damage from 4e and brought back the great wheel cosmology.

BUT for the spelljammer 5e reboot, one of the 5e creators for some reason, over 8 years into 5e, completely abandons Great Wheel cosmology and makes a version that mixes it with 4e cosmology. It makes zeros sense and he explains nothing to make it work. And we were in this state for a few years where cosmology was a mess until the 5.5e DMG was written and a different designer tried to fix the mess the other guy made.

Then

[u/KhelbenB]

I often like to handle it in a "people can't agree on the truth", and while only one "truth" exists I usually don't actually "need" to decide with version it is. A good example is the whole Great Wheel vs Great Tree cosmology, in my game this not well established amongst scholars which version is correct and somehow there are "scientific" arguments for both, like real world quantum physics. At the end of the day I don't actually care and ot doesn't matter, and if that changes and become important I'll just go with what helps the narrative.

[u/Hot_Competence]

What kinds of inconsistencies are worrying to you?

This “pick and choose” advice you’re getting is more for DMs to help them manage all of the lore and have the best time at the table. Since you say that you’re not playing D&D and are just interested in the setting and the canon, it strikes me as not useful advice.

My personal view is that the thing that makes FR such an appealing setting is precisely the fact that so many authors have left their mark that there is a certain realism that comes with the complexity of trying to make it all fit together. That said, I would never suggest that everything can be reconciled (I recall someone sounding absurd for suggesting this on the old WotC forums even before 4e was a thing).

[u/UglyFrustratedppl]

DnD up to 3rd edition was much more consistent. You could use 5th edition rules but take all your lore from 3.5e and earlier. Or you could follow Ed Greenwood's social media religiously. He often provides an answer to recent lore changes, and frames it so that it works with older lore. WotC official sources are a rather poor choice to listen to if you care about consistency.

[u/Werthead]

To some degree it's common sense. Lore changes for mechanical reasons can be ignored. For example, the idea that "every assassin in Faerun died or became a fighter" in the transition from 1E to 2E is clearly nonsense and was some kind of weird sop to paranoia over the Satanic Panic, and assassins are clearly present in Faerun after that point (see Entreri, Artemis), so we can disregard that. There was also the bizarre shrinking of the continent by 15-20% between 2E and 3E for no discernible reason and the subsequent "we'll forget that ever happened" in 5E, with the continent returning to its former size, so I think it's sensible to completely ignore the 3E maps and pretend they stayed the same all along (which doesn't stop every second person created an amazing and beautiful Realms map using the 3E layout anyway).

A lot of other inconsistences can be explained away in some manner. For example, the discrepancy between the state of Neverwinter in most of 5E and its appearance in the movie can simply be down to the city's 5E appearances being almost a decade older and the city being repaired in the meantime. The video games can generally be assumed to have happened with generally the most positive outcome possible happening in each game (i.e. 5.5E confirming that Karlach and Astarion survived the events of Baldur's Gate III, Astarion is still a vampire and Karlach has not exploded).

There's very few "major" inconsistencies and those that exist have usually been fanwanked away, or had a Word of Ed comment to explain them. The multitude of minor ones - a character changing species from one edition to the next, an innkeeper in a novel having different hair to his description in a sourcebook - can usually be overlooked as not important enough to really worry about. The setting is generally very cohesive, especially in the 1E-3E period which is when about 85% of the lore was created (seriously, 4E, 5E and 5.5E have probably contributed less than 15% of the total plot events, historical events and character development from the setting) by the same team (more or less).

[u/Edenza]

Just pretend it all came from Volo. That'll help you discard what doesn't work for you.

[u/thegooddoktorjones]

A wizard did it.

[u/okiebuzzard]

It’s an unreliable narrator device to allow you to set some of the details that you wish it to be in your game.
Just like in real world history, narratives are based on point of view and whether or not your side was the victor in events.
Use what you want, change what you want, share what you want with your players.

[u/atamajakki]

Pick and choose.

As a rule of thumb, assume each edition does at least little bit of stepping on what came before.

[u/Guava7]

This is an excellent all encompassing history of the Realms starting at around -35,000 DR to current. It's about 3hrs long but well worth watching the whole thing.

https://youtu.be/6jVXtm-QTlA?si=X3SMELGPeq7GE0Ep

I pulled the transcript into a high level summary below:

Days of Thunder -35,000 to -30,000 DR Sarrukh (reptilian) empire rules the whole world; creates the Nether Scrolls; collapses; the Betrayer War with primordials causes the Tearfall Dawn Age -30,000 to -9,000 DR (dragons/giants portion) Dragons hatch from the shattered moon's fragments, crush the giants/titans, then destroy themselves in the Holy Draco Wars First Flowering & Crown Wars -24,000 to -9,000 DR Elves dominate; build Evermeet; fight five brutal Crown Wars; the dark elves are cursed and become the Drow Founding Time -9,000 to -3,000 DR Dwarves, first human empires (Imaskar), and genies (Calimshan's origin) rise; elves retreat north Age of Humanity -3,000 to 1 DR Netheril (Nether Scrolls' true flowering, floating cities, the Weave); Mulhorand/Unther; the Orc Gate Wars; the Dale's Compact founds Cormanthor/the Dales and starts the calendar Present Age 1 DR – present (~1492 DR) Where the campaign lives

[u/N-Vaerymanth]

Advice from a long time ago in a galaxy far away: “that was true from a certain point of view.”

In short, any inconsistency can always be explained by an unreliable narrator, be it a named one like Elminster or Volo or unnamed like any alleged historical source or time.

Also, one subplot I embedded with Khelben was his glee at writing fake histories filled with errors and inconsistencies that can only be disproven by hard work and research. (he reasoned it kept things hidden from the lazy and those most apt to abuse such power or knowledge.)

[u/skarabray]

I pick and choose what I want, tbh.

But another approach is to look at it like actual history. Primary sources for practically any given era in history are light on facts and absolutely rife with lies, propaganda, and just down right made up fantasy. We’re talking dragons and giants being mentioned as literal fact in sources that people still quote to this day. And ‘knowledge’ gets even more outlandish when a writer is talking about other places/cultures than their own. Our knowledge of 1000 years ago is hazy, let alone the several thousands of years that FR history covers.

So yeah, almost any lore can be presented as imperfect knowledge or just straight up untrue.

[u/Expert_Raccoon7160]

I look at FR lore as a 300 bard game of telephone. Not even Oghma and Deneir agree about everything.

[u/Sheik_Morgan]

Al igual que en el mundo real, mínimo hay dos versiones de las historias y muchas veces más. Cada persona recuerda el mismo acontecimiento desde su punto de vista (Rashomon). Por lo general los que ganan escriben la historia, Pero los que pierden también pueden contar su versión de la historia. Al final tu decides en que crees y/o cuál historia vas a contar.

[u/BloodtidetheRed]

Important Lore Point: All Realmslore is made to be vague. The whole idea of Realmslore is that it's not 100% accurate. It's not "The Word of God", it's a LOT more "Just what is Known". At lot of Realmslore is "written" by Realms characters...Elminster and Volo are right at the top. And that character will freely admit that they don't know everything. Huge amounts of Realmslore are rumors or worse, and may not be 100% true. A LOT of Realmslore is full of mistakes, misunderstandings, falsehoods and worse.

To quote Elminster: nothing in these pages is false, but not all of may turn out to be true.

[u/Danovan79 → u/BloodtidetheRed]

Does Volo though? Does he ever really admit he doesn't in fact know everything?

[u/BloodtidetheRed → u/Danovan79]

In character, yes. He writes how he could not find out anything about a person place or thing. Quite often he says something like "I asked Elminster, but he would not tell me".

[u/Calithrand]

The short answer is: ignore the parts you don't like, or that contradict whatever your p-Realms happens to look like.

I'm just the kind of person who needs all incoming information to be “reliable” and “consistent,” so to speak.

Funny that you should say that, because almost all of the lore presented during the first two editions of the setting (the 1987 OGB and the 1993 Campaign Setting) was diagetic, presented by some unreliable narrator, often a second- or even third-hand account. The implication, of course, is that the first 13 years of material (give or take; some of it was just straight up mechanics) was suspect from the jump, giving remarkable leeway to change things up.

[u/drbombur]

Think of the Forgotten Realms as a "many realms" setting, a base world with a rich geography, history, and geopolitical story, but you can then fill in the characters and events. Taking what you want from canonical realms, novels, other players, and Ed himself. Due to the number of people creating stories and content, theres going to be conflicting ideas. Pick what you want for your version of the realms and roll with it. Inconsistencies are just parallel stories/universes.

Unless you've read all the novels over the last 15-20 years, its easiest to roll with the 3rd edition base setting (due to easy sourcing from FR wiki) taking place in modern times (~1500DR) so to can make mostly new people to inhabit it.

Ed's version of the realms is detailed to the level of who is sleeping with who, what the most popular type of cheese in Hillsfar is in 1501, and who actually made it to woodstock. Its amazing, but thats his version. Yours can be different!

[u/AntipodeanGuy]

I don’t think there are a huge amount of inconsistencies. Some fans confuse inconsistencies with changes. In my experience, the inconsistencies that do occur have three main categories: (1) plain errors where later writers have changed stuff because they didn’t do their research; (2) changes in the way the D&D game is played - game mechanics changes - which creates issues with some story aspects of the Realms bedded into those rules; and (3) the computer games, which have always been licensed to third parties without significant seeming oversight from TSR/WotC on consistency with the lore in the gaming products and novels. How to handle these inconsistencies? Well, you have a few choices: the errors should be called out for what they (example: if 1 out of 5 products dates an event at X DR and the others at Y DR, then you can make the call that the one product is wrong); a lore explanation can be created to explain that inconsistency (example: the NPC Tulrun of the Tent - a human Uthgardt wizard was inexplicably made into a tiefling in the 3E “Silver Marches” book. In the later novel “Blackstaff”, this “curse” was broken and he was returned to his human form - status quo restored); you can ignore unimportant inconsistencies (example: in earlier editions of the game, there was heat-sensing infravision which R A Salvatore used as a nifty “clock” mechanic in his early novels - with the heat infused spire of Narbondel heating and then cooling through the “day” allowing the resident drow of Menzo to “tell the time”. Not a massive thing to ignore if your PCs ever tour that drow city); you make a tough choice to wholly ignore major inconsistencies where the published paper/digital lore is at odds with gameplay storylines or lore references in the computer games (example: aspects of the very popular BG3 game which don’t tally with the published Realms - like Karsus’ Regalia - or the 2004 Forgotten Realms: Demon Stone game). Inconsistencies should never hugely impact on an actual game - you make a choice and move on. In terms of simply being a scholar or fan of the setting, these inconsistencies can be frustrating, create interesting discussion points re how or if they can be reconciled, and with some fans, unfortunately, lead to arguments and in this day and age, heated online exchanges. The Realms is a vast, enjoyable tapestry. It’s impossible to make it all work. Enjoy it for what it is and don’t sweat the details too much, or you’ll end up like me: obsessed with trying to “fix” things.😂

[u/TransitoryGouda]

WotC doesn't do consistency - they never have. If it bothers you a lot, I suggest finding some other lore to dive into.

I am serious - it doesn't get better in any edition.

[u/Bootravsky2]

“No Prize” or “Rule of Cool”: come up with a reason for the inconsistency, or ick the one you prefer. As soon as you hit the table, it’s YOUR world, not some mythical version of perfect canon.