Apparently there's another chuck of lore being removed from 5e by errata and apparently digital documents are being memory-holed. I haven't see an official source though.

Even left-leaning Reddit is concerned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/rg4jut/writeup_of_all_the_lore_thats_beein_removed_from

Welcome to the future. What a fucking clown show.

They are only making independent game companies stronger.

Wow, I can't wait to see the new and improved sensitive beholders and the noble gnoll tribes living free on the savannah! (/sarc)

Cripes, WotC, why not just call it the 'Misunderstood Manual' as opposed to the 'Monster Manual'?

They gutted Volo's Guide to Monsters, removing whole pages of lore about orcs, gnolls, beholders, and yuan-ti. And they didn't replace the information with anything.  Considering lore was the book's strongest suit, its value has gone way down.

Also, Alignment has been removed from all the races in the PHB, and the Alignment section has been rewritten to conform to modern woke orthodoxy. So much for "Alignment is only being removed from new races, not old ones."

The DMG has been bowdlerized too: All entries relating to brothels, slavery, and racial prejudice have been removed from the random tables. No more slavers dens or inns that cater to specific races.

WotC has really jumped the shark this time. I hope they go out of business.

Don't worry guys. Remember this is an RPG! Rule zero! You can do whatever you want! In my game, after all...

I can understand changing races so that they have multiple cultures with different values, but outright removing anything that describes nasty stuff like slavery, prostitution, and racism? I thought one of the things you did in D&D was play as an actual social justice warrior who did stuff like freeing slaves, freeing prostitutes, and promoting racial harmony? What are you supposed to fight if nobody is doing bad things? That's like making a superhero RPG set in a world without crime. How does this even work? Are we supposed to play this like DragonRaid now?

If you bought these books on Roll20, the offending non-woke information has already been removed. Sorry, kids, no refunds.

Quote from: BoxCrayonTales on December 14, 2021, 01:31:11 PM
What are you supposed to fight if nobody is doing bad things?

Run an inn with a lovable party of diverse misfits.

Visit remote Gnoll villages to teach them about their culture and rights.

Attend wizardry high-school, where everything seems scary at first, but actually it was all just a wacky misunderstanding.

Help a group of beholders retake their homeland from human colonists, who are not evil just ignorant.

Visit all the cites of the realm and topple statues of Strongheart TM.

Travel the countryside in autumn to seize and reallocate the harvest for the greater good.

Quote from: rytrasmi on December 14, 2021, 10:45:14 AM
Apparently there's another chuck of lore being removed from 5e by errata and apparently digital documents are being memory-holed. I haven't see an official source though.

Even left-leaning Reddit is concerned.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/rg4jut/writeup_of_all_the_lore_thats_beein_removed_from

Welcome to the future. What a fucking clown show.

Is there any source for this other than the Reddit post by Greeny3x3x3? Is the claim that if I were to purchase a digital copy of Volo's now, that it would be missing material that was present in my older physical copy?

This site links to the errata. It also rightly points out WotC's misuse of the term errata. Note that some of the changes look small but actually mention that several paragraphs have been removed.

https://www.belloflostsouls.net/2021/12/dd-wotc-removes-racial-alignments-retcons-drow-in-new-batch-of-errata.html

I don't subscribe to WotC stuff so I can't personally verify, but the reports from Reddit and the above site are that, yes, your digital subscription copy will as of this moment lack information that is in the books.

Quote from: jhkim on December 14, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
Is there any source for this other than the Reddit post by Greeny3x3x3? Is the claim that if I were to purchase a digital copy of Volo's now, that it would be missing material that was present in my older physical copy?

WotC maintains errata documents on their website. They can be found here: 

https://dnd.wizards.com/dndstudioblog/sage-advice-book-updates

Note that the newest changes are denoted with [New], and some of the core books include copious amounts of changes, so you will have to sift through them to find just the latest changes.

As for digital copies, I already checked my version of Volo's Guide to Monsters on Roll20, and as far as I can tell, the offending material has been removed, meaning that whole sections of the book have been excised. (If someone else wants to double-check, go for it.)

In any case, this is a new step in WotC's ongoing war against the un-woke, and I personally think they have crossed a line. They are catching well-deserved flak for it on Reddit.

I wrote a long post about this for my blog but haven't published yet because I feel like I'm complaining too much about 5e and I don't want to become tiresome.

This is not only about being politically correct, it seems; there is some bowdlerization going on.

Anyway, here is part of it:

---
Here is how one redditor put it:
There's more sanitization. Cannibalism and Sacrifice removed. Lisps and stutters removed from NPC mannerisms. No rolling a specific phobia as an NPC secret. They shuffled around the villain methods table to remove genocide, removed a hidden slavers' den from random residences, and that a tavern could cater to a specific race or be a brothel.

This is most noticeable in Volo's Guide to Monsters. Sections on paranoia, cannibalism, slavery, ransom, demonolatry, supremacy, etc., have been removed. Also, any negative portrayals of kobolds, apparently. In total, almost two pages have been purged from history with no replacement.

Everything in this books is now "only Volo's opinion", which is fine by me, because I do not care about WotC "canon" at all. But apparently not even in Volo's is entitled to some opinions... such as, that the kobolds are mostly weak or slow-witted.

Being an adult fan of dark fantasy, I can see that current D&D is not a great fit for my tastes, and that's okay. My games have demons, devils, cannibals, supremacists, etc. - they are meant to be the villains. But I guess you can play a D&D game where every villain is just misunderstood and most beholders are nice people. It's just not for me. If I were playing with children, I'd avoid mentioning slavery and cannibalism too!

The system is still decent enough, and I bet you'll find good bits of lore here and there - although I think it is time to take another look at older editions. For now, it seems they are removing parts of lore but they still do not have much to add - as exemplified by Volo's.

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 14, 2021, 02:40:10 PM
It's just not for me. If I were playing with children, I'd avoid mentioning slavery and cannibalism too!

LOL. I ran game with a 10yo player once who declared out of the blue his character was a cannibal and started to eat pieces of fallen foes. Kids are generally nuts and can deal with terrifying concepts quite well. It's the 20-30 something sensitives you gotta watch out for.

Quote from: Horace on December 14, 2021, 02:36:50 PM

Quote from: jhkim on December 14, 2021, 02:06:16 PM
Is there any source for this other than the Reddit post by Greeny3x3x3? Is the claim that if I were to purchase a digital copy of Volo's now, that it would be missing material that was present in my older physical copy?

WotC maintains errata documents on their website. They can be found here: 

https://dnd.wizards.com/dndstudioblog/sage-advice-book-updates

Note that the newest changes are denoted with [New], and some of the core books include copious amounts of changes, so you will have to sift through them to find just the latest changes.

As for digital copies, I already checked my version of Volo's Guide to Monsters on Roll20, and as far as I can tell, the offending material has been removed, meaning that whole sections of the book have been excised. (If someone else wants to double-check, go for it.)

Thanks, Horace. Here's the direct link for the Volo's changes from WotC. It wasn't obvious to me at a glance, but the errata does document what paragraphs are removed - just not what the removed text is. I'll have to look back at my copy at home for the context.

https://media.wizards.com/2021/dnd/downloads/VGtM-Errata.pdf

Quote from: Eric Diaz on December 14, 2021, 02:40:10 PM
I wrote a long post about this for my blog but haven't published yet because I feel like I'm complaining too much about 5e and I don't want to become tiresome.

I'm pretty sure Pundit will be asking you to hold his beer (pipe?) shortly as he drops another video on the idiocy at WotC.