Quote Originally Posted by Unoriginal View Post
Dwarf lore was great in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, but I think they decided to disown that book.
I'd rate Volos and MToF lore as "decent, but not great". I want setting-specific, varied lore. Not "well, multiverse..." crap. But yeah, then they decided that it wasn't vague enough[1] for them, so they ditched it.

Quite true.

LotR is interesting for the history of fantasy, but that history includes going through massive changes before it even gets to reach the "and this was D&D" stage.
Yeah. And between LotR and D&D there was a veritable explosion of other fantasy, some of which took cues from LotR but went in very different directions. And then D&D in every edition has applied the mutant-making cannon to all of its influences. Basically, D&D does D&D, nothing else.


[1] consciously avoiding any culture war topics here.