Chronomancers, time spheres, grand conjunction, sundering and uchronies.

Do you remember the sourcebook "Chronomancer" from AD&D 2nd Edition? There were a special group of spellcasters with special powers about time manipulation. The sourcebook told us about "time spheres", like the "crystal spheres" in Spelljammer setting but with a different timeline.

The time-travel is possible in the D&D canon but rarely, very rarely.

Do you think WotC should WotC allow as canon parallel earths in D&D? We don't need a description of this alternative timelines, but only a opened door for us to create our own versions as we wanted. This could allow a Dragonlance where the fifth age didn't started, or Lord Soth avoided the cataclysm, or Oerth (Greyhawk) suffering its own "sundering" changes in the geography of the continents. Or war in the island of Jakandar has to stop because they are being invaded by defilers from Athas, or Mystara being visited by the alien races from d20 Future (star frontiers + Star*Drive), or Cerilia (Birthright) discovering planar gates to a post-apocalypse world like Gamma World (not our Earth but with the same creatures).

If you ask about time paradoxes, I have got my homebred solution: Schöringer's cat is live and dead in the same time. When a detail is changed by crononauts/time-travelers it isn't like erased and rewritten but more like covered by a correction fluid and written over this. This would work like a hologram, where the observer from the right place would see the original timeline, and a second observer from the point of the view in the left side would be the new reality. If the change of the past is radically big, the original timeline doesn't disappear really, but it becomes a special type of demiplane, a dreamland. It isn't so bad, but planar barriers are weaker and invasion from the Far Realm (or other planes) is easier to happen. Some gods keep these demiplanes as their dominions, something like the Hollow World from Mystara.

And why to explore those timelines by adventurers hasn't allowed yet? Because that is the will by Vecna, god of the secrets, with his own reasons.

LuisCarlos17f said:

Do you think WotC should WotC allow as canon parallel earths in D&D? We don't need a description of this alternative timelines, but only a opened door for us to create our own versions as we wanted. This could allow a Dragonlance where the fifth age didn't started, or Lord Soth avoided the cataclysm, or Oerth (Greyhawk) suffering its own "sundering" changes in the geography of the continents. Or war in the island of Jakandar has to stop because they are being invaded by defilers from Athas, or Mystara being visited by the alien races from d20 Future (star frontiers + Star*Drive), or Cerilia (Birthright) discovering planar gates to a post-apocalypse world like Gamma World (not our Earth but with the same creatures).

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"Allow"?

A lot of us have been doing this sort of thing for years.

If you are the DM you can do what you want. An old campaign of mine did the multiple-timeline approach, but the players went in thinking time couldn't be changed. They were horribly surprised when an action of theirs led directly to the deaths of their younger characters (before they had been thrown back in time). They were expecting to fade away (Back to the Future style), but stayed alive knowing that they were responsible for their own deaths.

Of course I change everything I want but my question is if "time spheres" should be canon to allow some retcon by WotC.

In my multiverse when anybody can't be born by fault of crononauts his soul become a "lost", something like a petitioner, but he goes to a dreamland ruled by a special group of fey lords.

Other idea is the characters sometimes don't travel to the past really, but they go to a "akasha-sphere". This is a demiplane like a theme park created by memory of sentient beings (not always the remembered past is like happened really). Some naives of this demiplane are "reincarnated" souls. Also I have thought about a "time sphere" what really is a prison. Do you remember Prometheus' punishment in the classic myths? Now let's imagine a complete civilization trapped in a "time loop" where they suffer a apocalypse time after time, survivors rebuilding from zero, trying to live some years of happiness before facing the fatal fate again. A prison for titans (and allies as lord feys and genies) who didn't remember their past nor war against gods and living as ordinary mortals, but something start to fail and the illusion is breaking.

WotC doesn't need to "make" it canon. One, because WotC isn't concerned with "canon" in the first place. And two, the way they identify the "D&D multiverse" is that every single D&D game in every single D&D or generic or personal setting is an alternate timeline/world from each other in the D&D multiverse. So every D&D game you run is an alternate timelime/world from any other one you run, and from all of my D&D games, and from of the ones run by folks here on the boards, and by the ones written in the campaign setting books from 1st edition all the way to today.

Feel free to make chronomancy a thing in your world. And feel free to use that as an "explanation" in one of your campaign worlds to explain how things can travel from one world to another, one timeline to another etc. etc. But WotC has no need to use that explanation in any official book, because its already an assumed part of the "D&D multiverse" as a concept in the first place.

LuisCarlos17f said:

Of course I change everything I want but my question is if "time spheres" should be canon to allow some retcon by WotC.

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Aha! Okay, I understand what you mean, now. Something that allows for WotC creative license in the face of canon, that gives them a solid metaphysical justification for taking the tangled mess that are the official campaign settings and doing something cool and new with them.

This... is tricky. Not shooting down your ideas, because if they're going to do something like this, that would be a fun way to do it. It provides a solid "why" for the changes, and time travel and alternate realities and so forth are a fantasy/sci-fi staple.

But I'm going to tell you why it possibly might not work, and it's not because your ideas are bad ones. It's because your good ideas may run into certain realities.

First of all, I don't think that DMs absolutely need anything like this. You change things, I change things, and so do most DMs. I know very few DMs that run settings out of the box. I knew a DM that ran Dark Sun plus drow. (I didn't say all the changes were good ones!) I knew another one that ran FR as if the Time of Troubles never happened. And I know plenty that just take elements from settings without so much as a nod to the settings themselves, like me. So on the consumer side, we already have the imagination to do stuff like this. Sometimes we justify it with weird metaphysics and alternate timelines and so forth, but sometimes we just don't bother. So I'm concerned that giving people tools to do what a lot of us are already doing will be of limited value.

But you're intending this for WotC, I'm giving them the freedom to do what they want with the settings instead of having to conform to what has come before. And that's laudable.

However, as I'm sure you're aware, there are fantasy fans that approach canon in very much the same way fundamentalists approach religious scripture. Any change people makes to a setting's canon, even if it's an improvement or well-justified or done with good intentions, will be met by screaming hordes of Canon Gibbons declaring them anathema. (Sometimes the Canon Gibbons yell at the setting creators themselves for changing their own creations.) But let's be fair, here: it's not like the varied D&D teams have always treated these settings very well, or have been respectful stewards of the settings they've inherited. There were changes made that the majority of fans, even setting creators, didn't appreciate. So a certain defensiveness is understandable, even if people are sometimes stupid about it.

So, WotC giving themselves free license to violate setting canon, even if they don't actually do anything bad with it? That can go over poorly. I understand this isn't a good reason to not do it. Having to tiptoe around people that won't tolerate any kind of change, even if it's for the better, has to suck. But these people are an unfortunate reality in our community, and I believe WotC is choosing the side of conservatism when it comes to settings. And I can understand that. Even if I think your idea would be cool.

In my multiverse when anybody can't be born by fault of crononauts his soul become a "lost", something like a petitioner, but he goes to a dreamland ruled by a special group of fey lords.

Other idea is the characters sometimes don't travel to the past really, but they go to a "akasha-sphere". This is a demiplane like a theme park created by memory of sentient beings (not always the remembered past is like happened really). Some naives of this demiplane are "reincarnated" souls. Also I have thought about a "time sphere" what really is a prison. Do you remember Prometheus' punishment in the classic myths? Now let's imagine a complete civilization trapped in a "time loop" where they suffer a apocalypse time after time, survivors rebuilding from zero, trying to live some years of happiness before facing the fatal fate again. A prison for titans (and allies as lord feys and genies) who didn't remember their past nor war against gods and living as ordinary mortals, but something start to fail and the illusion is breaking.

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I honestly think these are cool ideas. But for reasons I explained before, I'm not sure how much traction it would gain. But I might be wrong! I would definitely suggest you continue to explore and expand your idea, maybe eventually release it to us as an ebook or something.

I use "Hora Brujha" a group of chronomancers in one of my settings...I love the chronomancers.

Angel of the Dawn said:

Any change people makes to a setting's canon, even if it's an improvement or well-justified or done with good intentions, will be met by screaming hordes of Canon Gibbons declaring them anathema. (Sometimes the Canon Gibbons yell at the setting creators themselves for changing their own creations.)

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I want to create a Gibbon Cannon now...

SkidAce said:

I want to create a Gibbon Cannon now...

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Does it use lesser apes as projectiles?

God. What an awful idea. We're trying to discuss chronomancers here, and you have to try and derail the discussion with this silliness. A weapon that fires primates? Please!

...

(But do if you design the Gibbon Cannon, please let me see the stats.)