Sage Advice: Plane and world hopping (includes how Eberron and Ravnica fit in D&D cosmology)

Hiya!

DEFCON 1 said:

Again, so what?

Why does what Jeremy Crawford has to say have any impact on anything a player does at their table?

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This begs the question: "Why did Jeremy even bother then?".

I mean, if what he says has "no effect" on a player or a DM's game in Whitehorse, Yukon...why did he even say anything if it's so pointless?

The answer is, of course, because there are folks out there (quite a few I would imagine), that will take his word as "canon" or otherwise assume that what he says is "the truth". This, in and of itself, isn't a problem. The problem arises when a DM comes on, say, these forums and says "I want my PC's to go from my homebrew campaign world into [official-campaign-world]. Thing is, my campaign setting has no 'other planes'...at all. The only ones that kinda sorta exist would be 'Heaven' and 'Hell', and you only get there if you're dead". At that point, a LOT of people will then start spitting out "quotes" and making links to what Jeremy said about this, that or the other thing. This will lead to the DM having to explain a bit more of his world...which will lead inevitably to somebody claiming that they are "doing it wrong" or that they are somehow "being ignorant of the way the multiverse really works in D&D". This will derail the question into some drawn out debate about what is "true" or "not true"...and the original question will be forgotten.

Kinda like this thread, I would imagine.

THAT is why Jeremy shouldn't have stated ANYTHING about Eberron/Ravnica. What could/should he have done? ... ... ...he should have "commented" on... ... ... "Well, each DM can decide how or even if these worlds exist in their own campaign. A DM could use the Spelljammer model, or the Planescape model, the original 1e AD&D Great Wheel model, or something of their own design. Ebberon or Ravnica could be a cool addition to an individual DM's multiverse. It's not up to us to decide how it all fits together in someone else's campaign".

He could have followed that up with a statement of what HE uses for HIS campaign. What he (and other "official designers/writers") say matters to the D&D community at large...weather or not he intends it to or not. One of those little bugaboos that comes with some level or notoriety.

Anyway...I really have no horse in this race as Ebberon and Ravnica will both not ever grace/sully the face of my campaign setting. That and I'm a crotchety old grognardian curmudgeon fairly set in his ways that EGG could return as a ghost and tell me "You're doing it wrong!" and I'd quip: "Yeah? Saaayss yooou!" (sorry, a Who's Harry Crumb? flash back there...) I was just trying to point out that what Jeremy (and other "officials") say WILL have an effect on the D&D community. And, imnsho, when he makes "statements" opposed to "suggestions"...it will cause more harm than good.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

pming said:

At that point, a LOT of people will then start spitting out "quotes" and making links to what Jeremy said about this, that or the other thing. This will lead to the DM having to explain a bit more of his world...which will lead inevitably to somebody claiming that they are "doing it wrong" or that they are somehow "being ignorant of the way the multiverse really works in D&D". This will derail the question into some drawn out debate about what is "true" or "not true"...and the original question will be forgotten.

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I have no sympathy for the DM who is unwilling to tell their players "this is how it is". And if they play with players who argue with them over stuff like this and that really bothers them that much... then the DM should boot them.

But I never want anyone at WotC to hamstring themselves in their creativity or design just because some DMs don't want to be bothered with talking with their players and controlling their own game. "I don't want the hassle, so you make the game the way I want it so I don't have to!"

No thanks.

Aldarc said:

So what, indeed. Why does Eberron's inhabitants need to be depicted as ignorant sods? Why does Eberron need to be connected to the multiverse? So what if it isn't part of the multiverse? So what if it has a different cosmology than the Great Wheel? So what if it's not reconciled with the rest of the D&D multiverse?

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One... they're not being depicted as ignorant sods... that's how you're choosing to see them. The other 99.9% of us don't bother or don't care.

Two... again, it's too late. It's already been connected. You have nothing left to do but either wallow in disappointment, or just say "F-it!" and ignore it. Which way you choose to live your life is up to you.

Jumping late into the conversation here with another wrinkle that I haven’t yet seen discussed.

Each table playing D&D is also its own multiverse. Importantly, the rules of that multiverse are determined by unique starting conditions that cause it to differ from other multiverses, this leading the Eberron of some to be the only prime material plane while the Eberron of others are part of the great wheel or astral sea.

This, of course means that the Ultimate Power of any multiverse is the GM and Players at that table.

Either that or it’s just Gygaxx all the way down.

DEFCON 1 said:

One... they're not being depicted as ignorant sods... that's how you're choosing to see them. The other 99.9% of us don't bother or don't care.

Two... again, it's too late. It's already been connected. You have nothing left to do but either wallow in disappointment, or just say "F-it!" and ignore it. Which way you choose to live your life is up to you.

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Or do what I do, which is to say an Eberron with tenuous connections to rest of the multiverse which are entirely unknown until the PCs discover them is entirely within the spirit of Eberron.

DEFCON 1 said:

I have no sympathy for the DM who is unwilling to tell their players "this is how it is". And if they play with players who argue with them over stuff like this and that really bothers them that much... then the DM should boot them.

But I never want anyone at WotC to hamstring themselves in their creativity or design just because some DMs don't want to be bothered with talking with their players and controlling their own game. "I don't want the hassle, so you make the game the way I want it so I don't have to!"

No thanks.

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I couldn't agree more. I love that the DnD team is putting together a story with their shared multiverse, I may not agree with all of it but I'm definitely enjoying reading about it all. It also changes nothing for me if I don't want it to. If I want to run a game based on the nine worlds of Norse myth then that is how it is in my game. No faerun, no Krynn, no eberron. If, later on, I decide I do want to join it up to the rest of the DnD multiverse, it also changes nothing. The world tree would still exist and it would connect to 9 very specific planes of existence.

Honestly, I think many people are making a mountain out of a molehill with their anger over the core assumptions of the DnD multiverse.

Hiya!

DEFCON 1 said:

I have no sympathy for the DM who is unwilling to tell their players "this is how it is". And if they play with players who argue with them over stuff like this and that really bothers them that much... then the DM should boot them.

But I never want anyone at WotC to hamstring themselves in their creativity or design just because some DMs don't want to be bothered with talking with their players and controlling their own game. "I don't want the hassle, so you make the game the way I want it so I don't have to!"

No thanks.

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Easy if you have a large or never ending supply of quality players to choose from. Quite a different story when you have decades long friends you've been gaming with and the viability of replacing one or more is pretty much zero. You are lucky to be able to pick and choose so easily your players.

Short and Sweet: I just don't like it when writers/designers talk about OPTIONAL stuff as if they are the default. "Here's Eberron! Here's how you can run it as your campaign world!" is great. "Here's Eberron! Here's how it connects to your homebrewed campaign!" is quite another.

^_^

Paul L. Ming

DEFCON 1 said:

One... they're not being depicted as ignorant sods... that's how you're choosing to see them. The other 99.9% of us don't bother or don't care.

Two... again, it's too late. It's already been connected. You have nothing left to do but either wallow in disappointment, or just say "F-it!" and ignore it. Which way you choose to live your life is up to you.

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The Planescape setting made a point of referring to other cosmologies as ignorant sods.

Where Crawford is a fan of Planescape, and as a lead designer seeks to impose the Planescape setting onto the official 5e setting, that condescending attitude that Planescape plays with becomes official. All the other settings, like Eberron, Ravnica, and Darksun, become officially wrong − and ignorant − and fail to worship the ‘true religion’.

For a supersetting to respect the different tastes of D&D players, the rules must be more open about other cosmologies and other religions being *legitimately* valid.

Polyhedral Columbia said:

Yeah, well said. Right...the Phlogiston Plane would be the Hyperspace of the D&D Multiverse. Exactly!

Still, how would you keep the existing lore about the details of the surface of the crystal spheres themselves? Some are very detailed...like there's beings who walk around on the crystal and stuff. Would this be happening in the Phlogistonic Plane? If you have to drop out of Phlogiston in order to enter the crystal sphere, how would people be able to interact with stuff which lies on the inside surface of the crystal sphere? Maybe the immediate inside vicinity of the crystal wall is the "Border Phlogiston"?

In either case, if you're not in the Border Phlogiston or Deep Phlogiston, you just see black empty space at the edge of the solar system. (?)

But if you're in the Phlogiston Plane, you see all the cool weird crystal wall and flat pools of radiance, as described in Spellammer. The radiant, flat "stars" on the crystal sphere are only a 2D locus for the 3D stars which lie far distant in the Material Plane.

BTW, to tap Neo-Platonic worldview, the Phlogiston could also be called the Empyrean "in the fire". The fire which lies beyond the Firmament. In contrast, the Phlogiston was simply the flammable potential in every earthly object. Empyrean is even closer to the D&D usage. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empyrean

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In the material plane − our space-time − the gravity of a solar system reduces exponentially gradually, asymptotically. However in the empyrean/phlogistonic hyperspace, there is either enough gravity or not enough gravity to yank the traveler out of the hyperspace. So within hyperspace there is a decisive edge between enough and not enough. The gravity around a solar system looks like a smooth sphere.

The sphere is strictly immaterial. The ‘hardness’ of the sphere has do with the faster-than-light speed of hyperspace versus the slower-than-light speed of the material plane. It reminds me of flying across a water surface, so that the surface seems as if solid.

Within hyperspace, a solar gravitational sphere appears relatively small, since small distances in the hyperspace correspond to vast distances in the material plane. Sometimes it would make sense to leave the solar system, enter hyperspace, go around the sphere, and reenter the solar system from the other side.



I imagine, within the empyrean/phlogistonic hyperspace, one can see the luminous spheres of other solar systems in the distance.

The sphere is star-spangled. Perhaps, the small point of gravitational pull from a distant star, interacts with the diminished gravity at the outskirts of the star of a solar system, to give off luminosity.

Creatures who can ‘walk’ on the edge of a sphere are necessarily inhabitants of the empyrean/phlogistonic hyperspace because only in the hyperspace does this sharply-defined sphere exist.

Delete. I should never post after 10. Too sleepy to be polite.