D&D 5E D&D Multiverse as setting - do you do it?

[neobolts]

D&D Multiverse as setting - do you do it?

1) What I'm getting at is: Do you or your group usually treat your D&D campaigns as existing within one giant shared universe?

2) If so, do you use the classic Spelljammer/Planescape approach?

I.e., your Toril, Athas, Krynn, homebrew worlds, etc. all exist in one place. You could fly from one world to the next in a spelljamming ship. If your party visits Sigil, its the same Sigil the other parties visit. If Tiamat dies, Tiamat dies everywhere.

3) Have you taken the next step with a crossover campaign?

For example, our group has used a shared Great Wheel multiverse for 20 years. We've had campaign crossovers. High level characters "graduate" to planar play to keep the homebrew worlds from filling with Elminsters. They team up and have have plane-shifting spelljamming ships and fight threats on an insane scale. The history of D&D and epic level play seems to just beg for this.

 

[KirayaTiDrekan]

Not really, but I'm the homebrewer sort who borrows from everything.

I have, however, contemplated doing something like the multiverse approach but allowing for separate cosmologies. In other words, a more realistic, science-governed universe (as opposed to Spelljammer's approach), but with metaphysical "crystal spheres" surrounding each world, invisible in the material plane, but with each sphere extending through the ethereal and astral planes. So, the Astral Plane would look like a photo negative of the real universe - a huge expanse of white with black orbs (the crystal spheres) sprinkled throughout.

Thus, each campaign setting would have it own cosmology and planar arrangement within its sphere, all contained within a single multiverse. Deities and powerful named entities that exist in more than one setting would be metaphysical copies of each other, representing the being's attempt to either escape its literal sphere of influence or to spread its domain beyond its own sphere. So, Lolth is not the same entity in FR and GH, but they both spring from the same source, so to speak.

I haven't done anything more with that particular idea beyond what I've written above as I'm busy with my homebrew settings at the moment, but, I do plan on getting back to it eventually.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I'm going to give the firm and amazingly helpful answer of "Sometimes."

I haven't yet had characters of one setting hop to another, but some of my campaigns have been set in worlds that are--or at least could be--part of a shared multiverse. Others I prefer to keep separate, though. Really just depends on a bunch of factors and how close the campaign is to the D&D "default."

 

[Shiroiken]

I used to, but not anymore. I've fallen in with the Gygaxian approach, and I like that better.

 

[Tony Vargas]

So far I'm running 5e exclusively at lower levels - vagaries of the Encounters program - so I don't expect it'll come up a whole lot. I'm used to thinking of it that way, though, D&D has always presented the 'prime material' or 'natural world' as a set of parallel planes, many worlds, at least as many as 1 for every DM out there. I'm currently running a plane-hopping campaign, started in the Feywild, visited several natural worlds, including Eberron, hit a pocket dimension that led to the Elemental Chaos, some time travel, and back to the Feywild - that was the first 15 levels, plan to do Epic in the Astral Sea - maybe when that campaign wraps I'll do a more plane-hopping 5e one, by then there should be more support out for it.

 

[SkidAce]

My meta setting has the different worlds as solar systems, a sorta crystal sphere (more of a zone than a barrier) with vacuum inside containing each one, and the Astral being the space in between.

Mostly...I change it up every so often.

 

[Remathilis]

During 2e, I did due to my love of Planescape and Ravenloft. Come 3e, the idea of building my own cosmology took hold and I made my own (several times in fact, I was never quite happy with it). During 4e, I used the Astral Sea. When I switched to Pathfinder, I used the generic Great Beyond, and now that I'm back to 5e, I'm back to using the Multiverse in all its chaotic glory.

So, yes, no, sorta, yes.

 

[Bacon Bits]

For our campaigns, generally speaking, "it isn't until it is."

The PCs generally have no knowledge of other campaign settings, and can't really reach them if they want to. However, through the course of their adventures PCs can end up moving from Toril to Oerth to Krynn to Athas to Sigil to the Demiplane of Dread.

And nobody actually plays Spelljammer.

I've tried to run Temple of Elemental Evil three separate times, with the campaign falling apart for various reasons. Each time, the players came across the scattered remains of the previous parties, and with Hommlet's partial destruction happening in the second one and carrying over to the third.

Someday, man... someday....

 

[Umbran]

1) What I'm getting at is: Do you or your group usually treat your D&D campaigns as existing within one giant shared universe?

Nope. I usually create a homebrew world for each campaign, and each has its own cosmology. Play remains within the given setting - while there may be plane-hoping, there is no setting-world hopping.

 

[DEFCON 1]

My current FR campaign has a character that portalled over from my previous Nentir Vale campaign, plus my wizard player is playing his character as a formerly-powerful wizard from Oerth that took a door from Sigil into the Realms and then lost almost all of his abilities and power.

That's not to say every future campaign will be like that... but I do have to say I like the concept of the Feywild and Shadowfell each mirroring their respective prime planes, while also all being a single plane. Same as the outer planes and such.