D&D 5E The D&D Multiverse How it Was and How They Might Be Screwing it Up.

[Radaceus]

Neither Teleport Without Error (3E), nor its sequel Greater Teleport(3.5) allowed interplaner travel. I dont know about 4E, but i've just looked it up in my PHBs because that one was news to me

As far as I know, Until the 5E version, Spell jamming was the only way as stated, Plane shift allowed for travel between planes, but not between worlds.

I as of yet have not had to deal with it, though I have written up some higher level content to take my 5E group past 12-15th level, and in that added some teleportation circles as well incorporated the Infinite Staircase (among other Planescape content). Toying with the idea of nearby planets accessible in this way, ancient creator race type thing.

I do not feel it is game breaking as of yet, since the caster needs to know the place they are teleporting to. Granted once known, via a telportation circle or spelljamming, possibly through contact another plane or some such divination, then said caster is good to go.

Anyhow, more on topic.
Our group has all of the boxed sets in question ( except Dark Sun, and Eberron), and heaps of the old modules. We used Menzoberranzan in conjunction with Greyhawk, we used Oriental Adventures on a new continent of FR, the list goes on. Mainly because we just gleamed what we wanted, imposed our own pantheons(Usually straight from (Deities and Demi-Gods, or Legends and Lore), maybe created our own homebrew and scalped what we wanted from all of the above. It's never been a problem.

FR is a nice tool, because for the layman, you can use the wiki and you've got your world built. Greyhawk requires a little more from a DM, and obviously homebrewing (building your world campaign from scratch) requires more again. I see having more settings as a boon. I doubt our group will ever set foot in Ravnica, or Eberon for that matter, but i guarantee we will scalp some ideas from them.

 

[cbwjm]

Neither Teleport Without Error (3E), nor its sequel Greater Teleport(3.5) allowed interplaner travel. I dont know about 4E, but i've just looked it up in my PHBs because that one was news to me

As far as I know, Until the 5E version, Spell jamming was the only way as stated, Plane shift allowed for travel between planes, but not between worlds.

Looking at the 3.5e spells, teleport was limited in distance, greater teleport would enable you to teleport between worlds since it had no range limit you could teleport between Krynn and Toril (for instance) as they are on the same plane of existence so no interplaner travel is happening. You just couldn't use greater teleport to travel to any of the other planes like the plane of fire or the abyss. That ability seems to have been removed in the jump from 2e to 3e.

 

[pming]

Hiya!

From what I remember (and have used since, well, '81?) is that the Great Wheel is "It". There is ONLY a single "Abyss", ONLY a single "Seven Heavens", ONLY a single "Elemental Plane of Air", etc....BUT...there are an infinite amount of "Prime Material Planes", and each of these PMP's can have it's own rules, laws, constellations, etc. This allows a DM of one campaign world free reign to pretty much do 'whatever they want', even going so far as to 'mess with' the Great Wheel...at least in the sense that Athas did (being "cut off" from everywhere). A DM could have a campaign where there "was no Great Wheel" by doing pretty much the same thing.

This was one thing that Planescape really messed with...to the point where all of us (me and my friends/group, for decades) didn't play PS because we couldn't "fit" it into all of our previously developed and experienced campaign(s). And yeah, it was one reason why it was a bit controversial when it first came out from what I remember.

So, "Ravnica" is just one more "Prime Material Plane" of the original Great Wheel. They can do whatever they want with it...cut it off from the Ethereal but not the Astral, say that only Hell, Heaven and the Elemental Planes 'exist', or even come up with their own 'planes of the dead' (which would become a demi-plane, effectively, because demi-planes are special cases where connections to/from other planes can be quite restricted). For me, at least, I will naturally just assume that everything I hear/read about Ravnica and it's "cosmology and multiverse" layout is from the perspective of 'lesser beings', such as humans, demihumans, demigods, arch-devils, greater gods, etc. [in other words, everything that the DM controls]. Ravnica will just be another Prime Material Plane with it's own rules and laws. It will likely never be mentioned or dealth with in my campaign(s) because, as of yet, Ravnica doesn't interest me at all.

Anyway, just wanted to put that whole "...back in the early days of AD&D..." thing out there. Zaardnar got it mostly correct...but I'm not sure I followed him fully, sorry Z!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[DEFCON 1]

Why do the same spells named after guys in one world (like Tenser's Floating Disk and Mordenkainen's Faithful Hound) show up in worlds where those guys don't exist?

Why do the names of a pair of dragon deities (Bahamut and Tiamat) show up as dragon deities across multiple worlds?

Why are greatswords exactly as powerful across every single world (2d6 worth of power)?

Why does your run-of-the-mill monster have the same exact capabilities regardless of what world they come from, and why do their capabilities all change exactly at the same time (when a new MM is released)?

Why does almost every single world use the potion as the default method of passing on a one-time magical ability to a person?

It's because every game is built off the back of Dungeons & Dragons, which is why the names, functions, tropes, and mechanics appear and are used the same way across every world. And thus they are "all connected". Because the meta of what D&D is connects every D&D game. Whether or not any individual DM or player does anything with the meta (or ignores it completely) for any individual game or campaign is up to them.

In truth the whole thing should probably be more accurately called the "D&D Metaverse" rather than "D&D Multiverse"... but as far as people's reactions to it, it's just picking nits.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Basically, my problem is more the idea that there is one true cosmology and one true set of gods. I'm fine with settings existing in the same Multiverse so long as they haven't previously been shown to have a significantly different cosmology, like Eberron and Nerath in particular do.

 

[Mirtek]

and one true set of gods.

But there's not. All pantheons are there side by side. The only ones wrong are those lying to their worshippers by claiming they're the only ones. They are still there of course, just hidding the fact that they hang out time to time to have tea with deities from pantheons they don't want their followers to know about.

 

[pukunui]

Personally I’ve always preferred to keep D&D’s various settings separate in my head/campaigns. I don’t think I would allow travel from one setting to another in any of my games.

I’ve never been a fan of Spelljammer, nor do I particularly like the Great Wheel. I find it too complex. I liked 4e’s cosmology much better and wish they’d kept it for 5e instead of mashing parts of it into the Great Wheel.

To be honest, I think I like Dragon Age’s cosmology (if you can even call it that) best. There’s basically just the natural world (what we would call the prime material plane in D&D terms) and the spiritual world, which is known as the Fade. It’s pretty much D&D’s Ethereal Plane, except that it’s also home to both evil and good spirits, and “heaven” is visible in the sky. It’s also something of a dreamworld.

 

[Zardnaar]

Very well put. I just don't get the mindset that all D&D worlds need or ought to be part of some interconnected planar universe just because they share the same real-world ruleset. Allow a specific setting to define its own cosmology, and if that cosmology is different from that of other settings, don't use convoluted metaphysical retcons to hammer that square peg into a round hole and call it a fix. It wasn't broken in the first place.

This.

 

[Radaceus]

Looking at the 3.5e spells, teleport was limited in distance, greater teleport would enable you to teleport between worlds since it had no range limit you could teleport between Krynn and Toril (for instance) as they are on the same plane of existence so no interplaner travel is happening. You just couldn't use greater teleport to travel to any of the other planes like the plane of fire or the abyss. That ability seems to have been removed in the jump from 2e to 3e.

Oh, I had thought we were talking about interplaner travel via teleport or spelljamming, I misread that bit. Even the 1e version says you cannot teleport to other planes. But all of them ( even 1e) allow you to travel to other worlds (prime Material) if you had been there before, and they are on the same Plane of existance (not an alternate Prime Material universe/Multiverse*). That was the catch, you need to have seen or been there. Thus a clever Contact other Planes, or a Wish or Limited Wish back in the day could possibly allow this, but again, you'd need to know something about a place, or the answer itself would be vague, or random.

*I dont know if anyone else does this, but being a Michael Moorcock fan, I consider some of the settings to be located in different universes. Not ont he same Prime but an alternate.

 

[Zardnaar]

Looking at the 3.5e spells, teleport was limited in distance, greater teleport would enable you to teleport between worlds since it had no range limit you could teleport between Krynn and Toril (for instance) as they are on the same plane of existence so no interplaner travel is happening. You just couldn't use greater teleport to travel to any of the other planes like the plane of fire or the abyss. That ability seems to have been removed in the jump from 2e to 3e.

In this context if you were running Spelljammer in 3E (there was a Dungeon and fan conversions) you could not teleport between rules as Spelljammer clarified you can't do that. RAW core books you can I suppose assuming its same plane/dimension.

Everron had that interesting thing about how close the planes were and how it influenced Eberron. That was kinda interesting to me IMHO.