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

[Aldarc]

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.

For someone who does not bother or care, you seem remarkably invested in pushing their viewpoint in this thread.

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.

Or how about I continue discussing this with civility on this forum regardless of your attempts to dismissively quiet any naysayers? What's done is done, but I disagree with this decision, much like many people here have disagreed with past decisions of lore and mechanics in D&D's history and still discuss. I'm not hopping mad about it, but I am indeed disappointed. But I don't think that the solution is shouting people down who voice disappointment. Sure most people may not care, but being dismissive of those who do does not seem like a reasonable position here.

 

[Remathilis]

Hiya!



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

If your homebrew is so boring that your players want to find a way to go to Eberron instead, the problem isn't with Crawford...

 

[DEFCON 1]

For someone who does not bother or care, you seem remarkably invested in pushing their viewpoint in this thread.

Or how about I continue discussing this with civility on this forum regardless of your attempts to dismissively quiet any naysayers? What's done is done, but I disagree with this decision, much like many people here have disagreed with past decisions of lore and mechanics in D&D's history and still discuss. I'm not hopping mad about it, but I am indeed disappointed. But I don't think that the solution is shouting people down who voice disappointment. Sure most people may not care, but being dismissive of those who do does not seem like a reasonable position here.

I'm not trying to dismiss your disappointment. I'm merely pointing out that what you are looking to have happen is an impossibility. None of us can go back to a simpler time during the 5E core book editing process in order to remove all mentions of "D&D multiverse" and thus get you what you want. It physically cannot happen.

Why am I doing it? Because I feel like. It was a subject that I felt like commenting on. If you don't like it... that's fine! Then you should do to me what I've been telling all of you to do Jeremy and WotC all along...

...ignore me and just not care what I say.

But if any of you keep posting your annoyance at the whole D&D multiverse thing and continue to say "Wizards of the Coast shouldn't be saying that!", I'll keep showing up to say quite succinctly "You're too late, they already have said it. So now what are you going to do about it?"

 

[DEFCON 1]

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.

Well, if you're so hung up on what's "official"... that your possible enjoyment of D&D hinges not on what YOU care about but instead how others see it and treat it... as though being "official" means absolutely anything... then I guess you're just screwed.

It seems to me you've been playing someone else's game this entire time. You haven't made it your own like the game tells you to... you've been playing Mike Mearls' game. Or Jeremy Crawford's game. Or who knows whose game. Which yeah... I have to imagine has to really suck. I'm sorry you're stuck in this position... waiting for someone on high to give you your game to play.

I can't say that changes how I feel WotC should go about their business though.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

I wouldn't mention any connection to post modernism, post modernism is in the midst of a huge back lash, I would prefer Planescape not end up in the middle of that.

Postmodernism was very much a thing in the 90s, just like how Planescape has made in the 90s and it very much had postmodernism as a core part of it's identity. Planescape does in fact present many philosophies that aren't looked well looked upon currently and seen in a very controversial light now, and they are things that it's very much in the middle of.

While Planescape is a D&D setting, I feel it was TSR's idea in the 90s to have something that would compare to many of White Wolf's World of Darkness games, especially Mage: the Ascension. Planescape's idea that "belief shapes the planes" shares a lot of common ground with Mage: the Ascension's idea of the Consensus Reality.

Also thing about Postmodernism I bring up, is because others in this thread many wrongly accuse Planescape of being an Absolutist setting, when it very much isn't. It's the opposite of absolutism, 1st edition was where the great ring was first conceived and it was presented as the Absolute for all settings. But Planescape is then be the deconstruction of how the Great Ring was in 1e. It's the nature of the setting and it's philosophy where it very much does say "everyone is wrong, though they may be right in some ways". All of it's source books were written from subjective in character views.

Planescape has been accused on imposing many of the controversial ideas from books like Mordernkainen's Tome of Foes or Volo's Guide, when it very much hasn't. While it could be described as a "meta-setting" it's separate from the core assumptions of D&D in the way that Eberron is separate from the core assumptions of D&D. There's always been a separation of what's true in the D&D core, and what's true in each D&D setting. Planescape is just another setting among many with it's own truth, or truth as far as one can get in a postmodern way since postmodernism is vague about truth.

 

[gyor]

Postmodernism was very much a thing in the 90s, just like how Planescape has made in the 90s and it very much had postmodernism as a core part of it's identity. Planescape does in fact present many philosophies that aren't looked well looked upon currently and seen in a very controversial light now, and they are things that it's very much in the middle of.

While Planescape is a D&D setting, I feel it was TSR's idea in the 90s to have something that would compare to many of White Wolf's World of Darkness games, especially Mage: the Ascension. Planescape's idea that "belief shapes the planes" shares a lot of common ground with Mage: the Ascension's idea of the Consensus Reality.

Also thing about Postmodernism I bring up, is because others in this thread many wrongly accuse Planescape of being an Absolutist setting, when it very much isn't. It's the opposite of absolutism, 1st edition was where the great ring was first conceived and it was presented as the Absolute for all settings. But Planescape is then be the deconstruction of how the Great Ring was in 1e. It's the nature of the setting and it's philosophy where it very much does say "everyone is wrong, though they may be right in some ways". All of it's source books were written from subjective in character views.

Planescape has been accused on imposing many of the controversial ideas from books like Mordernkainen's Tome of Foes or Volo's Guide, when it very much hasn't. While it could be described as a "meta-setting" it's separate from the core assumptions of D&D in the way that Eberron is separate from the core assumptions of D&D. There's always been a separation of what's true in the D&D core, and what's true in each D&D setting. Planescape is just another setting among many with it's own truth, or truth as far as one can get in a postmodern way since postmodernism is vague about truth.

I prefer CoD over WoD by a large, Mage the Awaking is more Gnostic/Matrix then Post Modern Mage the Ascention.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But why should it? If you are completely ignorant of any supposed "truth", then there's no reason to be upset.

I mean, let me ask you this: Right now are you, Chaosmancer, feeling at all put out or ignorant about living on Earth right now? Are you perpetually po'd? Because there's a pretty good chance that there's an actual multiverse out there, and thus your objective "truth" right now on Earth is false. Someone else out there in the multiversal cosmos is laughing at you for not knowing what's "really going on". Does that bother you? I mean, by the way you and a few others are talking about the D&D multiverse thing, you should be bothered. Even though you have nothing to base your anger on.

However, I'm willing to guess that you probably aren't. For a couple reasons. 1) You have no idea if in fact there *is* a multiverse or if there *are* people out there laughing at you. For all we know, it's a bunch of BS. And 2) Even if there is, you're never going to experience it or see those people involved, so from our perspective whether or not it exists is completely inconsequential. One of our quantum physicists can claim "Oh yeah, it's all true!" all they want... but if we're NEVER going to experience it... it doesn't matter.

And the same holds true for anyone playing Eberron. Eberron is a closed system. Even if there *is* a "greater truth" out there... as far as the people of Eberron are concerned... it's existence is probably total BS, and even if by some whackadoo philosopher's beliefs it *is* true... no one in Eberron is ever to know it for themselves anyway. So the "truth" doesn't matter. And that's exactly why what Crawford and Company say ALSO doesn't matter.

If we live in the Matrix, but we never know that we live in the Matrix... then do we?

But you are equating real life with fictional investment.

When you write a story, or portray a story, or set up a fictional universe, you set expectations for the people who will be experiencing it. This is why the escalating threat and power-up cycle of Shonen anime becomes a problem for those shows. "Here is the greatest threat to walk this planet, we cannot defeat it, we train, we defeat it. Now here comes an even greater threat far beyond that of the previous threat, we cannot defeat it, we train, we defeat it. But it was no where near as dangerous as this new threat, we cannot possibly defeat it, we train, we defeat it." At a certain point, it just becomes ridiculous, and part of that is you have to eventually break the previous scale to make things fit.

So, no, I personally don't feel stupid because some 7th dimensional being is doing the equivalent of laughing at me, nor do I expect the Sage of Blackmoor to feel stupid because some higher plane spelljammer captain is laughing at him. I do get upset when I get the narrative of "The Sage of Blackmoor is the wisest and most well-read sage amongst the planes, and has walked many of the different planes, mapping them for adventurers who will come." and that is followed by "People of Blackmoor have no idea the true shape of reality, the ignorant people still believe their maps are accurate while spelljammer captains know there is far more to the multiverse than they could ever imagine."

The Sage has now gone from an immense figure amongst the planes, to a footnote amongst the "true planes". And that is what gets people upset, the changing of the narratives because we are beings who can see the DnD multiverse layed out, and we have investments in the stories of some of those setting we are now being told are completely wrong.

If your homebrew is so boring that your players want to find a way to go to Eberron instead, the problem isn't with Crawford...

I'm sure this was meant as sarcasm, but... isn't the entire point of connecting these places so you can travel between them?

Why then is Krynn so boring that your players want to go to Faerun? Or Vice Versa? Or head to Mystara from Dark Sun, or ect ect ect.

Which brings me to a more serious point, and my initial point, is it really necessary to connect these places when a seemingly massive amount of the player base has no problem running their games in only one setting and little desire to run it in multiple settings, if these connections are never being referenced, they do not need to exist. Whether or not they have existed in the past is immaterial.

But if any of you keep posting your annoyance at the whole D&D multiverse thing and continue to say "Wizards of the Coast shouldn't be saying that!", I'll keep showing up to say quite succinctly "You're too late, they already have said it. So now what are you going to do about it?"

But a multiverse itself does not lead to these problems.

It is when a multiverse setting says "people believe these truths about how other planes exist (and those are absolutely true within that setting, so that the way the planes interact with each other in Faerun is completely true) but they are completely wrong unless they agree with how this setting shows them, because this is the setting of showing us the entirety of the multiverse, not just a piece of it"

That is not necessary to a multiverse, a multiverse can exist without travel between it's various realities even being possible. So, in fact, the genie is not out of the bottle, until they sit down and tell us that despite having these planar cosmologies for the settings like Eberron and FR and Mystara being entirely seperate, they are in fact all the exact same and look like this.

 

[gyor]

But you are equating real life with fictional investment.

When you write a story, or portray a story, or set up a fictional universe, you set expectations for the people who will be experiencing it. This is why the escalating threat and power-up cycle of Shonen anime becomes a problem for those shows. "Here is the greatest threat to walk this planet, we cannot defeat it, we train, we defeat it. Now here comes an even greater threat far beyond that of the previous threat, we cannot defeat it, we train, we defeat it. But it was no where near as dangerous as this new threat, we cannot possibly defeat it, we train, we defeat it." At a certain point, it just becomes ridiculous, and part of that is you have to eventually break the previous scale to make things fit.

So, no, I personally don't feel stupid because some 7th dimensional being is doing the equivalent of laughing at me, nor do I expect the Sage of Blackmoor to feel stupid because some higher plane spelljammer captain is laughing at him. I do get upset when I get the narrative of "The Sage of Blackmoor is the wisest and most well-read sage amongst the planes, and has walked many of the different planes, mapping them for adventurers who will come." and that is followed by "People of Blackmoor have no idea the true shape of reality, the ignorant people still believe their maps are accurate while spelljammer captains know there is far more to the multiverse than they could ever imagine."

The Sage has now gone from an immense figure amongst the planes, to a footnote amongst the "true planes". And that is what gets people upset, the changing of the narratives because we are beings who can see the DnD multiverse layed out, and we have investments in the stories of some of those setting we are now being told are completely wrong.





I'm sure this was meant as sarcasm, but... isn't the entire point of connecting these places so you can travel between them?

Why then is Krynn so boring that your players want to go to Faerun? Or Vice Versa? Or head to Mystara from Dark Sun, or ect ect ect.

Which brings me to a more serious point, and my initial point, is it really necessary to connect these places when a seemingly massive amount of the player base has no problem running their games in only one setting and little desire to run it in multiple settings, if these connections are never being referenced, they do not need to exist. Whether or not they have existed in the past is immaterial.





But a multiverse itself does not lead to these problems.

It is when a multiverse setting says "people believe these truths about how other planes exist (and those are absolutely true within that setting, so that the way the planes interact with each other in Faerun is completely true) but they are completely wrong unless they agree with how this setting shows them, because this is the setting of showing us the entirety of the multiverse, not just a piece of it"

That is not necessary to a multiverse, a multiverse can exist without travel between it's various realities even being possible. So, in fact, the genie is not out of the bottle, until they sit down and tell us that despite having these planar cosmologies for the settings like Eberron and FR and Mystara being entirely seperate, they are in fact all the exact same and look like this.

What it means is that the Sage of Blackmoor is keeping this info to him or her self for unknown reasons.

 

[TwoSix]

Which brings me to a more serious point, and my initial point, is it really necessary to connect these places when a seemingly massive amount of the player base has no problem running their games in only one setting and little desire to run it in multiple settings, if these connections are never being referenced, they do not need to exist. Whether or not they have existed in the past is immaterial.

I'm pretty sure it's necessary because they're going to release material which originates from newer settings (like warforged), and they don't want the default mode to be "You can't play a warforged in Forgotten Realms, that's an Eberron thing". They want to set up the D&D multiverse as inclusive of everything they release, but still maintain the bulk of their former character, so they make the isolated settings have only the most tenuous connections to the greater multiverse. DMs who prefer the "disconnected" mode are simply encouraged to rule that those connections don't exist for their games.

You can certainly argue that "no sharing material across settings" should be the default if you so desire, but I think that ship has sailed.

 

[Imaro]

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.

I thought Planescape implied no one actually knew the "truth" about the planes...