D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

According to WotC's James Wyatt, Fizban's Treasury of Dragons introduces a new cosmology for dragon gods, where the same beings, including Fizban, echo across various D&D campaign settings with alternate versions of themselves (presumably like Paladine/Bahamut, or Takhisis/Tiamat). Also... the various version can merge into one single form.

Takhisis is the five-headed dragon god of evil from the Dragonlance setting. Paladine is the platinum dragon god of good (and also Fizban's alter-ego).

Additionally, the book will contain psychic gem dragons, with stats for all four age categories of the five varieties (traditionally there are Amethyst, Crystal, Emerald, Sapphire, and Topaz), plus Dragonborn characters based on metallic, chromatic, and gem dragons.

D&D 5E - Check out Fizban's Alternate Cover!

WotC's James Wyatt talked to Polygon about Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, which also revealed the alternate cover, which you can only get from hobby stores. https://www.enworld.org/threads/fizbans-treasury-the-dragon-book-now-has-a-description-and-a-feat.681399/

www.enworld.org

D&D 5E - Fizban's Treasury: The Dragon Book Now Has A Description... And A Feat

Courtesy of Amazon, we now have a description for Fizban's Treasury of Dragons, the October D&D hardcover. The book introduces gem dragons, dragon-themed player options, and plenty of draconic lore! This joins September's The Wild Beyond the Witchlight, and November's Strixhaven: Curriculum of...

www.enworld.org

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Maybe a poor word choice, but for this discussing dislike = unhappy in my mind. So if you don't like the word unahppy, you can replace that sentence with the following:

"...You will just have to dislike the current direction I guess (until WotC changes course) - sorry!"

Okay, fair enough. The term was mostly....irritating in conjunction with the rest of the tenor of the general discussion, so, sorry that bled over into my response to you.

If you can think of a way to explain how you view the dnd multiverse and why that makes this discussion seem strange or redundant or whatever, I will try to remember to ask for clarification if anything seems condescending or dismissive, rather than responding as if one of the handful of habitually condescending and dismissive posters had said it.

 

[Dire Bare]

In Islands World, death doesn't even work remotely like it does in published D&D, gods aren't what they are in any published world, and there aren't any "planes of existence", there is just the one universe. Even the "spirit world" isn't a world, it's just that spirit beings are, by default, invisible and ethereal. They don't inhabit a different space than everything else.

In Space Fantasy, The Nine Hells are literal planets in a solar system that orbits the Abyss, which is a black hole. The Feywild is a region of space with pockets and tendrils reaching deep into other regions, and the Shadowfell is just the darker places within the Feywild.

In both, Devils and Demons aren't distinct from each other in any way, those are just interchangeable terms for the same thing, which all MM "fiends" are part of. Most people use the term Demon, while Devil and Fiend are more esoteric/academic terms.

You've got some neat ideas going on there! I especially like your concept of the "hell system"!

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Why do you assume a "pocket dimension" couldn't also be its own universe? That seems entirely plausible. Just like the great wheel could be a pocket dimension of another reality. There are not constraints applied to what is or isn't a dimension, a plane of existence, or a universe. At least not that I am aware of.

This is an interesting idea, but I don't think it really tracks with how the planes are generally treated in the books.

For instance, in Eberron's plane of Stories, Thelanis, there are an infinite number of potentially infinite "layers". Those layers are understood to be part of Thelanis, and thus ontologically secondary or....subservient (isn't the right word but hopefully it gets the point across) to the Plane of Thelanis.

In dnd as I've ever seen presented in actual published material, when a place is inside of another place, it is considered part of that place, and thus....exisentially less than the place which contains it? Like, surely you wouldn't argue with the statement that the planet of Oerth is, within the fiction of DnD, less than the Prime Material Plane in total? Right? It's part of it, and thus the plane is more than the planet, right?

So, if Eberron goes from being alongside the cosmology of the Greyhawk setting to being a "bubble" or "locked sphere" contained within the ethereal plane which is one plane of many within the "5e multiverse" of the Greyhawk (unless I've got my origins wrong on the great wheel) game/story setting. So, rather than being a universe which is only "inside" the "4e style multiverse" and in all ways equal to and in most ways separate from other universes within that multiverse, it is now merely a part of another universe. Hell, it doesn't even exist as like....a bubble on the outside of the great wheel or somesuch useful visualization, or to view it another way as it's own infinite plane alongside the others, it is a sub-plane within a larger plane.

The issue of things like elves still being the creations of Corellon is a bigger problem, but since it stems from the larger cosmological problem, it's hard to consistently discuss without going back to the cosmological problem.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Nobody got demoted, though. Even if the Progenitor Wyrm myth is real, they only created the universe, not multiverse. They created only Eberron and the planes that exist around it, not everything. They were never the end all be all, since Eberron existed as only one setting among many in 3.5 which had the Great Wheel. It was always a default part of the D&D multiverse. It's just that the beings inside the setting had no idea and believed their myth to be real and Eberron to be the only planet(setting).

3.5 had the Great Wheel as the cosmology of Greyhawk. Eberron had it's own cosmology, Ghostwalk had it's own cosmology, and the Forgotten Realms was connected to at least three separate Astral Planes with unique sets of planes and pantheons (Faerunian, Zakharan, and Maztican) as well as a spirit realm coterminous with Kara-Tur.

That last one in particular is hard to reconcile with the Great Wheel's single Astral Plane and constant set of planes.

 

[Bolares]

Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game

Wizards of the Coast has provided some clarity on the canon of Dungeons & Dragons in regards to [...]

comicbook.com

It seems nothing is canon anymore outside the books

 

[doctorbadwolf]

You've got some neat ideas going on there! I especially like your concept of the "hell system"!

Thanks! I'd like to someday put out a sourcebook for it. A big part of the idea is to only develop enough of the galaxy to be able to start making characters. The rest gets developed using character backgrounds/concepts, exploring story hooks, etc. So, I have a character who I wanted to be basically a Galaxy Ranger from the show of the same name, tied to the New Commonwealth of Free Worlds, and so we developed the bones of such an organization during character creation (what is your rank, are there ranks? how were you recruited or how did you earn your way in? how like or unlike a "cop" are you, compared to a romanticised marshal or ranger of the old west?) and then during play (your captain calls <improv ensues, world grows more detailed>). Meanwhile my buddy wanted to play something like a Jedi, but free of the SW canon he came up with the idea that they're stretched very thin but they recruit from pretty much anyone who can be trained to be a magical/mystical warrior, and the idea that they often work as free agent arbiters in disputes, indipendent investigators, and when needed as bounty hunters.

We are working on formalising some of that process, and frankly we are looking to play some pbta games in order to get a wider range of ideas on different ways to do so that don't rely as much on the DM and players all knowing eachother pretty well.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game

Wizards of the Coast has provided some clarity on the canon of Dungeons & Dragons in regards to [...]

comicbook.com

It seems nothing is canon anymore outside the books

I'd be happier if they said that there is no canon, but this is also good. It doesn't mean that the direction they take the game can't be meaningfully criticised or anything, but it is a good thing to have to point to when some dork on twitter yells at another dork like me who is not using the canon in their home game.

OF course, Jeremy's statements don't stop those same dudes from yelling at me about RAW when I give someone advice in a twitter thread that steps outside of RAW, but at least it might help observers understand that the designers don't view their work as binding at your table.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I've made plenty. You just won't accept them. You believe everything should be a certain way, others have said why that way is unnecessary, and you don't want to agree. And I have made my own inferences from that for why you won't agree. C'est la vie.

"you don't want to agree" LOL yeah, because reasonable people always change their minds when someone states an opinion they disagree with.

Or, maybe, you could not try to delegitimize discussion of a topic that you could just ignore if you really find it that redundant and unworthy of discussion.

 

[Parmandur]

Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game

Wizards of the Coast has provided some clarity on the canon of Dungeons & Dragons in regards to [...]

comicbook.com

It seems nothing is canon anymore outside the books

Copied for the sake of discussion:

...While speaking to media last week ahead of its D&D Live event, lead rules designer Jeremy Crawford discussed the "canon" of Dungeons & Dragons, particularly when it comes to popular novel series such as the Dragonlance novels by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman or the Drizzt novels by R.A. Salvatore.

"For many years, we in the Dungeons & Dragons RPG studio have considered things like D&D novels, D&D video games, D&D comic books, as wonderful expressions of D&D storytelling and D&D lore, but they are not canonical for the D&D roleplaying game," Crawford said. "Part of that is we don’t want DMs to feel that in order to run the game, they need to read a certain set of novels. We want you to read them for the joy of reading them, but not as homework."

Crawford elaborated with an example from his own childhood, using the Dragonlance novels as an example. "I started playing D&D as a kid and I ran the original Dragons of Despair, the first Dragonlance adventure module, which actually came out before the novels did," Crawford said. "For me, Dragonlance has always been a wonderful D&D war story where every DM gets to play through their own version of that war story. And then the novels are one way where that story plays out. That’s how we view all D&D novels." Crawford also noted that they would dive more into the idea of D&D canonicity in a future developer blog post in the coming months.

While the idea that the foundational novels that helped to build worlds such as Krynn or Faerun might not exist within "official" canon, Crawford said that this decision ultimately brings the focus to the story that the Dungeon Master and the players want to tell when playing Dungeons & Dragons. "When it comes to the RPG, what’s important is each DM’s story and the story they create with their players," Crawford said. "The moment you are at the game table, it’s no longer "our” Dragonlance or "our" Forgotten Realms, it’s your Forgotten Realms, it’s your Dragonlance. You’re now telling your stories in those settings. You’re not bound to the stories in the novels, as wonderful as they might be. We hope you take as much inspiration from them as it gives you joy to do so. The same goes for D&D video games or for D&D comics."

As for what is considered canon in the D&D RPG, Crawford provided a very simple answer. "If you’re looking for what’s official in the D&D roleplaying game, it’s what appears in the products for the roleplaying game," Crawford said. "Basically, our stance is that if it has not appeared in a book since 2014 [the year that Dungeons & Dragons' Fifth Edition core rulebooks came out], we don’t consider it canonical for the games."

 

[JEB]

Dungeons & Dragons Novels, Video Games, and Other Spin-Offs Are Not Canonical to D&D Roleplaying Game

I think this should probably be its own discussion thread, especially after this bombshell for canon fans:

"Basically, our stance is that if it has not appeared in a book since 2014 [the year that Dungeons & Dragons' Fifth Edition core rulebooks came out], we don’t consider it canonical for the games."