D&D General The Brilliance of the Original Gygaxian Multiverse

[ilgatto]

It came from Moorcock - who isn't American.

Moorcock invented the Prime Material Plane?

 

[Paul Farquhar]

Moorcock invented the Prime Material Plane?

He invented the multiverse, and plane hopping narratives*.

*Along with Steve Ditko (Doctor Strange). But we only know Gygax was influenced by Moorcock, because he is cited in the original Appendix N, whereas Doctor Strange is not. It's also possible Moorcock was influenced by Doctor Strange, but American comics where hard to come by in the UK in the 60s/70s.

 

[Alzrius]

But we only know Gygax was influenced by Moorcock, because he is cited in the original Appendix N, whereas Doctor Strange is not.

I'll just leave this here:

Doctor Strange: The Original D&D Grognard

We previously discussed the negative influence of a doctor on Dungeons & Dragons--Dr. Thomas Radecki, who used court cases to advocate that D&D was dangerous to society. But there is another, fictional doctor who strongly influenced D&D spells and magic items and who is now experiencing a...

www.enworld.org

 

[Umbran]

He invented the multiverse, and plane hopping narratives*.

*Along with Steve Ditko (Doctor Strange).

Further back - Wonder Woman #59 (1953) has WW travelling to a parallel Earth, and meeting her analog, Tara Terruna. DC uses the concept of multiple worlds a few times over in Golden Age WW after that.

Then, The Flash #123 (1961 titled "Flash of Two Worlds") explicitly established DC's Earth-Two, and the concept of the multiverse in general.

I think Moorcock establishes the multiverse of the Eternal Champion in the mid-to-late-60s.

And, Hugh Everett proposed the Many Words interpretation of quantum mechanics in 1957.

So, while Moorcock may have been part of popularizing it, he didn't invent the thing.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

He invented the multiverse, and plane hopping narratives*.

*Along with Steve Ditko (Doctor Strange). But we only know Gygax was influenced by Moorcock, because he is cited in the original Appendix N, whereas Doctor Strange is not. It's also possible Moorcock was influenced by Doctor Strange, but American comics where hard to come by in the UK in the 60s/70s.

Uh, in addition to what @Umbran wrote, it was established in other ways as well. For example, Scylla's Daughter (Fritz Leiber) was written in 1961 and won the Hugo in 1962.

Pretty pretty sure that Gygax was familiar with Fritz.

ETA- I think a better way to think of things is that, for various reasons, the idea of a multiverse that had been percolating begun to reach full speed in the 1960s and 70s.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

@ilgatto

If you're curious, this was just the first in a series of posts on the multiverse in D&D. You can find the rest here. (They are all in first section).

There's another one here. (it's the third one listed- Remix culture).

 

[Deset Gled]

If we're getting into history and influences, I always thought the planes were partially inspired by the alternate dimensions and "non-Euclidian spaces" from H.P. Lovecraft's works. We know Gygax read and enjoyed Lovecraft's stuff.

But I think the ur-example might be Flatland (1884). I don't know if Gygax read it, but it seems like something he would have.

 

[Lanefan]

I've never bought into "multiverse" theory and never will. There's only one universe (the "uni" in there is a clue!) within which each plane is kind of a sub-universe.

All the worlds - all of 'em: Greyhawk, Toril, your homebrew, my homebrew, etc. - are out there somewhere, and if you've a good enough telescope you can see them from your backyard (well, as they were whenever the light left that is just now reaching your eye).

All it takes to achieve this idea is to assume fundamental physics vary a bit from place to place; and things work here maybe a bit differently than they do in some galaxy a billion light-years away.

The one in-game glitch in this theory is the unfortunate wording of the Planeshift spell (in all editions), which hard-codes the assumption that different PM worlds are also different planes. Garbage, I say; and I long since reworded the spell so it allows world-to-world travel within the PM as well as plane-to-plane travel.

Teleporting from one world to another, however, does not and cannot work if one applies the least bit of physics to it: when jumping from the planet you're on to elsewhere on that same planet, your speed of movement through space as the planet orbits its star and the star orbits its galaxy etc. is the same (or close enough) at your jumping-off point as it is at your destination. Thus, teleport on the same world works OK. But teleporting onto a different world moving at a different speed through space - yeah, splat. Even teleporting to the moon would be damn risky!

Planeshift, on the other hand, covers this problem off as part of its magic - kind of a divine blessing, let's say, for the traveller.

The other planes - all however many of 'em there are - are adjacent to this one and can be reached in numerous ways.

 

[Clint_L]

I was into comics and science fiction before I was into D&D (1979), so the concept of a multiverse was de rigeur, at that point. But I agree that Gygax used it very cleverly to explain why basically why every single table game is canonically part of D&D. There's a creative inclusivity there that I really admire. Which wasn't always the case with Gygax, but in this instance, he nailed it.

 

[Staffan]

There was someone running games where the PCs would end up as different people native to the plane they shifted to. I always wanted to try that .

Monte Cook Games has a Cypher System-based game called The Strange, which has a theme sort of like that.

In the Cypher system, PCs are designed with three primary mechanical bits (with some wiggle room within each bit): a descriptor (an adjective providing some bonuses and modifiers), a type (class, with the Strange having three of them: Vector (fighter), Paradox (mystic/psychic), and Spinner (rogue)), and a focus (a thing the character is known for doing). So you could be a Strong Vector who Fights with Honor, for example. In the Strange, there's a twist that traveling to a different world will adapt you to that world which will change your Focus to something appropriate. So in one world you might be a Strong Vector who Fights with Honor, and in another you might be a Strong Vector who Wields the Holy Flame.

He invented the multiverse, and plane hopping narratives*.

*Along with Steve Ditko (Doctor Strange). But we only know Gygax was influenced by Moorcock, because he is cited in the original Appendix N, whereas Doctor Strange is not. It's also possible Moorcock was influenced by Doctor Strange, but American comics where hard to come by in the UK in the 60s/70s.

The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe was published in 1950 and featured the lead characters traveling to a magical land through the titular wardrobe. The Magician's Nephew came somewhat later, in 1955, and instead had a set of rings: one set that would bring the wearer to a mystical forest filled with ponds, and another that would let the wearer travel through these ponds into other worlds. I think this is one of the first literary uses of travel between different worlds (as opposed to "weird faraway places" like Gulliver's Travels) where those worlds aren't various afterlives (e.g. Dante's Inferno).