D&D canon backstory - where is it? (and a cosmological inquiry)

[Tony Vargas]

I think you're trying a little too hard. The Astral Sea encompases universes. It's infinite. There could be unlimitted numbers of Astral-dwelling critters in it, but it's so vast they could never gather any bigger a force together than is convenient for your story. The armies of Hell and the Abyss seem all but infinite, too, but it doesn't seem to upset the balance in their conflicts. It's all very conceptual. The Astral Sea and it's more out-there realms could even exist outside of time. The Blood War raging on matter how many adventurers from various infinite parallel prime material planes happen to resolve it one way or the other, because it's a conceptual thing, not an actual event. :shrug:

 

[vagabundo]

The 4e default setting material is all over the place - as in scattered throughout all the 4e books. It might be handy if it was collated into one book, but calling it canon is probably stretching it. It is really just fodder for your own game, not something to adhere too. You should pick what you will from it for your own homebrew or use one of the pre-canned settings.

There is no meta-setting as such; so no effort to try and reconcile all the different settings. If you wish you could describe it as the multiverse theory - with maybe Sigil being the hub to all the different multiverses.

It is definitely the way to go with the material, but they probably need to be clearer about what all this material is best suited for.

 

[Mercurius]

OK, thanks all for the responses--lots of stuff to chew on.

The basic gist for the first question is that the D&D backstory, such as it is, is spread around everywhere, and isn't as much canonical as it is a toolbox of ideas. I can buy that, and that's how I've always related with it, but I would like to see some enterprising fan gather it all into a Wiki of some sort, or something akin to the Grand History of the Realms.

As for the second, there are a lot of different views, which is the point, I suppose. Make of it what you will. Mirtek's point is interesting - that WotC weeded out the "many campaign worlds" approach from 2E to 3E to 4E. Can anyone pinpoint where they explicate this or describe the ontology of the D&D cosmos? Is it in Manual of the Planes?

 

[filthgrinder]

Anyone having worked for WotC: was there ever any sort of PoL setting bible, or was it handled much less formally?

I would seriously hope that the answer to this question is "No bible. Handled much less formally". "Points of light" isn't a setting, it's a description of a type of setting. The idea is that "Points of light" describe small pockets of civilization in a dark and dangerous wilderness. You could argue that the 2E version of Dark Sun was a Points of Light setting.

The Nentir Vale is the "default" or "assumed" setting for 4E D&D. This setting was presented in the DMG1, and INTENTIONALLY left vague and loose. The intention was to provide a framework for DMs, who didn't want to do world building from scratch, to flesh out and make their own. In fact, the chapter calls on DMs to make this their own. The idea was to avoid hamstringing DMs with canon and lore. If you DMed Forgotten Realms, you couldn't just place a dungeon or a tower somewhere, without violating canon and established lore.

The fact that "lore" is sprinkled throughout all the books is a bonus to me. By feeding stuff out piece by piece, you can take them as seeds for your imagination and build out and flesh stuff yourself, and you get tons of good ideas, instead of just reading dogmatic lore.

That being said, I'm running a Dark Sun campaign in 4E that pulls on tons of lore from 2E as well as the 4E tweaks.

 

[hexgrid]

The existence of multiple mortal worlds is specifically acknowledged in the Manual of the Planes, but without much detail about how it works.

If a traveler journeys through a fundamental plane into the trackless reaches outside the known dominions and realms, sooner or later he or she comes to the divine dominions or elemental kingdoms of different mortal worlds. Such a journey would be unthinkably long, and it would undoubtedly be easier to find or create a portal to reach them.

The mortal plane of existence is the natural world. This world may be Abeir-Toril, Athas, Eberron, Krynn, Oerth, or a world of your own devising. This plane also encompasses the space between worlds.

In addition, worlds beyond those of the natural world exist—realities separated by the gulf of time and space, where different peoples, civilizations, perhaps even cosmologies reside. If sigil sequences exist for every point of space in the D&D world, sigil sequences must exist that correspond to other worlds, such as Abeir-Toril and Eberron. It's possible then that with the right sigil sequence, a planar traveler could slip free from one world to enter another. It’s up to the DM to decide if such travel is available by Planar Portal, reality rip (page 21), or some other means.

I especially like the "space between worlds" part. It means there's still room for traditional Spelljammer in the 4e cosmology.

 

[Mirtek]

Can anyone pinpoint where they explicate this or describe the ontology of the D&D cosmos? Is it in Manual of the Planes?

It's in the 3e FRCS that's the first time the introduced the World Tree cosmology for FR and declared it's separation from the previous shared great wheel cosmology. It cause quite an uproar back then on the FR boards.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

OK, thanks all for the responses--lots of stuff to chew on.

The basic gist for the first question is that the D&D backstory, such as it is, is spread around everywhere, and isn't as much canonical as it is a toolbox of ideas. I can buy that, and that's how I've always related with it, but I would like to see some enterprising fan gather it all into a Wiki of some sort, or something akin to the Grand History of the Realms.

As for the second, there are a lot of different views, which is the point, I suppose. Make of it what you will. Mirtek's point is interesting - that WotC weeded out the "many campaign worlds" approach from 2E to 3E to 4E. Can anyone pinpoint where they explicate this or describe the ontology of the D&D cosmos? Is it in Manual of the Planes?

DMG1 gives a brief outline of the 4e cosmology. MotP naturally provides a reasonably complete explication of the layout from a play perspective. There really IS no philosophical or systematic ontological system going on here. They give just enough detail about each plane and the relation between them to give you the basis for using their background material, but not so much that the nature of the multiverse is ever nailed down exactly. Again, it's a toolbox. The parts are rather loosely connected and there's always room for something to be removed or added as the DM desires. MotP even has a brief discussion of the Great Wheel or other possible alternate cosmologies.

 

[UngainlyTitan]

Anyone having worked for WotC: was there ever any sort of PoL setting bible, or was it handled much less formally?

I would prefer if they never created a consistent canon for PoL land. I think that inconsistencies in the mythos is better than every thing in a nice neat package.

 

[malraux]

I would prefer if they never created a consistent canon for PoL land. I think that inconsistencies in the mythos is better than every thing in a nice neat package.

I also hope there's never a defined canonical version of the PoL setting. With multiple versions of stories, I can bring in old edition material without difficulty. There's never a problem of someone claiming that Tiamet and Demogorgon have specific antipathy towards each other and their aspects and agents should attack each other on sight.

It also helps me avoid metagaming myself. If there's a single truth, then I'll likely know it. If there's multiple possible truths, I have a lot more room for being surprised. I kinda like that.

 

[Shemeska]

I think that inconsistencies in the mythos is better than every thing in a nice neat package.

If there's a single truth, then I'll likely know it. If there's multiple possible truths, I have a lot more room for being surprised. I kinda like that.

That's not at all mutually exclusive with having a defined setting though. I know one of the things that I enjoy (and which I enjoy writing) are purposefully vague histories, open mysteries, and material related by biased, corrupt, or unreliable sources in-game. However there's a big difference between providing those options by intent, and providing them by happenstance because nobody is on the same page, keeping prior material in mind, editors working for setting coherency, etc. I prefer my settings to be done so by intent.

Which is why I'd asked about any setting bible, etc.