The more I think about the Multiverse, and the more people complain about doing it this way or that way, the more I think that we really need to consider the multiverse in a different way.
Many people seem to be picturing the Multiverse like a web of Prime Realities, with single solid Outer Planes floating around the web. Gods like Bane or Gruumsh or Pelor are outside of this web, and are active on the Multiverse scale.
However, as has been discussed many, many times, this causes all sorts of issues. It flattens settings, it robs entities of power and importance and generally just causes a mess.
So... why not picture a different theory? What if instead of a web and the Outer Planes being separated from that web, what if the Multiverse was more of a matter of mirrors stacked on top of each other. Inside each mirror is a Prime and Outer Planes, which is unique to that mirror.
So, sure, in the Forgotten Realms The Nine Hells enacted plan A which was super involved and did a lot of bad things. But, in Greyhawk, which also has a Nine Hells and an Asmodeus and all that... Plan A never happened, because they are part of a different mirror.
Can you travel between mirrors? Sure, takes high level magic and a lot of power, but you can. Entities like Gods and Demon Lords and Dragons can contact each of these mirrors and find echoes of themselves who may be similar or may be different. But if there was a common starting point for all these mirrors... it doesn't even have to matter. Because each mirror is self-contained. Eberron was created by the Three Primal Wyrms. This is true and nothing existed in Eberron until that point and the Three Primal Wyrms don't even have to have been from somewhere else. There was a void, the Wyrms appeared and created within that void, and everything in Eberron stays the same.
To my mind, this only leaves two potential hiccups.
1) Overgods. I don't care about them, but supposedly they work at a "higher level", which people want to be beyond the setting and putting them in a Multiversal sense. I... don't think that is necessary. The only Overgod who really matters is Ao and he only matters to the Forgotten Realms, and I don't think anything needs to change with this model to address Ao being a fact of his own Mirror.
2) Sigil. People want different things out of sigil. I think it is fine existing as a city between places, but it could also exist as self-mirrored. After all, the none of you can include any details of the Setting of Zorkathia in your versions of Sigil. You have no access to that place. Unless you make up your own, which would make a mirror, which could be in your mirror of Sigil, but won't be in mine.
Additionally, it could allow for some wacky concepts. Maybe there is a meeting every century between the various Lolths in Sigil. You may find that silly... so it won't exist in your version.
But it seems to me that the biggest issue is when people try and have gods and powers ACTING beyond their setting. Asmodeus in the Forgotten Realms being aware of Theros doesn't change anything in either setting. It is only when that leads to him making plans to do something in Theros, or when people start saying that because Asmodeus is aware of Theros therefore the Nixborn rules don't work, and in actuality Theros's lore is wrong, that we have a problem.
But if the settings are just... looking and reflecting each other, then we can have a set-up where that doesn't happen.
www.enworld.org
