D&D 5E D&D Multiverse as setting - do you do it?

[Rabbitbait]

There used to be two different campaigns running. I was running a Greyhawk campaign and my friend was running a FR campaign. My game was gritty and life was cheap. My friend's was far more monty-haul, wish fulfilment stuff.

As the FR group became high level, they noticed that there was an 'outside force' influencing events in their kingdom. They decided to follow the source, and found a portal leading to an alternate prime material plane. When they passed through the portal to Greyhawk, my friend stepped away from the DM screen, I stepped in and I continued DMing the adventure.

When the players realised that their FR characters were now being DMed by me, in my world, they were horrified and impressed at the switcheroo we had set up. As one of the players put it - "It's brown trousers time, we could DIE in here".

 

[Greg K]

Nope. I usually create my own settings. There is often the equivalent of Hell, The Abyss, A spirit world, and the Feywild (even before there was a Feywild). That is it. Any other worlds do not exist except possibly Ravenloft (and there are no links to worlds other than the campaign's world)

If I run a published D&D setting, I don't use the multiverse. There is no Spelljammer or Sigil as I don't like Spacejammer or Planescape. Athas, Greyhawk, Mystara, Toril are separate without connection to travel between them- even Kara Tur and Al Quadim are their own distinct worlds if I run them

 

[Mercule]

D&D Multiverse as setting - do you do it?

1) What I'm getting at is: Do you or your group usually treat your D&D campaigns as existing within one giant shared universe?

2) If so, do you use the classic Spelljammer/Planescape approach?

I.e., your Toril, Athas, Krynn, homebrew worlds, etc. all exist in one place. You could fly from one world to the next in a spelljamming ship. If your party visits Sigil, its the same Sigil the other parties visit. If Tiamat dies, Tiamat dies everywhere.

3) Have you taken the next step with a crossover campaign?

1) Generally speaking, no. I have a 30 year custom setting. It has its own cosmology and is generally separate from published settings. I've run a couple "one-off" home brew games. Those are assumed to be wholly separate, too. When I run a published setting, anymore, it's Eberron, which has its own cosmology.

2) I generally view Spelljammer as some sort of bender-induced practical joke that isn't actually funny, so it doesn't get consideration in my game. I know a lot of folks love Planescape, but it's pretty much what turned me from casual acceptance of the Great Wheel concept to purging it from my home brew. It's nowhere near as objectionable as Spelljammer; it's just something that doesn't interest me in the least.

3) Our group has a concept of "quest rings" for pick-up games. Some power has created rings that, when donned, transport the wearer to a "quest" (a.k.a. an adventure/module). It's up to the wearer to figure out whether he can trust his new party and what he's supposed to be doing. These rings exist on all major prime material worlds, though, and the quests can take place on any major prime world. Mainly, this just lets us get down to business when the old college group gets together for a weekend or if someone has an itch to run something. It shortcuts the need to explain how all the PCs got together, why you have a Paladin and an Assassin together, etc. If the DM wants, he can include an in-game note giving the PCs a bit of background on what's going on -- or he can leave it as a complete mystery. PCs used with the rings are only pulled from ongoing campaigns if the DM agrees that it's not harmful to that campaign to do so. Otherwise, we just pull retired favorites out of mothballs.

 

[Mercule]

I used to, but not anymore. I've fallen in with the Gygaxian approach, and I like that better.

Could you elaborate on this? I thought Gygax was largely responsible for the Great Wheel.

 

[DMZ2112]

1) What I'm getting at is: Do you or your group usually treat your D&D campaigns as existing within one giant shared universe?

When I am running an official D&D setting, absolutely. It is all one canon.

2) If so, do you use the classic Spelljammer/Planescape approach?

Usually just direct world-to-world astral conduits or portals, sometimes Planescape, rarely Spelljammer.

Planescape and Spelljammer are so detailed and weird that forcing a Planescape or Spelljammer encounter when you're just trying to get from Point A to Point B seems like a disservice to both your campaign and the settings themselves. And I've noticed it tends to irritate players as a result.

When I run Planescape or Spelljammer I generally just run Planescape or Spelljammer. My Planescape campaigns generally only visit weird Prime worlds (like Ortho), rarely the established settings, and my Spelljammer games only use the major cities of the groundling settings as ports of call.

3) Have you taken the next step with a crossover campaign?

I've never gone whole hog, because when it comes down to it I'm just too big a homebrewer. I'd rather be running my own stuff. But I love D&D canon, and will snap up every book I can find that expands it.

For example, our group has used a shared Great Wheel multiverse for 20 years. We've had campaign crossovers. High level characters "graduate" to planar play to keep the homebrew worlds from filling with Elminsters. They team up and have have plane-shifting spelljamming ships and fight threats on an insane scale. The history of D&D and epic level play seems to just beg for this.

This sounds awesome although I don't particularly enjoy high level play. My conception of the multiverse is that this iteration of it is old enough that the paths between civilized areas are reasonably safe, whether those paths cross mountains, atmospheres, or other dimensions. It's only when you veer from these paths that adventure really finds you. So getting from Toril to Oerth is not necessarily in and of itself a quest. It's just getting from here to there. Traders do it, cartographers do it, minstrels do it, low-level PCs can do it.

You cannot get there by spelljammer.... but you might be able to by planar travel.

By the Planescape fluff, you absolutely can, see community of Athasian halflings in Sigil's Hive. And as has been previously stated, Dark Sun fluff is notoriously wishy-washy on the topic.

Could you elaborate on this? I thought Gygax was largely responsible for the Great Wheel.

I think he's drawing a line between the AD&D1 Manual of the Planes and Planescape, which I've seen some other folks do in the past. It's not an unreasonable stance; Planescape is absolutely intended to be the updated Manual for AD&D2, but it's an update that quickly gets weird (and incredibly detailed). The idea that the planes are just another campaign setting really gets under some folks' skin.

Personally, I think it's unreasonable to assume that after thousands of years of Prime Material interference the planes aren't going to look a little like the Prime Material. But if you want a setting where only archmages and Epic adventurers ever see the planes, then yeah, absolutely, Planescape kind of gets in the way.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

By the Planescape fluff, you absolutely can, see community of Athasian halflings in Sigil's Hive. And as has been previously stated, Dark Sun fluff is notoriously wishy-washy on the topic.

Yep, and The Mists of Ravenloft can reach Athas (there is an Athasian Domain of Dread: Kalidnay). And the Githyanki managed to get there. It is still not clear if at one point there were gods for Athas.

 

[Mercule]

I think he's drawing a line between the AD&D1 Manual of the Planes and Planescape, which I've seen some other folks do in the past. It's not an unreasonable stance; Planescape is absolutely intended to be the updated Manual for AD&D2, but it's an update that quickly gets weird (and incredibly detailed). The idea that the planes are just another campaign setting really gets under some folks' skin.

Gotcha. In that case, I'd make the same break. Planescape (IMO) polluted what was an otherwise good idea.

Personally, I think it's unreasonable to assume that after thousands of years of Prime Material interference the planes aren't going to look a little like the Prime Material. But if you want a setting where only archmages and Epic adventurers ever see the planes, then yeah, absolutely, Planescape kind of gets in the way.

I always viewed "name level" as being akin to "retirement age". So, I figure there were, maybe, a handful of folks at that archmage/epic power level at any given time, which isn't enough to have much impact on the outer planes. Anyone under name level would have to be nuts to go to there. Really, that's gods-level beings, their servants, and the souls of the dead -- and the souls are required to fit into the environment, not shape it. The heavens impose their will on earth, not the other way around.

Even if you absolutely, positively had to do an outer planar quest, you sure aren't going to hang around. Get in, get done, get out before you're caught. Even an 80th level paladin's soul stays in Hell if he's killed there. If it was important enough for Pelor to go there himself (assuming he even can), he would have done so in the first place.

That's probably not telling you anything you didn't know, though.

 

[Shiroiken]

I think he's drawing a line between the AD&D1 Manual of the Planes and Planescape, which I've seen some other folks do in the past. It's not an unreasonable stance; Planescape is absolutely intended to be the updated Manual for AD&D2, but it's an update that quickly gets weird (and incredibly detailed). The idea that the planes are just another campaign setting really gets under some folks' skin.

Personally, I think it's unreasonable to assume that after thousands of years of Prime Material interference the planes aren't going to look a little like the Prime Material. But if you want a setting where only archmages and Epic adventurers ever see the planes, then yeah, absolutely, Planescape kind of gets in the way.

You are correct. The original idea (which was rectangular, not a wheel), did come from an old Gygax article in The Dragon. It was fairly simple, and given some advancement in the 1E PHB. I didn't care much for the Manual of the Planes myself (although the reprint of Ed's work on the Hells was fantastic), so I largely ignore it.

I also ignore everything after the 1983 boxed set for Greyhawk, so I'm not exactly the target audience here either...

 

[DMZ2112]

I always viewed "name level" as being akin to "retirement age".

I hear that.

The heavens impose their will on earth, not the other way around.

True to a point, but the purpose of the planes in D&D is to support the Prime Material. All of the fiction is clear on this point -- you might have the occasional scene set in a god's court in the Seven Heavens or Nine Hells or some such, but the Prime is where everyone is /striving/, god and man alike. It's where all the big decisions are made. It is of paramount importance. So there's some back and forth. St. Cuthbert's cathedral in Arcadia might be the source of all justice on Oerth, but it also looks like an Oeridian cathedral, and that justice is colored by an Oeridian perspective. No one is going to mistake it for Helm's cathedral. Symbology is important.

My biggest issue with Planescape is that for all its 'belief shaping the planes' canon, the symbology has nothing to do with the official D&D settings. I love it, but it is supremely alien. No matter where you draw the heavens-imposing-their-will/earth-imposing-its-perspective line in the D&D multiverse, you don't get Planescape. There's nothing like Planescape on the Prime Material, and there's /very little/ like the Prime Material in Planescape.

If I had it to do over again, I would make what is commonly understood to be "Planescape" a sort of independent middle-distance planar setting, over the hill and across the dale from the wild and wooly "Manual of the Planes" portals and conduits that link the Prime Material to its gods' realms on the planes and back to itself. And then beyond Planescape you'd find ever more increasingly bizarre and unapproachable interpretations of philosophy and its effects on your surroundings, as the Prime Material worlds connected to those distant lands become more and more different from what you know and understand. Because if you allow for a certain distance across which weirdness from other realities can propagate, you can see how Planescape /derives/ from the multiverse so long as it does not interact directly with the multiverse.

As written, replacing the Manual of the Planes, no, it totally gets in the way.

 

[Jeff Albertson]

My biggest issue with Planescape is that for all its 'belief shaping the planes' canon, the symbology has nothing to do with the official D&D settings. I love it, but it is supremely alien. No matter where you draw the heavens-imposing-their-will/earth-imposing-its-perspective line in the D&D multiverse, you don't get Planescape. There's nothing like Planescape on the Prime Material, and there's /very little/ like the Prime Material in Planescape.

Why is that a problem?