D&D 5E Forgotten Realms canon question

[DEFCON 1]

Did Ed Greenwood write any of the Scales of War adventures?

I don't believe so. I think Quickleaf's only belief that they might be connected is that there were some planar entities in SoW that are also planar identities in the Realms. Thus the question of whether there's only "one" planar entity of each type in the multiverse, which would thus mean SoW was a "part" of the Realms (since they share the entity.)

I do not believe that personally. I think every entity is one of an infinity group of them that each and every one of us can use at our leisure. Otherwise... we would have to assume that the Tiamat that is considered an Overlord trapped within Khyber in the Eberron setting is the same Tiamat that has been trapped in Avernus and almost escaped in the Tyranny of Dragons Realms adventure is the same one that appears in Red Hand of Doom. But just that just makes absolutely no sense... story-wise especially.

 

[dave2008]

I do not believe that personally. I think every entity is one of an infinity group of them that each and every one of us can use at our leisure. Otherwise... we would have to assume that the Tiamat that is considered an Overlord trapped within Khyber in the Eberron setting is the same Tiamat that has been trapped in Avernus and almost escaped in the Tyranny of Dragons Realms adventure is the same one that appears in Red Hand of Doom. But just that just makes absolutely no sense... story-wise especially.

Or it could be an avatar of Tiamat in both cases, or everyone is wrong (one of those two are not Tiamat). There are plenty of ways for it to be one multiverse with I myriad of false ways of understanding it.

 

[DEFCON 1]

What is easy for players to grok? That there is only one Tiamat that has an infinite number of "avatars" that all of us use in all these products and everything that has ever happened has happened to the "one true Tiamat" ... or there are just an infinite number of Tiamats that each of us use with impunity without worrying about "breaking" some universal D&D "canon"?

 

[R_J_K75]

That there is only one Tiamat that has an infinite number of "avatars" that all of us use in all these products and everything that has ever happened has happened to the "one true Tiamat"

I haven't followed cosmology much if at all since 2E ended but this is how I always understood it.

or there are just an infinite number of Tiamats that each of us use with impunity without worrying about "breaking" some universal D&D "canon"?

My guess is that if this is how WotC is portraying it these days its probably to mirror the every growing real life theories that there are multiple dimensions and realities.

 

[Mirtek]

I haven't followed cosmology much if at all since 2E ended but this is how I always understood it.



My guess is that if this is how WotC is portraying it these days its probably to mirror the every growing real life theories that there are multiple dimensions and realities.

More like there is only one Tiamat with multiple (but finite) avatars and very major events in one setting do actually affect her accross settings

 

[Quickleaf]

Actually, I would disagree with this assessment. As far as I can tell... there ARE multiple "Nine Hells". Every single thing in D&D in WotC's "multiverse" theory has infinite multiples of everything. It's due to the top-down meta perspective-- the "Nine Hells" that I use in my campaign is not the same "Nine Hells" that you might use in your campaign is not the same "Nine Hells" that are written about in Descent Into Avernus. Just like standard real-world multiverse theory... every one is just slightly different than each other because each of our games and each person who writes a new book changes things ever-so-slightly. There isn't one set "canon" because it isn't possible to make one.

Huh. My impression – that it is the same Astral Plane for all campaign settings – came from the Sage Advice on Planes and Worlds 7/23/18.

So you don't have to watch the whole 45 minute video, Greg Tito opens with a question (paraphrasing): So is it the same Nine Hells for all of these worlds? How does it work?

12:30 Jeremy Crawford: The way we present the core books for D&D is totally Planescape. It's just core now... ...and one thing we talk about, not only in books people have now but in D&D books stretching back decades, is that people in different worlds can imagine these planar relationships in different ways and might even have different names for them.

17:30 Jeremy Crawford: Let's talk about the worlds within the Prime Material Plane. I often get asked are all the worlds in the same universe? The official answer is yes. We talk about that in the Player's Handbook, and also in the DMG chapter called Creating a Multiverse.

24:20 Jeremy Crawford: There was a period in D&D's life especially around 3rd edition where this idea of all of D&D's worlds being in one giant setting together started to go out of focus. So you started ending up with worlds that were shepherded and designed to be their own thing. Now they would still end up sharing alot of the same mythological touchstones. So most of them talking about the Nine Hells or Mount Celestia or Mount Celestia with a different name. So a lot of the planar infrastructure was still in place even when the worlds were treated as thought they had no relationship to one another. BUT again, it's important for people to remember for the background of D&D, the original assumption in 1st edition was that the worlds were all in a multiverse together. And that is also the assumption of 5th edition.

To me this sure sounds like attempting to unify the D&D multiverse.

So that being said... I think to determine whether anything in Scales of War is "official FR canon" (as much as any FR canon can be "official")... easiest and safest way to determine it is whether anything in the AP is directly related or mentioning anything in the Realms. If all you can come up with is that the AP mentions this thing over here as being in the cosmology, and that the Realms also uses that cosmology (and thus the transitive property suggests that if A is in B and C uses B, thus A is in C)... they you're probably barking up the wrong tree in my opinion.

I haven't run or read the whole 19-adventure Scales of War path, just Siege at Bordrin's Watch (one of the early adventures), Tyranny of Souls, and then the final adventure Last Breath of the Dragon Queen. None of those 3 adventures mention NPCs or locations from Faerûn.

But of course... if your tweet to Ed receives a different opinion, then go with whatever he says.

Yep! Will see!

 

[R_J_K75]

To me this sounds like attempting to unify the D&D multiverse.

None of those 3 adventures mention NPCs or locations from Faerûn.

I suppose it would stand to reason that there is only one multiverse, otherwise "realistically" and I use the term loosely as in how realistic can it be when talking about a fantasy game, but what are the odds of a creature from Faerun running into a creature from Krynn or Oerth or any other setting from that matter if there were infinite cosmologies. Take Ravenloft for instance, seeing as in the whole demiplane is made up from realms from the prime material plane this supports a single multiverse as well.

 

[Eltab]

What is easy for players to grok? That there is only one Tiamat that has an infinite number of "avatars" that all of us use in all these products and everything that has ever happened has happened to the "one true Tiamat" ... or there are just an infinite number of Tiamats that each of us use with impunity without worrying about "breaking" some universal D&D "canon"?

One Tiamat with a number of avatars, and (if one of the avatars can ever beat the team of meddling kids heroes that rises from nowhere to lead opposition) a mystic link that allows her to take the place of whichever avatar finally succeeds in accomplishing Tiamat's scheme.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Huh. My impression – that it is the same Astral Plane for all campaign settings – came from the Sage Advice on Planes and Worlds 7/23/18.

Well, as I said... my opinion of "multiple Nine Hells" was coming at it also from a metagame perspective.

The meta perspective being that every single real life player runs their own game and that nothing any of us do impact any other player and their game. There could be 100,000 DMs all running Tomb of Annihiliation. Every single Chult realm is going to thus have their own story and their own plot. Some NPCs might die, some won't. Every one of those Chults will be slightly different, but every single one will also be "real". Anything that happens in our games is "real" from the perspective of our games and the perspective of D&D on the whole. And that's why we have a D&D "multiverse"... because its the way Jeremy et. al. can confirm for every player the reality of their game's existence.

It's also helps explain why they are no longer concerned with trying to tie up every facet of every single story so that it all still "works" in some sort of overarching, complete D&D narrative "canon". No more lame attempts at retconning things to explain or justify that what came before so that it makes sense with what they are writing now. With the Multiverse theory they now don't have to. Instead, every single one of us have been given the go-ahead to write D&D ourselves and have it be real-- just as real as anybody else's. So if someone says "You know... the firbolg race that they came up with for 5E, in the Forgotten Realms those are actually more Voadkyn that firbolg... WotC needs to explain why this got all messed up..." WotC can just say "In your FR world, maybe those are Voadkyn... do whatever you feel is necessary and it is correct." And that's so they don't actually have to waste their time trying to write all that crap up themselves just to make some players happy.

There is no "canonical" D&D... because every single thing can and has changed. Both by the people who write the books, and by the people who play the game. And the D&D Multiverse allows for all of it to be true.

 

[Scrivener of Doom]

Did Ed Greenwood write any of the Scales of War adventures?

No. Why would he write an adventure for WotC that did not take place in the Forgotten Realms?

I can only imagine Ed's unedited response to the tweet: "I'm being asked if a series of adventures that took place on a different world to Toril is somehow also considered to have taken place on Toril. Hmmm, that doesn't seem like it needs me to respond...."