D&D 5E Gods in the mltliverse/great wheel

[Astrosicebear]

The multiverse is accessible through gate or planeshift. Conceivably they are different universes all together, and not just inter-dimensions (use interdimensions for things like pocket spaces).

As for the Gods, as [MENTION=92511]steeldragons[/MENTION] suggested, one universe might have one name, while ours has another, but the virtues and domains of the god remain the same. Or, each universe has a unique set of gods. Its up to you. Might be interesting to see gods from different universes fight over the domain, for larger control. Maybe thats what happened.

It could be our understanding of deities is so primitive that these beings are simply multiverse aware. They have the same struggles we do, just on higher levels.

But as [MENTION=7706]SkidAce[/MENTION] says, the Astral Plane connects all. Think of it as the multiverse substrate.

To the OP, the gods exist where you want them to exist, and what works for your setting/campaign. If you want the players to interact and visit Moradin, go for it. If you want St. Cuthbert to bestow his mace to a worthy follower, do it. Or they be long absent from the material plane requiring characters to ascend to Celestia or Elysium or wherever you want.

 

[I'm A Banana]

Interesting. Any examples from 2e?

Planescape, by and large. Various godly domains include many of the more interesting places to visit on the planes. For instance, if you want to get into Hell but don't want Asmodeus to see you, you could do worse than going through Tiamat's realm. The pantheons interacted, too, so Thor and Zeus might exchange weather information. But the planes are big places, so two deities who had very similar interests might never interact. Or they might be nearly (and weirdly) identical. A lot of folks wonder, for instance, if FR's Tyr and the Asgardian Tyr are the same guy, or two different guys, or what.

As for race creation...the 2e theory on that was basically "it was so long ago that nobody really knows, and all the gods tell contradictory stories about it." One of the groups in Planescape, the Athar, might say that the gods all have their own propaganda, about how they created X Y or Z because they are the best, and thus X Y and Z must all worship this god, because it created them. But gods are known to exist only if creatures believe in them and pay them homage, so the idea that, say, Corellon existed before elves could worship him seems entirely backwards. But, because it was so long ago and no one really knows, there's not really a better story for why the elves exist.

The reason for elves being the same (and having very similar myths) on multiple worlds is sort of a bit "I don't know." 2e sort of implied there might be some deity-influenced evolution or something going on, but was never really explicit about it. Some say they originated on one world (a "homeworld" in Spelljammer parlance) and moved on from there (not unlike the Warcraft mythos in a lot of ways). Maybe there were multiple instances of incarnation. Who is to say?

 

[ppaladin123]

T

To the OP, the gods exist where you want them to exist, and what works for your setting/campaign. If you want the players to interact and visit Moradin, go for it. If you want St. Cuthbert to bestow his mace to a worthy follower, do it. Or they be long absent from the material plane requiring characters to ascend to Celestia or Elysium or wherever you want.

Oh, I know; was just interested in how the official campaigns settings that incorporated a multiverse concept dealt with the divine since, as is obvious from the discussion, this raises all sorts of questions.

 

[Staffan]

The only setting that really dealt with the issue of planar and spelljamming travel was Forgotten Realms - the other settings mostly ignored that kind of thing, or actively discouraged it (IIRC, Dark Sun is part of the multiverse but mostly cut off from it by the Grey and an impenetrable crystal sphere, Ravenloft had the Mists making travel a one-way thing, and Birthright was not a part of it at all). In FR at least, humans and some of the other races originally came to Toril via gates - which explains why some of them have pantheons that mimic "real-world" deities.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

In Spelljammer, gods have influence within a given solar system ("sphere") if and only if there is an established foothold (church, population of believers, I forget the exact requirements) within that sphere. Otherwise, they cannot grant spells there.

Except that Ptah can grant spells in any sphere, leading some to speculate that he might be in fact The Overgod. Others think it's just a perk of being the God of Explorers.

IIRC no one, not even Ptah, can grant spells to anyone in the phlogiston between spheres.

 

[Mirtek]

Who ever said Heironeous and Tyr were separate entities?

On Hallowed Ground for example

but the idea that you could get on a space ship to get from Oerth to Toril doesn't do it for me.

Actually that's the whole premise of the Spelljammer setting. With the right vessel you can sail space to get from Toril to Oerth without needing to leave the prime material plane

A lot of folks wonder, for instance, if FR's Tyr and the Asgardian Tyr are the same guy, or two different guys, or what.

Actually he is. As are "FR's" Oghma, Mielikki und Loviatar. Also Tyche, who split into Tymora and Beshaba, was the very deity from the Olympean pantheon, who are still mostly clueless about why she wasn't seen in such a long time (it's also speculated that she split herself on purpose to escape from Zeus who rules his pantheon with an iron fist and would destroy her for dabbling in a foreign pantheon)

 

[Staffan]

Speaking of gods and planar travel, one of my favorite aspects of Planescape was the Athar faction, who denied the existence of gods. In a campaign set on the outer planes, the very homes of the gods.

Of course, they didn't deny the existence of beings like Zeus, Oghma, Lathander, Set, and so on. That would be silly, they live right over there. But they denied their divinity, that there was something about those beings that made them worthy of worship.

 

[Nergal Pendragon]

This does bring up questions as to how the multiverse would work in cases where the universe and gods were created by even more powerful deities.

 

[Lanefan]

The idea of all the different "official" settings, along with any huge numbers of homebrew settings that may or may not bear an uncanny resemblance to one of the aforementioned official ones, being different planets in the same universe (or galaxy, whatever) on the Prime Material is just fine with me. The only (trivial) mechanical change required to make this work is a slight rewording of the Planeshift spell to allow it to jump you from one PM world to another as well as to the other planes. We've had it work this way since day 1.

As for the gods, I came up with my own version of how all that works in part to try and explain how there can be so many deities...and decided that in fact there aren't. There are only 21, each of which have all sorts of different aspects (seen by mortals as different deities) shaped to suit the particular culture and creature from whom they hope to gain worship.

The nice side effect of this is that a Cleric to a given deity on one world can usually get spells from the equivalent deity somewhere else (e.g. a Cleric to Odin might go to a world or plane where the Norse pantheon has no sway, pray for spells, and end up talking to what the locals see as Zeus), and may or may not eventually come to realize it's the same divine entity behind it.

Lan-"the best way to get gods on your side is to throw money at 'am"-efan

 

[Cristian Andreu]

The only setting that really dealt with the issue of planar and spelljamming travel was Forgotten Realms - the other settings mostly ignored that kind of thing, or actively discouraged it (IIRC, Dark Sun is part of the multiverse but mostly cut off from it by the Grey and an impenetrable crystal sphere, Ravenloft had the Mists making travel a one-way thing, and Birthright was not a part of it at all).

Technically, while Birthright itself did not reference the connection (at least as far as I know), Spelljammer did. Aebrynis was located within the Bloodspace crystal sphere, which can be reached by following a phlogiston flow from Greyspace. And since Spelljammer mentions it, it means it is also canonically a part of Planescape, and thus within the Great Wheel.