Multiverse spanning campaigns.

DeadHorse

First Post
Has anyone ran a multiverse spanning campaign? How was it? What means of travel did you use? Portals? Spelljammer? Never played and don't know much about spelljammer other than the basic ideas of it. But I always thought it would be cool to use that as a means of travel to the different AD&D worlds. Say have the main antagonist planet hop from world to world and have the pcs hit the high points of each setting as they chased him. Have the BBEG steal various artifacts from each world and the players have to return them. I just realized it would be kind of like "Where in the world is Carmen San Diego" lol. Would be a cool chance to throw in some of the more famous characters from each setting into the story. What are y'alls thoughts?
 
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Back in the day when I had cool friends, we played 2e quite a bit; especially Planescape. We did play through the Die Vecna Die! module which takes place in Ravenloft, Greyhawk, and Planescape. Planescape as a setting itself sends you all over the place and is filled with characters from a bunch of different worlds.

One game had the players hoping planes in search of some mcguffin I don't really remember, it was a while back, but what happened was that they just went to the setting they liked the most, which was Greyhawk. After awhile I just held the game there, but left the option open for them to travel the multiverse. I guess they were just ready to set their roots down.

Anyway, over time it became too much for them. A few forays to other settings was fun for them, but when it became the focus, they became disheartened because any rewards they got (such as land or titles) were somewhat useless to them... unless they were in Sigil.
 

Yes, from Grayhawk to the Forgotten Realms, to D&D Cosmology, to Call of Cthulhu, to Ravenloft.

The players really enjoyed it. Their base universe was D&D Cosmology, I used a previously unheard of abyssal demon to orchestrate the entire thing. He built chaotic portals with unknown, random destinations (only a Gatecrasher could determine where it was going to go/force it to go to a specific location) in the multiverse.
I had one the players take turns spinning a board with different cosmologies on it, and throwing darts at the board.

It was a fun exercise in randomness, and made me think on my toes.
 

Sounds like some really fun stuff. I'm trying to get a group started with all newbies and get them interested in playing and was considering doing something along the lines of the D&D 1980's cartoon in that they all get grabbed from their home world (not necessarily Earth) and trying to get home they travel the different worlds. That way I can judge what they like best. I eventually want to make my own world with it's own cosmology, history, etc. and I know it would be awful to have the group end in that world instead of getting home, but the group are all long time friends and family and if they enjoy playing it would be cool to incorporate their pcs as npcs in my new world.
 


I honestly believe the best thing for newbies is something really vanilla fantasy LoTR style that they can really grasp and sink their teeth into. Anything thats a little bit out there can be a bit much for people to really get into when they're also trying to figure out what this role playing thing is all about. I've had several experiences and anecdotal evidence to support this...but your mileage may vary.

Find out what they are into...and pick something stable to start them out. Once they get the hang of it and they are still into it....then you can start to go off the rails.
 


Oh yes.

Me and Mine have hopped a few planes. Some examples include:

-One of my players disliked his Ninja character because, while the concept was cool, it plainly sucked. And so we planned for his to die heroically to reroll a new character. I was DMing, tossed in a wolf pack random encounter while traveling in the woods, Great battle, he stayed behind while the rest escaped. He Died, yay!. Lawful Neutral alignment.

He and I met separately and ran a mini-adventurer on Acheron for his afterlife. He, as a petitioner, gained 5 levels of the new class. When the True Resurrection spell kicked in he returned, retrained, as a new class.

-Ran a 1 shot campaign with 2 players where they participated in a Multiverse-spanning competition not unlike the TV show "The Amazing Race" They were granted a base of operations, a vessel of sorts, that they would enter and it would whisk them away to the next location after they accomplished their task. They had to find a single flower in The Blessed Fields of Elysium, Had to secure a relic guarded by water elementals on a small island on the Material plane, Had to win a wrestling match on the Heroic Domains of Ysgard, They had to recover a single soul in the Infernal Battlefield of Acheron... etc. I essentially dropped them in a location that took place on the plane.

-In the midst of a fast-forward one-shot campaign where I leveled up my current character many years in the future of the official campaign's timeline, Samson, my Factotum6 was leveled up to a Factotum17/Chameleon2/Mindbender1 with the Mindsight feat.
He encountered Dor, a CN villain from another campaign, a Changeling/Half Doppleganger Fighter1/Rogue2/Bard2/Warshaper4/Cabinet Trickster5/Mindspy4 who specializes in not getting found or caught.
What started as the Factotum identifying the Changeling thought Mindsight as they both were on the Plains of Ida in Ysgard for their own separate reasons (Samson's brother is a Favored Soul of Kord, Dor had fathered a child with a Celestial Dwarf and he checks while in disguise in now and then)
Samson, intending to be friendly, called Dor out and intended to start a conversation, swapping stories, one experienced adventurer to another. What resulted was Samson getting mentally assaulted by the Dor's Midspy abilities and a Multiverse-spanning Cat-and-Mouse chase that went to (I'm going to forget the order):
The Infinite Staircase, the Dorithan Layer of Byopia, an Emerald mine in the Plane of Earth, Mahlhevik's Castle in the first layer of Celestia, the Brux layer of The Beastlands, The Tradegate city in the Outlands, Ending in the Twilight Tavern, a tavern built around (to hide) a portal between the Material Plane and the Plane of Shadow, where they become friends, share a drink, and Samson invited the Dor to join the Planar Cartographic Society.
During the chase Dor utilized a series of portals he knew and a custom made Cubic Gate Wondrous item, while the Samson used Plane Shift, Teleport and divination spells to keep up. Crazy fun.[FONT=&quot]
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