D&D 5E Multiverse Theory and you

[Professor Murder]

So I am curious. I have been DMing for decades and I don't know if I have ever used "multiverse" storytelling. While PCs have done some planar travel, especially when I have run Ravenloft or Planescape stories, I don't think I have ever had PCs traveling from one setting to another, as in, I have never had players transported from Krynn to Toril for example. But with the emphasis placed on the concept with recent releases, I am curious. Am I an anomaly?

So have you done worldhopping as a feature in a campaign? Care to talk about it?

 

[Scribe]

Plane hopping, yes.

Going from Material World, to Material World, no.

I actually dislike it quite a bit as a concept. Like Eberron to Dark Sun? Just no thanks.

 

[Irlo]

No, I don’t use it and I don’t like it. I think the Multiverse concept is there to add official legitimacy to the idea that we don’t all run in a Shared World. But I don’t need the legitimacy and it doesn’t add anything to think of my campaigns linked cosmically to everyone else’s.

 

[Jer]

So I am curious. I have been DMing for decades and I don't know if I have ever used "multiverse" storytelling. While PCs have done some planar travel, especially when I have run Ravenloft or Planescape stories, I don't think I have ever had PCs traveling from one setting to another, as in, I have never had players transported from Krynn to Toril for example. But with the emphasis placed on the concept with recent releases, I am curious. Am I an anomaly?

So have you done worldhopping as a feature in a campaign? Care to talk about it?

Published setting to published setting? Not really outside of planar travel within Planescape or traveling between Mystara and the "Dimension of Myth". Even when we played Ravenloft we played it as natives in the setting rather than as captives trying to get out.

Between my own settings? Yup. It can be fun for the players to have their characters visit another world and have it slowly dawn on them that it was the setting of one of our previous campaigns. or at least it's fun for me

(Also I think one reason why I'm less worried about a "multiverse" here might be because I spent so much of my early gaming time playing in Mystara, where "dimensional travel" is core to the setting, at least between Mystara and the "Dimension of Myth" and between Mystara and wherever the FSS Beagle survey team came from...)

 

[payn]

When I pick a setting its because that is the look, the feel, the flavor I want the game to have. Multi-versing can be a bit jarring to that experience. So it isnt something I have pursued. I have come a bit more around to the idea form other types of media, but im still dubious of it.

 

[MarkB]

Yeah, WotC's drive to link all settings to one shared multiverse has never appealed to me. I could see myself doing a campaign that involves hopping between different material planes, but even then, those various material worlds would be unique to that campaign.

The idea of bringing a character over from another campaign, set in a different world, just feels wrong to me, and having it become something that's just casually a part of the underlying assumptions of official worldbuilding is beyond annoying.

 

[DarkMantle]

Also, no for me.

I think I've just gone with a generic setting out of status quo, and waiting for a new cool setting to maybe jump into later.

I started with FR because it was the main offering with 5E and had all the maps and everything. I don't have time to do much homebrewing, so that's important to me. But I ignore 95% of the FR stuff (factions, detailed histories, etc.) and use it like a generic setting.

Then we hopped off into Ravenloft and the Feywild for now, and really enjoying that.

But I definitely will hop back into another Material Plane World after. Just waiting for a new setting that actually captures my interest, maybe that new continent in the upcoming Call of the Netherdeep

 

[Blue]

I've done nothing with traveling setting to setting, and actually find the multiverse idea distasteful, almost repugnant.

1. I exclusively run homebrew settings. They often have their own cosmology and pantheons. The concept that "D&D requires" that it's actually connected to everything - or even anything - else is a hard NO. You don't get to dictate my world like that. You most especially don't get to set player expectations such that they think anything from across the multiverse should be allowed to exist.

2. I strongly dislike "kitchen sink" settings when I play. Warforged in Eberron have a strong and dynamic place in the setting. They are connected to the history, and their existing in meaningful to what what and what is, forcing changes on the world. Warforged in FR are "oh look, mechanical men" with all serial numbers filed off.

3. Related to both number one and two, I enjoy flavorful settings. Dark Sun during the default age shouldn't have divine options available for PCs. Eberron is cut off from anywhere except the few specific planes occasionally because of the Ring of Siberys. Don't try to take away their uniqueness by connecting them up to a multiverse which will actively damage them by changing core assumptions of the settings.

Again, this is the idea of a multiverse - there being multiple planes in the cosmology is just fine. And that could include multiple material planes - if that's what that setting sets up. I had such in my Errantas setting that I ran multiple campaigns in. There were material planes accessible through the various elemental planes, and most of the races on the starting plane were refuges brought there by various deities to escape disasters or genocide because the walls of this particular material plane were "thin" and it was not too hard to get people here. But that doesn't mean that others of those material planes were FR, or that they could worship Tempus or meet Mordinkainen plane hopping. There were actually 18 "mantles" for gods, and the various pantheons filled most of them with Ascended from each culture. We also had strong genius loci (gods of places), and fisher-king like "the king is the land and the land is the king" connections to it. Other pantheon not part of that just didn't exist anywhere in (or connected to!) that setting.

 

[Yora]

Well, since you asked like that: No, I've never seen a campaign that moves between settings. Or even heard of one.

 

[MGibster]

So have you done worldhopping as a feature in a campaign? Care to talk about it?

I'm my first 5E campaign the PCs noticed that they all went to sleep for nearly a century. I mean everyone. They ended up traveling to Seattle to meet with the Wizard of the Coast who controlled all their destinies. They ended up helping the Seahawks defending Seattle from the Raiders of Oakland.