Sage Advice: Plane and world hopping (includes how Eberron and Ravnica fit in D&D cosmology)

[Dungeonosophy]

Huh. Not being particularly familiar with the "I" part of BECMI, I had no idea there was an official D&D version of "Magic Medieval Earth." Is WotI the only place it's mentioned? What's been said about it?

I don't have Wrath of the Immortals (WotI) with me. But here's a close summary of Laterre:

Okay, in the Classic D&D game universe (as expressed in the WotI boxed set), there are Dimensions, which are of a higher order than the Multiverse as such. Such as:

The Multiverse Dimension - includes the Material Plane, the Elemental, Ethereal, Astral, and Outer Planes.
The Old Alphatia Dimension
The Nightmare Dimension
The Vortex Dimension
The Dimension of Myth - contains Laterre. The source of "real world" mythologies.

Laterre is where the d'Amberville family came from. They're some of the most famous NPCs of Mystara. TSR borrowed the Ambervilles from Clark Ashton Smith's (CAS) Averoigne Cycle, which are part of the Cthulhu Mythos. In CAS' stories, the French province of Averoigne is a fictional replacement for the real-life province of Auvergne.

Of course "Laterre" is simply a modification of French "La Terre" (The Earth). There are also some Scottish Highlanders from Laterre who made it to Mystara. They speak "Kaelic."

There's a 2E-era web enhancement to Chronomancer which mentions the connections between Mystara and Earth - but the author (Roger Moore) confuses Modern Earth with Laterre. WotI says Laterre is specifically a magical medieval version of Earth. It presumably also has "Averoigne" province instead of "Auvergne."

***
Also, properly Wrath of the Immortals boxed set isn't "BECMI" D&D, because the "I" part of "BECMI", namely, the Immortals Set (Gold Box), was replaced and revised by Wrath of the Immortals. RC/WotI D&D ("Rules Cyclopedia + Wrath of the Immortals") is basically the ".5" edition of Classic D&D.

Lastly, to clarify, when I said "the crystal sphere of Laterre", I didn't mean to imply that crystal spheres were part of the WotI cosmology (the Classic D&D Multiverse). I just mean that Laterre's equivalent in the 2E/5E crystal sphere cosmology would presumably be modeled on the medieval (European) Neo-Platonic spheres.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

Conflating all settings into a single multiverse supersetting necessarily *changes* the settings. The settings have conflicting views about the multiverse, so it is impossible to reconcile and systematize these descriptions without *changing* them to various degrees. Even recontextualizing a description changes the meaning of the description.



I find it unappealing to decide that the characters within one setting that has a cool compelling cosmology of the multiverse − are simply stupid ignorant morons who dont yet understand what the truth is. That seems a counterproductive way to make an appealing setting.

For example, one of the design conceits of Eberron is that religions are subjective. If the inhabitants of Eberron are simply wrong − and are stupid ignorant morons − then that ruins Eberron for me.

An other player discovering as ‘fact’ a silliness of ultra-literal ‘crystal’ spheres (made out of quartz or glass?), might find that this ‘fact’ ruins the setting for them.



Crawford seems to be saying, if you dont like it, just ignore it. But if it is ‘true’, then it is impossible to ignore. For me anyway.

Bringing everything into a hodgepodge meta-setting has been a thing in D&D for a long time. If books stating that everything is connected ruin settings for you, that's not a good long-term prospect, I'm afraid.

 

[delericho]

Bringing everything into a hodgepodge meta-setting has been a thing in D&D for a long time. If books stating that everything is connected ruin settings for you, that's not a good long-term prospect, I'm afraid.

They've gone backwards and forwards on it over the years - no sooner had Spelljammer come out and joined everything up than Dark Sun came out and was explicitly separated (by a closed crystal sphere). 3e instituted different cosmologies for the supported settings (in that MotP covered the Great Wheel, but FR used the Tree, and Eberron's planes were also its moons). 4e was different again, and now 5e seems to be back to tying everything up neatly again.

I fully expect, in a few years once the current team have moved on, that we may well see the pendulum swing the other way.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah, it is rude and dismissive. It is possible to simply not respond to posts which one is not interested in.

I'm genuinely interested in what Yaarel brought up. Aristotle and the Platonists were perceiving an aspect of reality. It's simplistic to just say: "Aristotle was wrong." There is a real-world branch of science - Anthroposophic / Goethean Science - which integrates the Neo-Platonic cosmology with modern material science. For example, the Crystal Sphere is the human experiential component of the Cosmic Microwave Background.



Also, the crystal sphere of Laterre - the official D&D "Magical Medieval Earth" - mentioned in the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set, is probably Neo-Platonic as described in Dante.

I know it is simplistic to say he was wrong, but... how do I explain this.

How often do you sit down at the table to play, and talk about the bell curves and statistical probabilities, and how all of that tells you that there shouldn't be more than a handful of large predators in this section of the gameworld, because science tells us that a large predator needs so many miles of territory and according to real world conservation science, this is an unsustainable ecology you find yourselves in.


It applies to what you are doing, technically, but it misses the real point to a degree. I don't see how the model of science and reality theorized by ancient philosophers ties into whether or not the setting allows you to tell stories that interest your players and how useful the assumptions of that setting are for the majority of tables.

And, I'm not trying to be dismissive of Yaarel's point... but the only point in Yaarel's post I could find is "this model of the universe was first put forth by Aristotle." Which is a fine point of trivia, but I don't see the larger context of how it ties into the conversations being had here.

They've gone backwards and forwards on it over the years - no sooner had Spelljammer come out and joined everything up than Dark Sun came out and was explicitly separated (by a closed crystal sphere). 3e instituted different cosmologies for the supported settings (in that MotP covered the Great Wheel, but FR used the Tree, and Eberron's planes were also its moons). 4e was different again, and now 5e seems to be back to tying everything up neatly again.

I fully expect, in a few years once the current team have moved on, that we may well see the pendulum swing the other way.

And I hope it does, because universal truths seem to hard to write. And a lot of people prefer to keep their peas and mashed potatoes separated on their plate. (Bad analogy that makes sense)

 

[Kobold Boots]

The beauty of the game is that the publisher can do whatever they wish to suit their needs and I can summarily edit it to whatever it is that my players and I prefer or need.

Good stuff though.
KB

 

[Hexmage-EN]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I recall reading somewhere that in at least one Forgotten Realms sourcebook it was stated that there were multiple Astral Planes connected to different sets of Outer Planes, and that different parts of the world were associated with different Astral Planes. I think it was supposed to be an explanation for why different regions of Toril had different pantheons of gods.

 

[Remathilis]

Not only do I not see the need to join everything up, IMO Spelljammer (and probably Planescape too) works better if you treat it as it's own setting, and remove Greyspace, Realmspace, and Krynnspace from it.

Honestly, my favorite version of Spelljammer was Shadow of the Spider Moon in Dungeon; a self-contained variant they didn't use anything not found in the 3.5 core books (no giff, no guns, no neogi) but very much felt like a unique take and a great backdrop for a sword-and-planets adventure. It had a kinda OS Star Trek/Star Wars vibe to it. It felt like its own thing, not just the ferry service that gets kenders and muls to Oerth.

 

[SkidAce]

The beauty of the game is that the publisher can do whatever they wish to suit their needs and I can summarily edit it to whatever it is that my players and I prefer or need.

Good stuff though.
KB

Speaking of which.....solar systems as spheres/planes, gods rule over similar worlds/planes, all worlds alt material planes so might have different physics/magic.

Even inner planes are worlds (fire worlds, water worlds, etc...that break up into bits at the center (thus "inner planes" of the cosmos.

 

[Zardnaar]

They've gone backwards and forwards on it over the years - no sooner had Spelljammer come out and joined everything up than Dark Sun came out and was explicitly separated (by a closed crystal sphere). 3e instituted different cosmologies for the supported settings (in that MotP covered the Great Wheel, but FR used the Tree, and Eberron's planes were also its moons). 4e was different again, and now 5e seems to be back to tying everything up neatly again.

I fully expect, in a few years once the current team have moved on, that we may well see the pendulum swing the other way.

Way I looked at it was Spell jammer was a way to link up worlds. Not all of the world's were linked though eg Athas.

 

[DEFCON 1]

Crawford seems to be saying, if you dont like it, just ignore it. But if something is ‘true’, then it is impossible to ignore. For me anyway.

But you are already doing it. You are currently a person who is being told "there's a multiverse" out there, that there is a "truth" being presented by someone with supposed higher authority than you... and you are choosing not to believe it or accept it or are ignoring it because it seems outlandish or unnecessary or stupid or ruins things for you.

So has Eberron already been ruined?

Because right now, you are exactly like someone in Eberron. They believe what they believe is true-- that there are thirteen planes that circle the three layers of the Material plane, and that no other worlds exist. Are they "morons" for believing that? And to answer that, you just have to ask yourself "Am I, Yaarel, a moron?" Because just like the people of Eberron, you're being told this is how it is, and you have to make a decision to pretend that this has not been said. Or probably more to the point, just not care that these other people have said it.

If someone from the "D&D multiverse" is saying "those people in Eberron are morons because they don't know the truth"... the people within Eberron have absolutely no reason to respond. Because as far as they are concerned... that other person doesn't exist. Or that they don't care if he exists or not.

And its the same thing for you. You have to choose to not care what Jeremy Crawford says. Because otherwise the entirety of D&D has been ruined already. And even if you were somehow able to convince Crawford at some point to say "Ha! Psyche! I was just kidding, there's no D&D multiverse, everything is separate"... you're going to have thousands of players saying "No, actually Jeremy, you were right in the first place" and they'll ignore THAT statement by him. And all you'd be doing is keeping your head happily in the sand now that you thought someone with higher authority than you was vindicating your beliefs. But really... who made Jeremy's voice the final voice of authority? Why is his voice un-ignorable? Especially considering that at some point he's going to leave WotC and someone else is going to take over and use their own voice to "make rules" in D&D, so really, how much authority does Jeremy's voice really hold?

Thus the rest of us are going around thinking "Crawford's opinion is no more true than anyone else's. It doesn't matter what he says. I know what the truth actually is at my table, regardless of what he says."

And none of us will be able to convince the other that they are right. So we'll just do what we've always done...

...ignore that which we don't like, and just not care.