This is part three in what I realize is now probably going to be a four-part series. Parts 1 and 2:
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Also, apparently I need some disclaimers? So here it is:
Disclaimer 1: People can modify whatever they want to in their homegame. I'm more curious about early history of published material.
Disclaimer 2: I am not interested in arguing or being "right." More in observing the historical changes and seeing what they might mean. I'm not trying to convert anyone to running their own games in any particular way. Talking the history of the multiverse is fun, arguing about what is better is not (for me, you're welcome to whatever you want to say!).
Disclaimer 3: The reason I started writing this is because I was re-reading Q1, and began thinking about the shifting focus vis-a-vis alternate planes in the Prime Material and the Outer Planes. No other reason. After scouring the internet, I didn't see anyone else had really covered the issue. So either I'm FIRST!!11!!! or I'm really bad at googling.
A. A Brief History of Campaign Settings.
To set the table here requires a quick explanation as to origin of campaign settings in D&D. Given that this isn't the main thrust of the discussion, I am going to be brief and will probably omit or elide a few details (I am going off memory here). In the beginning, TSR viewed campaign settings in much the same was as modules; after all, who would buy something that people made themselves? So while there were references to the home campaign of Gygax (Greyhawk), other people were assumed to be creating their own campaign worlds. Of course, there were always third-party products (City State of the Invincible Overlord, for example). But usually, you played in some vaguely D&D-ish melange that you had created.
By the time of 2e, the only official D&D campaign settings were Greyhawk (1980, although referred to prior to that), Mystara/Known World (1981), Dragonlance (1984), Kara Tur (1985), Lankhmar (1985), Conan (1985), and Forgotten Realms (1987).
Of these, two were licensed properties that fell into disuse and are rarely considered part of the D&D settings anymore (Lankhmar, Conan). One of them has been been devoured by Faerun, Eater of Worlds (Kara Tur), as detailed later. One setting was primarily the alternate rule set (Mystara, home of B/X and BECMI). That left the three classic AD&D settings; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance.
B. Settings, Settings, Everywhere! And not a drop to drink.... The 2e Explosion.
As previously detailed, the switch from the Gygaxian Multiverse with an emphasis on travel between, and adventure in, alternate material planes to the Grubbs-ian "each material plane is an island" that we saw in the Manual of the Planes had an impact from my point of view. And this is best exemplified by the first two settings pushed out for 2e; Spelljammer and Dark Sun, iconic settings that best exemplify the change in the multiverse and the new emphasis on worlds that remain apart.
Spelljammer was the fist published setting for 2e; and weirdly, it was also by Grubb, who had (IMO) recently and very subtly changed the multiverse view. Released in 1989, at first glance it appears to continue and expand upon the profound weirdness that was OD&D and AD&D. Giant space hamsters! Phlogiston! Weird human/hippo hybrids! Travelling from one campaign world to another! But it doesn't take the gaze of a xenophobic beholder to realize that as cool as this setting was, it was the first step in curtailing the exploration of other settings within 2e.
Admittedly, it looked like the Manual of the Planes took away the easy ability to go from world to world, and Spelljammer brought it back in. But in reality, it didn't. Yes, it explicitly included Greyspace (Greyhawk), Realmspace (Forgotten Realms), and Krynnspace (Dragonlance). In fact, that was the explicit design goal. "The setting should link together the Realms, Krynn, and Greyhawk without invalidating any of those worlds or the games already set there." (SJ 3). Notably, the entirety of the Spelljammer, and the Crystal Spheres, has the following constraints:
A. Every world must be a D&D-type fantasy world. While there are allowances for space hippos, there is no allowance to spelljam to Gamma World.
B. There can be no variations in rules. Prior to 2e, many gamers were quite used to going back and forth between 1e and BECMI (at the very least, they would play the modules interchangeably). You could not, however, travel to the the well-known world of Mystara.
Two years later, Dark Sun (Athas) revealed that this change in direction was permanent. Athas did not want your cross-pollination with other worlds. "No creatures from the SPELLAMMER Monstrous Compendiums live on Athas." Athas is treated as cut off, separate, away from the deities that populate other planes. It is treated as cut off. It is remarkable, yet unsurprising, that the very first edition post-Spelljammer both declines to use Spelljammer and also adopts a cribbed cosmology; this is something that would repeat time and again moving forward.
And this gets to the shift presaged in Manual of the Planes, and completed in 2e. It was a shift in the viewpoint of the published material; prior to the Manual of the Planes shift and the 2e explosion, a "campaign" would often be a loose collection of places, modules, and excursions between genres and rulesets; a campaign was what your characters happened to do. Later, a campaign setting became much more important; you didn't visit Athas or Eberron like you did Dungeonland or Gamma World or a spaceship in the Barrier Peaks or Caer Sidi; instead, Athas was the game.
Now, that didn't mean that there weren't kitchen sink settings (I HAVE BECOME FAERUN, DEVOURER OF SETTINGS!) that would add in a little flair (Kara Tur, Al Qadim, Maztica etc.). But it did mean that the setting become an entity onto itself.
I will save my final thoughts for Part 4, and see if I can wrap this up. Probably not in a very satisfying manner, but it's worth a shot!
D&D General - The Brilliance of the Original Gygaxian Multiverse
Good artists borrow, great artists steal. I was looking at the following conversations in these two threads about the multiverse in D&D, and how that certain Card Game's setting can be incorporated into the D&D multiverse, and, for that matter, how the multiple D&D settings that we are seeing...
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D&D General - Manual of the Planes: The Switch to a Standard Multiverse, and Why it Matters (Part 2)
I originally wrote my ode to the Gygaxian multiverse here: https://www.enworld.org/threads/the-brilliance-of-the-original-gygaxian-multiverse.672504/ And in it, I made a passing reference to how the true Gygaxian multiverse, with a strong emphasis on the design space of the multiple...
www.enworld.org
Also, apparently I need some disclaimers? So here it is:
Disclaimer 1: People can modify whatever they want to in their homegame. I'm more curious about early history of published material.
Disclaimer 2: I am not interested in arguing or being "right." More in observing the historical changes and seeing what they might mean. I'm not trying to convert anyone to running their own games in any particular way. Talking the history of the multiverse is fun, arguing about what is better is not (for me, you're welcome to whatever you want to say!).
Disclaimer 3: The reason I started writing this is because I was re-reading Q1, and began thinking about the shifting focus vis-a-vis alternate planes in the Prime Material and the Outer Planes. No other reason. After scouring the internet, I didn't see anyone else had really covered the issue. So either I'm FIRST!!11!!! or I'm really bad at googling.
A. A Brief History of Campaign Settings.
To set the table here requires a quick explanation as to origin of campaign settings in D&D. Given that this isn't the main thrust of the discussion, I am going to be brief and will probably omit or elide a few details (I am going off memory here). In the beginning, TSR viewed campaign settings in much the same was as modules; after all, who would buy something that people made themselves? So while there were references to the home campaign of Gygax (Greyhawk), other people were assumed to be creating their own campaign worlds. Of course, there were always third-party products (City State of the Invincible Overlord, for example). But usually, you played in some vaguely D&D-ish melange that you had created.
By the time of 2e, the only official D&D campaign settings were Greyhawk (1980, although referred to prior to that), Mystara/Known World (1981), Dragonlance (1984), Kara Tur (1985), Lankhmar (1985), Conan (1985), and Forgotten Realms (1987).
Of these, two were licensed properties that fell into disuse and are rarely considered part of the D&D settings anymore (Lankhmar, Conan). One of them has been been devoured by Faerun, Eater of Worlds (Kara Tur), as detailed later. One setting was primarily the alternate rule set (Mystara, home of B/X and BECMI). That left the three classic AD&D settings; Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and Dragonlance.
B. Settings, Settings, Everywhere! And not a drop to drink.... The 2e Explosion.
As previously detailed, the switch from the Gygaxian Multiverse with an emphasis on travel between, and adventure in, alternate material planes to the Grubbs-ian "each material plane is an island" that we saw in the Manual of the Planes had an impact from my point of view. And this is best exemplified by the first two settings pushed out for 2e; Spelljammer and Dark Sun, iconic settings that best exemplify the change in the multiverse and the new emphasis on worlds that remain apart.
Spelljammer was the fist published setting for 2e; and weirdly, it was also by Grubb, who had (IMO) recently and very subtly changed the multiverse view. Released in 1989, at first glance it appears to continue and expand upon the profound weirdness that was OD&D and AD&D. Giant space hamsters! Phlogiston! Weird human/hippo hybrids! Travelling from one campaign world to another! But it doesn't take the gaze of a xenophobic beholder to realize that as cool as this setting was, it was the first step in curtailing the exploration of other settings within 2e.
Admittedly, it looked like the Manual of the Planes took away the easy ability to go from world to world, and Spelljammer brought it back in. But in reality, it didn't. Yes, it explicitly included Greyspace (Greyhawk), Realmspace (Forgotten Realms), and Krynnspace (Dragonlance). In fact, that was the explicit design goal. "The setting should link together the Realms, Krynn, and Greyhawk without invalidating any of those worlds or the games already set there." (SJ 3). Notably, the entirety of the Spelljammer, and the Crystal Spheres, has the following constraints:
A. Every world must be a D&D-type fantasy world. While there are allowances for space hippos, there is no allowance to spelljam to Gamma World.
B. There can be no variations in rules. Prior to 2e, many gamers were quite used to going back and forth between 1e and BECMI (at the very least, they would play the modules interchangeably). You could not, however, travel to the the well-known world of Mystara.
Two years later, Dark Sun (Athas) revealed that this change in direction was permanent. Athas did not want your cross-pollination with other worlds. "No creatures from the SPELLAMMER Monstrous Compendiums live on Athas." Athas is treated as cut off, separate, away from the deities that populate other planes. It is treated as cut off. It is remarkable, yet unsurprising, that the very first edition post-Spelljammer both declines to use Spelljammer and also adopts a cribbed cosmology; this is something that would repeat time and again moving forward.
And this gets to the shift presaged in Manual of the Planes, and completed in 2e. It was a shift in the viewpoint of the published material; prior to the Manual of the Planes shift and the 2e explosion, a "campaign" would often be a loose collection of places, modules, and excursions between genres and rulesets; a campaign was what your characters happened to do. Later, a campaign setting became much more important; you didn't visit Athas or Eberron like you did Dungeonland or Gamma World or a spaceship in the Barrier Peaks or Caer Sidi; instead, Athas was the game.
Now, that didn't mean that there weren't kitchen sink settings (I HAVE BECOME FAERUN, DEVOURER OF SETTINGS!) that would add in a little flair (Kara Tur, Al Qadim, Maztica etc.). But it did mean that the setting become an entity onto itself.
I will save my final thoughts for Part 4, and see if I can wrap this up. Probably not in a very satisfying manner, but it's worth a shot!
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