D&D General The Brilliance of the Original Gygaxian Multiverse

[Flamestrike]

The two problems with that are that I was explicitly discussing the Gygaxian view (which predates the MoTP), and made sure to note in the OP that the period starting with the MoTP is when it all started to go wrong in terms of the planar structure.

If it predates the MoTP, how can you assert that Gygax wasnt referring to just the Material plane that contains Oerth/ Greyhawk when he made his statement?

Krynn didnt exist yet from memory. Athas certainly didnt. Mystara was around (in a different system in BECMI). Eberron certainly wasnt. Birthright wasnt either.

Forgotten realms was around though, and it certainly used the 'multiple material plane' model.

 

[DND_Reborn]

FWIW, I have always thought the Prime Material Plane contains the worlds of Krynn, Greyhawk, etc., including my homebrew, yours, and everyone else's.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

My own question is about if DM Guild should allow alternate timelines, for example a Gamma World with all Hasbro franchises as "guest artists", or if Conan is now public domain, then Hirboria could be remade with a different cartography, only keeping the names and adding the fantasy races, or a Spelljammer zone with all alien races from d20 Future (Star Frontiers + Star*Drive) or Krynn where the cataclysm was avoided because lord Soth from an alternate timeline travel.

What should be the limits of the canon or official lore?

 

[Shiroiken]

We have sacrificed actual diversity for monotony, and infinite possibilities for arguments about the shape of outer planes (is it a wheel, or a tree?).

Silly argument anyway. Everyone knows it's a square

 

[Alzrius]

D&D's multiverse first started in the campaigns being run by Gary Gygax, but the first print version that I am aware of is Dragon #8 (July, 1977), which gave us the first glimpse of the extra-planar nature of the D&D multiverse.

Allow me to nitpick: the first instance of the D&D multiverse appearing in print that I'm aware of was in The Strategic Review, vol. 2 no. 1 (February, 1976), which had this planar arrangement:

 

[Umbran]

So, in a certain sense, there is never a need to worry about how something "fits into" the D&D multiverse.

Because everything is already in the D&D multiverse and always has been.

Well, no, not everything. Only those things that are also consistent with the standard Inner and Outer planes fit. If you run a game world that has massively different planar cosmology around it, it no longer fits into the standard Prime Material.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

lol.

I don't know - sometimes the funnest thing is to do something completely out there.

My current group has been exploring ruins in the Sea of Dust. And in their latest adventure escaped from the lower minions of a Suel Lich. In the process they flipped several levers to escape - one of which worked in opening an escape route (they didn't stick around to see what the other non-obvious ones did). Anyway, I'm thinking of having the players actions "accidentally" lead to the revival of an army of experimental vessels (the Suel had planned to use to save themselves in an emergency but couldn't activated quickly enough) that the Lich and his many minions will now inhabit.

In other words, once the group (hopefully) stabilize the region from the machinations of the Scarlet Brotherhood, they'll be facing an invasion of an army of warforged led by Tozhgan Ikan (The Suel lich in the body of a souped up warforged) all thanks to the PCs actions - at least that's the tenuous plan.

 

[Maxperson]

See, that's where I disagree.

The inner and outer planes are a forced expansion. They don't .... really .... add very much. Yes, there is a vocal contingent of Planescape fans, but the details about the outer planes did not expand the game so much as it constricted it.

I don't agree with that at all. I have the inner and outer planes in all their glory and details. I also have infinite prime planes in all their variation. That gives me a much more expanded game, not a constricted one. You literally cannot remove the planes and have a more expanded game than mine, in scope at least.

You ask what the expanded Prime Material did? It did everything! And in a deliberately useful way. Instead of the crabbed and useless outer planes, you had an infinite possibility of planes.

No it didn't. I did infinite variations of the prime plane. It did 0 variations of the afterlife. Going back to Amber. While there were infinite shadows, it still required both the Courts of Chaos and Amber to cast the shadows in the first place, making those places the "planes" that make up the building blocks of all the prime worlds. Much like the inner planes do. It also had 0 planes for the afterlife, which is the role of the outer planes.

 

[Maxperson]

In other words, an outer plane that is a "frozen-over bottomless ocean" isn't really interesting not just because it's uninteresting, but also because there are already an infinite number of worlds within the PMP that are "frozen-over bottomless oceans." Just like when you visited Q1, there were gates to worlds, including a proto-Ravenloft, and a world of endless ocean rules by the evil ocean dwellers.

Two things with this.

First, there are not an infinite number of frozen-over bottomless oceans on the Prime Plane where devils, gods and the souls of certain mortals go to be tortured for eternity. There are zero. That right there makes this particular frozen-over bottomless ocean more interesting or at least differently interesting.

Second, even if you don't detail that level of hell at all. No matter what you come up with as a DM, it's still going to have an infinite number of similar number of Prime Planes, excepting that devils, gods and souls of certain mortals go to this layer of hell to be tortured for eternity.

Given that there is no practical difference whether I come up with it myself or TSR/WotC does, I'd prefer that they do it to save me the time and effort. My game planning time is very limited and I'd rather spend it on other things.

 

[Maxperson]

No, it's not.

Raistlin was born into a different material plane of existence than Mordenkainen and Elminster were.

From each of their perspectives the material plane they were born in is 'the' Prime material plane, and the other two guys inhabit different (alternate) material planes.

They're all correct. Relative to their point of view.

You're looking at the Prime material plane as if it is an objective thing. It isnt; its subjective to the inhabitants of that material plane.

This accords with similar positions you can find in Quantum mechanics and the uncertainty principle, and special relativity as well for what its worth.

I've always looked at the Prime Plane as singular. There is only one of them, but it folds or whatever and creates infinite pocketed variations. Some of which you can get to with Plane Shifting magic, the phlogiston or whatever, others like Athas you can't get to so easily.