D&D 5E The D&D Multiverse How it Was and How They Might Be Screwing it Up.

[Satyrn]

Aren't all the races on athas, other than halflings, evolved from halflings using their lifeshaping magic?

So . . . to misquote a fellow poster . . . "It's halflings all the way down."

 

[Satyrn]

Why would high level PCs jam anywhere if they can just teleport instead its much quicker and safer.

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons we could come up with. I don't know how familiar you are with the Stargate shows, but they had the technological equivalents of both jamming and teleport circles.

If hack TV writers can do it, anyone can!

 

[Staffan]

For example in the original Darksun material the world is cut off and only 1 being has managed to cross the barrier between the worlds in the last 1000-2000 years. The original Darksun material also included planar cosmology that is not great wheel but you see reference to Athas turning up in Planescape products.

Haven't we been over this before? I know I've discussed this with someone on these boards, but I can't recall if it was you or someone else.

There's nothing in the original Dark Sun material that implies that Dark Sun is cut off from the planes. In the list of appropriate monsters the original box says "Fiends from the Outer Planes Appendix (MC10) can travel to and from Athas at will, but do so rarely, only when summoned by dragons and great wizards." Two of the adventures for pre-revised Dark Sun have strong planar elements (Black Spine and City by the Silt Sea), and there are lesser planar elements in some of the other adventures (like a tanar'ri being loose in Urik in one of them).

The idea of an alternate cosmology didn't start showing up until the novels - I think mainly in The Obsidian Oracle. It wasn't codified as interfering with planar travel until Defilers & Preservers, which was one of the last books published for the line - and even then, Dark Sun was still placed within the Great Wheel cosmology, but with a barrier making travel to the Astral/Outer planes really hard, and the Ethereal/Inner planes somewhat hard.

 

[Zardnaar]

I'm sure there are plenty of reasons we could come up with. I don't know how familiar you are with the Stargate shows, but they had the technological equivalents of both jamming and teleport circles.

If hack TV writers can do it, anyone can!

Big SG1/Atlantis fan.

 

[Zardnaar]

Haven't we been over this before? I know I've discussed this with someone on these boards, but I can't recall if it was you or someone else.

There's nothing in the original Dark Sun material that implies that Dark Sun is cut off from the planes. In the list of appropriate monsters the original box says "Fiends from the Outer Planes Appendix (MC10) can travel to and from Athas at will, but do so rarely, only when summoned by dragons and great wizards." Two of the adventures for pre-revised Dark Sun have strong planar elements (Black Spine and City by the Silt Sea), and there are lesser planar elements in some of the other adventures (like a tanar'ri being loose in Urik in one of them).

The idea of an alternate cosmology didn't start showing up until the novels - I think mainly in The Obsidian Oracle. It wasn't codified as interfering with planar travel until Defilers & Preservers, which was one of the last books published for the line - and even then, Dark Sun was still placed within the Great Wheel cosmology, but with a barrier making travel to the Astral/Outer planes really hard, and the Ethereal/Inner planes somewhat hard.

One of the DS books described the DS cosmology and it was very clear the DS planes were not the same as the D&D planes. The Athasian elemental planes were played out, had very little energy and they had the grey and black and astral planes. The devastation of the planes matched Athas the links were growing weaker as well so no new Sorcerer Kings could be created the conduits allowing the originals were dead/extinct etc.

Athas was not 100% cut off but things like their Gith got there centuries before and they had a dimensional gate which would let you dimensions and go to other worlds, it was not a mass transit type thing and on ly 1 being had access to it for 2000 years.

And yeah you could not Spelljam to Athas either in the old lore. You could not use planeshift or gate for example to reach Sigil from Athas and vice versa. Wish (maybe), DM fiat and the dimensional gate were about the only way to leave Athas cosmology.

See Earth, Air, Fire, Water, City by the Silt Sea, Dragon Kings, and I think Preservers and Defilers of Athas.

 

[Teemu]

3rd ed Manual of the Planes says that travel between different Material Planes can be possible through the Plane of Shadow. The idea is that 3.x Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, and others have their own cosmologies (the Wheel for Greyhawk, the Great Tree in FR, etc.), but the Plane of Shadows -- or its deepest parts -- connects all these worlds through their Material Planes. There's no exact specified method to accomplish this travel (like a specific spell beyond Shadow Walk/Plane Shift), but it's there as the "canon" method.

Never had teleportation circles before 4e, that was a 4e addition, you have the teleportation spell and planeshift in previous edition, but Teleportation circles are a 4e invention to my knowledge. So in FR that makes them only a recently developed magic technology.

Nah, 3.x has them:

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm

 

[Zardnaar]

Mass Transportation of goods and passangers.

Spelljamming was not that efficient/cost effective. For example a minor helm cost 100k, a major one 250k, a Cog as 10k, a Galleon 50k and they could hold a lot less cargo and passengers one used on Oceans could (I guess the helms could not move them and the air could not support a larger crew).

If it was an optin PCs could make more money using teleport with bags of holding. In modern logic you teleport to Athas with metal, trade it for gems or whatever and teleport out. Its a lot quicker, cheaper, and you don't have to deal with random encounters (1/20 chance in SJ) so the odds of your cargo arriving are 100%vs a random encounter with Illithids or a Beholder ship for example.

Its basically the reason you could not do it in 2E as it defeats the purpose of the setting.

Although when we played Spelljammer the PCs figured out if they could get a ship that could defeat most of the random encounters looting helms was a great way to get money so they ended up with a tricked out manoeuvrable Elven Man O War that used the battlecruiser concept to out run or out manoeuvre anything that could defeat them while they got to bully whatever they came across.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Eight Realities

Good post Zardnaar.

As originally written the following worlds had their own cosmology.

Darksun
Mystara
Eberron
Nerath

The following settings were explicitly part of the D&D Great Wheel multiverse

Greyhawk
Dragonlance
Forgotten Realms
Spelljammer

We're really dealing with nine different Realities.

1) Original D&D "Multiverse":
-Greyhawk
-Blackmoor
-Barsoom
(hints at Middle-earth "Ents" and "Hobbits")

2) Classic (BECMI) D&D Five Spheres Multiverse, canonically exists in an entirely different Reality than the AD&D Multiverse. In the back of the Gazetteers and in the Book of Marvellous Magic, there were official gates between this Multiverse and the AD&D Multiverse (both to Oerth and Toril), and also to Gamma World, Gangbusters, Star Frontiers, Dawn Patrol, and Boot Hill:
-Mystara (originally named "Urt") - the Multiverse Dimension
-Old Alphatia Dimension
-Nightmare Dimension
-Dimension of Myth (Laterre - Magical Medieval Earth)
-Oerth (only seen in modules B1 and B2, which officially exist in both Oerth and Mystara, and in Frank Mentzer's comment that Oerth is located in the Tau Ceti solar system vis-a-vis Mystara, and in Bruce Heard's comment that there could be a BECMI version of Oerth)
(This multiverse was greatly revised when the Gold Box Immortal Set was replaced by the Wrath of the Immortals boxed set.)

3) AD&D 1E Great Rectangle Multiverse, with shared Inner and Outer Planes:
-Greyhawk Alternate Material Plane
-FR Alternate Material Plane
-Dragonlance Alternate Material Plane
-Ravenloft was just two standalone adventures
-Elric and Cthulhu in Deities & Demigods

4) AD&D 2E Great Wheel Multiverse: (Planescape + Spelljammer + Chronomancer meta-settings)
-Greyspace
-Realmspace
-Krynnspace
-Athaspace
-Bloodspace (Birthright)
-(unnamed) "Mystaraspace" (Mystara was officially converted into AD&D 2E. There were Mystaran characters in Planescape, Spelljammer, and Ravenloft.)
-Demiplane of Dread

5) SAGA "Multiverse" - card-based rpg:
-Dragonlance Fifth Age
-suggestions for converting other D&D worlds into SAGA rules was covered in a DRAGON magazine article.

6) Hackmaster 4E Multiverse - the AD&D 1e/2e rules and various D&D campaign worlds and modules were licensed by WotC to KenzerCo to make a comedic version. There was even a Hackjammer space-travel meta-setting.

7) 3E D&D: A Multiverse of Multiverses: each main D&D world has its own cosmology, with its own separate set of Inner and Outer Planes. But still share the same Plane of Shadow. Also, in the 3E MotP, several alternate cosmologies were offered, not attached to a particular world.
-Oerth Cosmology ("The D&D World") - the Great Wheel
-FR Cosmology - the Great Tree
-Eberron Cosmology - the Orrery - was birthed during this edition.
-Dragonlance Cosmology
-Blackmoor Cosmology
-d20 Modern campaign models (reachable via Plane of Shadow)

8) 4E D&D Multiverse: World Axis cosmology. Dawn War etc. shared by all.
-Nerath
-Forgotten Realms
-Dark Sun
-Eberron

9) 5E D&D Multiverse - return to the 2E-era Great Wheel? but with some additions from 4E (Feywild, Shadowfell, Elemental Chaos)
-FR
-Ravenloft
-Eberron
-other worlds mentioned in PHB and DMG

https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/d-d-realities
https://sites.google.com/site/dndphilmont/realities-and-worlds-chart

 

[Staffan]

One of the DS books described the DS cosmology and it was very clear the DS planes were not the same as the D&D planes. The Athasian elemental planes were played out, had very little energy and they had the grey and black and astral planes. The devastation of the planes matched Athas the links were growing weaker as well so no new Sorcerer Kings could be created the conduits allowing the originals were dead/extinct etc.

Athas was not 100% cut off but things like their Gith got there centuries before and they had a dimensional gate which would let you dimensions and go to other worlds, it was not a mass transit type thing and on ly 1 being had access to it for 2000 years.

And yeah you could not Spelljam to Athas either in the old lore. You could not use planeshift or gate for example to reach Sigil from Athas and vice versa. Wish (maybe), DM fiat and the dimensional gate were about the only way to leave Athas cosmology.

See Earth, Air, Fire, Water, City by the Silt Sea, Dragon Kings, and I think Preservers and Defilers of Athas.

This is how Dragon Kings described the Dark Sun cosmology:

That's pretty bog-standard Great Wheel, just focusing on the inner planes and alternate primes instead of outer planes. And there was no mention of the Grey or the Black until the Revised Dark Sun box, and nothing about either of them affecting planar travel until Defilers & Preservers.

 

[Zardnaar]

This is how Dragon Kings described the Dark Sun cosmology:

That's pretty bog-standard Great Wheel, just focusing on the inner planes and alternate primes instead of outer planes. And there was no mention of the Grey or the Black until the Revised Dark Sun box, and nothing about either of them affecting planar travel until Defilers & Preservers.

I know but one of the books also described the planes and its clear the DS elemental planbes are not the normal ones the rest of the multiverse had. They were weak and played out.