To Mike Mearls: C'mon, bring back the whole D&D Multiverse!

[Dungeonosophy]

What happens if WotC wants a "Kara-Tur" for the world of Greyhawk?

Already there: the Celestial Imperium, Nippon, and the Nippon Dominion.

https://greyhawkery.blogspot.com/2012/04/beyond-flanaess-importance.html

Bringing out the connections between all the D&D Worlds doesn't preclude the further development of the hitherto unknown continents on each world. In fact, the proposed Tasslehoff's Atlas of the D&D Multiverse would feature newly "canonical" world maps for all the D&D Worlds, showing the location and shape of all continents, on both hemispheres. Even for planets which we don't have complete world maps for yet (e.g. the planet of Io's Blood, the setting for the 2E Council of Wyrms campaign setting), and for a bunch of Spelljammer worlds. I suspect people would be really into it.

Furthermore, this Atlas would show "canonical" locations for *every* D&D module, novel, and video game ever produced by TSR or WotC. (Kind of like the map from the Classic D&D Expert Set blue box which had an icon showing where all of the published Basic and Expert adventures were located in the Known World.)

Several adventure sites would be located in more than world (e.g. Keep on the Borderlands in Oerth, Mystara, and Nerath). And questionable sub-settings which haven't been placed before (Thunder Rift, Kingdom of Ghyr, Karawenn, Arir, Kolhapur, the D&D choose-your-own-adventure gamebook world) would be placed *somewhere*. Perhaps there'd need to be a new "Generic D&D World" which receives all of the generic stuff that doesn't fit anywhere else.

This is doable.

 

[Jester David]

They've touched on the multiverse a little bit. Two-thirds of the monster entries in Volo's Guide to Monsters are more Greyhawk than Forgotten Realms. Plus the forthcoming book.

But there's only so much they can do with the other settings.
The existing settings are great... for anyone who has been playing for 25 years or more. For the fans who already have those books. Fans who joined the game with 3e and 4e are likely to only care about the Realms, Eberron, and maybe Dark Sun...
Ignoring the fact that a significant majority of players only play homebrew and any campaign setting other than their own is wasted.

They're going slow in 5e, and slowly working through the basic products. The baseline content. A big multiverse event feels like a later product...

 

[Dausuul]

Oh hell no. Hell no.

I understand the business logic that leads to trying to cram every setting into the same multiverse. But that doesn't mean I hate it any less. I love vivid, distinctive settings like the original Dark Sun, or (even though I'm not normally a fan of magipunk) Eberron. The last thing I want is to see them all mashed together in a giant crossover. That requires accommodations which undercut each setting's unique traits. Eberron's intricate cosmology has to be reconciled with Planescape. Dark Sun has to open itself up to gods. Ravenloft has to allow PCs to bop in and out like it's no big thing.

TSR started down this road in late 2E, and I'm almost glad they went bankrupt before they could get very far. Wizards has largely steered clear of it, and they should stick to that. If their adventure paths are not compatible with every setting, good! They shouldn't be! Keep the adventure paths in the Forgotten Realms, and let other settings stand on their own.

If Wizards can't see a profitable way to update the old settings to 5E while keeping them unique, they should either cultivate a third-party licensee to do it, or else put the original-edition PDFs up on DM's Guild and leave it at that.

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

The multiverse would allow changes in the background for other lines, for example action-live movies, TV-cartoons and videogames, but we have to try avoid the "jump the shark".

The RPG's books are like LEGO boxes, after buying it you build as you want, not in the same way of the cover of the box. Sometimes the DMs alter the canon background to surprise players who have readen all the spoilers.

For me the Io's blood islands from "Council of Wyrns" are a demiplane.

(And now let's imagine the cover of "AD&D Chronomancer" with the soundtrack of Doctor Who like background music")

 

[Yaarel]

The RPG's books are like LEGO boxes, after buying it you build as you want, not in the same way of the cover of the box.

Yeah, that is what D&D means to me. A box of Legos that you can use to build any kind of world that you can imagine.

You can combine Legos from many different kinds of boxes, and eventually throw away the instructions. Because your stuff is better than the box that it originally came in.

But if WotC glues all of the Lego pieces together, then you cant do that any more. Not without solvents to dissolve the glue, and then deal with all of the mess that it leaves on the Legos forever.

 

[Yaarel]

The problem with lumping all of the D&D settings into a single network setting, is then Cthulhu eats My Little Pony.

Many settings are *unwanted*.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Eberron's intricate cosmology has to be reconciled with Planescape.

The Orrery was already reconciled with the Great Wheel from the start. They shared a Plane of Shadow, and that is all. In 3E, only Greyhawk had the Great Wheel. That is the way the 3E Multiverse was. Eberron was always part of the Multiverse. But that is reconciliation and connection. (Presumably the 5E Multiverse consists of multiple cosmologies as well.)

Dark Sun has to open itself up to gods.

There are many, many references to Dark Sun existing in the wider D&D Multiverse. The "gods" exists outside of the closed sphere of Athas. They just can't get in. A crossover wouldn't mean that Dark Sun all of a sudden is opened up to gods. The settings wouldn't be watered down or changed in tone.

Ravenloft has to allow PCs to bop in and out like it's no big thing.

...Like they do the Curse of Strahd.

Wizards has largely steered clear of it, and they should stick to that.

The DMG lists all the key worlds of the D&D Multiverse. They all exist in the same Multiverse.

put the original-edition PDFs up on DM's Guild and leave it at that.

And open those settings up to new authors on the DM's Guild.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Thanks to everyone who contributed to this thread!

 

[Gradine]

I gave this an thread five-stars because I'm always interested in seeing what other people think about multiple settings, what they do, and what they think WotC should do with them, even if I disagree with their conclusions.

I'll reiterate that I'd love to see more settings available for the DM's Guild; these are probably the only products I'd really consider actually purchasing from the site.

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, I guess that is true if you are the kind of player who prefers to play Humans and/or does not use feats.

They probably dont even know what the difference is between Demons and Devils. #sad

That’s because for the most part there really is no difference.