D&D 5E What's in YOUR Multiverse?

[Igwilly]

No, no, no. I don't even play 5e and I don't want my world to have any sort of connection to Planescape. And I don't care about what Mearls said or any relativist explanation.
No offense; I don't want to get angry here. If you want to use my content, feel free to do so; just don't include my version of the setting on anyone else's setting.
As I said, I think each game had its own setting (or version of it).

 

[hawkeyefan]

I love the idea of the multiverse, and I kind of see it as the same as any other fictional reference to the multiverse. I don't tend to have my D&D campaigns cross over into non-fantasy settings like the Marvel or DC universes or Star Wars or anything like that. There's nothing wrong with genre mash up in general, but that kind of thing does not fit with my campaign.

My campaign involves 5 Prime Material worlds....Arta (homebrew), Oerth, Toril, Athas, and Golarion. So it includes TSR/WotC worlds, Paizo, and homebrew. All of these are connected to the Planes, and Sigil plays an important part in the whole scheme.

I always really liked the idea of other worlds and realms...so that's the approach I've taken.

 

[Caliban]

In theory, yes. For my home game, all the other settings are simply different prime material planes (even mundane tech worlds like ours, or sci-fi settings, or super hero settings), but most of them have the dimensional cosmology wrong.

In practice, I generally choose not to have them impinge upon my campaign world in any noticeable way, except to introduce the occasional odd artifact or bit of weirdness. (I just recently ran a game session where a variant beholder living on Ley Line nexus came into possession of a Pac-Man and Ms. Pac-Man arcade machines, worshipped Ms. Pac-Man and reshaped a portion of his lair into a maze that resembled the Pac-Man maze, complete with 4 ghosts and power pellets (fungal pod that gave a variety of buffs when drunk from), and a variant zombie beholder (no eyestalks) that traveled the maze harvesting dots [fungal pods every 10 feet] and eating the ghosts when it got a power pellet.)

 

[Tony Vargas]

Within this multiverse are an endless variety of worlds Many of them have been published as official settings .. In the fabric of the multiverse. Alongside these worlds are hundreds of thousands more, created by generations of D&D players for their own games.

I think the section I underlined, above, says it more than the one you bolded. Any world can fit into the D&D multiverse.

Overall, it strikes me much like Rule 0 in 3e. It's an acknowledgement you can place whatever you want in an alternate prime material plane w/in the DMG cosmology - even if copyright laws won't let WotC do it - because there's no way they could stop you from doing so.

(Though I think hundreds of thousands might be be over-stating it.
So for that matter, might be 'generations.' I feel like D&D is still mostly being carried by the last cohort of boomers/first of gen-X that made it huge in the 80s.)

I suppose a tangential issue is that the reach of the D&D multiverse (you could fit any fictional setting into it) far exceeds the grasp of the D&D mechanics (you can model an eccentric slice of fantasy and sci-fi sub-genres with them).

And as I say, there's no way there even [/COLOR]can be a right or wrong answer

"Nothing but official settings could possibly exist in the D&D multiverse" would be a wrong answer.

 

[ProgBard]

I love seeing all these perspectives, many of which seem like subtly different lenses on the same ideas (as befits a proper multiverse).

I do think the way we approach this is revealing - probably of something like a lumper/splitter divide, but also (as with lore in general) whether we're prescriptivist or descriptivist in matters of cosmoi. And, for that matter, something like Law and Chaos too. Do you only include that which is explicitly permitted, or is anything not specifically forbidden allowed?

I know that my own "yes, all of it" approach says a lot about my lumper magpie mind and my tendencies toward syncretism. And, as [MENTION=6799753]lowkey13[/MENTION] and others have said, the theory can have practical implications, depending on how much you feel like all the doors are open.

Or, of course, it's possible it's the other way round, and the theory arises out of what you want for your table in practical terms. If, like me, you think it would be great fun to have a session where your Faerunian party goes to a demiplane for a side-quest with Cayden Cailean, you're probably going to shore that up with a magpie anything-goes philosophy of your multiverse. If you'd rather keep your settings clear ad distinct, you might be more likely to establish, as a couple of posters have, that maybe it's all hypothetically out there but there's not much gravitational pull, as it were, between the existing worlds.

 

[Parmandur]

I think the section I underlined, above, says it more than the one you bolded. Any world can fit into the D&D multiverse.



Overall, it strikes me much like Rule 0 in 3e. It's an acknowledgement you can place whatever you want in an alternate prime material plane w/in the DMG cosmology - even if copyright laws won't let WotC do it - because there's no way they could stop you from doing so.



(Though I think hundreds of thousands might be be over-stating it.

So for that matter, might be 'generations.' I feel like D&D is still mostly being carried by the last cohort of boomers/first of gen-X that made it huge in the 80s.)



I suppose a tangential issue is that the reach of the D&D multiverse (you could fit any fictional setting into it) far exceeds the grasp of the D&D mechanics (you can model an eccentric slice of fantasy and sci-fi sub-genres with them).



"Nothing but official settings could possibly exist in the D&D multiverse" would be a wrong answer.

Generations certainly isn't an overstatement; I'm an older Millennial, and there ate tons of folks in my cohort and the next playing. Conservatively, I'd say st least five generations have played or are still playing.

And the numbers playing are in the seven figures, over half of whom home brew their setting: hundreds of thousands is on the money, though surely most ain't Greg Stagford, M.A.R Barker, or Ed Greenwood

 

[Mercule]

But there is a distinction.

On a theoretical level, they are connected. My players might end up in a brief sojourn to (5e) Gamma World, for instance. Or Nehwon (I'm actually working on that). Or you might bring in a character from another homebrew campaign when a player joins your group; either implicitly (handwaving, they're just there) or explicitly (they appear through a gateway, with a goatee).

But as a practical matter, it doesn't matter unless there is a reason for it. What happens at your table doesn't impact my table. We are all part of the same multiverse, but my players just aren't visiting your particular world among the infinite worlds that are out there.

This and your previous post are a much less rambly statement of what I'd intended.

In theory, my home brew setting is somehow connected to the Realms (which a friend ran in high school). It's also, theoretically, connected to Eberron, which I'm currently using. In practice, they may as well be completely isolated from one another. I play my home brew when that's the tone I want. I play Eberron when that's the tone I want.

No one in any of my groups has ever really cared for SpellJammer, Planescape, or anything else that would have required/encouraged a firm answer to the question. That's the way I prefer it.

 

[76512390ag12]

Yes. I first came to fantasy through Moorcock and so in my mind all settings are part of the multiverse for me, stated or not. This happens often in my mind and my campaigns where resonances, echoes, memes, NPCs and even PCs slip and pop between settings, all and any of them.

That's how I have always viewed fantasy and I extend that to all genres and settings.

However, that's me. As a player I respect the GM and their visions.



Posted by C4-D4RS on the MetroLiberal HoloNet

 

[Zardnaar]

I more or less yuse the defaut, if I vary from it i use the elemental planes, plane of light/darkness and the astral plane.

 

[Bitbrain]

The main DM for my group regards each setting (whether official or fan made) as a separate planet located within the Material Plane.
In this way, he can have our group of PCs go from the Forgotten Realms to Golarion, Eberron, or wherever else he feels like taking us, usually via high-level teleportation spells.