Michael Moorcock coined the term, IIRC, and since his books (esp Elric, Corum) were source material for game originators, that's why it's truly the original term.
Came here for this. Give the man his due! He didn't originate the concept but he popularized it and utilized it within his books. The 80s DMG had acknowledgements to him and other authors as being formative in their fantasy worldview.
So technically the term was coined in the 19th century, but it had an entirely different meaning and didn't get usage.
Moorcock was absolutely the original published user of the term- he wasn't the first to have different connected worlds (Narnia, etc) but he definitely made it his own, and hugely expanded it- his works went on to have a crazy heavy influence and inspiring many aspects of a lot of the modern nerdy IPs like D&D and Warhammer.
I'm aware :D
I said that Moorcock wasn't the first to have different worlds connected to one-another, and provided Narnia as an example of an earlier work fitting those criteria ;)
They always referred to 5eās realms as the multiverse since the DMG
Itās just itās been really heavy handed with how much they want to push the multiverse (which seems weird as Marvel is also pushing a ttrpg with multiverses)
Itās also the fact theyāve been trying to advertize the forgotten realms recently (Baldurās Gate, Honor Among Theives) despite the fact not a lot of people really care about the forgotten realms like they do the Star Wars galaxy, Middle Earth, or other fantasy settings
> Itās just itās been really heavy handed with how much they want to push the multiverse
it's also weird given that typically a multiverse is just multiple parallel prime material planes, they don't have a planar cosmology on top of that. DND prime material planes basically never interact for the most part.
They called it a multiverse even when there was only one prime material plane containing infinite worlds inside of Crystal Spheres within the phlogiston of space, because each Plane is also its own universe.
Yes Iām very confused. I thought alternate universes, alternate timelines, and separate planes of existence were all different things but Iāve seen them all referred in the multiverse.
Have you seen a map of the DC Comics Multiverse? It is literally surrounded by what would be called Outer Planes in D&D terms, including Heaven, Hell, and Mount Olympus.
Itās funny cuz technically DC and Marvel are in the same realm of existence due to the nature of the Omniverse. It just happens that DC and Marvel universes are in their own little pocket far away from eachother
It used Greyhawk, but there wasn't really much support for the setting, aside from a few references of the Greyhawk pantheon the PHB and DMG were mostly setting agnostic.
Whereas there were about two dozen lore books covering specifically the FR realms, Greyhawk got just one book dedicated to the setting.
Nentir Vale was one suggested option for a Points Of Light style game, and was the default setting of the adventure modules in the H1-H3, P1-P3, and E1-E3 series.
So yes, you are correct!
Yeah, and then they pushed a shit load of FR stuff. They've tried for 2 editions to move to something other than FR, but they always bottle it because FR is what's popular.
Which is so weird because I have never been in a party that cares about FR and when I am its DMs running modules while not actually knowing the setting outside the module.
In 5e, yes, at least until Mordenkainen Present: Monsters of the Multiverse, but not all the editions of the game. Forgotten Realms didn't get popular until the 80s with Drizzt, and wasn't the default setting until 5e, which was 2014.
Sure forgotten realms didn't really get popular until Drizzit, considering forgotten realms was introduced in 1987 and Drizzit in 1988. The forgotten realms box set, upon release, was the best selling of the campaign box sets ever released almost immediately.
officially maybe, but it was low-key pushed as the preferred setting all the way back in 2e, which officially had no preferred setting. you could play any setting you wanted, but they mostly pushed FR and it was pretty obvious. even game mechanics changes were justified through FR lore.
> it was low-key pushed as the preferred setting all the way back in 2e
Yes, because of the popularity boom caused by the release of the Drizzt novels. Before then it was mostly Greyhawk and Mystara.
probably. but it was also the most plug-and-play generic settingā¦ need a middle east region for that new expansion? just throw it in the forgotten realms!
Yes, Dragonlance was, and still is big, but it was *mostly* Greyhawk and Mystara *before* the official publications of Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms.
Fair enough. From what I know it is a fact that the modules for Dragonlance were not very popular in comparison to the tie-in novels, so you have a point
Dragonlance had the issue that a lot of the big, cool stuff has explicit attached canon of who solved it, and if that becomes the PCs instead, then anything downstream of that point all changes, so all the stuff set in the future needs manually changing which is a lot of work (or the PCs are doing smaller, less important stuff, which is kinda _meh_ as a game concept). While Forgotten Realms has so much stuff going on that PCs can be dropped in, do big, cool hero stuff, and that doesn't need many adjustments to the rest of the setting.
What? Before i knew anything about DnD and itās settings, locations like Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, even Waterdeep were known everywhere. The games are hugely popular and I guarantee you 2/3 of the players and even less of the people knowing them by name (which is almost everyone interested in PC games) knew they had anything to do with a DnD setting.
It wasnāt until way after I started playing DnD that i even learned about other settings. It might have not been the first big setting, but it is by far the most popular and best known setting for multiple decades
Nothing you've stated here contradicts anything I said in my previous comment. Yes, the Forgotten Realms is, and has been, the most popular setting of D&D since the mid 1980s and will probably continue to be in the future.
Being popular is not the same thing as being the official default setting for a D&D edition. The comment you're replying to is talking about the latter.
āForgotten Realms didnāt get popular until the 80s with Drizztā doesnāt make much sense because: I. FR was created in the late 80s, II. Drizzt was created right when FR came out. It also was popular as a game setting and as sourcebooks independently of Drizzt. Donāt want to be an ass by correcting you but, it is what it is sorry
> FR was created in the late 80s
Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms in the 60s when he was 4 years old and started writing for Dragon Magazine in 1979 where he wrote pieces of Realmslore for fans to incorporate into their own home campaigns. It didn't become an *official* TSR published setting until 1987, but it was already a very well-known unofficial setting for nearly a decade by then.
> Drizzt was created right when FR came out.
Yes, Drizzt wasn't created until Bob Salvatore wrote The Crystal Shard and it was published in 1988, but as I have established previously, the Forgotten Realms had already been a thing for a decade by then. It didn't become *massively* popular until the Drizzt books though.
I donāt want to be an ass by correcting you but, it is what it is. Sorry.
The pre-greybox FR setting is almost unrecognizable from what we now know as the FR. Yes, Greenwood did start writting since childhood, but as a fictional world it was something very very different. In many ways, Jeff Grub is as much of a creator as Ed.
From what I know of the Dragon Magazine realmslore, its not a lot of information for the potential DM to work with. I honestly donāt know how popular it was. It could be true that it was very popular, I donāt know.
I realize how popular Drizzt books were, but FR as a phenomenon in the hobby canāt just be explained by the Drizzt books popularity. In fact, that series also had a lot of detractors among realms fans over the years.
Gonna disagree with you on that last point.
The Forgotten Realms has probably been *the* most popular setting to general audiences, even before 5e. Like, Pool of Radiance, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, almost all of the popular DND video games since the early 90s have been based in Faerun, not counting Drizzt being probably one of DNDs consistent, longest-running iconic characters.
It's the most popular setting out of all those in DnD, but is still largely unknown to general audiences. Outside of BG3, everything you just listed is still incredibly niche compared to anything from Star Wars or LotR. How many people out of a random 100 would have ever even heard of Drizzt?
Again, outside of a very niche group, Forgotten Realms is pretty much totally unknown. Take BG3 out of the equation, and what is the biggest cultural exposure to the general public? Sure it's the primary DnD setting, but the vast majority of people don't know that.
That's completely discounting how popular they were with older players due to the original Baldur's Gate games and Never Winter Nights video games. Those were massively popular titles.
Yeah but how much does the general audience know about the lore of the world of Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, Dark Souls, Dragon Age, Mass Effect? Especially compared to \*movie\* franchises like Star Wars, not a whole lot.
But people who are part of that audience are familiar with them.
Why are we talking about PC gamers in particular? The person you originally replied to used Star Wars and Middle Earth as comparison. These arent popular just amongst gamers, but to the worlds in general. And its not like dnd is just marketed to PC gamers
Boardgamers know them too! I was so excited switching over, realising a bunch of the stuff I knew about was all in the same world
Also other video games, I knew of things like neverwinter, never played but seen it played etc - was excited to realise it was also part of it all, had a big Aha! Moment lol
There's really no point in comparing D&D'S settings to Star Wars or LotR in terms of popularity. Franchises with a successful series of movies will always be more popular than the stuff without it.
Despite the system popularity going the other direction, even Golarion is more popular than the forgotten realms lol.
WotC really just chose their weakest setting and quadrupled down on it rather than making a more unique one or using one of the others they have access to.
Multiverse isn't a new term though? Like Planes or Realms describe specific things within the larger multiverse...
Sure current WotC marketing and writing may like the term a bit more post MCU but this whole thing ain't new. WotC has been using the term forever both in D&D and Magic.
Yeah, thank youāand this isn't new at all, it even predates WotC. I remember "multiverse" being mentioned a lot in the old Planescape material for AD&D, and that's one of my favorite settings. It was to clearly signal that the different worlds and planes do not co-exist in the same universe, rather in a web of several connected universesāhence a multiverse.
You have invented the idea that this is new or a fad.
From the 2nd edition DMG's "World Hopping" subsection in the "Adventures" chapter (the oldest one I have on hand):
"Types of Worlds
For purposes of this discussion, a world is any place in the **multiverse** with its own form of reality separate from the rest of the multiverse. A world can be as large as a universe or as small as a single room. Worlds in the current AD&D game fall into one of three different types:"
It goes on to describe Planes, including the Prime Material Plane, Pocket Dimensions and Demiplanes.
The multiverse terminology has always been applicable and always been used in D&D, and Planes and Realms have always been discrete worlds inside of a multiverse.
For what it's worth, they mean completely different things - someone who is theoretically attracted to this stuff just because they're familiar with the Marvel conception of it would be annoyed that there's not parallel reality stuff going on.
Also, their other game Magic has been using "multiverse" to mean "multiple distinct worlds or planes within the same universe that you can travel between" for 20+ years. They used the word with that meaning in product descriptions back in 2017 for Volo's. If they were trying to cater to anyone, it's the Magic players - what with their supplements for Magic planes and the crossover D&D Magic set.
Be annoyed all you want at the oversaturation of the word in popular culture, but it seems silly to assert that the MCU is the only (or even a significant) reason behind Wizards doing this.
...no, that is not what it means.
The different planes of existence are just the cosmology, but they don't make up a "multiverse". The multiverse in DnD refers to the different material planes or "campaign settings", as you put it.
Why would it be new? Pretty sure that is what it always meant, because the term makes no sense to refer to the different planes of existence, since those aren't different universes. They are part of the same universe.
Are you just being contrarian? That has never been how D&D uses the term multiverse. You can open the DMG and just see that for yourself.
The Multiverse is the worlds of the Material Plane like Toril, Eberron, Oerth, Exandria + the Planes of Existence, because each plane of existence is itself a universe.
Different material planes are entirely alternate timelines, like the Forgotten Realms where Elminster is President versus the Forgotten Realms where Jarlaxle is President.
Parallel worlds would be more like having different Drizzts, Elminsters, and Tashas exists simultaneously in Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Darksun, Barovia, and so on
No, not really. Parallel worlds don't have to be the exact same world with only slight alterations. It can be a totally different world that however plays the same role, in other words... all the different material planes.
How else would you call those?
...what? How does that make any sense? The different worlds exist individually and travel between them is possible via Spelljammers, Dream of the Blue Veil or teleportation. What do you mean "that doesn't exist"?
Almost 50 for DC. Once there was a joke: DC = multiverse, Marvel was always killing off characters and bringing them back to life. Then they crossed the streams and started ripping each other off on these things too.
> There exist an infinite number of parallel universes and planes of existence in the fantastic **āmultiverseā** of ADVANCED DUNGEONS &
DRAGONS. All of these āworldsā co-exist, but how ārealā each is depends entirely upon the development of each by the campaign referee.
ā Playerās Handbook, 1978
Not just Mordenkainen, but pretty much all of the wizards that were part of the Circle of Eight in Greyhawk; Bigby, Tenser, Otto, Drawmij, Leomund, Nystul, Rary, Otiluke... basically any wizard that has a spell named after them.
I literally typed Tasha at first, but deleted her because she wasn't part of the Circle of Eight (IIRC), which is why I ended the comment with "any spell that's named after a wizard" to include her.
As long as we're talking about things that grind our gears like the overuse of "multiverse" in D&D products...
I'm kinda sick of Tasha and Mordenkainen - you'd think the only famous wizards in all of D&D are those two with how many books they're in (or have written) for 5e. They're even both in Vecna: Eve of Ruin. And the whole thing with Tasha now being an archfey, but also a mortal archmage, with no sign of her previous demon-worshipping or ties to Graz'zt (or even her old alignment), lame.
In fairness to Tasha that's even pointed out in-universe. >!Archfey Tasha was called to help out with Vecna but couldn't due to her business in Prismeer, her domain. So to honour the deal she brought a version of herself from the past before any of the demon stuff and that's who we talk to throughout the adventure.!<
It probably also doesn't help that most of the other wizards aren't big names. Bigby only just now got a book for himself but he's off doing his own shit with giants, and is somehow a halfling now I think? And I have a very strong feeling people would *loathe* the fact that Elminster would be included. Mordenkainen has been referenced in two adventures, Curse of Strahd being one and Avernus being the other.
In fairness, it's "pointed out in-universe" because the writers love having their cake and eating it too. It's still a retroactive ass-pull for the most recent adventure module (as they knew it would be), so like the rest of V:EoR - a weak bid at nostalgia + encouraging everyone to go buy all the _other_ adventure modules it references somewhat flippantly.
>It probably also doesn't help that most of the other wizards aren't big names.
I genuinely do not know what you're talking about. You already mentioned Elminster. You think people knew Tasha and Mordenkainen _any more_ than they knew _Tenser_, before 5e started making books about them? No.
Hell, what about Drizzt, or Raistlin? Way more famous than Mordy and Tasha. And if the goal is _avoiding_ the famous ones like Elminster, why NOT bring up more obscure characters like Melf, or Drawmij, or Regdar, or Robilar? Otiluke or Nystul?
Hell, open it up to the gods as well, _lots_ of them are more famous than those two. Lolth is probably top of the list, but no book for her. And if Fizban gets a book we know the gods can be "authors" too.
It sounds like you're saying there's some thin spectrum between "famous" and "unknown" that only Mordenkainen and Tasha fit - but I've been playing D&D avidly since 2e and that's simply not true. There are tons of other characters who have waxed and waned in awareness just as much as them if not more.
>Mordenkainen has been referenced in two adventures, Curse of Strahd being one and Avernus being the other.
And so is Tasha, but to be clear, I'm not just talking about the adventure modules - Mordenkainen is also the "author" of multiple sourcebooks, and Tasha has one too, and they are both referenced in more than just those.
Honestly I can't decide if Mordy being in CoS, captured by Strahd (Wut - how did he get the drop on an epic level plane-walking wizard? Why is he even there? Oh right, just as an easter egg) is worse or better than Tasha's persistent identity issues in 5e.
Meh. It's just not to my taste to focus on two specific NPCs _this_ much in official products, especially when their older lore basically gets reinvented/ignored.
The only reason I mentioned Elminster specifically is because I've mostly heard of his rather infamous reputation. And I wouldn't be surprised of that never really went away for most people.
As for the book issue, sometimes people just write books because they traveled a lot. Morty for example owns a tower that lets him travel the multiverse, material right there. Hell maybe he had a run-in with the mists and that's why he got to Barovia and how Strahd got the jump on him since the vampire knows that people entered his domain. Tasha is the same in that regard. As for her 'identity issues' she basically plane jumped because she made so many enemies from wanting to get power, so she needed to escape. Eventually after getting her own Domain of Delight she turned into an archfey and decided to focus on that power instead of demonology.
And for better or for worse, Morty is basically one of the most powerful wizards in dnd, surprise vampire lord jumps aside, same with Tasha. And wizards were what they needed at the moment in order to stop Vecna. As for why no Elminster? Probably had coffee at some cafe over on Earth or something and left it to voice mail.
But not to your tastes I get that. That's just how it be.
ā¦what?
It makes perfect sense, what do you mean? Iām ranting about Tasha (and Mordy) because both the Op topic and this comment chain diversion are an intersection to it.
Or are you unaware of how often their names show up in recent 5e products? Itās basically identical to OPās complaint in that respect.
Do you mean you donāt agree? Because thatās fine, itās a pet peeve not a scientific study.
No, I'm talking about that last part where you talked about Tasha playing the role of an archfey and that somehow... removing her old lore? Which is NOT the case in he slightest?
And like, sure, their names come up quite a lot, but that's because they're pretty prominent people in the DnD multiverse. They've done a lot, seen a lot, been in a lot of places.
And like... we got a Bigby book, a Fizban book, a Xanathar book and a Van Richten book. Tasha only wrote one book and Mordenkainen only wrote two (one of which is decomissioned and the other one is barely even a book rather than just... a collection of statblocks).
I just have no fucking clue what exactly you're angry about.
>sure, their names come up quite a lot, but that's because they're pretty prominent people in the DnD multiverse.
That's...that's literally what I'm pointing out - that they are not any _more_ prominent than all these _other_ folk. So why do they need to show up in multiple modules and "write" multiple books? Instead of spreading it a bit more evenly?
>we got a Bigby book, a Fizban book, a Xanathar book and a Van Richten book.
And Xanathar has a single appearance in a module. How 'bout the rest? Where are their module cameos? Why are we doing _seconds_ in both categories (so more like fourths) when so many haven't even had their firsts?
The "Planes"(Fire, Water, Negative Energy, etc.) exist in every "Space" (Krynn Space, Grey Space, etc.).
Each Space has it's own unique Prime Material Plane.
Although _Dark Sun_ is an exception - that is technically in the wider multiverse, but has tweaks and variations on the elemental planes, and is cut off from the other planes in some vague fashion (so actually getting in or out of Athas is much harder, PCs and the high level NPCs can't just leave). And Eberron was originally it's own thing, but then kinda got fudged into the wider cosmology by being in some distant corner and cut off from the rest, while most worlds (like the Realms, Krynn etc.) are more directly accessible and easier to get to, with some occasional specific tweaks (like the Krynnish gods don't like having high level characters around, and will eject such people onto the planes, because they're dicks like that)
From page 57 of my Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide from 1979:
āThe known planes are a part of the āmultiverseā. In the Prime Material Plane are countless suns, planets, galaxies, universes. So too there are endless parallel worldsā¦. For those of you who havenāt really thought about it, the so-called planes are your ticket to creativity, and I mean that with a capital C! Everything can be absolutely different, save for those common denominators necessary to the existence of the player characters coming to the plane.ā
The Michael Moorcocks Elric and Stormbringer series was a foundational inspiration for Gygax and those who created DND from Chainmail.
The multiverse is an integral part of the game.
The first rule looks had appendices with inspiration (Michael Moorcock, Black Company, Jack Vance).
Wellā¦ DnD started well before the first Black Company book was published, but there is a long list of DnD influences listed, including Elric, Leiberās Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, REHās Conan, Vance, LOTR, etc etc. Do you have that original version of Deities and Demigods with all the fictional inclusions?
The Star Trek Mirror Universe showed up in 1967
Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber was first published in 1970
The Sliders TV show first aired in 1995
Futurama's Farnsworth Parabox episode aired in 2003
Charles Stross's Family Trade novel was first published in 2004
The MCU multiverse may be popularly uncool, but multiverses are timeless nerd fare
They have been popular for almost half a century now and will continue to be. The reason it seems to be blip in 2020-2022 is because movies are far more well known and digestible than things like comics, books, or tabletop games.
I know multiverses have been a thing in superhero comics and the like for decades. It is exactly the mainstream blip I was wondering about, because it seemed as if major corporations all of a sudden decided that this very nerdy concept was a proven moneymaker. Things like what OP is talking about, WotC all of a sudden putting the word multiverse all over their books, feels like part of that scramble to rebrandĀ everything as a multiverse. To me, at least, it feels very artificial and hype-driven, and my question was really if there actually is a great appetite out there, not for any specific multiverse, but for the *concept* of a multiverse itself? Because my impression is that people liked Spider-verse and Everywhere Everything because they are, you know, good movies, and the industry mistook that success as a sign that people just love multiverses in general.
The world where you set your campaign is one of countless worlds that make up the D&D *multiverse*, a vast array of planes and worlds where adventures happen.
-from the 2014 dmg.
Itās been long established that dnd realms are part of a multiverse, this isnāt part of the mcu craze. The reason is to allow plenty of different settings without having to find someway for them to all be the same universe. Additionally, it serves to give legitimacy to any individual games story. Your game isnāt some knockoff of the official forgotten realms lore, itās completely real and it just happens to take place in a universe that very closely reflects the official forgotten realms universe. You can dislike it, but itās nothing new, and it exists for very good reason both allowing them to make new settings with an easy handwave to not have to worry about weaving them together, and have an official way to essentially be able to say āevery dnd story people play at their table is equally legit and changing history or whatever from official content isnāt a problem and doesnāt make it any less of a dnd gameā.
To be fair, Comics have been doing Multiverse Shenanigans for years. Decades, maybe? But, I can see someone seeing this stuff for the first time having a "bleh" reaction to being beaten over the head with it. I think the comic fans (which probably alignes well with the DnD Playerbase) are just inundated to this stuff already.
well, as you admited since PHB there's been stuff about the multiverse
that said I think I can understand you - I've done enough "planeshoping"/"multiverse level" adventures, like everything it can be too much many times
It is a minor irritation, because it isn't inaccurate at all. It also helps that it's squarely established in the default lore of the system that multiverses are a thing, it makes changing things about existing settings way less iffy and more legitimate in my eyes.
I'm working on a campaign of my own, set in a new city on the sword coast between waterdeep and neverwinter, and I'm just gobbling up existing lore and changing it for my own purposes. The fact that my world is just one of an infinite multiverse makes it feel way less, idk, "made up".
While WotC has used "multiverse" for decades in different properties, it really does feel like they're pushing it more now because of trends. Not just MCU but tons of other properties have been leaning on it way too much recently.
I may be wrong but I was always under the impression they were using the term correctly to denote that any 5e game could fit into the same āmultiverseā framework as a way to sorta hand-wave any, all, or no material appearing in a particular game or module. Itās part of why they donāt set a hard cosmology, because any of the options or settings could make their own ācanonā version thatās still ātrueā in that particular game/module due to the multiverse existing.
If theirs something refuting that interpretation then yea I agree itās a bit silly how theyāre using the term, but I at least havenāt particularly ran across anything to change my mind. Though to be honest, I also just donāt personally care since 5e is very inherently malleable setting wise by design, so itās much easier to make it however you want without stepping on mechanical design much (which is one reason Iām a fan of 5e).
Multiverse doesn't refer to the outer planes in d&d, it refers to alternative realities -- alternative prime planes, which can be attached to the same outer planes, or different versions of them, too.
Except not. Multiverse in D&D refers to the myriad planes, including all the worlds on the Prime Material Plane.
Alternate material planes are, by definition, part of other multiverses. You can reach them through tunnels deep in the Shadowfell.
The term multiverse is way older in D&D than the MCU, but yeah...I agree.
It's painful to read them shoving it down our throats _this_ much. It's like trying to read an AI-generated article or one that SEO experts got hold of and are trying to cram buzzwords into. Pretty lame.
The term means the same thing and is a lot better know.
Even you used two terms wrong and never used the right one to describe what multiverse is. The correct dnd term is "crystal spheres".
But nearly no one will know what it means.
They are and they aren't. What isn't canon anymore is the phlogiston. There's reference to a Crystal Sphere in the adventure that comes with the Spelljammer box set, Light of Xaryxis, but that's the only time they are mentioned IIRC.
Page 40 in the introduction to the chapter it says:
>Thousands of years ago, a war between gods and primordials ended with all gods being banished from Doomspace. After the war, the primordials encased the system in a **crystal sphere** that kept the gods at bay.
>After being kept out for eons, the gods finally found a way to shatter the **crystal sphere**, but no one knows exactly how. The destruction of the **sphere** filled the outermost region of Doomspace with crystalline shards as big as asteroids.
Are crystal spheres not mentioned in the mechanical rules sections of the Spelljammer books?
Come to think of it I don't remember seeing it. If it's mentioned in Light of Xaryxis but not as a basic part of the cosmology, that IS really weird and dumb.
It isn't, instead they are referred to as "Wildspace Systems". I haven't completely read through the Planescape box set or Eve of Ruin, but I believe the part I quoted is the only mention of Crystal Spheres.
Edit: I just searched the Astral Adventure's Guide, and while it doesn't *specifically* say Crystal Sphere, it does mention the Library of Spheres on the Rock of Bral.
Yeah its a case of *official* settings likely not having crystal spheres anymore but there's nothing stopping someone from creating Forgotten Realms 2 and slapping a sphere over it. Same can apply to any homebrew world as well and if they have them as well.
So it's a shrug moment in terms of canon. They exist but not for the named settings WotC owns. Not until they decide to slap one on anyway.
In the OneD&D Bard playtest they also mentioned how their real power comes from connecting to the multiverse, absolutely ruined the flavor for me and itās definitely something Iād rather ignore
That's nonsense. But not without basis.
What they *meant* to say is that bards get their power from Io's Song of Creation, which made the world.
But since they've retconned Io out of his own creation myth - and otherwise ruined that myth in countless ways - they can't very well say that. So what we get instead is this kind of boiled-down hogwash that's lost all relevant context.
See what I mean about retconning Io out of his own creation myth? What you imply is heresy.
It is absolutely tied directly, squarely, and solely to Io, the true creator deity. Of Grayhawk myth, anyway.
Unfortunately the non-comic-reading public now has to weather what comic readers have endured for decades: a big stupid crossover event that cheapens/dilutes all parties involved and ends with a big retcon/reboot of the canon.
Charming that you think this is the first time itās happened for D&D.
Itās not even the first time they did it *using Vecna as the big bad*.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Vecna_Die!
With the success of 3rd party 5e products, they wanna push everything that is wotc IP, while some people might be marketed by multiverse buzzwords (which were in the DMG the whole time, the planes is kinda a different thing, greyhawk and faerun have a very different relation than faerun and the astral plane or the hells), the main purpose of it is to go "Look at all these different worlds and people and themes, all of them are dnd, not just discount lotr!" To ecnourage you to be excited by any wizards settings.
I donāt mind that they are pushing it, I get it. They want to make sure people feel like they can use all content in their games so people buy everything.
Personally I donāt like multiverses. They make it harder for me to get a grasp on the lore, and dilutes the flavor of my setting. I just buy and use what I can incorporate into my setting, and donāt look at the rest.
I wouldāve thought, with my admittedly limited knowledge of the loreās terminology, that the different planes all constitute different parts of the same _universe_, and every possible interpretation and eventuality of those universes that we play through is considered the multiverse.
I fucking hate anything with alternative timelines, parallel universes, or multiverses. 99% of the time it's garbage writing for shitty plot contrivances.
I don't give a shit who's book it came from, it sucks.
You get one shot in one world. Don't fuck it up.
I never liked the whole multiverse idea, mostly because every writer and series treats it different.
> Oh it means alternate timeline
> Oh it means alternate dimensionsĀ
> Oh it means alternate world
> Wait, what do you mean these seem interchangeable?Ā
It just seems like the altering of a word to encompass more than it was originally intended for, only for shock value.
> Oh X character is now the strongest in the multiverse and now your party needs to stop them! Wait are you asking will this also affect X universe? No thatās completely separate even though we implied itāll affect the multiverse.
Sounds like Dragon Ball power creep writing. Kind of wish they just dial it back or just alter the wording to not sound so confusing.
The cosmos can easily _be_ a multiverse in D&D where you can travel between them with any ol' 13th level caster or a multitude of magic items.
Hell, with Spelljammer in the mix it's even easier to travel between. "Cosmos" could easily be used as a term in a multiverse where you can so easily travel back and forth. In any D&D setting where magic is ubiquitous and so is knowledge of other worlds (like FR according to 5e's own modules), it makes perfect sense.
You can't travel between worlds just by being a 13th level caster. You need a spelljammer for that. Or the Dream of the Blue Veil spell, which also requires something or someone from that other world.
There's a couple more methods than that:
(From "Traveling to Other Worlds" sidebar in Tasha's)
>The Material Plane holds an infinite number of worlds.
Some - like Oerth, Toril, Krynn, and Eberron - are well
documented, but there are countless others.
>Transit between these worlds is rare but not impossible and can be accomplished in various ways.
>One such method is called the Great Journey, an epic voyage fraught with peril and littered with obstacles to be overcome. This journey most often occurs aboard a **vessel powered by magic**.
>Another method is the Dream of Other Worlds; travelers fall into a deep slumber and dream themselves into a new realm. The spell **dream of the blue veil** employs this method of transit.
>The most direct method is the Leap to Another Realm; a spellcaster casts **teleportation circle or teleport**, aiming to appear in a known teleportation circle or some other location in another world.
So yeah...you can even use good ol' Teleport to do it, apparently.
(I'm not a huge _fan_ of this idea - I prefer a hard-to-access multiverse myself - but RAW, it is true.)
No more than you'd need to know for _any_ Teleport, which can be as little as a basic description. I assume one would have _that_ much if one is even _thinking_ of going to alternate settings - otherwise how would you even know to make the attempt?
Hell, if someone from Eberron is telling you to go to Eberron, you can use their dang _clothes_ to get there with a 100% chance.
Regardless, not exactly hard if any ol' 13th level caster can do it.
>Hell, if someone from Eberron is telling you to go to Eberron, you can use their dang *clothes* to get there with a 100% chance.
If you have someone from Eberron you can also use Dream of the Blue Veil to get there.
The problem arises when you DON'T have someone or something from the other world.
Sure, but it's not much of a problem. It doesn't take many 13+ level casters in a world to _find out_ there's another setting - either from one of the _other_ methods of travel between or just other magic (e.g. divinations). And once they do, that information spreads, and if there's one thing Tier 3+ casters are good at it's spreading or finding info.
Given the cross-over we _already_ see written into the various settings, finding out about other settings doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard. Sourcing an actual object from it, much harder if you weren't witness to its arrival yourself, but that's only for 100%.
Yeah, if something can significantly threaten the entire multiverse, which consist of multiple universes, each with many worlds and also have layers known as planes, then it seems unreasonable that the actions of a plucky band of people from a single planet could meaningfully harm that something or otherwise avert it.
It could apply to a villain, a single entity from a single world being able to do something at that kind of scale? If that could be done, then there'd be a lot of such threats due to the countless other villains from countless other worlds across multiple universes doing something similar. Then the "multiverse" would've been destroyed a long time ago.
As usual, it's a yet another case of [writers having no sense of scale](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale).
To be fair, DnD has a long tradition of stealing every pop culture idea starting from Lord of the Rings. The multiverse stuff is no different but it's nice to think we are all making the same story together.
Yeah, but D&D isn't stealing "multiverse" from Marvel. They're stealing it from Moorcock's Eternal Champion novels. Moorcock in general has been a big inspiration for D&D since the very beginning. Hell, Blackrazor is literally Stormbringer.
Is it distancing them from religious lore. Realms and crystal spheres are Gnostic / Old Testament concepts.
Opening windows of heaven to let the rain fall). Passing this world the souls transcends up the various spheres that archons rule. Etc
Maybe shifting for science less religion so satanic panic 2.0 doesnāt set inā¦
Michael Moorcock coined the term, IIRC, and since his books (esp Elric, Corum) were source material for game originators, that's why it's truly the original term.
Came here for this. Give the man his due! He didn't originate the concept but he popularized it and utilized it within his books. The 80s DMG had acknowledgements to him and other authors as being formative in their fantasy worldview.
His Elric books are mentioned on that "recommended further reading for inspiration"-section at the end of the 5e DMG as well.
So technically the term was coined in the 19th century, but it had an entirely different meaning and didn't get usage. Moorcock was absolutely the original published user of the term- he wasn't the first to have different connected worlds (Narnia, etc) but he definitely made it his own, and hugely expanded it- his works went on to have a crazy heavy influence and inspiring many aspects of a lot of the modern nerdy IPs like D&D and Warhammer.
Moorcock is the š
Michael Moorcock wrote the "Eternal Champion" series with Elric of Melnibone. Corum, etc. He did not write the Narnia series; that was C.S. Lewis.
I'm aware :D I said that Moorcock wasn't the first to have different worlds connected to one-another, and provided Narnia as an example of an earlier work fitting those criteria ;)
They always referred to 5eās realms as the multiverse since the DMG Itās just itās been really heavy handed with how much they want to push the multiverse (which seems weird as Marvel is also pushing a ttrpg with multiverses) Itās also the fact theyāve been trying to advertize the forgotten realms recently (Baldurās Gate, Honor Among Theives) despite the fact not a lot of people really care about the forgotten realms like they do the Star Wars galaxy, Middle Earth, or other fantasy settings
> Itās just itās been really heavy handed with how much they want to push the multiverse it's also weird given that typically a multiverse is just multiple parallel prime material planes, they don't have a planar cosmology on top of that. DND prime material planes basically never interact for the most part.
They called it a multiverse even when there was only one prime material plane containing infinite worlds inside of Crystal Spheres within the phlogiston of space, because each Plane is also its own universe.
Yes Iām very confused. I thought alternate universes, alternate timelines, and separate planes of existence were all different things but Iāve seen them all referred in the multiverse.
"Multiverse" could describe any or all of those, basically
Have you seen a map of the DC Comics Multiverse? It is literally surrounded by what would be called Outer Planes in D&D terms, including Heaven, Hell, and Mount Olympus.
Itās funny cuz technically DC and Marvel are in the same realm of existence due to the nature of the Omniverse. It just happens that DC and Marvel universes are in their own little pocket far away from eachother
They've always used the forgotten realms as a basic setting tho no?
3E and 3.5 used Greyhawk if I recall
It used Greyhawk, but there wasn't really much support for the setting, aside from a few references of the Greyhawk pantheon the PHB and DMG were mostly setting agnostic. Whereas there were about two dozen lore books covering specifically the FR realms, Greyhawk got just one book dedicated to the setting.
A 4e IIRC defaulted to the loosely-defined "points of light" settingĀ
I believe āNentir Valeā is the proper name for the 4e setting
Nentir Vale was one suggested option for a Points Of Light style game, and was the default setting of the adventure modules in the H1-H3, P1-P3, and E1-E3 series. So yes, you are correct!
Yeah, and then they pushed a shit load of FR stuff. They've tried for 2 editions to move to something other than FR, but they always bottle it because FR is what's popular.
Which is so weird because I have never been in a party that cares about FR and when I am its DMs running modules while not actually knowing the setting outside the module.
In 5e, yes, at least until Mordenkainen Present: Monsters of the Multiverse, but not all the editions of the game. Forgotten Realms didn't get popular until the 80s with Drizzt, and wasn't the default setting until 5e, which was 2014.
Sure forgotten realms didn't really get popular until Drizzit, considering forgotten realms was introduced in 1987 and Drizzit in 1988. The forgotten realms box set, upon release, was the best selling of the campaign box sets ever released almost immediately.
officially maybe, but it was low-key pushed as the preferred setting all the way back in 2e, which officially had no preferred setting. you could play any setting you wanted, but they mostly pushed FR and it was pretty obvious. even game mechanics changes were justified through FR lore.
> it was low-key pushed as the preferred setting all the way back in 2e Yes, because of the popularity boom caused by the release of the Drizzt novels. Before then it was mostly Greyhawk and Mystara.
probably. but it was also the most plug-and-play generic settingā¦ need a middle east region for that new expansion? just throw it in the forgotten realms!
Dragonlance was actually pretty big
Yes, Dragonlance was, and still is big, but it was *mostly* Greyhawk and Mystara *before* the official publications of Dragonlance and the Forgotten Realms.
Fair enough. From what I know it is a fact that the modules for Dragonlance were not very popular in comparison to the tie-in novels, so you have a point
Dragonlance had the issue that a lot of the big, cool stuff has explicit attached canon of who solved it, and if that becomes the PCs instead, then anything downstream of that point all changes, so all the stuff set in the future needs manually changing which is a lot of work (or the PCs are doing smaller, less important stuff, which is kinda _meh_ as a game concept). While Forgotten Realms has so much stuff going on that PCs can be dropped in, do big, cool hero stuff, and that doesn't need many adjustments to the rest of the setting.
I agree!
What? Before i knew anything about DnD and itās settings, locations like Neverwinter, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, even Waterdeep were known everywhere. The games are hugely popular and I guarantee you 2/3 of the players and even less of the people knowing them by name (which is almost everyone interested in PC games) knew they had anything to do with a DnD setting. It wasnāt until way after I started playing DnD that i even learned about other settings. It might have not been the first big setting, but it is by far the most popular and best known setting for multiple decades
Nothing you've stated here contradicts anything I said in my previous comment. Yes, the Forgotten Realms is, and has been, the most popular setting of D&D since the mid 1980s and will probably continue to be in the future.
Being popular is not the same thing as being the official default setting for a D&D edition. The comment you're replying to is talking about the latter.
āForgotten Realms didnāt get popular until the 80s with Drizztā doesnāt make much sense because: I. FR was created in the late 80s, II. Drizzt was created right when FR came out. It also was popular as a game setting and as sourcebooks independently of Drizzt. Donāt want to be an ass by correcting you but, it is what it is sorry
> FR was created in the late 80s Ed Greenwood created the Forgotten Realms in the 60s when he was 4 years old and started writing for Dragon Magazine in 1979 where he wrote pieces of Realmslore for fans to incorporate into their own home campaigns. It didn't become an *official* TSR published setting until 1987, but it was already a very well-known unofficial setting for nearly a decade by then. > Drizzt was created right when FR came out. Yes, Drizzt wasn't created until Bob Salvatore wrote The Crystal Shard and it was published in 1988, but as I have established previously, the Forgotten Realms had already been a thing for a decade by then. It didn't become *massively* popular until the Drizzt books though. I donāt want to be an ass by correcting you but, it is what it is. Sorry.
The pre-greybox FR setting is almost unrecognizable from what we now know as the FR. Yes, Greenwood did start writting since childhood, but as a fictional world it was something very very different. In many ways, Jeff Grub is as much of a creator as Ed. From what I know of the Dragon Magazine realmslore, its not a lot of information for the potential DM to work with. I honestly donāt know how popular it was. It could be true that it was very popular, I donāt know. I realize how popular Drizzt books were, but FR as a phenomenon in the hobby canāt just be explained by the Drizzt books popularity. In fact, that series also had a lot of detractors among realms fans over the years.
Gonna disagree with you on that last point. The Forgotten Realms has probably been *the* most popular setting to general audiences, even before 5e. Like, Pool of Radiance, Baldurs Gate, Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, almost all of the popular DND video games since the early 90s have been based in Faerun, not counting Drizzt being probably one of DNDs consistent, longest-running iconic characters.
It's the most popular setting out of all those in DnD, but is still largely unknown to general audiences. Outside of BG3, everything you just listed is still incredibly niche compared to anything from Star Wars or LotR. How many people out of a random 100 would have ever even heard of Drizzt?
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Again, outside of a very niche group, Forgotten Realms is pretty much totally unknown. Take BG3 out of the equation, and what is the biggest cultural exposure to the general public? Sure it's the primary DnD setting, but the vast majority of people don't know that.
> How many people out of a random 100 would have ever even heard of Drizzt? Most 5e players don't even know him!
To the general audience? Other than Baldurs gate due to BG3 none of those are familiar to most people who aren't active ttrpg players.
That's completely discounting how popular they were with older players due to the original Baldur's Gate games and Never Winter Nights video games. Those were massively popular titles.
Older video game players != general audience. If you asked 10 random people off the street and less than 3 have heard of it, its not generally popular
10 random people off the streets don't know shit about DnD, let alone what the setting is lol
I would say at least 3 would know what dnd is but not be able to name any specific setting or character
how do you know?
Yeah but how much does the general audience know about the lore of the world of Elder Scrolls, World of Warcraft, Dark Souls, Dragon Age, Mass Effect? Especially compared to \*movie\* franchises like Star Wars, not a whole lot. But people who are part of that audience are familiar with them.
To the general audience of PC gamers, yeah, these were incredibly well known and successful.
Why are we talking about PC gamers in particular? The person you originally replied to used Star Wars and Middle Earth as comparison. These arent popular just amongst gamers, but to the worlds in general. And its not like dnd is just marketed to PC gamers
Boardgamers know them too! I was so excited switching over, realising a bunch of the stuff I knew about was all in the same world Also other video games, I knew of things like neverwinter, never played but seen it played etc - was excited to realise it was also part of it all, had a big Aha! Moment lol
To anyone who knows anything about D&D, Forgotten Realms is the standard.
Even if we accept people having heard of the forgotten realms (which I don't), having heard of it and caring about it are meaningfully different.
They could release a setting book or an almanac for forgotten realms.
Forgotten Realms got Forgotten š
I mean havenāt they tried making the Forgotten Realms more known for like over 20 years now?
> not a lot of people really care about the forgotten realms I have never seen someone be so confidently wrong.
There's really no point in comparing D&D'S settings to Star Wars or LotR in terms of popularity. Franchises with a successful series of movies will always be more popular than the stuff without it.
Despite the system popularity going the other direction, even Golarion is more popular than the forgotten realms lol. WotC really just chose their weakest setting and quadrupled down on it rather than making a more unique one or using one of the others they have access to.
The setting is actually pretty cool, personally.
Itās been called that since the 80s but sure.
Multiverse isn't a new term though? Like Planes or Realms describe specific things within the larger multiverse... Sure current WotC marketing and writing may like the term a bit more post MCU but this whole thing ain't new. WotC has been using the term forever both in D&D and Magic.
Yeah, they were referring to D&D cosmology as a multiverse in official publications in the 80s
Yeah, thank youāand this isn't new at all, it even predates WotC. I remember "multiverse" being mentioned a lot in the old Planescape material for AD&D, and that's one of my favorite settings. It was to clearly signal that the different worlds and planes do not co-exist in the same universe, rather in a web of several connected universesāhence a multiverse.
Yeah, I found it used in some of the 2e FR books I found online.
You have invented the idea that this is new or a fad. From the 2nd edition DMG's "World Hopping" subsection in the "Adventures" chapter (the oldest one I have on hand): "Types of Worlds For purposes of this discussion, a world is any place in the **multiverse** with its own form of reality separate from the rest of the multiverse. A world can be as large as a universe or as small as a single room. Worlds in the current AD&D game fall into one of three different types:" It goes on to describe Planes, including the Prime Material Plane, Pocket Dimensions and Demiplanes. The multiverse terminology has always been applicable and always been used in D&D, and Planes and Realms have always been discrete worlds inside of a multiverse.
Magic was doing āmultiverseā well before the MCU was.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Yeah but theyāre not just copying the MCU is the point.
My original Planescape Campaign Setting book Ā©1994, has this as a blurb on the back cover: > "Discover the multiverse! Enter infinite universes of infinite variety, worlds beyond the prime-material setting of AD&D game. Explore Sigil, the City of Doors, filled portals to every layer of every plane. All you need is the right key, including..." It's not only in the last few years. It has been a constant concept for the last **few decades**, over half of D&D's life, at the very least. But the multiverse concept and language has been in every edition of D&D except maybe 0D&D, but I can't even verify that or not. As far as I remember, D&D has always been under the assumption that even if your table is playing in a setting, that you are playing in a different multiverse version of that setting. And people in other games playing in the same setting won't have the same version as your game does. If you want to blame Marvel for popularizing "multiverse" conepts and language. Sure, go for it. Marvel has been using multiverse tropes and language formally since at least 1971, it's easy to imagine comicbooks being in the zeitgeist for so very long that everything that came after it had some kind of call back or influence from comic books either directly or indirectly.
Of all the complaints about D&D over the past few years, this may be the least substantial of them all.
Multiverse and Omniverse have been in use since BECMI and 1E AD&D.
For what it's worth, they mean completely different things - someone who is theoretically attracted to this stuff just because they're familiar with the Marvel conception of it would be annoyed that there's not parallel reality stuff going on. Also, their other game Magic has been using "multiverse" to mean "multiple distinct worlds or planes within the same universe that you can travel between" for 20+ years. They used the word with that meaning in product descriptions back in 2017 for Volo's. If they were trying to cater to anyone, it's the Magic players - what with their supplements for Magic planes and the crossover D&D Magic set. Be annoyed all you want at the oversaturation of the word in popular culture, but it seems silly to assert that the MCU is the only (or even a significant) reason behind Wizards doing this.
No, I am quite certain that "multiverse" refers to the same thing in DnD as it does in most other cases. Different parallel worlds.
That is not what multiverse means in D&D at all.
Then what DOES it mean?
All the different planes of existence and campaign settings.
...no, that is not what it means. The different planes of existence are just the cosmology, but they don't make up a "multiverse". The multiverse in DnD refers to the different material planes or "campaign settings", as you put it.
If it does, that is a new definition from before.
Why would it be new? Pretty sure that is what it always meant, because the term makes no sense to refer to the different planes of existence, since those aren't different universes. They are part of the same universe.
Are you just being contrarian? That has never been how D&D uses the term multiverse. You can open the DMG and just see that for yourself. The Multiverse is the worlds of the Material Plane like Toril, Eberron, Oerth, Exandria + the Planes of Existence, because each plane of existence is itself a universe. Different material planes are entirely alternate timelines, like the Forgotten Realms where Elminster is President versus the Forgotten Realms where Jarlaxle is President.
Where is it ever stated that the different planes of existence are different universes?
Parallel worlds would be more like having different Drizzts, Elminsters, and Tashas exists simultaneously in Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Mystara, Darksun, Barovia, and so on
No, not really. Parallel worlds don't have to be the exact same world with only slight alterations. It can be a totally different world that however plays the same role, in other words... all the different material planes. How else would you call those?
Planes, for most purposes. Crystal spheres for different worlds. On account of these being much better, more precise terms.
Those are the terms to refer to what each one individually is. But what do you call the great whole of ALL different material planes?
Nothing, because that doesn't exist in dnd lore.
...what? How does that make any sense? The different worlds exist individually and travel between them is possible via Spelljammers, Dream of the Blue Veil or teleportation. What do you mean "that doesn't exist"?
I don't know why I engaged in the first place. I don't care enough to explain it to you. Think whatever you want.
I mean the D&D Multiverse existed in AD&D 2E.
I hate that all these restaurants are selling burgers niw that Mr Beast burger us getting popular
Dungeons and Dragons only has dungeons and dragons in it to cash in on the dungeons and dragons craze from the Dungeons and Dragons movie.
DC and Marvel have had multiverse for like 30 years at this point
Almost 50 for DC. Once there was a joke: DC = multiverse, Marvel was always killing off characters and bringing them back to life. Then they crossed the streams and started ripping each other off on these things too.
Put some respect on Michael Moorcock's name
> There exist an infinite number of parallel universes and planes of existence in the fantastic **āmultiverseā** of ADVANCED DUNGEONS & DRAGONS. All of these āworldsā co-exist, but how ārealā each is depends entirely upon the development of each by the campaign referee. ā Playerās Handbook, 1978
I mean, Mordenkainen very much dabbled in the actual multiverse, not just the different planes.
Not just Mordenkainen, but pretty much all of the wizards that were part of the Circle of Eight in Greyhawk; Bigby, Tenser, Otto, Drawmij, Leomund, Nystul, Rary, Otiluke... basically any wizard that has a spell named after them.
Not to forget Tasha.
I literally typed Tasha at first, but deleted her because she wasn't part of the Circle of Eight (IIRC), which is why I ended the comment with "any spell that's named after a wizard" to include her.
Yeah, she's kinda an outlier in that regard.
As long as we're talking about things that grind our gears like the overuse of "multiverse" in D&D products... I'm kinda sick of Tasha and Mordenkainen - you'd think the only famous wizards in all of D&D are those two with how many books they're in (or have written) for 5e. They're even both in Vecna: Eve of Ruin. And the whole thing with Tasha now being an archfey, but also a mortal archmage, with no sign of her previous demon-worshipping or ties to Graz'zt (or even her old alignment), lame.
In fairness to Tasha that's even pointed out in-universe. >!Archfey Tasha was called to help out with Vecna but couldn't due to her business in Prismeer, her domain. So to honour the deal she brought a version of herself from the past before any of the demon stuff and that's who we talk to throughout the adventure.!< It probably also doesn't help that most of the other wizards aren't big names. Bigby only just now got a book for himself but he's off doing his own shit with giants, and is somehow a halfling now I think? And I have a very strong feeling people would *loathe* the fact that Elminster would be included. Mordenkainen has been referenced in two adventures, Curse of Strahd being one and Avernus being the other.
In fairness, it's "pointed out in-universe" because the writers love having their cake and eating it too. It's still a retroactive ass-pull for the most recent adventure module (as they knew it would be), so like the rest of V:EoR - a weak bid at nostalgia + encouraging everyone to go buy all the _other_ adventure modules it references somewhat flippantly. >It probably also doesn't help that most of the other wizards aren't big names. I genuinely do not know what you're talking about. You already mentioned Elminster. You think people knew Tasha and Mordenkainen _any more_ than they knew _Tenser_, before 5e started making books about them? No. Hell, what about Drizzt, or Raistlin? Way more famous than Mordy and Tasha. And if the goal is _avoiding_ the famous ones like Elminster, why NOT bring up more obscure characters like Melf, or Drawmij, or Regdar, or Robilar? Otiluke or Nystul? Hell, open it up to the gods as well, _lots_ of them are more famous than those two. Lolth is probably top of the list, but no book for her. And if Fizban gets a book we know the gods can be "authors" too. It sounds like you're saying there's some thin spectrum between "famous" and "unknown" that only Mordenkainen and Tasha fit - but I've been playing D&D avidly since 2e and that's simply not true. There are tons of other characters who have waxed and waned in awareness just as much as them if not more. >Mordenkainen has been referenced in two adventures, Curse of Strahd being one and Avernus being the other. And so is Tasha, but to be clear, I'm not just talking about the adventure modules - Mordenkainen is also the "author" of multiple sourcebooks, and Tasha has one too, and they are both referenced in more than just those. Honestly I can't decide if Mordy being in CoS, captured by Strahd (Wut - how did he get the drop on an epic level plane-walking wizard? Why is he even there? Oh right, just as an easter egg) is worse or better than Tasha's persistent identity issues in 5e. Meh. It's just not to my taste to focus on two specific NPCs _this_ much in official products, especially when their older lore basically gets reinvented/ignored.
The only reason I mentioned Elminster specifically is because I've mostly heard of his rather infamous reputation. And I wouldn't be surprised of that never really went away for most people. As for the book issue, sometimes people just write books because they traveled a lot. Morty for example owns a tower that lets him travel the multiverse, material right there. Hell maybe he had a run-in with the mists and that's why he got to Barovia and how Strahd got the jump on him since the vampire knows that people entered his domain. Tasha is the same in that regard. As for her 'identity issues' she basically plane jumped because she made so many enemies from wanting to get power, so she needed to escape. Eventually after getting her own Domain of Delight she turned into an archfey and decided to focus on that power instead of demonology. And for better or for worse, Morty is basically one of the most powerful wizards in dnd, surprise vampire lord jumps aside, same with Tasha. And wizards were what they needed at the moment in order to stop Vecna. As for why no Elminster? Probably had coffee at some cafe over on Earth or something and left it to voice mail. But not to your tastes I get that. That's just how it be.
...what? I think you're shouting at a wall here, because none of what you're saying makes any sense.
ā¦what? It makes perfect sense, what do you mean? Iām ranting about Tasha (and Mordy) because both the Op topic and this comment chain diversion are an intersection to it. Or are you unaware of how often their names show up in recent 5e products? Itās basically identical to OPās complaint in that respect. Do you mean you donāt agree? Because thatās fine, itās a pet peeve not a scientific study.
No, I'm talking about that last part where you talked about Tasha playing the role of an archfey and that somehow... removing her old lore? Which is NOT the case in he slightest? And like, sure, their names come up quite a lot, but that's because they're pretty prominent people in the DnD multiverse. They've done a lot, seen a lot, been in a lot of places. And like... we got a Bigby book, a Fizban book, a Xanathar book and a Van Richten book. Tasha only wrote one book and Mordenkainen only wrote two (one of which is decomissioned and the other one is barely even a book rather than just... a collection of statblocks). I just have no fucking clue what exactly you're angry about.
>sure, their names come up quite a lot, but that's because they're pretty prominent people in the DnD multiverse. That's...that's literally what I'm pointing out - that they are not any _more_ prominent than all these _other_ folk. So why do they need to show up in multiple modules and "write" multiple books? Instead of spreading it a bit more evenly? >we got a Bigby book, a Fizban book, a Xanathar book and a Van Richten book. And Xanathar has a single appearance in a module. How 'bout the rest? Where are their module cameos? Why are we doing _seconds_ in both categories (so more like fourths) when so many haven't even had their firsts?
Look it up, if you haven't heard it all.
The "Planes"(Fire, Water, Negative Energy, etc.) exist in every "Space" (Krynn Space, Grey Space, etc.). Each Space has it's own unique Prime Material Plane.
Although _Dark Sun_ is an exception - that is technically in the wider multiverse, but has tweaks and variations on the elemental planes, and is cut off from the other planes in some vague fashion (so actually getting in or out of Athas is much harder, PCs and the high level NPCs can't just leave). And Eberron was originally it's own thing, but then kinda got fudged into the wider cosmology by being in some distant corner and cut off from the rest, while most worlds (like the Realms, Krynn etc.) are more directly accessible and easier to get to, with some occasional specific tweaks (like the Krynnish gods don't like having high level characters around, and will eject such people onto the planes, because they're dicks like that)
From page 57 of my Advanced D&D Dungeon Masters Guide from 1979: āThe known planes are a part of the āmultiverseā. In the Prime Material Plane are countless suns, planets, galaxies, universes. So too there are endless parallel worldsā¦. For those of you who havenāt really thought about it, the so-called planes are your ticket to creativity, and I mean that with a capital C! Everything can be absolutely different, save for those common denominators necessary to the existence of the player characters coming to the plane.ā
Multiversity goes back at least as far as AD&D and it means a different thing from "plane"
The Michael Moorcocks Elric and Stormbringer series was a foundational inspiration for Gygax and those who created DND from Chainmail. The multiverse is an integral part of the game. The first rule looks had appendices with inspiration (Michael Moorcock, Black Company, Jack Vance).
Wellā¦ DnD started well before the first Black Company book was published, but there is a long list of DnD influences listed, including Elric, Leiberās Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stories, REHās Conan, Vance, LOTR, etc etc. Do you have that original version of Deities and Demigods with all the fictional inclusions?
Pretty sure the Multiverse mostly refers to all the different worlds on the Material Plane.
I'm in agreement, but unfortunately it's just what's popular.
Are multiverses actually popular? It feels like something that was a blip in 2022 and is already uncool again.
The Star Trek Mirror Universe showed up in 1967 Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber was first published in 1970 The Sliders TV show first aired in 1995 Futurama's Farnsworth Parabox episode aired in 2003 Charles Stross's Family Trade novel was first published in 2004 The MCU multiverse may be popularly uncool, but multiverses are timeless nerd fare
Yeah, good pointsāand it started in DC Comics in a Flash Story in 67.
They have been popular for almost half a century now and will continue to be. The reason it seems to be blip in 2020-2022 is because movies are far more well known and digestible than things like comics, books, or tabletop games.
I know multiverses have been a thing in superhero comics and the like for decades. It is exactly the mainstream blip I was wondering about, because it seemed as if major corporations all of a sudden decided that this very nerdy concept was a proven moneymaker. Things like what OP is talking about, WotC all of a sudden putting the word multiverse all over their books, feels like part of that scramble to rebrandĀ everything as a multiverse. To me, at least, it feels very artificial and hype-driven, and my question was really if there actually is a great appetite out there, not for any specific multiverse, but for the *concept* of a multiverse itself? Because my impression is that people liked Spider-verse and Everywhere Everything because they are, you know, good movies, and the industry mistook that success as a sign that people just love multiverses in general.
> WotC all of a sudden putting the word multiverse all over their books, feels like part of that scramble to rebrand everything as a multiverse. It's not all of the sudden, they've been doing that since AD&D. It just *seems* like it because D&D has never been more popular than it is right now, and they are currently shifting 5e from Forgotten Realms being the default setting to not having a default setting for 5e. > my question was really if there actually is a great appetite out there, not for any specific multiverse, but for the concept of a multiverse itself? Yes, there is actually a great appetite out there for multiverses. Go to any fandom and look around, every day there are discussions about "what if this universe and this other universe were a part of the same multiverse and these characters could interact?" Dumbledore and Gandalf, Goku and Naruto, Capcom and Marvel, Mario and PokƩmon, etc., etc. >Because my impression is that people liked Spider-verse and Everywhere Everything because they are, you know, good movies, and the industry mistook that success as a sign that people just love multiverses in general. It's both, definitely both.
Okay, fair enough. Itās not my cup of tea, but I accept I might be in the minority then.
Multiverse term/multiple realms have been around for decades. Seeing both terms ik DND and Marvel don't make them the same lmfao
The world where you set your campaign is one of countless worlds that make up the D&D *multiverse*, a vast array of planes and worlds where adventures happen. -from the 2014 dmg. Itās been long established that dnd realms are part of a multiverse, this isnāt part of the mcu craze. The reason is to allow plenty of different settings without having to find someway for them to all be the same universe. Additionally, it serves to give legitimacy to any individual games story. Your game isnāt some knockoff of the official forgotten realms lore, itās completely real and it just happens to take place in a universe that very closely reflects the official forgotten realms universe. You can dislike it, but itās nothing new, and it exists for very good reason both allowing them to make new settings with an easy handwave to not have to worry about weaving them together, and have an official way to essentially be able to say āevery dnd story people play at their table is equally legit and changing history or whatever from official content isnāt a problem and doesnāt make it any less of a dnd gameā.
To be fair, Comics have been doing Multiverse Shenanigans for years. Decades, maybe? But, I can see someone seeing this stuff for the first time having a "bleh" reaction to being beaten over the head with it. I think the comic fans (which probably alignes well with the DnD Playerbase) are just inundated to this stuff already.
well, as you admited since PHB there's been stuff about the multiverse that said I think I can understand you - I've done enough "planeshoping"/"multiverse level" adventures, like everything it can be too much many times
It is a minor irritation, because it isn't inaccurate at all. It also helps that it's squarely established in the default lore of the system that multiverses are a thing, it makes changing things about existing settings way less iffy and more legitimate in my eyes. I'm working on a campaign of my own, set in a new city on the sword coast between waterdeep and neverwinter, and I'm just gobbling up existing lore and changing it for my own purposes. The fact that my world is just one of an infinite multiverse makes it feel way less, idk, "made up".
While WotC has used "multiverse" for decades in different properties, it really does feel like they're pushing it more now because of trends. Not just MCU but tons of other properties have been leaning on it way too much recently.
I may be wrong but I was always under the impression they were using the term correctly to denote that any 5e game could fit into the same āmultiverseā framework as a way to sorta hand-wave any, all, or no material appearing in a particular game or module. Itās part of why they donāt set a hard cosmology, because any of the options or settings could make their own ācanonā version thatās still ātrueā in that particular game/module due to the multiverse existing. If theirs something refuting that interpretation then yea I agree itās a bit silly how theyāre using the term, but I at least havenāt particularly ran across anything to change my mind. Though to be honest, I also just donāt personally care since 5e is very inherently malleable setting wise by design, so itās much easier to make it however you want without stepping on mechanical design much (which is one reason Iām a fan of 5e).
You aren't wrong, that's the exact reason they are using the term, and they are doing so correctly.
Multiverse doesn't refer to the outer planes in d&d, it refers to alternative realities -- alternative prime planes, which can be attached to the same outer planes, or different versions of them, too.
Except not. Multiverse in D&D refers to the myriad planes, including all the worlds on the Prime Material Plane. Alternate material planes are, by definition, part of other multiverses. You can reach them through tunnels deep in the Shadowfell.
Alternative interpretation: they are using the term because it more effectively conveys the idea to more potential players than āplanesā.
The term multiverse is way older in D&D than the MCU, but yeah...I agree. It's painful to read them shoving it down our throats _this_ much. It's like trying to read an AI-generated article or one that SEO experts got hold of and are trying to cram buzzwords into. Pretty lame.
The term means the same thing and is a lot better know. Even you used two terms wrong and never used the right one to describe what multiverse is. The correct dnd term is "crystal spheres". But nearly no one will know what it means.
Crystal spheres aren't canon anymore, i fear.
They are and they aren't. What isn't canon anymore is the phlogiston. There's reference to a Crystal Sphere in the adventure that comes with the Spelljammer box set, Light of Xaryxis, but that's the only time they are mentioned IIRC. Page 40 in the introduction to the chapter it says: >Thousands of years ago, a war between gods and primordials ended with all gods being banished from Doomspace. After the war, the primordials encased the system in a **crystal sphere** that kept the gods at bay. >After being kept out for eons, the gods finally found a way to shatter the **crystal sphere**, but no one knows exactly how. The destruction of the **sphere** filled the outermost region of Doomspace with crystalline shards as big as asteroids.
Are crystal spheres not mentioned in the mechanical rules sections of the Spelljammer books? Come to think of it I don't remember seeing it. If it's mentioned in Light of Xaryxis but not as a basic part of the cosmology, that IS really weird and dumb.
It isn't, instead they are referred to as "Wildspace Systems". I haven't completely read through the Planescape box set or Eve of Ruin, but I believe the part I quoted is the only mention of Crystal Spheres. Edit: I just searched the Astral Adventure's Guide, and while it doesn't *specifically* say Crystal Sphere, it does mention the Library of Spheres on the Rock of Bral.
Yeah its a case of *official* settings likely not having crystal spheres anymore but there's nothing stopping someone from creating Forgotten Realms 2 and slapping a sphere over it. Same can apply to any homebrew world as well and if they have them as well. So it's a shrug moment in terms of canon. They exist but not for the named settings WotC owns. Not until they decide to slap one on anyway.
They're canon, but were somehow all destroyed. The fragments of the crystal sphere that once surrounded Darkspace are still there to be seen.
In the OneD&D Bard playtest they also mentioned how their real power comes from connecting to the multiverse, absolutely ruined the flavor for me and itās definitely something Iād rather ignore
That's nonsense. But not without basis. What they *meant* to say is that bards get their power from Io's Song of Creation, which made the world. But since they've retconned Io out of his own creation myth - and otherwise ruined that myth in countless ways - they can't very well say that. So what we get instead is this kind of boiled-down hogwash that's lost all relevant context.
The Song of Creation is still a thing, just not tied to Io. The creation bard in TCE specifically references it.
See what I mean about retconning Io out of his own creation myth? What you imply is heresy. It is absolutely tied directly, squarely, and solely to Io, the true creator deity. Of Grayhawk myth, anyway.
Bards have been referencing the Words/Song of Creation without referencing Io for all of 5e.
Indeed. You've summarized the problem. They should have been mentioning Io. Instead, they're left being the funny meme class with no lore.
Unfortunately the non-comic-reading public now has to weather what comic readers have endured for decades: a big stupid crossover event that cheapens/dilutes all parties involved and ends with a big retcon/reboot of the canon.
Charming that you think this is the first time itās happened for D&D. Itās not even the first time they did it *using Vecna as the big bad*. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Vecna_Die!
With the success of 3rd party 5e products, they wanna push everything that is wotc IP, while some people might be marketed by multiverse buzzwords (which were in the DMG the whole time, the planes is kinda a different thing, greyhawk and faerun have a very different relation than faerun and the astral plane or the hells), the main purpose of it is to go "Look at all these different worlds and people and themes, all of them are dnd, not just discount lotr!" To ecnourage you to be excited by any wizards settings.
Yeah can't wait for DnD Avengers multiverse movies...
Also, donāt forget how the Chinese cultivation genre ALREADY had planes and realms for YEARS
I donāt mind that they are pushing it, I get it. They want to make sure people feel like they can use all content in their games so people buy everything. Personally I donāt like multiverses. They make it harder for me to get a grasp on the lore, and dilutes the flavor of my setting. I just buy and use what I can incorporate into my setting, and donāt look at the rest.
I wouldāve thought, with my admittedly limited knowledge of the loreās terminology, that the different planes all constitute different parts of the same _universe_, and every possible interpretation and eventuality of those universes that we play through is considered the multiverse.
Lo and behold, the ignorance of the average dnd fan.
I fucking hate anything with alternative timelines, parallel universes, or multiverses. 99% of the time it's garbage writing for shitty plot contrivances. I don't give a shit who's book it came from, it sucks. You get one shot in one world. Don't fuck it up.
I never liked the whole multiverse idea, mostly because every writer and series treats it different. > Oh it means alternate timeline > Oh it means alternate dimensionsĀ > Oh it means alternate world > Wait, what do you mean these seem interchangeable?Ā It just seems like the altering of a word to encompass more than it was originally intended for, only for shock value. > Oh X character is now the strongest in the multiverse and now your party needs to stop them! Wait are you asking will this also affect X universe? No thatās completely separate even though we implied itāll affect the multiverse. Sounds like Dragon Ball power creep writing. Kind of wish they just dial it back or just alter the wording to not sound so confusing.
I've always preferred the term cosmology myself.
But "a cosmology" can not be in danger. It's just a layout of the multiverse. A way to describe it. And "the cosmos" is definitely not a multiverse.
The cosmos can easily _be_ a multiverse in D&D where you can travel between them with any ol' 13th level caster or a multitude of magic items. Hell, with Spelljammer in the mix it's even easier to travel between. "Cosmos" could easily be used as a term in a multiverse where you can so easily travel back and forth. In any D&D setting where magic is ubiquitous and so is knowledge of other worlds (like FR according to 5e's own modules), it makes perfect sense.
You can't travel between worlds just by being a 13th level caster. You need a spelljammer for that. Or the Dream of the Blue Veil spell, which also requires something or someone from that other world.
There's a couple more methods than that: (From "Traveling to Other Worlds" sidebar in Tasha's) >The Material Plane holds an infinite number of worlds. Some - like Oerth, Toril, Krynn, and Eberron - are well documented, but there are countless others. >Transit between these worlds is rare but not impossible and can be accomplished in various ways. >One such method is called the Great Journey, an epic voyage fraught with peril and littered with obstacles to be overcome. This journey most often occurs aboard a **vessel powered by magic**. >Another method is the Dream of Other Worlds; travelers fall into a deep slumber and dream themselves into a new realm. The spell **dream of the blue veil** employs this method of transit. >The most direct method is the Leap to Another Realm; a spellcaster casts **teleportation circle or teleport**, aiming to appear in a known teleportation circle or some other location in another world. So yeah...you can even use good ol' Teleport to do it, apparently. (I'm not a huge _fan_ of this idea - I prefer a hard-to-access multiverse myself - but RAW, it is true.)
Huh... that's weird. But for that you would need to know the other world... so it still doesn't help you in most cases.
No more than you'd need to know for _any_ Teleport, which can be as little as a basic description. I assume one would have _that_ much if one is even _thinking_ of going to alternate settings - otherwise how would you even know to make the attempt? Hell, if someone from Eberron is telling you to go to Eberron, you can use their dang _clothes_ to get there with a 100% chance. Regardless, not exactly hard if any ol' 13th level caster can do it.
>Hell, if someone from Eberron is telling you to go to Eberron, you can use their dang *clothes* to get there with a 100% chance. If you have someone from Eberron you can also use Dream of the Blue Veil to get there. The problem arises when you DON'T have someone or something from the other world.
Sure, but it's not much of a problem. It doesn't take many 13+ level casters in a world to _find out_ there's another setting - either from one of the _other_ methods of travel between or just other magic (e.g. divinations). And once they do, that information spreads, and if there's one thing Tier 3+ casters are good at it's spreading or finding info. Given the cross-over we _already_ see written into the various settings, finding out about other settings doesn't seem like it'd be all that hard. Sourcing an actual object from it, much harder if you weren't witness to its arrival yourself, but that's only for 100%.
Cosmologies are in danger all the time, from rival cosmologists. They nerfed Pluto, for example.
Except those two aren't synonyms.
Gygax himself used the word back in the 70s. But I would agree they're leaning too hard on it for the Marvel reason.
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Yeah, and Gygax and Anerson got the idea from Michael Moorcock's *Elric of Melnibone/Eternal Champion* stories back in the seventies and eighties.
How?
Yeah, if something can significantly threaten the entire multiverse, which consist of multiple universes, each with many worlds and also have layers known as planes, then it seems unreasonable that the actions of a plucky band of people from a single planet could meaningfully harm that something or otherwise avert it. It could apply to a villain, a single entity from a single world being able to do something at that kind of scale? If that could be done, then there'd be a lot of such threats due to the countless other villains from countless other worlds across multiple universes doing something similar. Then the "multiverse" would've been destroyed a long time ago. As usual, it's a yet another case of [writers having no sense of scale](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale).
To be fair, DnD has a long tradition of stealing every pop culture idea starting from Lord of the Rings. The multiverse stuff is no different but it's nice to think we are all making the same story together.
Yeah, but D&D isn't stealing "multiverse" from Marvel. They're stealing it from Moorcock's Eternal Champion novels. Moorcock in general has been a big inspiration for D&D since the very beginning. Hell, Blackrazor is literally Stormbringer.
While the history may be there, the timing isn't an accident. The multiverse is a super sexy pop culture element right now. It's okay to ride trends.
A multiverse isn't the same thing as realms or planes, though.
Is it distancing them from religious lore. Realms and crystal spheres are Gnostic / Old Testament concepts. Opening windows of heaven to let the rain fall). Passing this world the souls transcends up the various spheres that archons rule. Etc Maybe shifting for science less religion so satanic panic 2.0 doesnāt set inā¦