Campaign worlds colliding

[Promethean]

Has anyone else read about the world serpent Inn, spell jammer, or to a certain extent Ravenloft/Demiplanes of Dread and thought about what could happen just from some settings coming in contact with each other.

For example: If a spellcaster were to escape from Dark Sun/Athas and get into faerun(which would make them the second luckiest person in the multiverse, second only to anyone who escapes Ravenloft). Athas doesn't have it's own Weave, represented in the Dragon Magazine supplement that world serpent Inn appeared in by a feat spellcasters had to take in order to do magic in Athas. Imagine how much of an uproar a spellcaster that relied on neither the weave or the shadow weave would cause in the magic community in forgotten realms, How many mages would kill for the ability to use magic freely in any dead magic zone or be immune to having their spells taken away because mystra felt like it. It's worth a campaign in it's own right.

[Crake]

Has anyone else read about the world serpent Inn, spell jammer, or to a certain extent Ravenloft/Demiplanes of Dread and thought about what could happen just from some settings coming in contact with each other.

For example: If a spellcaster were to escape from Dark Sun/Athas and get into faerun(which would make them the second luckiest person in the multiverse, second only to anyone who escapes Ravenloft). Athas doesn't have it's own Weave, represented in the Dragon Magazine supplement that world serpent Inn appeared in by a feat spellcasters had to take in order to do magic in Athas. Imagine how much of an uproar a spellcaster that relied on neither the weave or the shadow weave would cause in the magic community in forgotten realms, How many mages would kill for the ability to use magic freely in any dead magic zone or be immune to having their spells taken away because mystra felt like it. It's worth a campaign in it's own right.

I've considered doing this, but between homebrew worlds that me and other DMs I know build and run. Far more interesting to collide worlds you're intimately familiar with, rather than ones that someone else made.

[schreier]

Dragonlance is another similar "different" magic (lunar). It would be interesting to see how the different users of magic interact across the various planes.

The Wizards Three series in Dragon Magazine can be a fun read with them all interacting. (Greyhawk / Faerun / Krynn). Not much from Dark sun obviously there. Seems like psionics users would be in better shape in that situation

[PacMan2247]

It can definitely be a good time. My wife ran a Spelljammer campaign a long time ago, and we worked together to put together everything we could remember of various campaigns we'd all been part of, to flesh out the worlds we were visiting over the course of the campaign. We put them all at different points in the story, too- some of them were before the events of our campaign, mostly recognizable by landmarks (and in one case, by the realization that we'd set in motion the events of the other campaign), others were during or after the other games, and all of it added some fun flavor.

[unseenmage]

Some GMs just let Plane Shift straight up connect differing campaign settings while others require at least Gate or Wish.

Canonically both Golarion and Faerun connect to the 'real world' already. And from there at least learning of other settings becomes doable.

Sigil, the World Serpent Inn, and the Infinite Staircase theoretically already connect everywhere to everywhere. So too does the Plane of Shadow. Go far enough into Deep Shadow and there's no telling where you'll wind up.

Planes like the Region of Dreams and the Far Realm also theoretically allow for travel to other cosmologies but the Dreamheart can be brutal and just don't the Far Realm. Just... no.

Spelljamming already is supposed to connect campaign settings and Planescape too is built to let alien worlds intermingle.

The Demiplane of Dread and it's Dark Powers already yoink persons and locales from the multiverse but being the type of creature it/they are or could become interested in is bad news since that force is composed entirely of suffering flavored GM fiat and plot.

Gods can yoink folk from wherever to wherever but again, composed of plot and thus fairly useless for a practical means of transport.

Lastly, Epic Spellcasting can literally do anything. I wonder what the DC is to bridge campaign settings? To bridge into other TRPGs entirely entirely? A day trip to the world of Creation from Exalted perhaps?

EDIT: I might have contemplated this at length and strongly considered starting a PbP game that basically follows the plot of the TV series Fringe with Eberron and Faerun as the alternate worlds...

[Buufreak]

EDIT: I might have contemplated this at length and strongly considered starting a PbP game that basically follows the plot of the TV series Fringe with Eberron and Faerun as the alternate worlds...

And I might equally contemplate jumping in on said theoretical game...

[schreier]

That would be awesome...

Btw what was the athas feat? Defilee?

[Zanos]

I generally try to avoid it. It's only really interesting for a non-series campaign, because most of the settings are written so differently that characters from one going to another kind of makes it a joke. A magic caster going from Athas showing up in the Realms for example would be interesting, but the strongest casters in Athas are under 20th level IIRC while FR has casters well into their 30s with piles of custom powers.

[Nifft]

Has anyone else read about the world serpent Inn, spell jammer, or to a certain extent Ravenloft/Demiplanes of Dread and thought about what could happen just from some settings coming in contact with each other. Well yeah, as far as I'm aware, the idea of traditional setting crossover is one of the larger meta-setting elements in Spelljammer and Planescape.


For example: If a spellcaster were to escape from Dark Sun/Athas and get into faerun(which would make them the second luckiest person in the multiverse, second only to anyone who escapes Ravenloft). Athas doesn't have it's own Weave, represented in the Dragon Magazine supplement that world serpent Inn appeared in by a feat spellcasters had to take in order to do magic in Athas. Imagine how much of an uproar a spellcaster that relied on neither the weave or the shadow weave would cause in the magic community in forgotten realms, How many mages would kill for the ability to use magic freely in any dead magic zone or be immune to having their spells taken away because mystra felt like it. It's worth a campaign in it's own right. IIRC that's not a thing Mystra actually does very often, since the one time she tried she got killed for her troubles.

So the first thing you'd need to do is figure out how anyone would know that this character is using special non-Weave magic.

To the kids in the Weave play-pen, it might look like their magic is identical, since it's all D&D spell effects.

[umbergod]

Well yeah, as far as I'm aware, the idea of traditional setting crossover is one of the larger meta-setting elements in Spelljammer and Planescape.

IIRC that's not a thing Mystra actually does very often, since the one time she tried she got killed for her troubles.

So the first thing you'd need to do is figure out how anyone would know that this character is using special non-Weave magic.

To the kids in the Weave play-pen, it might look like their magic is identical, since it's all D&D spell effects.

The one thing that'd stand out is that all Athas based casters get the Defiler feat and the subsequent ability to defile fertile land around them for an on the fly added punch to their magic.

[Promethean]

Another thing that occurs to me, If All campaign settings exist, doesn't that make gods look like CE parasites? I mean, with both post meteor krynn and pre rajaat-going-postal Athas floating around it doesn't seem like gods are particularly nessisary to any world's survival, and with the existance of things like the Wall of the faithless in faerun, the campaign settings they do have a direct hand in make them out to be massive D*cks to mortals

[Tvtyrant]

Another thing that occurs to me, If All campaign settings exist, doesn't that make gods look like CE parasites? I mean, with both post meteor krynn and pre rajaat-going-postal Athas floating around it doesn't seem like gods are particularly nessisary to any world's survival, and with the existance of things like the Wall of the faithless in faerun, the campaign settings they do have a direct hand in make them out to be massive D*cks to mortals

A fairly major plot point in FR is that gods provide protection for their followers, especially in the case of Imaskar where multiple gods entered the world ti overthrow the empire and save their followers.

[Promethean]

A fairly major plot point in FR is that gods provide protection for their followers, especially in the case of Imaskar where multiple gods entered the world ti overthrow the empire and save their followers.

Still honestly paints them like the mafia to me. Considering they basically force people to choice a patron deity to devote their lives too or suffer eternal punishment in the wall of the faithless, makes this sound alot like the "Insurance" mafia families would sell. Considering they also send any children too young to have a patron there too, I'd rather have them Not be around or at least letting sleeping dogs lie like in eberron.

[Arutema]

Canonically both Golarion and Faerun connect to the 'real world' already. And from there at least learning of other settings becomes doable.

There may be some problems of chronology however, given that the current year in Golarion maps to 1918 on Earth as of "Reign of Winter".

Though, speaking of timeline shenanigans, one could always add Starfinder to the mix, in which case Absalom station is at most 6 days of drift travel away, and from there it's at most 30 days of drift travel to get anywhere else.