Sell me on the "restricted" multiverse idea

[PhoenixPhyre]

Definition (for this thread): a restricted multiverse is one where there are many many settings with reasonably-easy (but not trivial) passage between settings but most play is intended to be in one setting with at most "visitors" from other settings.

For example, the 5e D&D concept of the multiverse, where all the published settings belong to a single cosmology and it is possible (via Spelljammer or spell or other means) to move between them, but most adventures assume a single sub-setting. This is different from something like Rifts (as I understand it), where universe-hopping/intersection is kinda the whole point and individual sub-universes aren't detailed nearly as much. A "true" multiverse would have only one setting--the multiverse itself; at the other end you have the "isolated universes" idea where each setting and its universe stands completely alone without intersection with any other.

To me, the restricted multiverse is the worst of all worlds:

Isolated universes can go all in on the variation aspect. You can have radically different games when one setting might have kebler elves and another might have Terry Pratchet elves and a third might have no elves at all and a fourth might have "standard" D&D elves. Or cosmologies (including pantheons, etc). Where the only things holding them together are a shared, "lore-free" skeleton of (generic) mechanics. It can also go hard on consistency--every element can be chosen to flow from the basic premises and cosmology, leaving a lean, mean setting that truly gets at the intended themes/tones, etc.

On the other hand, a true multiverse can go all-in on the wacky "kitchen-sink, but kinda makes sense because it's different universes" model. You can really have all sorts of things colliding, and you can craft a single coherent setting.

The mixed, "restricted multiverse" model gets neither side. You get the forced similarity of a single shared cosmology, but all the value of the weird-and-wacky variation is lost. Instead you just have the intrusion of incongruous elements (hey look, there's a walking robot man in my classically-medieval setting!) at random intervals. All of the downsides (as a DM/player), none of the upsides. While guaranteeing bland, homogenous "lore" (because it has to fit any possible setting). It's an awkward superposition of constraining and not constraining at the same time. Like a dress that binds where it should be loose and is loose where it should be fitted.

[NichG]

I'm not sure there's that much difference between true multiverse and restricted multiverse. But if I were to make sense of it, I'd say the point of a restricted multiverse is for doing things where there are different layers of metaphysics, such that multiverse travel is restricted based on being able to exist meaningfully and parse the higher meta level.

For example, universes that are connected by the fact that they're all different dreams of the sleeping deities of the multiverse. You can sort of get between them, but only by accepting that your existence is the idea of you and not anything about your body or powers or whatever.

If you want strong out of context reveals, it could be useful for that.

[RandomPeasant]

One player's "incongruous element" is another player's "important character concept". Sometimes you want your magic silver robot (Karn) in your gothic horror setting (Innistrad), and that's fine. Roleplaying games are about compromise, and "you get the thing you think is cool without having to retool the entire setting to incorporate it" is exactly the sort of compromise that makes them function.

[Mechalich]

This isn't really anything inherent to the concept of a multiverse, it's just a generalized guideline as to how your want the party to interact with the setting. Specifically, whatever the primary setting element happens to be, whether that's a town (common in Sword & Sorcery), an island (common in Age of Sail and 'pirate' fiction), a planet (common in space opera), or a bounded reality such as a dimension/plane (common in high magic or superhero settings), your deciding whether travel between these primary elements is rare or common and whether or not the focus is on the features of the setting element or the focus is on the shared cosmopolitan culture of those who travel.

For example, Planescape is the latter setup. The characters are presumed to be part of a broad, cosmopolitan community linked to planar travel through the city of Sigil, which serves as a neutral space guarded by fiat - the Lady of Pain - to preserve that culture from those who would destroy it, and wherever they go the characters bring the issues of that community - most obviously the Factions, but other stuff too - with them and they mostly interact with people who are either part of this shared culture or locals for the purpose of advancing the goals of that shared culture. By contrast Conan is arguably the former. Conan goes lots of places on his adventures, but this is presumed to be very rare in the Hyborian Age and Conan encounters few people like himself and each of the various places he spends time in has a different culture with different expectations and different stuff for him to get up to and limited continuity with any of the previous places he's been.

The advantage of a restriction is that because there's no shared cosmopolitan culture between the various travel locations, each new 'reality' is in a sense a completely new setting. The only thing moving from place to place is the characters - yes, in a game this means the rule set gets dragged along, but if the rules are sufficiently flexible this is not a huge problem, note that D&D is not sufficiently flexible, in any edition. This also has the secondary advantage of divorcing these adventures from some kind of overarching context that threatens to consume them. For example, Star Trek often tries to produce isolated and unique planets, sometimes including weird physics or even alternate realities, for the ship's crew to explore, but it is difficult to keep these stories isolated. There are greater overarching conflicts in the background, the ship can at least theoretically always call for help (a problem the writers had to work around a lot), and the crew always represents the Federation on at least some level.

Now, in the context of a TTRPG the characters are usually - not always, but usually - the weak link the story already, which reduces the benefit of this setup and makes overarching conflicts in a single shared culture that play easily to universal archetypes and themes easier. However, if you have high-commitment, high-immersion players who are actually interested in role-playing reactions to generally new horizons and circumstances, this can be beneficial.

[gbaji]

Yeah. There's a couple ways to approach this:

1. One set of game rules, and traveling to different universes/dimensions/whatever involve translating those rules for different settings (or translating the settings into the existing rules might be an easier way of thinking about it). This is probably the easiest way to manage this. You have to be careful with this (especially if travel is available via PC initiated action rather than GM scenario driven). I deal with this in my long running game by having different worlds have slightly different rules for magic/technology/whatever, such that there is some translation of spells/abilities (may work in a limited fashion, or may not work at all, or may work but in a completely different way). This allows for backwards restrictions, so if the characters from a high fantasy setting travel to "Shadowrun world", weapons and whatnot that they get there will just not work when they come back. No traveling to Robotech world and returning with a Mech and curbstomping everyone. Of course, you can introduce some tech/magic/artifact level stuff that may work properly anywhere, but you have to do this with caution. As a general rule, items that can function easily in the base rule system (without horribly breaking power levels) can maybe work well, but anything specialized to the one dimension/world they were in probably should not work when it's brought back home.

2. Worlds/dimensions are completely separate and distinct. The concept of characters being dreamed into existence is a good one. The idea that matter, energy, and reality itself doesn't actually move from one to another, but that the "idea" of the characters does. The characters get re-made in new forms (presumably analogues to their "real world" selves). This allows you to use completely different game systems in different worlds (and can be a lot of fun). This method automatically fixes the "bring back powerful stuff from another world" problem, but raises another: Don't forget that players tend to like when their characters gain not just levels/experience/whatever, but also items and abilities. If everything they gain is unusable or fades away once they return, there'd better be some serious game-scenario motivation for them to do this, and if you're constantly running the PCs through these "reality spanning" scenarios, be prepared for players to not be happy when after playing for X amount of time, they have very little to show for it item wise. I tend to use this only for somewhat extreme cosmic level scenarios where it's a short jaunt to "somewhere else" for some resolution or other, then they return having succeeded in that portion of the adventure and we return to our usual programming or something.


Obviously, if you have no intention or need for maintaining a longer running game world, then you can chuck out a lot of this. Although, I'm not sure why you wouldn't just play different games with different characters and go from there. It's a lot of work to translate characters from one game system to another, and unless you have some permanency going on in the first place, I'm not sure it's worth the bother. Again, this is my focus given that I run a long running continuous game world. Everything has to "fit" and not break things (too much). So I put a lot of focus on this. If you're just putting stuff out there and you and your players are fine with tossing one world into the trash and moving on to another, then your focus is going to be completely different.


What not to do though: We had a GM that for a period of time got really fascinated with certain computer tactical (more or less video) games, and kept running our PCs though dimensional portals where we were basically playing in these games. Was kinda fun for one time. Ok for the second. But after that I remember talking to one of our (newer) players and he was really complaining because he'd just started this character, picked skills and spells and whatnot, and absolutely zero of them had any effect on the game scenarios we were playing. Worse, all of the "stuff" we picked up were the stereotypical weapons and powerup style things you get in said video games, and were absolutely useless once we "returned home". Which might not be an issue in a D&D style level based game (cause you could still be awarded experience), but we were playing in a purely skill based game. So after playing his character for about a year in real time, he noticed that his character had not gained a single skill percentage, nor any items, no spells, no gains at all. We were just running through scenarios that seemed to have no purpose at all. The whole thing just felt like a waste of time.

On the flip side, we ran through a scenario with a broad story arc where we were trying to free some basic magical concept from an ancient prison thing. Near the end of the whole thing, we finally found all the pieces we needed to get to where it was imprisoned, and got transferred to another reality (more or less option 2) where our items/spells more or less didn't function, and we had to solve puzzles and figure out things in order to find the being we were freeing and open its cage or whatever. The point is that it was brief, tied into a larger scenario in which it had some broad impact on the game setting, and it was just one final component to a larger adventure in which lots of experience and items were gained along the way. So that worked very well and was rewarding as part of the finale. Additionally, we were granted a reward/boon for our troubles, which translated to points to spend basically creating permanent enhancements to the characters that completed the final portion and those *did* translate into real gains for the characters.

We also had another scenario in which our characters had to compete to achieve a "great victory" and gain some power which could be used in various ways in the "real world". In this one, the GM actually presented us with a set of character choices out of the Talisman game that represented "avatars" of our actual characters, and we played out said game. The character who won got to pick what to do with the power (there was a specific reason we were there, so that was the thing I think we were all going to do, but heck if I can remember what it was now). That character also got some reward that had some effect on the actual character (was enhanced in some way). The rest just woke up the same as they were before.

That one was also very fun. And yeah, also more or less option 2, but with rewards that can be applied back to the "real world" to benefit the character(s), but in ways that fit into said world well. So yeah. Lots of specific ways to handle this, but I do think that most will fit into one of the two broad methods.

[False God]

I'm not sure how your logic tracks.

How do you get from "These universes share a connection on the regular in various ways." to "These universes must be samey."? Further, I don't see how randos from other universes MUST be present in every universe. Further further, even if it is samey, I don't see how that makes it uninteresting. Paris and Tokyo are samey in that they're both dense major metrpolis' full of humans and visitors from elsewhere, but they're still very different.

The "universe" is a rather big place. Just because Gort traveled from Universe A to Universe B, doesn't mean he's on the same planet, much less the same solar system or even galaxy as whatever world the party exists on.

And even if Gort does, the reaction to this can vary from locale to locale, same as it could from Some Guy traveling from Some Town to Some Other Town. Town B need not be any more tolerant or accepting of travelers than Universe B. Just like travel around the world, the level of travel between any two points can be highly variable.

Maybe there IS a Giant Metal Man in some semi-earth-like-fantasy-world, but that world is kinda like some podunk town in the middle of Wyoming, not many folks go there because there isn't much reason for them to do so. Even if Giant Metal Man does go there, it's unlikely his visit will be anything but brief.

[PhoenixPhyre]

One player's "incongruous element" is another player's "important character concept". Sometimes you want your magic silver robot (Karn) in your gothic horror setting (Innistrad), and that's fine. Roleplaying games are about compromise, and "you get the thing you think is cool without having to retool the entire setting to incorporate it" is exactly the sort of compromise that makes them function.

I'm a big believer in setting invariants. And that setting comes way before character concepts. Character concepts come out of the setting and should fit it. Saying "we want to play a real-world WWII game" and someone saying "ok, I'll bring my D&D wizard" just doesn't fit. And aggressively so--you can't shoehorn it in.

And yes, you do have to retool the entire setting to incorporate those completely alien elements. Or accept that your setting is going to be lowest-common-denominator meaningless kitchen-sink. If everything is available, then there is place for nothing.

A true multiverse gets around this by defining a single setting that incorporates multiple possibilities and accepts the contradiction as a core invariant. Then it really becomes about how the characters interact with the weirdness. A restricted multiverse (which shares the same cosmology) ends up being neither varied nor consistent. It's just a mess of things thrown together.

This isn't really anything inherent to the concept of a multiverse, it's just a generalized guideline as to how your want the party to interact with the setting. Specifically, whatever the primary setting element happens to be, whether that's a town (common in Sword & Sorcery), an island (common in Age of Sail and 'pirate' fiction), a planet (common in space opera), or a bounded reality such as a dimension/plane (common in high magic or superhero settings), your deciding whether travel between these primary elements is rare or common and whether or not the focus is on the features of the setting element or the focus is on the shared cosmopolitan culture of those who travel.

For example, Planescape is the latter setup. The characters are presumed to be part of a broad, cosmopolitan community linked to planar travel through the city of Sigil, which serves as a neutral space guarded by fiat - the Lady of Pain - to preserve that culture from those who would destroy it, and wherever they go the characters bring the issues of that community - most obviously the Factions, but other stuff too - with them and they mostly interact with people who are either part of this shared culture or locals for the purpose of advancing the goals of that shared culture. By contrast Conan is arguably the former. Conan goes lots of places on his adventures, but this is presumed to be very rare in the Hyborian Age and Conan encounters few people like himself and each of the various places he spends time in has a different culture with different expectations and different stuff for him to get up to and limited continuity with any of the previous places he's been.

The advantage of a restriction is that because there's no shared cosmopolitan culture between the various travel locations, each new 'reality' is in a sense a completely new setting. The only thing moving from place to place is the characters - yes, in a game this means the rule set gets dragged along, but if the rules are sufficiently flexible this is not a huge problem, note that D&D is not sufficiently flexible, in any edition. This also has the secondary advantage of divorcing these adventures from some kind of overarching context that threatens to consume them. For example, Star Trek often tries to produce isolated and unique planets, sometimes including weird physics or even alternate realities, for the ship's crew to explore, but it is difficult to keep these stories isolated. There are greater overarching conflicts in the background, the ship can at least theoretically always call for help (a problem the writers had to work around a lot), and the crew always represents the Federation on at least some level.

Now, in the context of a TTRPG the characters are usually - not always, but usually - the weak link the story already, which reduces the benefit of this setup and makes overarching conflicts in a single shared culture that play easily to universal archetypes and themes easier. However, if you have high-commitment, high-immersion players who are actually interested in role-playing reactions to generally new horizons and circumstances, this can be beneficial.

That doesn't sound like a restricted multiverse. If you're regularly traveling (as opposed to "we're in Hyperborea but this random dude from Star Trek dropped in with full gear", which is what a restricted multiverse gives you) to different settings, then they're really all one big setting. Star Trek is an example of this gone wrong--in the end, all the differences become washed out and you just have technobabble gluing a bunch of things together. Star Trek has nothing like a coherent world/universe.

Restricted multiverses, unlike isolated settings, also end up with a power level equal to the strongest power level. Because those other settings can come and take over. A true multiverse doesn't allow that either because the powers are incompatible (ie if you take a Star Trek phaser into a Star Wars universe, it just doesn't work or it works like a blaster) or because everything's full on gonzo universal cold war.

----------

Personally (if you haven't noticed), I'm a big fan of the isolated setting. Every setting should have 100% freedom to define things like cosmology, pantheons, origins of races, available character concepts, and those invariants should be respected by everyone. "I have this nifty character idea" should only come after filtering out the ones that don't fit the setting. Or ideally, characters should arise organically from within the setting without reference to external ideas. No "superhero X, but in <setting>" things....unless you're playing a superhero game where that's a valid character. Limits and invariants are what make things interesting.

[Jay R]

The universe should be such that the story concepts planned can work well. [And the DM needs to provide good story concepts.]

Definition (for this thread): a restricted multiverse is one where there are many many settings with reasonably-easy (but not trivial) passage between settings but most play is intended to be in one setting with at most "visitors" from other settings.

For example, the 5e D&D concept of the multiverse, where all the published settings belong to a single cosmology and it is possible (via Spelljammer or spell or other means) to move between them, but most adventures assume a single sub-setting. This is different from something like Rifts (as I understand it), where universe-hopping/intersection is kinda the whole point and individual sub-universes aren't detailed nearly as much. A "true" multiverse would have only one setting--the multiverse itself; at the other end you have the "isolated universes" idea where each setting and its universe stands completely alone without intersection with any other.

To me, the restricted multiverse is the worst of all worlds:

Isolated universes can go all in on the variation aspect. You can have radically different games when one setting might have kebler elves and another might have Terry Pratchet elves and a third might have no elves at all and a fourth might have "standard" D&D elves. Or cosmologies (including pantheons, etc). Where the only things holding them together are a shared, "lore-free" skeleton of (generic) mechanics. It can also go hard on consistency--every element can be chosen to flow from the basic premises and cosmology, leaving a lean, mean setting that truly gets at the intended themes/tones, etc.

On the other hand, a true multiverse can go all-in on the wacky "kitchen-sink, but kinda makes sense because it's different universes" model. You can really have all sorts of things colliding, and you can craft a single coherent setting.

The mixed, "restricted multiverse" model gets neither side. You get the forced similarity of a single shared cosmology, but all the value of the weird-and-wacky variation is lost. Instead you just have the intrusion of incongruous elements (hey look, there's a walking robot man in my classically-medieval setting!) at random intervals. All of the downsides (as a DM/player), none of the upsides. While guaranteeing bland, homogenous "lore" (because it has to fit any possible setting). It's an awkward superposition of constraining and not constraining at the same time. Like a dress that binds where it should be loose and is loose where it should be fitted.

Not one single concept mentioned here as an upside forces good stories, and not one single concept mentioned here as a downside prevents good stories.

The universe should be such that the story concepts planned can work well. [And the DM needs to provide good story concepts.]

My current game has a basic "prime material plane" where most action will take place. There are times when there is no magic at all, and it's a generic medieval world, and there are times (including the current one) when magic is entering the universe, allowing caster classes and working magic. It also starts allowing denizens from other planes into that one. In the first two sessions, the PCs found kobolds, orcs, ogres, nixies, a quasit, zombies, and an entwife -- all in a universe where none of them usually exist.

The entire structure of the game calls for a universe with many settings but most play is intended to be in one setting, with at most "visitors" from other settings.

We have had seven sessions, and the players seem fascinated.

The universe should be such that the story concepts planned can work well. [And the DM needs to provide good story concepts.]

That's all.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'm not sure how your logic tracks.

How do you get from "These universes share a connection on the regular in various ways." to "These universes must be samey."? Further, I don't see how randos from other universes MUST be present in every universe. Further further, even if it is samey, I don't see how that makes it uninteresting. Paris and Tokyo are samey in that they're both dense major metrpolis' full of humans and visitors from elsewhere, but they're still very different.

The "universe" is a rather big place. Just because Gort traveled from Universe A to Universe B, doesn't mean he's on the same planet, much less the same solar system or even galaxy as whatever world the party exists on.

And even if Gort does, the reaction to this can vary from locale to locale, same as it could from Some Guy traveling from Some Town to Some Other Town. Town B need not be any more tolerant or accepting of travelers than Universe B. Just like travel around the world, the level of travel between any two points can be highly variable.

Maybe there IS a Giant Metal Man in some semi-earth-like-fantasy-world, but that world is kinda like some podunk town in the middle of Wyoming, not many folks go there because there isn't much reason for them to do so. Even if Giant Metal Man does go there, it's unlikely his visit will be anything but brief.

I'm specifically thinking here of things like D&D 5e, which has gone all in on "each setting is basically a planet in the greater universe, and cross-setting traffic is frequent enough that everything exists everywhere" as well as "every setting has the exact same cosmological structure, named characters, gods (even if they call them different names), devils and demons, and even dragons are the same in every setting. Every elf is descended from Correllon, every world has "drow" that are tied to an underdark and eladrin that are tied to the feywild, and they all have the same traits, every world even has all the same spells, with the same names (including those named after famous people." To the level that if someone discovers a spell to create a nice floating disk, they'll also know that it's called Tenser's Floating Disk and that it was really invented by a guy named Tenser. Etc.

In that model, the only allowable differences are cosmetic. And you're fully expected to drop any character of any race or class into any game and not have any friction. Published in some obscure setting book? Yup, you can find him everywhere, even in areas that haven't seen outsiders in millennia. Every dwarf everywhere has an innate love of tools because Moradin. What, you want a setting where dwarves are atheist nomadic horse-riders? Nope, they have to be underground tool wielders who worship Moradin (by some name or other). Etc.

It leans really hard into the "it's all a cosmopolitan kitchen sink, races are just purely cosmetic, no one ever looks at you weird" model because it tries really hard not to publish anything that anyone anywhere might possibly get offended by. Which results in it not having any meat at all.

[Gnoman]

I'm not an expert on 5e D&D, but my limited experience says that doesn't sound right. The PHB even explicitly says "there's different gods in different settings, here are the more common sets for easy reference".

[Psyren]

The whole point, at least in a gaming context, is so you can use the stuff from setting book A in campaign setting B and give the DM a starting point for explaining that in a Watsonian sense.

If that doesn't appeal to you, that's perfectly okay - but it means there isn't really anything to "sell you on." Generally speaking, either you buy into that premise and its benefits, or you don't.



As a sidenote, you can have gameplay-divergent Keebler Elves and Pratchett Elves etc. in a multiverse setting with basically no extra work. Just have the former be a different mechanical race with that label, like Forest Gnomes, and be called "Elves" on their world. (Which is basically what they are, anyway.)

[PhoenixPhyre]

The whole point, at least in a gaming context, is so you can use the stuff from setting book A in campaign setting B and give the DM a starting point for explaining that in a Watsonian sense.

If that doesn't appeal to you, that's perfectly okay - but it means there isn't really anything to "sell you on." Generally speaking, either you buy into that premise and its benefits, or you don't.



As a sidenote, you can have gameplay-divergent Keebler Elves and Pratchett Elves etc. in a multiverse setting with basically no extra work. Just have the former be a different mechanical race with that label, like Forest Gnomes, and be called "Elves" on their world. (Which is basically what they are, anyway.)

AKA "sell more books", setting consistency and worldbuilding be darned. That's fine in a commercial sense, but inevitably (as far as I can tell) weakens the product. I have yet to see a piece of worldbuilding enhanced by introducing a multiverse that wasn't part of the core concept from the beginning. And even then...

@Gnoman--they've changed the philosophy starting in about Tasha's. Now it's all multiverse all the time, like it or not. Every published setting and every piece of published material presumes that there is one multiverse and one origin for everything and that everything is exactly the same everywhere except cosmetically.

[Telok]

For example, the 5e D&D concept of the multiverse, where all the published settings belong to a single cosmology and it is possible (via Spelljammer or spell or other means) to move between them, but most adventures assume a single sub-setting. This is different from something like Rifts (as I understand it), where universe-hopping/intersection is kinda the whole point and individual sub-universes aren't detailed nearly as much. A "true" multiverse would have only one setting--the multiverse itself; at the other end you have the "isolated universes" idea where each setting and its universe stands completely alone without intersection with any other.

Ironically the current 5e implementation of "multiverse" is basically "fantasy Rifts". There's one primary setting detailed that you play in (standard Earth version with add-ons), stuff falls into the main setting as required by plot, and some random splatbooks exist with half baked off-world setting pieces. The cut scenes for translating from world to world have been rendered functinally inconsequential as a couple level appropriate fight scenes with a no-effect "explore weird place" paint job.

[halfeye]

We hsd an old thread (don't reply in that thread, it's dead) about a subject related to this in the media forum:

https://forums.giantitp.com/showthre...ses-in-fiction

[PhoenixPhyre]

Ironically the current 5e implementation of "multiverse" is basically "fantasy Rifts". There's one primary setting detailed that you play in (standard Earth version with add-ons), stuff falls into the main setting as required by plot, and some random splatbooks exist with half baked off-world setting pieces. The cut scenes for translating from world to world have been rendered functinally inconsequential as a couple level appropriate fight scenes with a no-effect "explore weird place" paint job.

Without any of the charm and wildness. It's "fantasy Rifts"...as compiled by committee 9-hells-bent on not offending anyone or presenting anything controversial.

[Telok]

Without any of the charm and wildness. It's "fantasy Rifts"...as compiled by committee 9-hells-bent on not offending anyone or presenting anything controversial.

Agree. But then I'm a nutso who has scraped probably a dozen wikis for different games & media to get background details for Acid Trip: The Setting for my next game.

[False God]

I'm specifically thinking here of things like D&D 5e, which has gone all in on "each setting is basically a planet in the greater universe, and cross-setting traffic is frequent enough that everything exists everywhere" as well as "every setting has the exact same cosmological structure, named characters, gods (even if they call them different names), devils and demons, and even dragons are the same in every setting. Every elf is descended from Correllon, every world has "drow" that are tied to an underdark and eladrin that are tied to the feywild, and they all have the same traits, every world even has all the same spells, with the same names (including those named after famous people." To the level that if someone discovers a spell to create a nice floating disk, they'll also know that it's called Tenser's Floating Disk and that it was really invented by a guy named Tenser. Etc.

In that model, the only allowable differences are cosmetic. And you're fully expected to drop any character of any race or class into any game and not have any friction. Published in some obscure setting book? Yup, you can find him everywhere, even in areas that haven't seen outsiders in millennia. Every dwarf everywhere has an innate love of tools because Moradin. What, you want a setting where dwarves are atheist nomadic horse-riders? Nope, they have to be underground tool wielders who worship Moradin (by some name or other). Etc.

It leans really hard into the "it's all a cosmopolitan kitchen sink, races are just purely cosmetic, no one ever looks at you weird" model because it tries really hard not to publish anything that anyone anywhere might possibly get offended by. Which results in it not having any meat at all.

I'm not a particular fan of 5E's cosmology.

But outside of 5E, or using 5E for purely the system, I think a "restricted multiverse" that is, one where visitors are common and there is strong commonality between them because the underlying rules are the same and therefore the potential outcomes are similar (ie: humanoids all have 2 arms, two legs, 1 head, etc....) are perfectly reasonable.

Including worlds where up is down, where nothing works as we know it, where everything is made from paint is creative, but your group will likely experience so little of it that the work required just isn't worth it.

But IMO, in a multiverse setup, restricted or not, I think a lot of the non-primary-play worlds will be simple set pieces, and they don't require more thought than that. You stop by Town A in World A and meet Group of People A, resolve the problem and move on. What the rest of their universe looks like doesn't really matter. No, it doesn't need to actually be a multiverse in this setup, it could be a planet with a lot of variety, a galaxy, but again, you're really just showing off this interesting set piece and once The Problem has been resolved, you move on.

Star Wars, for example, has a lot "set piece worlds", where you see one or two limited locales across the entire world and nothing else. No deeper dive into the nations or various cultures or people, just a short encounter with a specific group that makes no greater implication about the world as a whole. Once we have solved The Problem, the party moves on to the next one. Mario is an equally great example of this.

[Satinavian]

IME it is usually done do have the possibility to do a crossover arc. There is a certain appeal to mix and match different antagonists and protagonists, to play lots of culture shock and try out thing in a new environment. There is a reason it happens all the time in both fanfics and in comics, it is popular.

The second possibility is to do a single arc exploring a new, unknown, different environment. That is usually done to shake things up or bring some other perspective or to take a break from the current campaign.



Personally i don't need it much in my games. There are often even less intrusive versions : "dreamworld", "fey worlds", "mystic experience astral quest world" etc. that are by nature even better contained and still allow the GM to insert an episode in whatever setting.

[Mechalich]

Star Wars, for example, has a lot "set piece worlds", where you see one or two limited locales across the entire world and nothing else. No deeper dive into the nations or various cultures or people, just a short encounter with a specific group that makes no greater implication about the world as a whole. Once we have solved The Problem, the party moves on to the next one. Mario is an equally great example of this.

Star Wars is a universe where travel is easy. Spaceships are treated like cars and going to another planet is like driving down the highway to next town over. Consequently, Star Wars has a universal culture that, while not open to everyone in the galaxy (especially aliens whose minds don't fit its functionality, ex. Colicoids) it is presumed the PCs, and basically any recurring NPC will be members of. Local problems, in Star Wars, are usually tied into some vastly greater galactic scale conflict.

But yes, a serial format wherein the hero(es) got to place X, solve problem Y with the help of friendly local Z, and then move on when done never to return does commonly have a restricted setup. Specifically the restriction is that travel is rare and that most people can't or don't travel from place to place. Often the restriction is that only a tiny group of chosen individuals can travel at all. Magic: the Gathering is a good example of a universe like this - only planeswalkers can travel between the realms with any sort of reliability and they are almost incalculably rare to the point that they basically all know each other personally. The various planes are largely siloed from each other, with only the actions of planeswalkers able to breach those boundaries.

[RandomPeasant]

I'm a big believer in setting invariants. And that setting comes way before character concepts. Character concepts come out of the setting and should fit it. Saying "we want to play a real-world WWII game" and someone saying "ok, I'll bring my D&D wizard" just doesn't fit. And aggressively so--you can't shoehorn it in.

But that's a much larger differential than most of these "restricted multiverse" things are about. Yes, "D&D Wizard in WWII" doesn't work. But if "this guy is a lizardfolk when there mostly aren't lizardfolk" breaks your worldbuilding, you did bad worldbuilding. Similarly, if someone wants to show up with some non-standard class (like an Incarnate or a Binder in 3e), that only breaks the game if the designers give those classes capabilities that are themselves game-breaking -- and those break the game if you give them to the standard classes too.

And yes, you do have to retool the entire setting to incorporate those completely alien elements. Or accept that your setting is going to be lowest-common-denominator meaningless kitchen-sink. If everything is available, then there is place for nothing.

There is a large difference between "we could go over that hill and find anything, regardless of its consistency with the rest of the setting" and "Larry's character is the only Treefolk and the only Warlock we have ever encountered". The whole reason you have a restricted multiverse is so that all the retooling you need to do to accommodate a specific thing is say "and by the way, this weirdo showed up".

Every setting should have 100% freedom to define things like cosmology, pantheons, origins of races, available character concepts, and those invariants should be respected by everyone.

Then those invariants should be defined by everyone. The game belongs to everyone in it, coming from a position of "this is what allowed and if you want anything else sod off" is just unproductive. It does not break your setting to have a Warforged Duskblade when you expected Gishes to be Elven Wizard/Fighters.

Consequently, Star Wars has a universal culture that, while not open to everyone in the galaxy (especially aliens whose minds don't fit its functionality, ex. Colicoids) it is presumed the PCs, and basically any recurring NPC will be members of.

Star Wars has a universal culture in the way that the real world has a universal culture. But there's a lot of variation within that culture, just as there is in the real world. The culture of the Mandalorians is quite different from that of Coruscant, which in turn are different from various Sith or Jedi factions.

[Quertus]

Suppose I have a world where there’s a deadly disease that’s thrived on the planet for millennia. It spreads through multiple vectors, trans-species, including a highly infectious airborne vector that targets the Y chromosome.

In that world, the human population is all female clones. Other species, the males are often sickly, often passing the disease along in the act of mating, meaning animals have adapted with large litters and strong “constitutions”.

Trying to talk about adding “males” to such a setting could, of course, receive pushback in the form of just how stupid that is, given the disease, and how suboptimal it is compared to the established female cloning in the setting.

But that don’t make *this* world (where we’re posting) incoherent.

Point is, if you want people to sell you on the value of “the world of Man”, you may need to drop some of your preconceptions in order to hear what they’re saying.

I'm a big believer in setting invariants. And that setting comes way before character concepts. Character concepts come out of the setting and should fit it. Saying "we want to play a real-world WWII game" and someone saying "ok, I'll bring my D&D wizard" just doesn't fit. And aggressively so--you can't shoehorn it in.

And yet, the story of a D&D Wizard in WW2 could be an interesting one. Simple, honest question: can you imagine such a story being interesting? (Personally, I imagine it as a short story - a very short story, in which the clueless Wizard, unable to comprehend what’s going on, doesn’t see the elephant, and gets filled with lead while everyone else takes cover / drops prone / whatever. I think that’s the most likely story of that particular crossover, at least - and I find that those who deprioritize character often overlook that particular story.)

In my kind of multiverse, there are an infinite number of worlds that have followed our history up until that point. On this particular world that we happen to be looking at, perhaps the world will have a visitor, perhaps it will not. Shrug.

The point of a game is to choose a particular setup that will be good to play through. “Multiverse setting, world that up till now has followed our history. The setting is WW2”? Yeah, that’s a good start for a game, regardless of whether anyone takes an off-worlder or not.

I have yet to see a piece of worldbuilding enhanced by introducing a multiverse that wasn't part of the core concept from the beginning. And even then...

If you transitioned from thinking of “D&D Wizard in WW2 doesn’t fit” to “D&D Wizard in WW2 would make an interesting story”, if the focus of your world-building was on facilitating interesting stories rather than limiting yourself to certain types of stories, I’d contend it was entirely possible that your world-building might be improved. At least, I’d say mine was when I focused on what stories I could tell.

I mean, I’m deeply into world-building. But if you don’t accept the basic concept of the multiverse, then yeah, it’s hard to accept it. Which is why I suggest the infinite multiverse, and the “no one has happened to go here before” concept.

But that doesn’t help with your specific issue. To whit:

I'm specifically thinking here of things like D&D 5e,

and they all have the same traits, every world even has all the same spells, with the same names (including those named after famous people."

Let’s use Evard’s Black Tentacles as an example.

Obviously, no one has invented Evard’s Black Tentacles in Rifts, or Warhammer, or Pac-Man, or Shadowrun, or the WW2 setting. Why would you ever imagine that anyone (other than Evard) would invent it in a D&D setting? In fact, why would anyone have invented Sleep, or Magic Missile?

The answer is, they wouldn’t have. All world-building that doesn’t take that fact into account, that doesn’t invent a whole new arcane spell book for each world or accept branching realities / Flow of information between worlds / some other similar concept to explain similarities between worlds is ****. It’s like saying, “see these two worlds with completely different maps, cultures, technologies, and languages? Yeah, they’re completely different, but they both developed Pac-Man. And Asteroids. And Centipede and Joust and Mario Party and DOAX Beach Volleyball and Minecraft and…”

That’s just murder to suspension of disbelief.

Now, that’s an awful lot of work, working up a whole new set of spells for each supposedly sealed-off, never interacted with the outside Greater multiverse setting. So the lazy Gamist says, “it’s just a game, let’s sacrifice setting consistency for gameplay, eh?”

As someone who is a good programmer and therefore lazy, and who cares about setting consistency, my settings have answers, such as being open to the Greater multiverse. EDIT: in other words, to my mind, the existence of the multiverse helps with world-building. I don’t get why you consider it a detriment.

As someone who supposedly puts setting first, what do you do?

Limits and invariants are what make things interesting.

If taken as a definition, that would make The White Room interesting. Instead, consider “complexity and consistency are what make things interesting”.

[Mastikator]

I'm specifically thinking here of things like D&D 5e, which has gone all in on "each setting is basically a planet in the greater universe, and cross-setting traffic is frequent enough that everything exists everywhere" as well as "every setting has the exact same cosmological structure, named characters, gods (even if they call them different names), devils and demons, and even dragons are the same in every setting. Every elf is descended from Correllon, every world has "drow" that are tied to an underdark and eladrin that are tied to the feywild, and they all have the same traits, every world even has all the same spells, with the same names (including those named after famous people." To the level that if someone discovers a spell to create a nice floating disk, they'll also know that it's called Tenser's Floating Disk and that it was really invented by a guy named Tenser. Etc.

In that model, the only allowable differences are cosmetic. And you're fully expected to drop any character of any race or class into any game and not have any friction. Published in some obscure setting book? Yup, you can find him everywhere, even in areas that haven't seen outsiders in millennia. Every dwarf everywhere has an innate love of tools because Moradin. What, you want a setting where dwarves are atheist nomadic horse-riders? Nope, they have to be underground tool wielders who worship Moradin (by some name or other). Etc.

It leans really hard into the "it's all a cosmopolitan kitchen sink, races are just purely cosmetic, no one ever looks at you weird" model because it tries really hard not to publish anything that anyone anywhere might possibly get offended by. Which results in it not having any meat at all.

But D&D 5e isn't just a restricted multiverse, it's a restricted multi-multiverse. There are entire separate cosmologies that can be fully disconnected to the great wheel thingy. Like Eberron, or any homebrew setting with homebrew planes.

My problem with this restricted multiverse isn't that the great wheel exists but rather that the DMG itself tells the DM which planes exist and the PHB tells the player that dwarves live underground and halflings are jolly. THIS is the problem. The DMG should tell the DM how to make a cosmology, and the PHB should tell the player how halflings work physically.

The problem is that the DMG, MM and PHB all double as the Forgotten Realms campaign setting book. Halflings are NOT jolly in Darksun or Eberron. The core books should not be campaign setting books, there should instead just be a book on the forgotten realms, and that book can contain the great wheel cosmology.

So why does Dragonlance and Greyhawk use the great wheel too? Because the writers are too lazy to make up something original.

[Quertus]

Sell me on the multiverse? Well, I’ve already written a targeted attempt, and I’ll not try and sell a particular bad implementation of a multiverse, so instead I’ll just focus this post on a general pitch.

The multiverse is your friend, and can be for a great many reasons. As I’ve already stated and alluded, it explains similarities between worlds, and greatly reduces a GM’s workload in creating a believable setting using shared building blocks.

And it’s not just spells - technology, culture, art, clothing, language, construction techniques, every piece of the setting that isn’t hand-crafted by the GM for the setting can be explained as “familiar” by the connection to the Greater multiverse.

It allows the greatest diversity of content that explicitly isn’t required to have a native home or origin in that setting: if you don’t have Dragons in your setting, my half-Dragon can simply be from a world with Dragons, or the Dragon that impregnated my mom could have done so “on vacation”. You could have Drow seemingly wiped out, yet resurface (heh) at a later date with no incongruity. No fuss, no muss, everything just works.

It allows you the greatest possible breadth of stories and settings. Sure, you could tell a Star Wars story that took place entirely on one planet, limited exclusively to characters who are all natives of that planet, but, if you accept the idea of multiple planets, it opens up stories that span multiple planets, or involve beings from multiple planets. And these different planets might have different environments that might challenge or be utilized by the characters in different ways. Same thing with universes in a multiverse.

There’s plenty of “alt-history” stories where our world was shaped by aliens, or deities, or time-travelers, or beings from other dimensions (including programmers, like in The Matrix). Should not other worlds also be capable of telling such stories? Why should a fictional world be more limited in its scope of stories than the “real” one?

What would a D&D Wizard do in Star Trek, or Warhammer 40k, or WW2? I haven’t a clue, but, to my mind, that’s an interesting question. “What is a D&D Wizard” is a question I personally find interesting; and, when the players of the Star Trek / Warhammer 40k / WW2 game are ignorant of “D&D”, and don’t just see that the Wizard “doesn’t belong”, that’s when they get to be seen for what they truly are. Similarly, “what is this setting” is also best answered by an outsider.

D&D in particular has a long and glorious history of world-hopping, that it’s a disservice to the history and legacy of the game to ignore. “Mage’s Disjunction”, indeed!

But most any setting can benefit from the inclusion of the multiverse into its DNA - even if that inclusion is simply of the form, “but no one has made the voyage… yet.”.

That’s my attempt at a generic elevator pitch for the concept of the multiverse.

[Psyren]

AKA "sell more books", setting consistency and worldbuilding be darned. That's fine in a commercial sense, but inevitably (as far as I can tell) weakens the product. I have yet to see a piece of worldbuilding enhanced by introducing a multiverse that wasn't part of the core concept from the beginning. And even then..

@Gnoman--they've changed the philosophy starting in about Tasha's. Now it's all multiverse all the time, like it or not. Every published setting and every piece of published material presumes that there is one multiverse and one origin for everything and that everything is exactly the same everywhere except cosmetically.

"Selling more books" is a two-party transaction; for them to do that means more people are buying those books, which means there is demand for that content. That you think it weakens the product in your opinion is your prerogative, but clearly others don't agree.

IME it is usually done do have the possibility to do a crossover arc. There is a certain appeal to mix and match different antagonists and protagonists, to play lots of culture shock and try out thing in a new environment. There is a reason it happens all the time in both fanfics and in comics, it is popular.

The second possibility is to do a single arc exploring a new, unknown, different environment. That is usually done to shake things up or bring some other perspective or to take a break from the current campaign.

I'd say the primary benefit of a multiverse is to distill what is core or fundamental to the identity of a creation or brand. Consider the MCU for example - we saw in Loki that there were at least a dozen versions of the character, but they all shared traits that made them recognizable as Loki, such as a god complex / need for validation, low cunning, distrust of authority other than themselves, and an affinity for illusion magic.

For D&D specifically, a multiverse allows them to distill the elements of a given official setting that allow it to feel like D&D, such as the presence of elves, humans, dwarves and dragons in some form, but allowing them to play with different expressions of those core concepts. Eberron elves, Ravnica elves, Krynn elves and Faerun elves are all very different from one another, but not so different that a newcomer can't pick up those settings and still recognize them all as being elves.

[KorvinStarmast]

I'm not an expert on 5e D&D, but my limited experience says that doesn't sound right. The PHB even explicitly says "there's different gods in different settings, here are the more common sets for easy reference".

The opening to Fizban's Treasury of Dragon's is where the 5e Devs threw down the gauntlet.

But if "this guy is a lizardfolk when there mostly aren't lizardfolk" breaks your worldbuilding, you did bad worldbuilding.

No, they didn't.
This is you making the accusation of badwrongfun based on your opinion, and as you know opinions are like navels.

There is no requirement for lizardfolk to exist in any setting. None. It's the call of the DM.
If you play at my table, you will find that Tiefling's as a PC race do not exist.
Genasi do, however. OG Genasi (EE Player Supplement) but I may fold in the more recent version soon if someone wants to play one.

If you play at some other tables, you will find that Multiclassing doesn't exist.

If you play at some other tables, you fill find that feats don't exist.

You don't get to dictate to others how to do worldbuilding or apply optional rules.
(~ AL is of course an exception to the above since it tries to be open to as much produced material as it can as a matter of good business practice ~ even though AL had some restrictions on alignment and on a few races). In the main, though, DM's aren't world building in AL in the same way that they do in a normal campaign).
IMO, PHB+1 was the better idea for AL, but I guess that ship has sailed.

---

For Phoenix: a problem that needs to be explored under this topic is:
"When you go from one world / setting to the other, what doesn't work in setting Y in the same was as it does in setting X?"

From one place to another, for example, magic works differently. (Dark Sun being a nice example from 2e AD&D). The lazy brains at WoTC have, through their attempt at 'it's all one multiverse because we said do' in Fizban's, are unwilling to consider that in World X/Setting X, certain magics don't work, or work differently, and so on. When I try to cast 'remove curse' in Setting Y, for example, something different happens in setting Y than in setting X; or a rosebush nearby suddenly blooms/dies as a side effect.

This gambit by WoTC devs is an aid to 'standardization' for their purposes, but it often is disruptive to coherent worldbuilding. Then again, some DM's don't want to do much world building. For them this is in the noise level.

I'm not a particular fan of 5E's cosmology.

I'll go out on a limb and suggest that 5e doesn't actually have a cosmology, but FR has one (IMO a bad one). See also DMG pages 10-13 on Forces and Philosophies.

About Spelljammer: I think they put the cart before the horse in 5e on this one. It feels to me that Spelljammer is something fundamentally based on the Planescape setting...and Sigil as the nexus of a particular multiverse, or 'verse as they'd say in Serenity/Firefly.

[gbaji]

What would a D&D Wizard do in Star Trek, or Warhammer 40k, or WW2? I haven’t a clue, but, to my mind, that’s an interesting question. “What is a D&D Wizard” is a question I personally find interesting; and, when the players of the Star Trek / Warhammer 40k / WW2 game are ignorant of “D&D”, and don’t just see that the Wizard “doesn’t belong”, that’s when they get to be seen for what they truly are. Similarly, “what is this setting” is also best answered by an outsider.

There are other problems to consider though. Do these different universes all share the same core cosmology, or are they different? Do the "rules" of magic/technology/whatever work the same everywhere, or differently in different places.

You asked the question: "What is a D&D wizard?", but the more relevant question is the follow up: "And why don't they already exist in Star Trek world?". If the magic a D&D wizard uses works when he travels to Star Trek world, then one has to ask why there aren't already magic users there? And if Phasers and Warp drive work in Star Trek world, why don't they exist already in your D&D setting? Why does a powerful deity in one world, not have a presence in another? Are they restricted to their one world? Maybe a few worlds? All, but only if there's worship there? And how does that work if you have a world where divine spellcasting doesn't exist or work? And if it does, how do you explain why no one there uses it?

I tend to lean towards "open" worlds in that you can travel to other worlds, but "restricted" in that it's rare and difficult to travel and also that each world has its own rules entirely. Magic may work differently, or not at all. Technology maybe works in one world, but not in another (so that Star Wars blaster is just a crude club in many worlds). So yeah, in my game, the PCs can travel to other worlds, but it's always a risk, most likely most of their magic spells/abilities/items wont work (or wont work the same at least), and they'll be in a world full of people who have developed their own items/magic/tech/abilities that *do* work in their world, so the party will almost always be at a disadvantage. It's a place to visit, if you really have to for some reason, but not a lot of reason to stay or to go back.

It tends to work. Allows us to try out different settings and make it so there is other stuff "out there". I really do feel that the most dangerous risk of allowing this too much in a game is that the game itself loses its focus and feel. If you allow any character type from any game system/setting in your game, you can expect that players will come up with the ones most likely to break things. Depending on your game and table, this may be just fine. But for many game settings it will make it into a huge mess. YMMV of course.

If my players really want to play in a completely different setting with a different set of actual game rules, we'll just play that other game instead. I'm just not a fan of having players want to take their beloved character from gameA and play it (or a version of it) in gameB. Just create a new character in the new game. Variety is good.

[NichG]

In general I think one danger of a multiverse featuring strongly in a campaign is that it makes it much more important for players to feel strongly connected to the world/country/city/etc they're playing in. Otherwise 'eh, things are really bad here with the necromantic tides, let's just evacuate everyone into Elysium, it's literally heaven' or 'go ahead and kill me, that's just a free plane shift to a being such as I' sorts of responses can become easy.

Why would anyone stay in Dark Sun if they could leave? You have to have a good answer, or the game might just become about trying to find a way out and ignoring whatever is threatening Tyr.

Or you end up running a campaign about multiverse -scale threats and actors.

[Psyren]

The opening to Fizban's Treasury of Dragon's is where the 5e Devs threw down the gauntlet.

Do you mean the First World stuff? Sure it gives a Watsonian explanation for why every published D&D setting features dragons in some capacity (because they have to from a Doylist perspective too), but ultimately it's still a theory/rumor/myth that the DM can disregard if they want.

In general I think one danger of a multiverse featuring strongly in a campaign is that it makes it much more important for players to feel strongly connected to the world/country/city/etc they're playing in. Otherwise 'eh, things are really bad here with the necromantic tides, let's just evacuate everyone into Elysium, it's literally heaven' or 'go ahead and kill me, that's just a free plane shift to a being such as I' sorts of responses can become easy.

Why would anyone stay in Dark Sun if they could leave? You have to have a good answer, or the game might just become about trying to find a way out and ignoring whatever is threatening Tyr.

Or you end up running a campaign about multiverse -scale threats and actors.

"The multiverse exists and {setting} is part of it" does not in any way have to mean "going from one setting to another is easy (or even possible) for most people" nor even does it have to mean "the inhabitants of that setting are aware that a multiverse exists."

You're right that if leaving Dark Sun or Ravenloft were an option for most inhabitants they probably would. But you can have a multiverse without making that option available to them. The PCs are already assumed to be special baseline after all.

[Osuniev]

Personally (if you haven't noticed), I'm a big fan of the isolated setting. Every setting should have 100% freedom to define things like cosmology, pantheons, origins of races, available character concepts, and those invariants should be respected by everyone. "I have this nifty character idea" should only come after filtering out the ones that don't fit the setting. Or ideally, characters should arise organically from within the setting without reference to external ideas. No "superhero X, but in <setting>" things....unless you're playing a superhero game where that's a valid character. Limits and invariants are what make things interesting.

Agreed. My last campaign, I sent my players a list of 6 races, 10 classes, 15 "backgrounds" etc and said "this is it".
It made them coherent and helped the new players to not get overwhelmed.

[False God]

I'm specifically thinking here of things like D&D 5e, which has gone all in on "each setting is basically a planet in the greater universe, and cross-setting traffic is frequent enough that everything exists everywhere" as well as "every setting has the exact same cosmological structure, named characters, gods (even if they call them different names), devils and demons, and even dragons are the same in every setting. Every elf is descended from Correllon, every world has "drow" that are tied to an underdark and eladrin that are tied to the feywild, and they all have the same traits, every world even has all the same spells, with the same names (including those named after famous people." To the level that if someone discovers a spell to create a nice floating disk, they'll also know that it's called Tenser's Floating Disk and that it was really invented by a guy named Tenser. Etc.

In that model, the only allowable differences are cosmetic. And you're fully expected to drop any character of any race or class into any game and not have any friction. Published in some obscure setting book? Yup, you can find him everywhere, even in areas that haven't seen outsiders in millennia. Every dwarf everywhere has an innate love of tools because Moradin. What, you want a setting where dwarves are atheist nomadic horse-riders? Nope, they have to be underground tool wielders who worship Moradin (by some name or other). Etc.

It leans really hard into the "it's all a cosmopolitan kitchen sink, races are just purely cosmetic, no one ever looks at you weird" model because it tries really hard not to publish anything that anyone anywhere might possibly get offended by. Which results in it not having any meat at all.

To preface, I agree on all points about 5E. So I'm not going to argue there.

But really, thinking about it, thinking about other settings I'm familiar with that use a "restricted multiverse", I seem to notice that the overwhelming majority of them only use "other worlds" as temporary set pieces that never explore the real differences in the world. And I got to wondering, why do we need forest universe, water universe, fire universe, if functionally we're only going to see a single city and a tiny fraction of the population? Why can't these simply be elements of "the universe". We don't really even need different planes or planets, as we could reasonably cover most concepts on the same world.

So coming around, I actually agree that there's no point in a "limited multiverse" provided they all play by the same rules (even if each has their own unique spin on elves) ad we don't ever see more than a tiny sample of those alternate realities.