Sell me on the "restricted" multiverse idea

[Psyren]

You and many others are resisting that encouragement, but it's still not good that the DMG don't tell you how to make a cosmology but instead just tell you what the other planes are. The end result is that many tables- even tables that run homebrew, end up running forgotten realms with different geography. You may have different names of towns and different famous NPCs but dwarves still live in mountains, elves live in the forest, halflings are jolly, gnomes are santa's little helpers, orcs and goblins exist only to be killed by players, etc. It's always the same.

Let me ask you this. How are your standard races different from forgotten realms? Do the elves not live in the forest? Do dwarves live above ground? Are your halflings jolly? Do your orcs do anything interesting beyond serve as cannon fodder?

Am I missing something? The DMG doesn't have anything about racial attitudes at all, whether they are jolly halflings, santa gnomes, traditionalist dwarves or any other such trope. It neither sets up nor subverts such stereotypes, nor is it supposed to.

It does provide info on the default D&D planar cosmology (Great Wheel), sure, but it also provides several alternative examples. It does exactly what it should be doing, providing just enough to spark your imagination. The only really big mistake is that it puts that stuff up front in Chapter 2, while relegating the far more universally necessary/helpful How To Run The Game stuff all the way back in Chapter 8 of all places.

What D&D is supposed to do, in terms of encouraging you to play settings other than Forgotten Realms.... is to publish settings other than Forgotten Realms. And they are doing that.

[False God]

I'm down for collaborative world-building, but I wouldn't do it as a by-product of char-gen - rather, I'd suggest a Session 0 where we decide on the setting / campaign style, discuss character concepts, then go and make characters based on that (not a fan of "chargen at the table" personally).

Although that said, it's not something that should be expected of a GM; more often IME the GM has at least a big chunk of the setting and campaign focus already decided, and that's fine. Saying "I'll bring lasagna to the potluck" doesn't mean you've agreed to cook any and all possible foods.

I agree with this. And if we can't settle on a cohesive campaign concept in Session Zero, IME things are looking grim for running a game at all.

[Fiery Diamond]

Let me ask you this. How are your standard races different from forgotten realms? Do the elves not live in the forest? Do dwarves live above ground? Are your halflings jolly? Do your orcs do anything interesting beyond serve as cannon fodder?

Admission first: I've only ever played/run 3.5 and PF 1e, so there's a lot of stuff I don't know about the official settings, including Forgotten Realms. I've never actually played or run a campaign that used one of the official settings, nor have I read any of the setting-specific books. So... other than the stuff shown in the PHB or DMG... I'm not even really influenced directly by it. But to answer the specific questions...

1) Sure. They also live in cities that have nothing to do with the forest. Usually, it's "if it's a settlement deep in the forest, it's likely to be elves, but there are just as many if not more elves that don't live in the forest." Also, D&D isn't the only source material (let alone Forgotten Realms specifically) for elves living in the forest.

2) Sure they do. In fact, I can't remember a single campaign I ran where dwarves lived primarily below ground. I usually have their heartland be in the mountains, but not under the mountains.

3) I'm not super found of halflings, to be honest. Too much overlap with gnomes. I don't always have them, but when I do... no, I don't have them be particularly jolly as a whole.

4) Of course. They're typically still enemies, but that's because they tend to be warlike. They're not just cannon fodder; they're people, with all the potential complexity that implies.

That's pretty much my main concern about multiverses, yes. My personal preferences about setting structure are separate.



Now with a bit more time to respond to details--

This isn't actually far from what I did, just...in the past. I certainly don't do all the worldbuilding ahead of time. The only difference is that I don't create the macrosetting for each campaign. Generally, each campaign is set in an area (either time or space) that other groups haven't touched. The effects of those other groups are still around--my current group has, in the background, the fall of one of the gods at the start of that in-fiction year (in which a previous party was heavily implicated) and if they go to a certain mountain...wait...ok, there never was a mountain there . And those other characters exist as NPCs, but they never feature more than as cameo appearances.

But I see a huge difference between the following sequences:

1. Create a campaign idea and setting to match, including setting invariants.
2. Solicit characters with those invariants, themes, etc in mind
3. Play

And

1. Solicit characters without any but the vaguest theme (ok folks, we're doing a western)
2. Create the campaign idea and setting to match, trying to reconcile all the disparate character elements
3. Play

The first is something I can (personally) tolerate--it's not my favorite, but at that point it's within the acceptable margins. And I'd say it and "build a setting, use it for multiple campaigns" are kinda tied for commonality. The second, which is something I associate heavily with PbtA-style games[1] as well as more narrative games, is something I strongly dislike because it leads to disposable settings. Which, in my experience, is one major driver for disruptive behavior--I don't have to deal with murder hobos and other "trash the place" players because they're tied in with the world and the persistence of the world is a major draw to my games. In a setting that's designed to be disposable, there's no such binding to the setting. It's designed to get trashed.

[1] although those do have more system-level thematic binding, so that's mostly "the group builds the setting at session 0". But I still dislike the DM saying "ok, tell me how <major place> is" or "tell me why <big boss> is the big boss." Because it breaks, for me, exploration. I, as a player, know all the mysteries. There's nothing to be revealed. Which means the world doesn't feel like it could be real--it feels like it's a stage backdrop with every piece placed to support the characters and the story. No (or fewer) odd-ball pieces there just because that's how things worked out in times past.

I do repeat that this is all my personal preference. Not some "objective rule".

I see a difference between those two approaches as well... and while I certainly would find the second one unappealing to me personally, it does exist, and I would also find your "setting that exists for multiple campaigns over multiple groups" unappealing to me personally as well.

As for player attachment and being tied to the world... I can't speak for others, but for me personally... I'd be much more attached if some of the setting details were influenced by my character background than if I was simply forced to create a character to slot into a fully developed setting with less control on my part, so your argument that it would go the opposite direction is completely baffling to me. I'd actually have less attachment to a world that had already been "used" by other gamers. The "persistence" of the world is irrelevant to me.

Of course, you and I come from very different mindsets about PCs, I suspect. For me, the game is about the characters. The setting only has any value insofar as the characters are able to interact with it. I feel this way both as a player and a DM. Just as you don't like more narratively-focused games (or so I gather), I find the exalting of setting as a DM to be nothing more than navel-gazing, and as a player if I can't affect the stuff that's happening independent of my character by deciding to interact with it, I will quickly lose interest in the game and respect for the DM. "The world is bigger than the PCs" should only be physically. Sure, things can happen in the background. But if the players decide that background activity looks interesting, it shouldn't matter how large-scale that background activity is, they should be able to be a driving force for change within it if they try.

As for "trash the place" players... well, that's a player problem, not a setting problem, and they'd soon find themselves kicked from any game I ran.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I see a difference between those two approaches as well... and while I certainly would find the second one unappealing to me personally, it does exist, and I would also find your "setting that exists for multiple campaigns over multiple groups" unappealing to me personally as well.

As for player attachment and being tied to the world... I can't speak for others, but for me personally... I'd be much more attached if some of the setting details were influenced by my character background than if I was simply forced to create a character to slot into a fully developed setting with less control on my part, so your argument that it would go the opposite direction is completely baffling to me. I'd actually have less attachment to a world that had already been "used" by other gamers. The "persistence" of the world is irrelevant to me.

Of course, you and I come from very different mindsets about PCs, I suspect. For me, the game is about the characters. The setting only has any value insofar as the characters are able to interact with it. I feel this way both as a player and a DM. Just as you don't like more narratively-focused games (or so I gather), I find the exalting of setting as a DM to be nothing more than navel-gazing, and as a player if I can't affect the stuff that's happening independent of my character by deciding to interact with it, I will quickly lose interest in the game and respect for the DM. "The world is bigger than the PCs" should only be physically. Sure, things can happen in the background. But if the players decide that background activity looks interesting, it shouldn't matter how large-scale that background activity is, they should be able to be a driving force for change within it if they try.

As for "trash the place" players... well, that's a player problem, not a setting problem, and they'd soon find themselves kicked from any game I ran.

I think I'm not communicating very well. The players have tons of room to interact. A world is a very big place--most of it isn't fleshed out at all until someone decides to ask what's over there. That doesn't mean they dictate what's there or can override existing established facts. "Able to interact" =/= has total control.

For example, I had a character in a previous campaign who wanted to be a hexblade warlock who (in character) didn't know who his patron was and had amnesia. After discussion (pre-campaign and during the campaign), we decided that having him be tied to the setting's equivalent of Death (something I had penciled in as existing, but didn't have any idea about) and a race that had been touched on very lightly but were still mostly a mystery (the setting's equivalent of the shadar kai, but very different both thematically and origin-wise). From that, over the course of the campaign, came a large clarification to the metaphysics of the setting. Now, in future campaigns, those exact facts are fixed. But there are still tons of unknowns and mysteries to be decided on.

Another character in my current campaign wanted to play-test a homebrew dragon-rider class. They provided substantial backing as to orders/organizational structure (in collaboration with me) and those parts have mattered significantly. Another character wanted to play a "time wizard" who was infatuated with an entity known as the Archon of Time (personification of the concept of causality). The Archon had come up in a past campaign, but hadn't been humanized, and the nature of time was still indeterminate. His arc in the campaign has solidified a lot of those ideas.

I love when players OOC ask about things or suggest stuff. In fact, most of my creativity comes from that kind of interaction. As such, the setting is as much the players' as it is mine, with a legacy now of many groups, most of whom touched small bits (because most campaigns were part of a school club that focused on levels 1-8-ish) with a few big things.

And just because something's a player problem doesn't mean that the setting can't do a lot to reduce that tendency. I've had players that I played with in other games who were very free to trash those other settings because they didn't respect them at all, while they were good and tied into mine because I put so much time and effort into tying them in and letting them feel that their actions had real weight and consequence. Settings that are designed to get thrown away after the game stops can't really have true lasting consequences--once the game is over, the consequences all go away. Whereas a living world has consequences (good and bad) that extend beyond the campaign. So players tend to think (in my experience) more about what legacy they want to leave for other groups. Which could be their same group of players, just in a future campaign.

[Anymage]

As for "trash the place" players... well, that's a player problem, not a setting problem, and they'd soon find themselves kicked from any game I ran.

I think the issue is less about players wanting to break stuff just to watch the world burn, and more about the fact that there's a natural tendency to see the setting as just a backdrop for your characters to do cool stuff in. The more often that setting consistency is given a back seat to just keeping the game running (in whatever form that takes), the more likely that the players will see it as - and treat it as - nothing more than a set.

Which no shade to beer and pretzels gaming, sometimes that's exactly what you're looking for. If someone wants a different tone, however, it's worth being aware how even minor things can help set players' expectations one way or another.

[KorvinStarmast]

The way I've seen it described is that when the players ask "what about X", the DM answers with "how do you want it to be", throwing most of the responsibility for that initial worldbuilding/scene setting onto the players. And I don't personally enjoy that as a player OR a DM.

It really depends on the individuals involved, IME.
Sometimes it works, and sometimes it creates dissonance rather than internal consistency.

[gbaji]

The way I've seen it described is that when the players ask "what about X", the DM answers with "how do you want it to be", throwing most of the responsibility for that initial worldbuilding/scene setting onto the players. And I don't personally enjoy that as a player OR a DM.

Yeah. Not a fan of that either. I kinda view that as the GM more or less winging it. IMO, the players are responsible for running their characters. If the PCs want to influence the setting, they should take actions designed to influence the setting. It's the PCs who are in the game, not the players. Obviously, this does not at all preclude a player coming up to me with a neat idea and me deciding to incorporate it into my game (perhaps with a bit of a twist, just to keep things interesting). But the GM actually asking the players who the bad guy is and what they are doing, and why? Eh... Why bother with a GM?

We could literally just have a table of players, each playing their own character and taking turns injecting plot points into the adventure, pulling stuff out of source books, and then playing it out. It's a valid way to play, but it's what you do when you don't have a GM willing to run the game. That's the fallback for a GM who's not writing the world. When I play, I expect the GM to do this, not me. Heck. It's why I play. I get enough of coming up with cool ideas, plots, and stories when running my game. I want to sit back, relax, and let someone else drive for a while. It's so much more relaxing when I know that all I have to show up with on game night is my characters and dice.

As for player attachment and being tied to the world... I can't speak for others, but for me personally... I'd be much more attached if some of the setting details were influenced by my character background than if I was simply forced to create a character to slot into a fully developed setting with less control on my part, so your argument that it would go the opposite direction is completely baffling to me. I'd actually have less attachment to a world that had already been "used" by other gamers. The "persistence" of the world is irrelevant to me.

Sure. That's what I referred to earlier as a "one shot" game. Nothing at all wrong with that. But I'll suggest that there's a direct relationship between how much actual "setting" is being created for a game, and the degree of "persistence" that game setting has. I have run games like you describe, but there's also not more than what's actually needed to run the game. And yeah, in that kind of very limited setting, I'm going to allow pretty much anything, because the setting doesn't have to exist once this set of PCs are done running in it.

Of course, you and I come from very different mindsets about PCs, I suspect. For me, the game is about the characters. The setting only has any value insofar as the characters are able to interact with it. I feel this way both as a player and a DM. Just as you don't like more narratively-focused games (or so I gather), I find the exalting of setting as a DM to be nothing more than navel-gazing, and as a player if I can't affect the stuff that's happening independent of my character by deciding to interact with it, I will quickly lose interest in the game and respect for the DM. "The world is bigger than the PCs" should only be physically. Sure, things can happen in the background. But if the players decide that background activity looks interesting, it shouldn't matter how large-scale that background activity is, they should be able to be a driving force for change within it if they try.

Have you ever actually played in a larger persistent game setting?

I just think that worlds feel more "real" when the PCs are just a small part of it. And no, I'm not speaking of geography here. The idea that other things are happening all the time, all over the place, even when the PCs are not at all involved, is what makes a setting "real". Otherwise, it's just a backdrop for whatever the PCs are doing at the moment. Again, that's fine for a short one-shot kind of game, but I'd find that extremely boring pretty quickly.

If the only things of significance that happen in a game settings are the things the PCs do, then the things they PCs do aren't actually significant.

For example, I had a character in a previous campaign who wanted to be a hexblade warlock who (in character) didn't know who his patron was and had amnesia. After discussion (pre-campaign and during the campaign), we decided that having him be tied to the setting's equivalent of Death (something I had penciled in as existing, but didn't have any idea about) and a race that had been touched on very lightly but were still mostly a mystery (the setting's equivalent of the shadar kai, but very different both thematically and origin-wise). From that, over the course of the campaign, came a large clarification to the metaphysics of the setting. Now, in future campaigns, those exact facts are fixed. But there are still tons of unknowns and mysteries to be decided on.

Another character in my current campaign wanted to play-test a homebrew dragon-rider class. They provided substantial backing as to orders/organizational structure (in collaboration with me) and those parts have mattered significantly. Another character wanted to play a "time wizard" who was infatuated with an entity known as the Archon of Time (personification of the concept of causality). The Archon had come up in a past campaign, but hadn't been humanized, and the nature of time was still indeterminate. His arc in the campaign has solidified a lot of those ideas.

Pretty similar here. I create the setting, but obviously, I can't detail every single thing in it (there's not enough time). if a player comes to me and says "My character is an assassin working for the local thieves guild and <insert other drama here>", that's great. I probably had an idea that there was some organization managing crime in the area, and this is a great opportunity for me to develop that to support the character. But if details the player comes up with actually contradict something I've already written/established, I'll be forced to either adjust my setting, or ask the player to adjust their character. So, if the same player says his character worships <deity X>, but I've already established the local underworld is run by followers of <different thief appropriate deity>, that's going to create a problem (in my game setting, there's 3 or so deities that are appropriate for thief type characters to worship, and they don't tend to get along and don't tend to share territory). Depending on how mature my development for the thieves guild is, I'll ask the player to make adjustments. Maybe he changes his deity, or he's from another area instead, and this creates different drama because he'd be seen as an encroacher on the local turf maybe (or maybe he's a foreigner hired for a specific job and that's why he's here?).

Point being that there are a ton of ways to fit any character concept into an existing game. And if it's at all possible, I'll make it work.

Player wants to run an alchemist character in the local setting? Great. However, I'll point out that the kingdom the PCs are in is a bit off the main trade routes, so rarer alchemy supplies are hard to get, and there's not much there. But hey, he could make it rich if he's successful or something. Point being that the character has to fit into the setting, not the other way around. I wont change the kingdom to make it the center of a trade hub just to make the PC concept work better. What I will do is allow the PC to try to figure out ways to get materials to practice his craft, and if those are good ideas, they'll work. Let the players actually play in the setting. It works.

There is a heck of a lot of leeway for "fitting" characters in though. It's not like I list off 5 character types that can be played, and anything outside that is just outright banned. If a player wants to play a character from a distant land, or even different world, if it's at all possible to fit them in, I'll do it. I just make sure the player is aware of any issues or complications that may arise. Then, as I mentioned above, they play this out in the setting.

I love when players OOC ask about things or suggest stuff. In fact, most of my creativity comes from that kind of interaction. As such, the setting is as much the players' as it is mine, with a legacy now of many groups, most of whom touched small bits (because most campaigns were part of a school club that focused on levels 1-8-ish) with a few big things.

Yup. When/if a player comes up with a really cool idea, I will find a way to introduce it. But always with a mind towards how said thing will actually "fit" into the existing stuff that's already there. I have one player in particular who is always coming up with "out there" ideas. And sometimes, it's more of a "nah, that's not going to work", but every once in a while, it'll create a spark that's like "huh. Yeah. That could work!". And that's always great. It's not about hard firm rules, but more about creating boundaries way out at the edges and making sure things stay within those.

[Mastikator]

Am I missing something? The DMG doesn't have anything about racial attitudes at all, whether they are jolly halflings, santa gnomes, traditionalist dwarves or any other such trope. It neither sets up nor subverts such stereotypes, nor is it supposed to.

It does provide info on the default D&D planar cosmology (Great Wheel), sure, but it also provides several alternative examples. It does exactly what it should be doing, providing just enough to spark your imagination. The only really big mistake is that it puts that stuff up front in Chapter 2, while relegating the far more universally necessary/helpful How To Run The Game stuff all the way back in Chapter 8 of all places.

What D&D is supposed to do, in terms of encouraging you to play settings other than Forgotten Realms.... is to publish settings other than Forgotten Realms. And they are doing that.

The PHB has the racial attitudes. The DMG has the cosmology.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Pretty similar here. I create the setting, but obviously, I can't detail every single thing in it (there's not enough time). if a player comes to me and says "My character is an assassin working for the local thieves guild and <insert other drama here>", that's great. I probably had an idea that there was some organization managing crime in the area, and this is a great opportunity for me to develop that to support the character. But if details the player comes up with actually contradict something I've already written/established, I'll be forced to either adjust my setting, or ask the player to adjust their character. So, if the same player says his character worships <deity X>, but I've already established the local underworld is run by followers of <different thief appropriate deity>, that's going to create a problem (in my game setting, there's 3 or so deities that are appropriate for thief type characters to worship, and they don't tend to get along and don't tend to share territory). Depending on how mature my development for the thieves guild is, I'll ask the player to make adjustments. Maybe he changes his deity, or he's from another area instead, and this creates different drama because he'd be seen as an encroacher on the local turf maybe (or maybe he's a foreigner hired for a specific job and that's why he's here?).

Point being that there are a ton of ways to fit any character concept into an existing game. And if it's at all possible, I'll make it work.

Player wants to run an alchemist character in the local setting? Great. However, I'll point out that the kingdom the PCs are in is a bit off the main trade routes, so rarer alchemy supplies are hard to get, and there's not much there. But hey, he could make it rich if he's successful or something. Point being that the character has to fit into the setting, not the other way around. I wont change the kingdom to make it the center of a trade hub just to make the PC concept work better. What I will do is allow the PC to try to figure out ways to get materials to practice his craft, and if those are good ideas, they'll work. Let the players actually play in the setting. It works.

There is a heck of a lot of leeway for "fitting" characters in though. It's not like I list off 5 character types that can be played, and anything outside that is just outright banned. If a player wants to play a character from a distant land, or even different world, if it's at all possible to fit them in, I'll do it. I just make sure the player is aware of any issues or complications that may arise. Then, as I mentioned above, they play this out in the setting.



Yup. When/if a player comes up with a really cool idea, I will find a way to introduce it. But always with a mind towards how said thing will actually "fit" into the existing stuff that's already there. I have one player in particular who is always coming up with "out there" ideas. And sometimes, it's more of a "nah, that's not going to work", but every once in a while, it'll create a spark that's like "huh. Yeah. That could work!". And that's always great. It's not about hard firm rules, but more about creating boundaries way out at the edges and making sure things stay within those.

Agreed. There are setting invariants. Those are the things that cannot, will not change. For example, one invariant for me is "no immortal characters." Because, for setting reasons, immortality is a trap option and makes one unsuitable to be a PC (long involved discussion). Or "there are only 16 true gods that can grant cleric spells, here they are." There's a crap ton of ascendants and you can absolutely come up with more, but you ain't getting cleric spells from any of them. The races that exist and are playable is an invariant, because the origins of those races is tightly bound into the setting. So no Custom Lineage or other such things. And no playable gnomes (they exist, but just aren't available for various reasons). And you can't play a book drow--those don't exist. There are dark-skinned elves who live underground, but they're radically different in origins, culture, aesthetics, and traits. Etc. I white-list sources and maintain a large player-facing wiki of information.

On the other hand, there's a crap ton of stuff I haven't written and would love you to collaborate on me about. A couple of my favorite sessions were one-on-one with players (the others couldn't make it for scheduling reasons) where we narratively talked through their backstory in detail. As it turns out, two of the players decided they were from the same small village and that fed into the reasons that they were adventuring. And, incidentally, decided why the village ended up getting destroyed before they left (due to time-travel shenanigans on the part of the BBEG who was trying to smack them down before they could become an issue, not realizing that he was running afoul of the Archon of Time, who hadn't become that yet. Time travel weird things =)). So now there's this (ruined, in current time) village out there.

Another character wanted to make a cleric of the goddess of hearth and family, a noted pacifist. And wanted to make someone in the vein of the WH40K Inquisition (wildly xenophobic, etc). So I had to figure out how that worked--that led to the idea that, in that setting, who you worship and who you get spells from may not be the same. The god of practical jokes was impersonating the goddess of hearth and home and granting power to this order of nutcases because he found it funny. And that's led to other issues with gods trying to undercut other gods for various reasons of divine politics. That character also led to the foundation of my "origin of the races"--I'd had the vague idea that goblins were degenerate humans. But to tweak his character's nose, I wrote a document in-world from a researcher who postulated that it was the other way around--that humans were artificially-mutated goblins. And then I realized that that shift made tons of sense and answered lots of other questions, so it became canon. Filling in a gap that I thought had been filled.

[Psyren]

The PHB has the racial attitudes. The DMG has the cosmology.

Well you're in luck, all signs point to the new PHB having much less prescriptivity in the "racial species attitude" department.

As for the DMG, again I posit it has the right level of cosmology presentation.

[Fiery Diamond]

Sure. That's what I referred to earlier as a "one shot" game. Nothing at all wrong with that. But I'll suggest that there's a direct relationship between how much actual "setting" is being created for a game, and the degree of "persistence" that game setting has. I have run games like you describe, but there's also not more than what's actually needed to run the game. And yeah, in that kind of very limited setting, I'm going to allow pretty much anything, because the setting doesn't have to exist once this set of PCs are done running in it.



Have you ever actually played in a larger persistent game setting?

I just think that worlds feel more "real" when the PCs are just a small part of it. And no, I'm not speaking of geography here. The idea that other things are happening all the time, all over the place, even when the PCs are not at all involved, is what makes a setting "real". Otherwise, it's just a backdrop for whatever the PCs are doing at the moment. Again, that's fine for a short one-shot kind of game, but I'd find that extremely boring pretty quickly.

If the only things of significance that happen in a game settings are the things the PCs do, then the things they PCs do aren't actually significant.

That's not how "one shot" is usually used. One shot is usually used to refer to a single (or very small number) session game. I'm talking year-long weekly games being done that way.

And, well, I kind of agree with you about most of the rest of what you said. That's why I said my perspective was different: I do not care about the setting outside the context of the game. This is true for games I run/play in; stories I write/read; movies/TV shows I watch; etc. Tolkein's Middle Earth world building beyond what shows up in the LotR and the Hobbit that exists just for the sake of creating a complex world? Yawn. Pointless. Do not care. Both as a creator and consumer, that's how I feel. In fact, I find a DM who actually values his world more than the game he's running in it to be someone I would never want to game with, because their values are counter to mine.

I don't agree with your last line, because what the PCS do is what defines "important." That's like saying a novel that only deals with the protagonist's interactions with his immediate surroundings that ignores the things that aren't his immediate surroundings makes the protagonist's story unimportant. Uh... no?

[Quertus]

Another character wanted to play a "time wizard" who was infatuated with an entity known as the Archon of Time (personification of the concept of causality). The Archon had come up in a past campaign, but hadn't been humanized, and the nature of time was still indeterminate. His arc in the campaign has solidified a lot of those ideas..

As long as we’re talking about things that we, personally, don’t like, I’ve gotta say, this definitely falls into the red flags of things I abhor. I’ve never had a GM who cared as much about their world as I did, never had a GM who could start the campaign with a detail undefined, and have it played with consistency through to the end. It’s just never worked.

So that’s another advantage of the restricted multiverse (you know, that thing we’re theoretically discussing): players who care more than the GM can have characters come from worlds with defined physics and history that is consistent and makes sense, rather than inconsistent, “seat of the pants”, “makes Dr. Who look positively well-thought-out by comparison” world building I associate with “play to find out” physics.

[Satinavian]

As long as we’re talking about things that we, personally, don’t like, I’ve gotta say, this definitely falls into the red flags of things I abhor. I’ve never had a GM who cared as much about their world as I did, never had a GM who could start the campaign with a detail undefined, and have it played with consistency through to the end. It’s just never worked.

Now that must be just incredibly bad luck as generally GMs tend to care more about the settings than average players. Personally i am not interested in playing with GMs who don't care about the setting.

So that’s another advantage of the restricted multiverse (you know, that thing we’re theoretically discussing): players who care more than the GM can have characters come from worlds with defined physics and history that is consistent and makes sense, rather than inconsistent, “seat of the pants”, “makes Dr. Who look positively well-thought-out by comparison” world building I associate with “play to find out” physics.

Or even better : Play on those worlds in the first place. And have everyone make characters from there, not outsiders.There is no reason whatsover to craft new settings for each campaign.

Really, the work a good, detailed, carefully crafted setting needs is so big that no one does this and starts all over all the time for each new campaign.

[Mastikator]

Well you're in luck, all signs point to the new PHB having much less prescriptivity in the "racial species attitude" department.

As for the DMG, again I posit it has the right level of cosmology presentation.

I know, I am excited for D&D one and like the direction they're going.

The DMG I think is missing something crucial: guidelines for making your own planes, just listing planes is not enough, in fact it's worse because it leads people to believe that the great wheel is the one true cosmology. Which it very much is not. You can have any planar cosmology at your table, you don't need avernus or mount celestia or beastlands or limbo or whatever. They should just be examples, but they're often treated as the only cosmology, the true cosmology, the cosmology to envelop all cosmologies.

[Quertus]

Now that must be just incredibly bad luck as generally GMs tend to care more about the settings than average players.

Or even better : Play on those worlds in the first place. And have everyone make characters from there, not outsiders.There is no reason whatsover to craft new settings for each campaign.

Really, the work a good, detailed, carefully crafted setting needs is so big that no one does this and starts all over all the time for each new campaign.

I’m not the average player. Besides, for any given metric X, if there are Y people sitting around the table, it’s not hard to estimate that the odds that the GM has the highest value of X is 1/Y, if X and Y are independent variables. So, yes, it’s bad luck that my player rolled high for my “cares” stat.

But the real question is, which is more likely to be consistent: a detail that is ironed out before the campaign begins, or one where the group is “playing to find out”? Simply put, “slowly uncovering the mystery” of how balanced 3e muggles vs casters are just isn’t the same experience as knowing how 3e balance works, and building accordingly. Or, more germane if less visceral, “playing to find out”, one could jump back in time to collect the infinity gems… then learn that time Travel creates branch realities… use the gems in your “home” reality… then travel to another reality… only to learn that the gems don’t work… because they only work in their “source” reality. Wait, what?

There are absolutely things you can play to find out. The mechanics/rules/physics of the game just aren’t among them. Not if you care about consistency.

[Satinavian]

I’m not the average player. Besides, for any given metric X, if there are Y people sitting around the table, it’s not hard to estimate that the odds that the GM has the highest value of X is 1/Y, if X and Y are independent variables. So, yes, it’s bad luck that my player rolled high for my “cares” stat.

That is (mosty, with some additional assumptions) true. But we are not talking about a single table. We talking about you and the dozens upon dozens GMs you have encountered. It is in the same way quite unlikely that each one cared less about their very own world than you as one of the players. Especially as it is also unlikely that you care about each of those many worlds equally.

I don't say it is impossible or that you are wrong, but if you are right, your experiences are quite uncommon indeed. Lamentably so.

There are absolutely things you can play to find out. The mechanics/rules/physics of the game just aren’t among them. Not if you care about consistency.

I am not a fan of "play to find out" either. But that is a very different topic.

[NichG]

I generally write a new game system and setting for each campaign I run. Takes about three months, and those campaigns generally last 1.5 to 2 years.

[gbaji]

That's not how "one shot" is usually used. One shot is usually used to refer to a single (or very small number) session game. I'm talking year-long weekly games being done that way.

Yeah. Terminology aside, I'm trying to discuss the differences in what you must do in a game setting based on whether you go into it knowing it'll only be played for this one set of characters through a single (or set) of adventures, or if you plan on it lasting beyond that, to run additional adventures, with different characters, perhaps in different areas of that same setting.

Regardless of what we call it, in the former setting you don't have to worry much about stability. You can absolutely introduce/allow pretty much anything because the setting doesn't have to survive it. It makes any discussion of different "types" of multiverse rules pretty academic IMO, since in the long run, it doesn't really matter (cause there is no long run). I'm merely pointing out that things you may not care about in a short term game really really matter to a long persistent setting.

Tolkein's Middle Earth world building beyond what shows up in the LotR and the Hobbit that exists just for the sake of creating a complex world? Yawn. Pointless. Do not care.

Which is ironic because that's exactly how Tolkien built his world. He was a attempting to duplicate classic myths in a "new/unique" setting, in order to study the interaction of culture, events, and language (really dry academic stuff). He wrote massive amounts of "setting" prior to ever putting pen to paper and writing The Hobbit (ok, he just narrated that to his son for fun initially). Point being that it's a good bet that the reason those stories are so classic and so memorable is precisely because Tolkien spent the time building his setting *first*, then once he did that, it was relatively easy to drop stories within that setting in various times and places.

I think you'd be surprised just how many of the best games/worlds/stories you enjoy started with the creator coming up with the setting first and then writing a story within it. So maybe don't just dismiss this so quickly.

I don't agree with your last line, because what the PCS do is what defines "important." That's like saying a novel that only deals with the protagonist's interactions with his immediate surroundings that ignores the things that aren't his immediate surroundings makes the protagonist's story unimportant. Uh... no?

It doesn't make the protagonists story unimportant, but it will make the novel feel one dimensional.

Also RPGs are not like novels. A novel has a single author. An RPG is more like collective storytelling. In a novel, the author decides what the protagonists and antagonists are going to do and can craft their actions and words to fit a tight story. You try to do that in an RPG, and we call that railroading. By creating a broad rich setting, then when your players decide to do something "off the rails" of the current story/adventure, you don't have to either make stuff up on the fly, or prevent them from doing so. The latter is railroading. The former will result in inconsistencies in your setting over time.

But we weren't talking about "important to the characters". That is circular. Of course what the PCs do is important to them. I was talking about significance. If your setting includes things that are happening external to the PCs then it will feel more real to them. KingdomA is involved in a trade dispute with KingdomB. That's happening whether it has any significance to the current adventure or not. There's a war going on "over there". Maybe I introduced that as part of the setting description. But even if the players never go "over there", and never get involved in that war, it's being fought, right? It will eventually be resolved. That's "significant". Maybe once that war ends, the PCs will start encountering more mercenaries (veterans of the war looking for work). Maybe there are other socio-political outcomes that do impact the PCs. Maybe not.

The point is that by having other things happening in the world around them, without them actually being involved directly in them, it creates "things" that the players may choose to become involved in later, or that affect them in small ways that make sense. Or that you the GM may choose to write something about later. Again, these are the kinds of things you do when you are creating a more persistent setting. It may not matter a bit to the PCs grinding through the "caverns of evil things" at the moment that Princess Buttercup just got married to Prince Charming, but if you, the GM, have determined that this has happened, you can also determine what other effects it may have on the setting and *that* in turn may have an impact on the PCs. If you only introduce things relevant to the current adventure, everything will be "small?".

And yeah. If I were to go more philosophical/meta on this, then if we aren't playing in a persistent setting, then nothing the PCs do is actually "significant". If we never play in it again, then nothing actually mattered beyond the players enjoying the game (which isn't bad at all, btw). But in terms of the actual "setting", it doesn't matter because the setting doesn't exist anymore, right? The characters don't exist anymore. Nothing they did had any relevance at all. Again, nothing wrong with this. I like playing short term games. But when I do play them, I'm not really interested in doing anything outside of the actual adventure we're running. I'm not building anything. I'm not going to go get married. I'm not going to worry about whether we accidentally destroyed that town. I'm not going to build relationships with anyone beyond what provides a tangible benefit to the current adventure. And I'm certainly not concerned about the long term sociological/technological/magical impact of introducing something from one universe in the setting into another.

Which loops us right back to "if you're not planning on playing this setting past the current adventure/campaign, then you can be as open or restricted in your multiverse rules as you want because it really doesn't matter". In that case, my only consideration as a GM is scenario balance and nothing more. Again, that's fine, but I think it sidesteps a huge portion of the very topic we're discussing.

So that’s another advantage of the restricted multiverse (you know, that thing we’re theoretically discussing): players who care more than the GM can have characters come from worlds with defined physics and history that is consistent and makes sense, rather than inconsistent, “seat of the pants”, “makes Dr. Who look positively well-thought-out by comparison” world building I associate with “play to find out” physics.

Why would the other world have better or more consistent physics and history than the primary world you're playing on? Are we talking just about game settings, or game systems? Or just rule variants between settings in the same system?

I'm pretty sure that a player who introduces a character from another universe with completely different rules defining the unique/special abilities/powers/whatever is going to create more problems for the game, not fewer.

Do you have an actual example of this? Cause I'm struggling to see it. Unless you're actually suggesting that the player should just dictate how his powers/abilities/items should work in the GMs setting? Which seems fraught with foolishness.

[Psyren]

I know, I am excited for D&D one and like the direction they're going.

The DMG I think is missing something crucial: guidelines for making your own planes, just listing planes is not enough, in fact it's worse because it leads people to believe that the great wheel is the one true cosmology. Which it very much is not. You can have any planar cosmology at your table, you don't need avernus or mount celestia or beastlands or limbo or whatever. They should just be examples, but they're often treated as the only cosmology, the true cosmology, the cosmology to envelop all cosmologies.

I guess I *do* see them as examples. The DMG includes guidance around this specifically:

As described in the Player’s Handbook, the assumed D&D cosmology includes more than two dozen planes. For your campaign, you decide what planes to include, inspired by the standard planes, drawn from Earth’s myths, or created by your own imagination.

At minimum, most D&D campaigns require these elements:

A plane of origin for fiends
A plane of origin for celestials
A plane of origin for elementals
A place for deities, which might include any or all of the previous three
The place where mortal spirits go after death, which might include any or all of the first three
A way of getting from one plane to another
A way for spells and monsters that use the Astral Plane and the Ethereal Plane to function

Once you’ve decided on the planes you want to use in your campaign, putting them into a coherent cosmology is an optional step. Since the primary way of traveling from plane to plane, even using the Transitive Planes, is through magical portals that link planes together, the exact relationship of different planes to one another is largely a theoretical concern.

I'm struggling to think what more they needed to have included in a book aimed at people who are unlikely to be making up their own cosmologies from whole cloth anyway.

[Fiery Diamond]

Yeah. Terminology aside, I'm trying to discuss the differences in what you must do in a game setting based on whether you go into it knowing it'll only be played for this one set of characters through a single (or set) of adventures, or if you plan on it lasting beyond that, to run additional adventures, with different characters, perhaps in different areas of that same setting.

Regardless of what we call it, in the former setting you don't have to worry much about stability. You can absolutely introduce/allow pretty much anything because the setting doesn't have to survive it. It makes any discussion of different "types" of multiverse rules pretty academic IMO, since in the long run, it doesn't really matter (cause there is no long run). I'm merely pointing out that things you may not care about in a short term game really really matter to a long persistent setting.




Which is ironic because that's exactly how Tolkien built his world. He was a attempting to duplicate classic myths in a "new/unique" setting, in order to study the interaction of culture, events, and language (really dry academic stuff). He wrote massive amounts of "setting" prior to ever putting pen to paper and writing The Hobbit (ok, he just narrated that to his son for fun initially). Point being that it's a good bet that the reason those stories are so classic and so memorable is precisely because Tolkien spent the time building his setting *first*, then once he did that, it was relatively easy to drop stories within that setting in various times and places.

I think you'd be surprised just how many of the best games/worlds/stories you enjoy started with the creator coming up with the setting first and then writing a story within it. So maybe don't just dismiss this so quickly.



It doesn't make the protagonists story unimportant, but it will make the novel feel one dimensional.

Also RPGs are not like novels. A novel has a single author. An RPG is more like collective storytelling. In a novel, the author decides what the protagonists and antagonists are going to do and can craft their actions and words to fit a tight story. You try to do that in an RPG, and we call that railroading. By creating a broad rich setting, then when your players decide to do something "off the rails" of the current story/adventure, you don't have to either make stuff up on the fly, or prevent them from doing so. The latter is railroading. The former will result in inconsistencies in your setting over time.

But we weren't talking about "important to the characters". That is circular. Of course what the PCs do is important to them. I was talking about significance. If your setting includes things that are happening external to the PCs then it will feel more real to them. KingdomA is involved in a trade dispute with KingdomB. That's happening whether it has any significance to the current adventure or not. There's a war going on "over there". Maybe I introduced that as part of the setting description. But even if the players never go "over there", and never get involved in that war, it's being fought, right? It will eventually be resolved. That's "significant". Maybe once that war ends, the PCs will start encountering more mercenaries (veterans of the war looking for work). Maybe there are other socio-political outcomes that do impact the PCs. Maybe not.

The point is that by having other things happening in the world around them, without them actually being involved directly in them, it creates "things" that the players may choose to become involved in later, or that affect them in small ways that make sense. Or that you the GM may choose to write something about later. Again, these are the kinds of things you do when you are creating a more persistent setting. It may not matter a bit to the PCs grinding through the "caverns of evil things" at the moment that Princess Buttercup just got married to Prince Charming, but if you, the GM, have determined that this has happened, you can also determine what other effects it may have on the setting and *that* in turn may have an impact on the PCs. If you only introduce things relevant to the current adventure, everything will be "small?".

And yeah. If I were to go more philosophical/meta on this, then if we aren't playing in a persistent setting, then nothing the PCs do is actually "significant". If we never play in it again, then nothing actually mattered beyond the players enjoying the game (which isn't bad at all, btw). But in terms of the actual "setting", it doesn't matter because the setting doesn't exist anymore, right? The characters don't exist anymore. Nothing they did had any relevance at all. Again, nothing wrong with this. I like playing short term games. But when I do play them, I'm not really interested in doing anything outside of the actual adventure we're running. I'm not building anything. I'm not going to go get married. I'm not going to worry about whether we accidentally destroyed that town. I'm not going to build relationships with anyone beyond what provides a tangible benefit to the current adventure. And I'm certainly not concerned about the long term sociological/technological/magical impact of introducing something from one universe in the setting into another.

Which loops us right back to "if you're not planning on playing this setting past the current adventure/campaign, then you can be as open or restricted in your multiverse rules as you want because it really doesn't matter". In that case, my only consideration as a GM is scenario balance and nothing more. Again, that's fine, but I think it sidesteps a huge portion of the very topic we're discussing.

I would argue that "significant" in the sense you're defining it here doesn't exist, period, regardless of what you do with the setting. It's not a desirable goal, because it's a moot point - it doesn't exist. Your setting is just as unimportant to the grand scheme of things in the real world if it's super detailed and run across multiple play groups as it is if it's used for an actual one-shot. It's just a game setting. It has no significance. Just like the game itself has no significance. There are very few settings of any kind of story that have real-world significance by changing the course of real-world history (such as Tolkien's Middle Earth). Your game setting? No matter who you are, it's not one of them.

"Important to the players (including DM)" is literally the only benchmark besides "important to the PCs" for "importance." And I, as both a player and DM, find anything that doesn't directly impact the PCs to be "not important to me." There is no "important to the setting." There is no "setting is important by itself." Those are things which do not exist. "I, as DM, find this thing that affects the setting independent of whether it intersects with the players, to be important" is entirely a you thing falling under the umbrella of "important to the DM," not some sort of outside measure of importance. And I, as a player, would not want to game with a DM that felt that such things were more important than the PCs and their direct interactions, because I feel that's the hallmark of a self-important navel-gazing DM. My perspective: the game is about the PCs. Period.

I also disagree with your assessment about novels and one-dimensionality. You may feel that way, but it's certainly not any kind of general truth. If you find a problem with novels focusing solely on the main characters and their issues, that's a you problem, not a problem with the novels.

[Mastikator]

I guess I *do* see them as examples. The DMG includes guidance around this specifically:



I'm struggling to think what more they needed to have included in a book aimed at people who are unlikely to be making up their own cosmologies from whole cloth anyway.

Guidelines for planar drama (internal or intra-planar), like the blood war, or the war in shavarath, or the githzerai trying to tame limbo. Guidelines for themes associated with planes, a plane needs more than just "it's a home for fiends", what do they stand for and against, how should the planes relate to each other (if they do at all), guidelines for alignment relation to planes. Guidelines for the planes purpose and what they do.
Instead it gives page after page of "these are the planes of D&D". They don't tell you how to make your own, they tell you which ones to use. The end result is great wheel everywhere all the time. The only way to escape the great wheel is to escape D&D.

An example of a plane that I just now came up:

Sherizar - the plane of mystery and secrets
This plane is the home of mystery and secrets, the origin of creatures like Sphinxes, certain Yugoloth dedicated to knowledge and hags with the ability to peer into the future.
The geography of the plane is dominated by 7 (the most mysterious number) regions:
1) the desert of silence - no knowledge may ever leave this place, anything learned is forgotten, save for answers given by sand hags and sphinxes
2) the jungle of truth - this dense and nigh-intraversable jungle magically rearranges itself to prevent anyone from leaving, save for those who are honest with themselves. Populated by hags and fey creatures
3) the great lonely mountain - the mountain can only climbed alone, anyone who seeks to climb it with company will find the mountain goes on forever. Those who reach the top will find the great storm giant oracle
4) the bog of lies - populated by sign posts that only tell lies, those who can read between the lines can uncover the truth they seek in the bog. Populated by hags of course
5) the great library - all knowledge held by anyone on this plane is recorded in the books that populate these endless rows of bookshelves, yugoloths can help one find what they're looking for, for a price
6) the dark sky - the dark sky covers the entire sky of the plane, where it roams memory stealing demons that can strike anywhere on the plane, they are hostile to all
7) the eternal sea - anyone who dies with lies in their heart find themselves trapped on the oceanic floor, some of those are in such denial that they attack anyone on sight, others seek to be freed by confessing to the living

Not too bad if I may say so myself, honestly it feels more interesting than most of the planes found in the DMG and there's nothing in the DMG that could inspire me to make that up. No, I had to pull from nearly 20 years of TTRPG experience- something new DMs do not have access to. That's the important thing here: new DMs, they need help. It is not given to them.

[Quertus]

Why would the other world have better or more consistent physics and history than the primary world you're playing on? Are we talking just about game settings, or game systems? Or just rule variants between settings in the same system?

I'm pretty sure that a player who introduces a character from another universe with completely different rules defining the unique/special abilities/powers/whatever is going to create more problems for the game, not fewer.

Do you have an actual example of this? Cause I'm struggling to see it. Unless you're actually suggesting that the player should just dictate how his powers/abilities/items should work in the GMs setting? Which seems fraught with foolishness.

That first sentence is an excellent question. The rest, though, isn’t the direction I was going. So your call for an example is spot on. So let’s start with an example, to ground the conversation. As usual, my example will be lengthy and extreme, to drive home the direction I’m pointing.

Spoiler: “Example, part 1”

Show

Example, part 1 - Isekai‘d

So, imagine I decided to play myself, a programmer / gamer of Viking descent, with a hobbyist interest in psychology. We can all agree that the real world (TM) has more realistic, detailed physics than any RPG world, right?

Ok, let’s Isekai “me” into a campaign setting. Now I’m genre savvy, at least in the sense of comprehension of some of the basics of the root concept of an RPG. That’s my Super Power.

Once I get over my initial panic, I do some tests, and find that I seem to still be me: I have my clothes and basic form afaict; I have about the right lift capacity, about the right reflexes, about the right memory… what was I talking about?

I also don’t seem to have anything extra: my will doesn’t trigger anything new, nor do iconic motions or words seem to carry power.

Why would “I’ve been Isekai’d into an RPG” be my first thought? It wouldn’t. Not even my second thought. It’s just the most actionable, and most relevant to this conversation.

Performing some simple, repetitive tasks, I find that, the simplest, I don’t fail despite hundreds of attempts. I notice that all my rough estimates seem to exist in “5%” chunks.

Then, one of the tasks, I notice a sudden up-surge of 5% in my odds of success. Going back and checking, related actions seem about 5% more likely to succeed now. From this, I hypothesize

• That this world runs on a d20-based skill system (complete with “don’t fail on a 1”);
• The system is more point-buy / skill-based than level-based;
• Experience can be earned and spent mid-session;
• I am not the one spending my XP.

That last one is troubling. Is it my player, the GM, or the System that determines how I gain skills?

Thinking about my player, I realize that there’s an important skill I’d like to level if possible: breaking the 4th wall. I begin muttering to myself, breaking the 4th wall constantly as I talk to my player (and occasionally the GM), telling them what I’d like out of this existence, what skills I’d like to level vs what ones, even if I use, I’d prefer not to waste limited resources improving (*if* there’s resource limits, like XP, rather than pure skill-usage-based improvement, like… elder Elder Scrolls / CoC).

I don’t notice any more improvements before I tell my player/GM that, if this world has magic, I’d like to learn it / become a Wizard, if possible. To my shock, another voice joins the conversation.

Spoiler: “Example, part 2”

Show

Example, part 2 - apprenticeship

“Is that what you want?”

Now, it may come as something of a surprise, but I’m actually accustomed to holding one-sided conversations, and to other people joining them, and I’m not ashamed to admit it. So I don’t just act like nothing’s strange. (Internally, I hypothesize that this is not a “comedy” game; or, if it is, the “themes” do not override roleplaying / “free will”).

“Hello?”

So I have my first encounter in a new world, and, if I haven’t before, I’m definitely mumbling about wanting to improve the “Sense Motive” equivalent ASAP. Actually, I’m doubtless mumbling it either way.

To speed things up, I’m introduced to someone who… can arrange for me to learn magic. Although I don’t completely trust them / this setup, I hypothesize that I’m in “backstory”, and I need to “level up” in order to “join the party”.

Sure enough, the two of us remain isolated, so that (I hypothesize) how long it takes me to level up isn’t able to be inconsistent with the timeframe of the rest of the party. My companion / mentor seems strangely pleased at the things I try not to pay attention to.

My mentor… is odd. Over time, I notice that they seem to only have one spell, that they cast at most once/day. Let’s call this spell “Miracle”.

They don’t teach me, so much as Miracle up Spell books for me to learn from, components/foci/targets for me to use, and, eventually (with some reluctance), a “familiar” that is best described as “10 lbs of Dream”.

It didn’t take much Sense Motive to realize that they are intentionally avoiding telling me much about the world. They admit early on that they don’t have purely altruistic motives in training me, but, much like if those motives were “they want me to stay alive” or “they want to be proud of me”, their motives will be better met and I’ll do better by them not explaining their motives yet.

Between “Miracle”, Spell books, and the spells I’m learning, I’m feeling a very “D&D derivative” vibe. So I convince my mentor to Miracle up a… “Steal Youth” spell, and a Ring of Spell Storing. I’m actually surprised how easily they go for it, and glad that, a little pain later (only a little, because my mentor is apparently younger than me), I’m in much better shape (or, at least, younger. Same thing.)

Years later, I’m definitely better than a 1st level (or even 3rd level) Wizard in any version of D&D I’m familiar with, yet there’s still no call to action. So I just keep on training… and experimenting with item creation.

Spoiler: “Example, part 3”

Show

Example, part 3 - Call to Action

It’s been decades. I’ve developed my own spells, created my own items, and mastered magic that, while generally weaker, I figure is in some ways stronger than many 9th level D&D spells. I’m hoping I’ll be able to understand Time sometime soon.

I still haven’t gotten much out of my mentor, but I have figured out that they seem almost afraid of learning… anything. And almost similarly afraid of me learning… most things.

I have many hypothesis about that. My “best” one (the one that I think gets the most reaction out of my mentor) is the idea that, while one is free to grow as many skills as much as one wants, there’s a hidden “Luck” stat that is reduced once you pass some threshold.

Still, I’ve learned what I’m calling “Spellcraft”, and I think “Craft” is a single skill in this system (I think I can even write passable stories now (gasp!), although my only truly sentient companion refuses to read them). I’ve also learned what I thought was “Throwing”, but, upon eventually thinking to test it, appears to actually work on all ranged attacks I’ve tried. And I’m not sure if I’ve learned “Sense Motive”, or if my mentor is just “bluffing” that I can read them.

I know a lot more about the system, like that it doesn’t always work in increments of 5%. Best guess is, it’s a percentile system; while skills are always in 5% increments, situational modifiers come in as small as 1% increments. And I’m apparently mana-based, although my experiments are very inconclusive wrt costs / mana pool size. I suspect spells have variable costs, there are “soak rolls” to avoid “drain”, or some such. I really hate rigorous science. And I haven’t had any luck learning an “Autohypnosis” type skill. I do, however, have custom spells to collate data for me.

“Spellcraft” being the only thing my mentor approves of me learning (the only thing we have in common?), all our conversations that aren’t vacuous are about magic. But this is how I’ve learned that I’m not myself. Because I can’t… Learn. Not in the way I should.

If I don’t understand something (if I fail my Spellcraft roll), it doesn’t matter how many times my mentor goes over it, how much they dumb it down, I simply cannot get it. Period.

Worse, the same is true of math. Or coding. If I don’t get it right the first thing, I can test and find I get a different answer, but I’ll never get the right answer. Not until my skill improves. Which is why I have spells to boost my skills.

(And, yes, coding. My familiar has “leveled”, and can become a laptop. Or grow, but then it becomes less… changing.)

Having fallen into the routine, I’ve all but forgotten my original thoughts when my mentor tells me that it looks like it’s time.

Spoiler: “Example, part 4”

Show

Example, part 4 - Call to Action

I’ve seen what I’m calling “terrified” many times before, whenever I threatened to accidentally teach them something. This time, my mentor looks worried. “I’ve been waiting to fill you in until we’re…” a waggled hand indicates ambiguity, “Equals. So, before I tell you my motivation, you should know, I’m a Shapechanger. Don’t be alarmed.”

And “he” turns into a “she”.

“We’re the only people in the world. I need your help repopulating the planet.”

Well. That’s… not what I was expecting at all.

“Kidding!” Yeah, I’m still trapped in a surprise round. If I’m reading her right, she’s still nervous about telling me something, and that was supposed to be an ice-breaker, a joke to soften the truth? I don’t think you need much skill to see that I’m apprehensive.

“The truth is, I’m following… ‘prophesy’ is too strong a word. Divinations, perhaps? They led me to you, and now, we need to be on our way.” She casts her daily Miracle, and a portal opens to an unknown (unseeable) destination. I’m always more cautious after my mentor uses their 1/day ability, so that really doesn’t help my mood / concentration.

“This portal will lead us to [*Redacted*], where we have to meet up with someone who divinations say will [*Redacted*]. I don’t know much about them, but supposedly they - or one of their companions - will be riding a [*Redacted*].”

I think, caught in my state of shock, my expression finally catches up to how I feel about that statement. She gets really… still. “What did you just hear?”

I tell her. The color drains from her face. “The Enemy has found us. I think you’re still ignorant enough to fly under the radar, but I’m compromised, I can’t go with you. Remember our lessons, and good luck,” she tells me as she tries to hurry me through the portal. Fortunately, my familiar can gather my gear at Quickling speed while I physically stall my departure. That stalling amounts to about time to say, “but…” and emote my concern (which she hopefully takes as including “for her safety”, and not just “my having no clue what the mission is”) before I’m shoved through the portal, and find myself in a back alley of an unfamiliar city.

All that’s mostly just background, to provide context for my character getting a crash course in the local physics.

Spoiler: “Example, part 5”

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Example, part 5 - crash course

So, I’ve already spent decades in this world, learned a lot about the way the world works, gained mastery of magic equivalent to a nigh-epic D&D Wizard, so interacting with a new town should be easy, right?

Yeah, not so much.

I don’t have the equivalent of Knowledge: Local, so I don’t know where anything is. And, as we know, I can’t learn anything, either directly or from being told, so I can’t ask directions (or, rather, I can ask, but it doesn’t help). So I’m lost. Permanently. Unless I gain the skill. Which I don’t dare do, because “ignorance” is apparently the best/only defense against “The Enemy”, whatever that is.

I do still have my existent skill in things like math and logic, so I can design movement algorithms to attempt to traverse an unknown topography.

However, as it turns out, I also have a metric ton of bling, hastily grabbed rather than carefully stowed, a habit of talking to myself (often in 4th wall breaking ways), and a morphing familiar that can literally be glaring daggers at anyone who looks at me funny. I may not be able to navigate my way out of a wet paper bag, but I certainly do draw attention.

And I think I really have “maxed out my ranks” in Sense Motive, because I seem to know so much more about everyone’s intentions than I ever would have before I came here.

It doesn’t take long before a group in similar uniforms (at least I’m “allowed” to notice that) are cautiously approaching me, informing me that they’re some word I can’t learn, but I’m certain means “local law enforcement”, and asking me to explain my situation.

I tell them that I’m under the effects of a “Confundus” spell (which means nothing to them beyond “spell”), and ask if they can lead me to a place where I can sit down with a glass of water. They are happy to acquiesce.

I get the feeling that this world was built with the meme, “how much is a room for someone who can cast Fireball, and burn this inn to the ground” in mind. Apparently, I mumbled some of that out loud, and it made enough sense to them that they confirm it. I do my best to express my disdain for those who would so abuse their power, and to thank them for their assistance. Duty, obligation, and fear are still their biggest motivators, but “happy to help” did grow at least a little. At least they can tell that my appreciation is genuine.

Ultimately, they lead me to a tavern which both iconography and words identify as the Dancing Monkey, although it looks more like the Pide Piper, playing a clarinet as it dances.

Spoiler: “Example, part 6”

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Example, part 6 - starting in a tavern

Yes, I did intentionally invoke that trope.

Unfortunately, despite the size of the place, there’s no one here besides the barkeep, whom the local law enforcement seem quite happy to leave me with. I think Sense Motive is helping me again, because I register the barkeep as “Tireless”. Strange that that’s not under Perception or Heal - maybe my skill is broader than I thought.

“I’d like some water,” I tell the barkeep, “But I’m not sure if I’ve got any money.” He goes through the motions of obviously giving me a once-over, but it’s purely for my benefit. “On the house. As is room and board.” It’s like an infinitely recursive mirror, of “I can see that he can see that I can see that…” as we come to an understanding of just how happy to help he is, how that’s his calling, his purpose in life.

He helps me with a lot, answering lots of questions, most of which I can actually understand the answers to. Wizards are rare, casting is fully legal (some of the effects obviously aren’t, but it’s very permissive) and won’t inherently cause a panic, etc. He’s absolutely shocked at my accuracy at a range (apparently, it’s unheard-of among Wizards, and my level of skill is right impressive among something I can’t catch). And I know he knows I know he knows I didn’t understand.

As patrons begin filtering in, I test the patrons in various ways, with arm wrestling, tests of skill, games of memory. Obviously (for those familiar with RPGs), I’m testing for things like “bounded accuracy” or “4e skill challenges”. What I find is, I’m pretty sure, Narrativium. And that I have at least two flaws: I apparently wear my heart on my sleeve, and I lose every arm wrestling match.

Also, everyone here is perfectly comfortable with repeating themselves, or explaining things differently, even though it obviously has no possible benefit, and the practice couldn’t have evolved naturally on this world. I resist the urge to facepalm at the vestigial holdover from “my” world.

Eventually, the PCs - or, rather, the adventures, some of whom might be PCs - begin showing up. And… they’re often armed with tech (which I really should have expected, given that my familiar could become a laptop). Some of it, I can recognize (if I’m familiar with the concept); otherwise, it’s alien and unlearnable.

Eventually, I deduced which group must be the PCs. The biggest hint is that my read on them is very different from everyone else (I hypothesize I’m getting my Intel from the players rather than the GM, and that, being different people, they describe different things / describe things differently).

When we go to approach one another, one of the PCs suddenly pulls the others into a huddle. I can tell that they’ve seen something concerning, and are confident that I cannot hear them at this range.

Spoiler: “Example, part 7”

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Example, part 7 - rules and regulations

They seem really concerned about treatment of prisoners, and the use of torture to extract information. I’m really concerned about what Sense they have that they’re misinterpreting to think that those are important topics to discuss, and how they measure distance every time they back off into a huddle. But what we almost come to blows over isn’t anything I’d have expected: it’s when I offer to help.

Now, not a one of the NPCs has ever reacted when I offered to help them with something. Even my mentor, PC or NPC, reacted what I’ll call “normally”. But the PCs? Offer to help with even the simplest of tasks, like cleaning up spilt beer? I may as well have unsheathed a Vorpal Blade made of Balefire for as much as they looked like they wanted to roll initiative at my offer of assistance. My hypothesis is, it involves XP, or skill increases, or something. Whatever or is, they clam up tight when I ask about their reaction. My hypothesis is, that’s a “roleplaying” thing, to not talk about whatever it is they’re clearly reacting to but not taking about.

So I can only test the effects of “aid another” actions with the NPC patrons, and the results… tell me that this system doesn’t register / grant any benefit from assistance. Needless to say, there’s lots of huddled conversations from the PCs at my experiments and note-taking. But when I start pulling books out of thin air, they’re back to wanting to talk shop.

Turns out, they consider my storage magic really valuable. And they show me theirs: it’s a chest, which contains two even larger chests, one of which contains 4 more chests, one of which contains 3 chests and 2 bags, one of which…

I dimly remember an old video game that worked like that. Navigating those takes forever. Whereas I have the “combat healing” version of storage.

Also, there are two such “chests of chests” mounted on either side of a Harley.

Not the “exotic mount” I was expecting, but between that and the evidence of being PCs, I’m willing to believe that this is where I’m “supposed” to be.

So, what’s my point? That most any game world is going to have really dumb physics, and really bad roleplaying that doesn’t make sense given that physics (or given supposed ignorance thereof). And that GM’s (or, at least, GM’s I’ve had) do a worse job than the system when they override it “for realism”. And that I’d rather build and roleplay a consistent character from a world where the physics is better, than have a character whose personality and backstory don’t make sense given the world they supposedly grew up in.

[Satinavian]

So, what’s my point? That most any game world is going to have really dumb physics, and really bad roleplaying that doesn’t make sense given that physics (or given supposed ignorance thereof). And that GM’s (or, at least, GM’s I’ve had) do a worse job than the system when they override it “for realism”. And that I’d rather build and roleplay a consistent character from a world where the physics is better, than have a character whose personality and backstory don’t make sense given the world they supposedly grew up in.

So what is your point ? That you only want to play real world characters because all tabletop settings have subpar physics ? Or that you take the quirks of whatever game system is used as failing of the setting physics ?

Both have very little to do with the original argument, which was about transferring a character from one RPG setting to another. NOT from the real world. So you have to make an argument that the setting random players want to pull their characters from are more fleshed out than the setting the group is suppossed to use.

[Quertus]

So what is your point ? That you only want to play real world characters because all tabletop settings have subpar physics ? Or that you take the quirks of whatever game system is used as failing of the setting physics ?

Both have very little to do with the original argument, which was about transferring a character from one RPG setting to another. NOT from the real world. So you have to make an argument that the setting random players want to pull their characters from are more fleshed out than the setting the group is suppossed to use.

First, I’ve already preemptively answered the important part:

As usual, my example will be lengthy and extreme, to drive home the direction I’m pointing.

And “supposedly!Earth” is a part of most RPG settings, including, relevantly, D&D.

Second, I’m not arguing about random players.

Third, even if I was, different failings matter more to different people - they could choose the setting whose failings and successes work for them and their personal needs and suspension of disbelief.

Fourth, even if the quality is the same, the GM isn’t going to be ruining the source world with rulings, or invalidating the backstory with retcons, making it inherently better.

Sure, 20 sessions in, the GM can make a ruling that invalidates their entire campaign. Or they can be constantly changing their physics, to where anything could happen next, and there’s no point being invested in anything. But, by insulating the character and their backstory as much as possible from such madness, you maximize the ability to remain invested in the character, and in the parts of the world the GM hasn’t ruined yet.

Because, in the end, Exploration / Discovery is my greatest joy in an RPG. I’d love to explore the GM’s world, see all the cool stuff they’ve done. But most GM’s make doing so a struggle, whether because they prioritize other types of fun, or in the name of “realism”. And don’t get me started on, “I’ve got to change that, because, if it were true, everyone would be doing that already”.

[Satinavian]

First, I’ve already preemptively answered the important part:

You were right that this was lengthy. But i answered the way i did because despite all thoise words this example utterly failed in explaining the direction you are going.

And “supposedly!Earth” is a part of most RPG settings, including, relevantly, D&D.

Nope, it is not. Most RPG settings that are not Earth itself don't have Earth as part of their universe.

Second, I’m not arguing about random players.

As seen from GMs you want to convince to include your old character when you are coming to their table, you are a random player.

Third, even if I was, different failings matter more to different people - they could choose the setting whose failings and successes work for them and their personal needs and suspension of disbelief.

That is acceptable.

Fourth, even if the quality is the same, the GM isn’t going to be ruining the source world with rulings, or invalidating the backstory with retcons, making it inherently better.

Sure, 20 sessions in, the GM can make a ruling that invalidates their entire campaign. Or they can be constantly changing their physics, to where anything could happen next, and there’s no point being invested in anything. But, by insulating the character and their backstory as much as possible from such madness, you maximize the ability to remain invested in the character, and in the parts of the world the GM hasn’t ruined yet.

Nope. Once your home setting is part of the multiverse the GM uses, his rulings completely extend to every part of it as well. If you are not willing to accept that, forget porting your characters.
He can use your background NPCs, your home, even potentially retcon your history. Yes, those things should be done carefully. But it does not matter in this regard of your background comes from another world or not.

And don’t get me started on, “I’ve got to change that, because, if it were true, everyone would be doing that already”.

That one is worthy of its own discussions.

[Quertus]

You were right that this was lengthy. But i answered the way i did because despite all thoise words this example utterly failed in explaining the direction you are going.

Did I? I think it’s pretty clearly pointed in a direction, but I’m biased that way. How about with this added line: if you can see what the world’s rules and physics look like from the PoV of someone from a realistic, consistent world like Earth, that should give you a feel for what the world looks like from the PoV of someone from another consistent world.

Hot about if I add the tags, #CharacterPerspective and #Roleplaying? Does it feel like it’s pointed in a direction yet?

If your answer is still “no”, maybe sit down with the people who have problems with Hit Points until their perspective feels natural, then apply that same level of rigor to every aspect of the game. (Note that I’m fine with HP, so you actually need less rigor than that to get to my PoV.)

Also, I really like the idea of people from a world with one implementation of HP getting used to a world with a different implementation thereof.

Nope, it is not. Most RPG settings that are not Earth itself don't have Earth as part of their universe.

Ah, I doubt there’s a master list of “every RPG ever created” to get a factual answer here. I admit, I meant more “in my experience” than “across all RPGs”. However, the more relevant bit was the relevance of supposedly!Earth canonically being connected to D&D.

Once your home setting is part of the multiverse the GM uses, his rulings completely extend to every part of it as well.

My character is from Earth. Please retcon that this is a post-scarcity world of peace and prosperity, filled with intelligent, caring, immortal beings.

I take it back - this is the best argument for a restricted multiverse. Never mind that it ruins the concept of a character from a world with one implementation of HP getting used to a world with a different implementation, GM’s, get on it with the retcon of Earth!

[Thrudd]

So what is your point ? That you only want to play real world characters because all tabletop settings have subpar physics ? Or that you take the quirks of whatever game system is used as failing of the setting physics ?

yes, Quertus is using "physics" to mean "the game mechanics" in these examples. According to these examples, if a game has mechanics or a GM who applies the rules in a way he doesn't like, he imagines that it is just the "weird physics" of the universe he's in. He insists that his character is actually the same character, with memories of every campaign past in every prior edition of D&D he's played, with all the same abilities, and that he can "break the fourth wall" and perceive the mechanics like distinct skills and which sort of dice are being rolled to determine things. I'm not sure where this comes from or why, but I'd guess it's the origin of many statements Quertus has made about "role playing" in general. Everything comes from the angle of him imagining how he could port his "signature" fourth-wall breaking AD&D character into the game- all abilities and memories intact - and be able to function the way he was able to under the DM and system of the original game. To him, this specific character seems to be everything, and his only concern is how well he can play as this specific character with the specific set of abilities he gained in the original system. The idea of just accepting a GM's chosen setting and game mechanics, playing a new character that originates in that setting and immersing in the fiction, treating the mechanics as a way to decide what happened in the fiction rather than physics, seems to be a hard sell.

If I were GM, and a player was constantly making digs at my rulings and criticizing the system we're using by making fourth-wall breaking in-character comments like "gee, the physics in this world are weird, nothing makes sense, it's not like the universe I came from" - I'd take that as the passive aggressive insult that it is and politely ask the player to knock it off. "I'm just role playing my character" is no excuse for this sort of thing.

[PhoenixPhyre]

yes, Quertus is using "physics" to mean "the game mechanics" in these examples. According to these examples, if a game has mechanics or a GM who applies the rules in a way he doesn't like, he imagines that it is just the "weird physics" of the universe he's in. He insists that his character is actually the same character, with memories of every campaign past in every prior edition of D&D he's played, with all the same abilities, and that he can "break the fourth wall" and perceive the mechanics like distinct skills and which sort of dice are being rolled to determine things. I'm not sure where this comes from or why, but I'd guess it's the origin of many statements Quertus has made about "role playing" in general. Everything comes from the angle of him imagining how he could port his "signature" fourth-wall breaking AD&D character into the game- all abilities and memories intact - and be able to function the way he was able to under the DM and system of the original game. To him, this specific character seems to be everything, and his only concern is how well he can play as this specific character with the specific set of abilities he gained in the original system. The idea of just accepting a GM's chosen setting and game mechanics, playing a new character that originates in that setting and immersing in the fiction, treating the mechanics as a way to decide what happened in the fiction rather than physics, seems to be a hard sell.

If I were GM, and a player was constantly making digs at my rulings and criticizing the system we're using by making fourth-wall breaking in-character comments like "gee, the physics in this world are weird, nothing makes sense, it's not like the universe I came from" - I'd take that as the passive aggressive insult that it is and politely ask the player to knock it off. "I'm just role playing my character" is no excuse for this sort of thing.

Yeah. I'll note that (as the OP), this particular academic wizard after-whom-the-account-is-named is a prime example of exactly what I dislike about restricted multiverses.

Consider what happens if a player wants to import a character from a different setting, one with different "physical laws" (either game mechanics or actual in-universe natural law).

True Multiverse: We have rules for that. Generally those involve converting the character from System A to System B. Or defining rules about how System A and System B interact. Not my favorite, but doable.

Isolated Settings: No. Not an option. This is my strong preference because it makes (IMO) for better settings with more internal consistency and more interesting, coherent narratives. But others may differ.

Restricted Multiverse: One of two options:
1. You can't have settings with different physical laws. Everyone must act exactly the same except cosmetically.
2. Characters have a right to come and choose whatever set of laws they want. Or the DM is being bad.

Both of those are odious beyond odium. Option 1 is breaking all settings on a Bed of Procrustes, limiting everyone to whatever the developers can come up with. And even the best of them are limited. And D&D specifically...I've yet to see a published setting that interested me. Eberron came close, until they filed off all the interesting parts when moving to the Multiverse Model of current 5e. FR, Greyhawk--they're just super bland and an inconsistent mishmash of things over the generations. Planescape? Heavens no. The Great Wheel is at the core of what I dislike about the Multiverse model. Plus the original leaned heavy into the "make up new words for things" model. Spelljammer? No. Just...no. If you want space adventures, play a space game. Don't poison other settings by stapling on this malignancy (ok, more like idiocy).

Option 2 is worse. It says that everything must bow to the most obnoxious player. You've got your +52 sword of brokenness from a previous campaign? Yup, either let them keep it or suffer the whining.

There's technically a 3rd option, where the player and the DM negotiate in detail every single little bit of the character and how it will work. But that's like hen's teeth, and often creates loopholes and jank because no one can predict all the needed details in advance.

Character migration can work...under very limited, very restricted circumstances. Even things like Organized Play get really screwed up incentives and suffer from power-gaming (in the bad sense of that, where it's generally munchkinry). And those are as locked down (rules wise) as it can reasonably get.

[NichG]

This must just be me, since everyone else including the OP seems to tacitly agree on this, but...

Character porting is, to me, among the least important things about the role of a multiverse in a setting cosmology. 'We should use X type of cosmology, so we can port our characters' or 'I don't like X type of cosmology, because people port their characters in such a way' seems like it misses 99% of what those choices can actually be used for.

(I also think this 'restricted multiverse' term doesn't sound like what OP seems to mean by it, if the only difference between 'restricted' and 'true' is whether different settings can have different physics. It now seems like the 'restricted' is supposed to mean 'settings are restricted', whereas I understood it originally as 'travel between settings is restricted'. But like, what exactly is 'restricting' you in this? And why formulate it that way in particular rather than, dunno, 'totally disjoint multiverse' vs 'multiverse with overarching metaphysics' vs 'fully integrated multiverse' or something like that)

I guess I'm saying this in the sense that, the most important aspects of a multiverse to me seem to be:

- How accessible are places with fundamentally different assumptions or natures to each-other? Not at all, somewhat, frequent?
- What are the tensions between what is true at different scales or levels of understanding/access? How do those different scales interact with one another?
- What arises from the way in which disjoint things become unified when you zoom out?

[Thrudd]

Yeah. I'll note that (as the OP), this particular academic wizard after-whom-the-account-is-named is a prime example of exactly what I dislike about restricted multiverses.

Consider what happens if a player wants to import a character from a different setting, one with different "physical laws" (either game mechanics or actual in-universe natural law).

True Multiverse: We have rules for that. Generally those involve converting the character from System A to System B. Or defining rules about how System A and System B interact. Not my favorite, but doable.

Isolated Settings: No. Not an option. This is my strong preference because it makes (IMO) for better settings with more internal consistency and more interesting, coherent narratives. But others may differ.

Restricted Multiverse: One of two options:
1. You can't have settings with different physical laws. Everyone must act exactly the same except cosmetically.
2. Characters have a right to come and choose whatever set of laws they want. Or the DM is being bad.

Both of those are odious beyond odium. Option 1 is breaking all settings on a Bed of Procrustes, limiting everyone to whatever the developers can come up with. And even the best of them are limited. And D&D specifically...I've yet to see a published setting that interested me. Eberron came close, until they filed off all the interesting parts when moving to the Multiverse Model of current 5e. FR, Greyhawk--they're just super bland and an inconsistent mishmash of things over the generations. Planescape? Heavens no. The Great Wheel is at the core of what I dislike about the Multiverse model. Plus the original leaned heavy into the "make up new words for things" model. Spelljammer? No. Just...no. If you want space adventures, play a space game. Don't poison other settings by stapling on this malignancy (ok, more like idiocy).

Option 2 is worse. It says that everything must bow to the most obnoxious player. You've got your +52 sword of brokenness from a previous campaign? Yup, either let them keep it or suffer the whining.

There's technically a 3rd option, where the player and the DM negotiate in detail every single little bit of the character and how it will work. But that's like hen's teeth, and often creates loopholes and jank because no one can predict all the needed details in advance.

Character migration can work...under very limited, very restricted circumstances. Even things like Organized Play get really screwed up incentives and suffer from power-gaming (in the bad sense of that, where it's generally munchkinry). And those are as locked down (rules wise) as it can reasonably get.

I agree, but aren't we really just talking about the D&D "kitchen sink" in general? This multiverse is just the current explanation for why the same system is used for all these different campaign settings, and make it possible for open table league play using any/all of the published material. What other games have such a setting, with so much content?

I am the same, I have always created my own settings and would curate and homebrew the options available for players if I were to run 5e, just as I did with 3e and AD&D. Is there anything to stop us doing that? I suppose there is a complaint that the more the game mechanics and spells get tied into this implied multiverse setting, the more work it is for us to adjust for our own settings. Also the factor of new players coming in, expecting D&D to be run "as published", and maybe getting upset that you're denying them playing the exact character they want. But I've felt that way about D&D pretty much forever- I don't feel conflicted about giving players restrictions on character options and changing how some spells work to match my setting, while also allowing some collaboration on including new elements that can be made cohesive with the rest of the setting.

Bringing characters from different campaign settings, let alone different game systems, is a hard "no" for me in pretty much any circumstance I can envision in any game I'd be running.