Unpacking the Vast Complexities of the D&D Multiverse

While I suppose at this point I've been DMing for nearly two years, I still think of myself, as someone who got into the game in his 30s, as a neophyte to Dungeons and Dragons.

I'm also a fantasy writer, and so naturally, when I got into D&D, I took the opportunity to create a new world for my players to inhabit.

But one of the oddities of D&D is that, while they encourage the creation of new worlds (such as Matthew Mercer's Exandria setting for the Critical Role games,) the Multiverse seems to be fairly consistent. The Dungeon Master's Guide outlines the inner planes - such as the Feywild and Shadowfell, which are sort of "just outside reality," and then the Elemental Planes - followed by the Outer Planes, which seem much more directly tied to the alignment system.

Whereas some established, commercial IPs are complex but not so complex that I couldn't match their complexities (I'd argue my Sarkon setting is roughly as complex as the Warcraft setting, though that's one that keeps getting fleshed out with each WoW expansion, meaning I'll have to keep working to keep pace with it,) the D&D Multiverse is utterly immense.

Essentially, it seems that each setting, with exceptions for plane-hopping "settings" like Planescape or Spelljammer, is really just one of the worlds within the Prime Material Plane. What this means is that there's actually a lot of crossover between them.

Typically, humans have different gods to worship in each of the material plane worlds, but the other races tend to have the same ones. And entities from the other planes, like the Raven Queen of the Shadowfell or Asmodeus with his infernal hierarchy from the Nine Hells, play roles in each of these worlds.

This presents a bit of a conundrum for me and my setting. I'm torn between wanting to connect it with the greater D&D multiverse (which, for example, might make it more welcoming for veteran players) and creating my own thing. (I'm reminded of an Arrested Development line where GOB, the only slightly successful stage magician, buys a katana that apparently has a complex mythology and he interrupts the guy telling him saying "Yeah, I make up my own patter. Just ring it up with the dong tea.")

The thing is, I think that tons of writers have been adding to D&D lore since before I was born, so there's a ton of stuff that's rather firmly established on which I only have a partial grasp.

Currently, my thinking is that the multiverse of my own setting is actually outside of the main multiverse, in a kind of pocket of reality across the Far Plane. It's a setting with a very important and strong cosmic horror element, but I figure it's connected enough that faint whispers of existing D&D stuff could get in.

But one of the odd consequences of making my own stuff up is that sometimes I think I've come up with a clever take on an existing element only to discover that someone else has already had that idea.

Take, for example, my version of the Drow (Dark Elves.)

In my setting, no humanoid race is inherently evil - Half-Orcs, for example, are actually just Orcs but given that name because Orcs are so associated with barbarism and thus the other races feel that referring to them by the actual name of their race would be an insult.

Anyway, the Drow are an ostracized minority within the general culture, most forced to live in isolated villages in the more dreary and dangerous parts of the Empire. However, a large faction of them were evangelized by strange bird-like emissaries of an entity called the Dire King, who rules the Shadowlands - Sarkon's equivalent of the Shadowfell. This faction, who call themselves the Dire Elves, are far more vicious and cruel, like the Lolth-worshipping Drow of the main setting.

However, clever as I thought I was being, I then learned about the Shadar-Kai - a group of, yes, Drow, who, rather than worshipping Lolth, have become worshippers of the Raven Queen, who, you know, rules the Shadowfell.

Not only that, but my bird-like creatures, inspired mainly by the Taheen from Stephen King's Dark Tower series (which, if I had to name one top influence on me, that's the one) as well as the "Winged Servants" of the "Distant Prince" from the Welcome to Night Vale podcast, actually bear a resemblance to the "Nagpa," a somewhat obscure, but apparently about to appear in Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes, bird-headed group of Shadowfell creatures (themselves partially inspired by the Skekses from The Dark Crystal.)

There's a granularity to D&D's established stuff that is really intimidating.

Take, for example, the fact that there are both Demons and Devils. In my setting, I've taken inspiration from Warcraft (or at least my interpretation of Warcraft lore) and have three major, mostly independent major evils - the Lovecraftian Great Others, the ominous and corrupting Primal Shadow, and the undead legions of Gorendan, the God of Death (the latter being complicated by the fact that Gorendan himself might not be strictly evil anymore, even if his legions still are.)

So the Great Others have a pretty good spread of Aberration--type monsters to associate with (I've even got a history for Ilithids/Mind Flayers that suggests they were once benevolent before the influence of the Great Others corrupted them.) Gorendan and his lieutenant Absolon are a great source for all kinds of Undead monsters, but also work pretty well to introduce Devils - Absolon is essentially an Undead Angel, and in my setting, there are tons of fiendish creatures who serve a similar role that the Angels do to the benevolent gods, only they serve Gorendan.

The Primal Shadow is somewhat more vague, but the Dire King serves as a kind of tangible manifestation of its power. All the nasty Shadowfell stuff could come through this branch, but again, it's complicated. In the standard D&D stuff, the Shadowfell is actually home to much of the undead/necromantic magic. My Shadowlands are really more equivalent to the Dark World from A Link to the Past.

The thing is, I think that if you look at D&D's official, established canon, there's way more than just that. I mentioned Devils and Demons, but those are only the denizens of the Nine Hells of Baator (the Lawful Evil plane) and the Abyss (the Chaotic Evil plane.) But that's only two of seven evil-aligned planes, not to mention the Shadowfell or any of the other places where there's nasty evil stuff, like the City of Brass in the Fire Plane or the bad parts of the Feywild.

My problem here is that there's a certain hubris I possess that says "ok, you've (and by you I mean countless different writers all working at different times) had 40 years to establish this enormously complex canon. I must match it!" I'm not generally a competitive person - I don't even enjoy player-versus-player video games much. But I guess I found a worthy opponent and a challenge I find compelling.

May Dor, Sarass, Byzerak, Yad and all His saints have mercy on this foolish soul.