Earth and D&D

 Hey, you know what's nuts?

Earth is canonically one of D&D's settings.

In D&D, the general cosmology has, at its center (well, one of its centers - the residents of Sigil would certainly beg to differ) the Prime Material Plane. The "PMP" as it were, an abbreviation I will never use again (I'll just say Material Plane,) is the most straightforward of the planar realities - it's where worlds that are more or less like our own exist. Worlds where there are humanoids, beasts, and sure, there's some magic and stuff, but the ground is made of real dirt, the sky is real air, and things obey the laws of physics when magic isn't altering them.

Spelljammer expanded some of the lore of the Material Plane, adopting and adapting real-world medieval theories on the way the universe works, rather than our current model of solar system, stellar clusters, galaxy, galactic clusters, and the observable universe governed by things like Einstein's relativity and universal expansion. Back when there was a geocentric model of the universe, the belief was that the planets (which, in that model, included the sun and the moon) were all part of spheres rotating around the earth, and that beyond them was an outermost sphere in which the stars were embedded, and beyond that was literally God only knows what. (Note for medieval scientific history buffs - that's just what I can recall off the top of my head, which I think is more or less the gist, even if I got some details wrong.)

So Spelljammer takes this idea of Crystal Spheres and suggests that each D&D world, from the Forgotten Realms' Toril to Dragonlance's Krynn to Greyhawk's Oerth, rests within its own crystal sphere. The interior of these spheres is somewhat analogous to space as we know it, and I believe is on the scale of magnitude of a solar system, or perhaps a bit smaller. Toril is within a sphere called "Realmspace," while Krynn is within "Krynnspace," etc. To travel to another world, you need to have a special magic spaceship called a Spelljammer (named after the legendary ship of the same name) that can open a portal in the wall of the crystal sphere and then journey across the Phlogiston - a kind of aether-like soup - along currents that can take you to another sphere.

Officially, D&D includes Earth as one of the worlds within one of these spheres. Granted, given our understanding of the size of the universe, it's got to be by far the biggest one (either that or it explains our current theories as being misinterpretations of the evidence we have,) but what this means is that traveling to, well, here, is actually very doable with D&D mechanics.

Planar travel in D&D is generally restricted to either finding portals in the world (very much at the DM's discretion) or only after you get high-level spells. Plane Shift is a 7th level spell, and also requires you find a special tuning fork that is attuned to the resonance of another plane (so the DM can control whether you get it or not) and then Astral Projection is a 9th level spell that involves a jaunt into the Astral Plane, one of the weirdest places in the D&D multiverse.

But the thing is, because all the settings (well, most) are on the Material Plane, that means that you don't actually need such advanced magic to get there. Essentially, while the distance might be tremendously enormous, if you're standing in Waterdeep in the Forgotten Realms, there's actually a simple, 3-dimensional direction you can point to Zadash in Exandria, and as such, ordinary teleportation would allow you to go there. Granted, you'd probably need to know that it existed, but if, say, you had a sigil sequence for a teleportation circle on another world, you could actually just cast Teleportation Circle as soon as level 9 (on a pure caster that can cast that spell) and take your party there.

And that also means you can get to Earth.

In the PHB, some real-world pantheons are listed among the options to consider for your deities. While this might just be simple inspiration for coming up with equivalent gods, the truth is that you might actually worship figures like Thor or Aphrodite. Indeed, in early content, such as Planescape, they actually came up with a place for these figures. The Norse gods are found in Ysgard, while the Greek are found in Arborea (which was also sometimes just called Olympus.) Yes, it might be odd to see a super-lawful deity like Athena in the Chaotic Good plane, but we also have Tiamat, a chaotic evil goddess, in the Lawful Evil Nine Hells, so there's precedent.

Actually, this does complicate some things - Tiamat is named after an ancient Mesopotamian deity who was the sort of original evil in contrast with Apsu. Both were sort of water-based deities (it's implied that Tiamat represented salt water while Apsu represented fresh water,) and Tiamat is slain in the creation myth and the bottom half of her body makes the ocean while the top half becomes the sky - not exactly consistent with "five-headed dragon goddess."

Naturally, the question of where the Abrahamic religious figures fits in here is also something of an open question - though one that I think TSR and Wizards have probably been wise to set aside. Though actually, a lot of Demon Lords and Archdevils do share names with subjects of Medieval demonology based in a Christian tradition, so... who knows?

The thing that got me to write about this, largely reacting to a Lore You Should Know that featured Jeremy Crawford talking about the eponymous wizard from Tasha's Cauldron of Everything, is that Tasha was actually raised by Baba Yaga.

Now, Baba Yaga is a figure of Slavic folklore, more or less as the ultimate witch in the woods. She's mostly antagonistic and scary, but arguably not precisely evil (though woe betide you if you get on her bad side.) And unlike Tiamat, the implication is that Baba Yaga is not just some same-named figure, but is actually the figure from Earth's folkore.

In the interview, Greg Tito and Jeremey Crawford actually speculate that Tasha might even be from Earth.

And that just sets my mind in motion.

At one point during the Acquisitions Incorporated games, the team suddenly shows up at the WotC headquarters in Renton, WA, and they actually meet Chris Perkins (who was simultaneously DMing - this was before he passed the campaign off to Jeremy Crawford.) While this mostly felt like a sweet bit of meta (that was apparently 100% improvised,) reflecting on how long they'd been running that campaign (which began as a promotion for the then-new 4th Edition!) it was actually also canonically ok to happen.

And given that there are some tools for modern stuff like firearms and explosives (and a more abortive attempt at modern subclasses and spells that skewed a little too cyperpunk for my personal tastes) I think it would be really fun to have some campaign that actually brings the action into our world.

We've also been told that this book (coming out tomorrow!) is "not the last we'll see of Tasha" moving forward, which makes me very curious about what upcoming books we'll have for 5E in the coming year. With the release of Tasha's, I don't think any announced books will remain to be released, so it's really an open question.

Again, I hope we see the College of Spirits and Undead Patron come out with a Ravenloft book. But hopefully after Tasha's release, we'll get some news on what's next for D&D.