D&D Moves Towards ‘One Magical Multiverse’ In The Future
In a recent interview, D&D’s lead rules designer reveals a change in direction to ‘one magical multiverse.’
In a recent video, Jeremy Crawford reveals that Dungeons & Dragons is moving away from one central world. Instead, the venerable fantasy RPG is moving to a multiversal model. What does any of that mean? Take a look for yourself below.
The two big takeaways from this big lore dump are that one: D&D is about to get a whole lot broader. It’s a direction we’ve kind of seen in the last wave of books.
Wild Beyond the Witchlight takes players into the Feywild. Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything opened up options for players from around the various D&D worlds. And more practically speaking, as D&D looks to build its fantasy franchise into a Cinematic Universe with its big budget feature film and TV series projects, who knows where else they’ll go?
As Crawford puts it, shifting into a focus on the Multiverse allows them to span many different subgenres of fantasy. So instead of the default D&D setting and aesthetic being the Forgotten Realms, which is about as bog standard fantasy as it gets, a unique identity can be carved out in all manner of fantasy niches.
From the post-apocalyptic fantasy of Dark Sun to the pulp and gaslamp fantasy of Eberron. There’s a lot to reckon with already. But with a focus on the totality of D&D’s many worlds, the design team can experiment with “beats that span the many worlds.”
Crawford highlights this by calling out recent changes made to the lore of Goblinoids.
Goblins in a Magical Multiverse
Mordenkainen Presents: Monsters of the Multiverse establishes new origins for goblins. Now instead of monstrous folk who have always just sort of been around, they’re monstrous fae. Who have always just sort of been around.
Now they’re imagined as servants of the Unseelie Queen of Air and Darkness. Or at least they were. Until the conquering god Maglubiyet came along and defeated the goblin’s gods (or possibly archfey goblins) and pressed them into Maglubiyet’s foul dominion. Now they’ve proliferated through the many worlds.
Which explains how goblins are different in this new magical multiverse model. But it also sets up potential stories that might kick off with goblins in Eberron, say, venturing between worlds to break free of the god’s dominion.
But all this is only speculation at the moment. Time will tell soon enough what exactly this means. But in the meantime, there’s always the next book, Critical Role: Call of the Netherdeep to look forward to.
Happy Adventuring!
