Dungeons & Dragons Introduces Multiversal Variants With Planescape: Adventures In The Multiverse

It's been over twenty years since the last Dungeons & Dragons book set in Planescape. The once extremely popular setting was abandoned by Wizards of the Coast starting with Third Edition in 2001 in order to focus on one main plane of existence, with only brief forays into others such as Avernus happening recently. But with Dungeons & Dragons' recent fondness for the ever-popular Multiverse, it's the right time for a return to the setting that first appeared in 1994, but with a few fun new twists. 

Thinking With (Multiversal) Portals

The appeal of Planescape comes from the fact that it links to everything. You can go from any setting, from any campaign book, through to the nexus point of the multiverse. Indeed it's encouraged to link in one shot here and there if your players decide that they want to explore a particular portal and end up in another realm, using books like Journey Through The Radiant Citadel as a starting point, since the Radiant Citadel itself is a place where travelers from across the multiverse mingle. As Co-Lead Designer Wes Schneider stated:

"That's one of the fascinating things about this. There's always been sort of the idea that every game, every table, every story, every adventure, every personal DM campaign setting is all part of the multiverse. That's part of what makes the D&D multiverse so wondrous is that if you want to hop from the campaign setting you've been creating and playing in for decades to your buddy's setting to a published campaign setting to something else entirely. It's all out there. It all connects."

This is represented in a three-book box set that contains a combination Players Handbook/Dungeon Masters Guide, a Monster Manual, and an Adventure book. The goal here is to reintroduce players to Planescape as a setting, similar to how Spelljammer was reintroduced, before releasing new standalone adventures in this universe. 

Nothing Ever Ends, Adrian. Nothing Ever Ends.

An extremely interesting new mechanic has also been added with the Planescape: Adventures In The Multiverse. The core adventure that comes in the three-book boxset, Turn of Fortune's Wheel, is designed for characters levels 3-10 before a sharp jump to level 17, which is actually explained in the narrative. You see, Turn of Fortune's Wheel is predicated on the idea that something is going wrong with reality. Whether it's related to the fact that you're in the Great Wheel, the nexus point for every campaign setting in Dungeons & Dragons history, or something else, you're not quite right.

Due to this weird aberration in reality, when you die you come back. It's not like a True Resurrection spell or Revify, though — you come back different. It's up to the players and the Dungeon Master to fabricate exactly what this means in their game, but the example given during the press conference was that somebody who died would come back as a different multiversal variant of themselves. Perhaps you died as a Level 5 Tiefling Fighter and came back as a Level 5 Drow Cleric, or perhaps you came back with a different weapon than what you used to use. It opens up the game to a lot of different possibilities and offers an extremely interesting twist on death that doesn't trivialize the experience but enhances it.

"Something that players are going to discover in this adventure is that they're at the center of this multi-planar glitch where something about reality isn't clicking with them right. In the course of learning about that, what they're going to discover is that when they die or when something dramatic happens to them, they don't just die. The soul doesn't move onto another plane in the multiverse like usual. 

After a few beats, they come back as a different incarnation of themselves. So in the course of this adventure, you might start off and you might be playing a fighter, but if you end up dying... your character will return slightly different. What that means is entirely up to the players and the Dungeon Master."

What we don't know about this return to Planescape is whether or not it'll play a part in the long-running story surrounding the Obelisks that keep appearing around the Dungeons & Dragons multiverse. Could whatever is happening to reality in Planescape be the reason that so many magically infused objects are dotted around the adventure books? We also know from the original announcement showcase that Planescape: Adventures in the Multiverse sets up the big adventure to come in 2024, which will surround the long-beloved Dungeons & Dragons villain Vecna, so how will he factor into this? We'll have to wait for the full release to find out. 

Planescape: Adventures In The Multiverse is available October 3rd for digital D&D Beyond purchases. Physical versions will be available through your local game store on October 17.