Imagine an adventure that explores all of the official realms of Dungeons & Dragons—adventurers from a number of classic settings coming together to face a force that threatens all of their worlds, embarking on a quest that will take them to many different settings. Hearing this you might say “Oh, right, that’s the new WotC adventure Eve of Destruction, right?” And, well, yes it is. But it’s also the basis of Legacy of Worlds, a liveplay campaign that launches on the Six Sides of Gaming at 8:30 Eastern Time on March 12th . What is Legacy of Worlds? Well, tome keeper Devin Wilson explains it succinctly here. The cast includes Luke Gygax, Elisa Teague, Thomas Gofton, KP Upadhyayula, Bee Zelda, Ed Greenwood, and Noordin Ali Kadir, playing champions from Eberron, Oerth, Faerun, Ravenloft, Mystara, and more!

I’ve never been drawn to liveplay, but I love this group—the players, the characters, and the adventure. I especially love the relationship between Merrix and Elminster… and DM Devin does a fantastic job of creating stories that entangle all of the planes and that have significance for all of our characters. Here’s a fun moment from the first episode.

Now, to shoot the tribex in the room, I’m sure many of you are saying But wait! Eberron has its own cosmology! It shouldn’t be possible for Elminster and Merrix to have a team-up. And you’re right. Eberron has its own unique cosmology and a different approach to deities than many of the other settings; it’s intentionally isolated. But it’s also always been the case that it’s a place where you can tell the story you want to tell. The original 3.5 Eberron Campaign Setting had the Plane of Shadow as part of Eberron’s cosmology, with the idea that it was a back door that let you sneak to other settings. I once played a warforged cleric of the Becoming God in a Forgotten Realms campaign based on this idea. It didn’t change anything about how I wrote or ran Eberron; it was a weird one-time fluke, because that was the story I wanted to tell. Eberron: Rising From The Last War expanded on this, in this section labeled “Eberron and the Multiverse”:

It is theoretically possible to travel between Eberron and other worlds in the multiverse by means of the Deep Ethereal or various spells designed for planar travel, but the cosmology of Eberron is specifically designed to prevent such travel, to keep the world hidden away from the meddling of gods, celestials, and fiends from beyond… In your campaign, you might decide that the barrier formed by the Ring of Siberys is intact, and contact between Eberron and the worlds and planes beyond its cosmology is impossible. This is the default assumption of this book. On the other hand, you might want to incorporate elements from other realms. Perhaps you want to use a published adventure that involves Tiamat or the forces of the Abyss meddling in the affairs of the world. In such a case, it could be that the protection offered by the Ring of Siberys has begun to fail. You might link the weakening of Siberys to the Mourning — perhaps whatever magical catastrophe caused the Mourning also disrupted the Ring of Siberys, or perhaps a disruption of the Ring of Siberys actually caused the Mourning!

If contact between Eberron and the wider multiverse is recent and limited, consider the implications for everyone involved. In the Great Wheel, Asmodeus is an ancient threat, with well-established cults, lines of tieflings, and a long history of meddling that sages might uncover in dusty old tomes hidden in remote libraries. But if Asmodeus has only just discovered Eberron and begun to influence it for the first time, there is no lore about him to be discovered on Eberron. He has no power base and needs to recruit new followers. Unusual alliances might form against him, as celestials and fiends join forces to expel this hostile outsider.

No Contact is the default assumption. Legacy of Worlds is a What If? scenario—What if Merrix was a hero? What if he was pulled into another setting? What if he had adventures with Elminster and friends? None of that is canon or kanon; Legacy Merrix isn’t going to appear in my Quickstone campaign. I doubled down on this by deciding that Legacy Merrix is from Eberron in 1018 YK, in part of justify the fact that he’s a 20th level character in this campaign. So the Eberron he’s from is different in many ways, some of which might come out during the campaign. But nothing I do as Merrix changes canon or kanon; it’s just a fun story to explore as a purely hypothetical scenario!

Anyhow, I love playing in Legacy of Worlds and I hope you’ll check it out! I’ll be hanging out in chat with some of the cast for the premiere, so come join me there! And here’s one more awesome picture from KP Upadhyayula—if you enjoy his work, check out his studio here!