No. Because The prime material plane is not a planet. Most of the game worlds exist in the prime material plane, it is the ‘physical’ plane where we all exist. It includes The forgotten realms, greyhawk, krynn, darksun, golarion, eberron, blackmoor, al-qadim and mystara. Those are all game worlds or planets that have been officially released as official game worlds - there are others, they are just examples off the top of my head. These all exist within the pmp. They are all distinct worlds in their own right with their flavour and identities. Then outside of that are the planes of hell, astral, ethereal, celestial, elemental etc. Earth would be located within the pmp and it would be considered a separate game world if they ever did it as an official setting.
The material plane isn't a specific world, it's a dimension that many worlds occupy, such as Toril, Oearth, Krynn, and Exandria. None of the published settings are, were, or will be our Earth, they're all their own worlds.
Some older, non-canon content did have connections between our world and the various worlds of D&D.
From the Grand History of the Realms, slavers from Toril did come to Earth twice to take humans as slaves. This is why you see similar pantheons of Gods from ancient Earth in the Forgotten Realms Setting. Whether you call a book by WotC with Ed Greenwoods name on it a “non-canon source” is up to you.
I mean, per WotC and that link specifically, _everything_ is not cannon, including everything published for 5e. Actually a fan of that move. Makes adventure sales easier when players don't have to worry about continuity (and yeah, there's a timeline but I can only think of one instance in 5e where events of one adventure are referred to in another one as having actually happened).
To the OP's point. No. Some products of earlier editions, and some people play in their own game worlds, and those can be some sort precursor or post Earth; but it's never been D&D's explicit intent that the world you're playing in is in some sort of temporal relationship with our Earth. Definitely not Krynn. Greenwood's Forgotten Realms could "reach" the Earth of old and vice versa (and that bridging explains the existence of "real" mythologies popping up in the FR, which isn't a common thing mind you) it's part of his story logic for why they're called the "forgotten" realms when they were a fiction project before they became a game world. IIRC, that wasn't really a point or a known fact in the Forgotten Realms when TSR initially introduced it.
There was also the Legends and Lore book going back to AD&D that also statted various real life mythologies and fictions (Cthlulhu was in the original book, I forget whether Elrick was but there are artifacts in the game that are clearly analogs to Moorcock's mythos, which does have a relationship to "the real world".).
I guess at the end of the day, there isn't some essential or "true" relationship between the various cosmologies, pantheons, geographic structures etc folks draw from for D&D worlds and "the real world." However, at times and to varying degrees, the game has been and can be used to be set in some world in relationship to the "real world" if you want to do that. Play Camelot, play in Scandanavia and Iceland and go to Asgard, head butt Cuchulain, call upon the aid of Anansi to help defend your community, maybe there are sacred waters that are misunderstood to convey "eternal youth" and fight the invaders trying to find it. Or pretend your world prefigures the world you live in. You can do all of that in D&D, but it's definitely not essential to D&D and I'd say it's not the most common, or even a common way most players build their settings. More often "Earth's" relationship to any given D&D world is like Earth's relationship to the Star Wars Galaxy.
I mean, per WotC and that link specifically, _everything_ is not cannon, including everything published for 5e. Actually a fan of that move. Makes adventure sales easier when players don't have to worry about continuity (and yeah, there's a timeline but I can only think of one instance in 5e where events of one adventure are referred to in another one as having actually happened).
I was actually referring to these two key points:
Fifth edition’s canon includes every bit of lore that appears in the most up-to-date printings of the fifth edition Player’s Handbook, Monster Manual, and Dungeon Master’s Guide. Beyond these core rulebooks, we don’t have a public-facing account of what is canonical in fifth edition because we don’t want to overload our fellow creators and business partners
and
However, we use canonical lore internally to maintain consistency across our fifth-edition products. Knowing that fire giants are canonically shorter yet more powerful than frost giants means that we don’t need to rethink that bit of lore in upcoming products. Similarly, knowing that all trolls regenerate makes designing new troll variants easier.
Specifically there is content WotC considers canon and non-canon and pre-fifth edition content falls under the non-canon umbrella until reprinted under fifth edition
Look if you want to do that, its your call. Tiamat from the first 5E module is a Babylonian deity. Those people that were slaves from Earth brought their gods from Earth. Much later that pantheon was wiped out save a few which joined the Faerun pantheon, including Tiamat. 5E acknowledges her existance therefore her past in the Realms via canon. If you don't want the hassle of dealing with the deep lore, that's your call, but pushing it aside as irrelevent is insulting to all the work done by people for the game and companies that brought us this great hobby.
Grew up reading those Dragon Magazine articles of Ed talking to Mordenkainen and Elminister in his study. Both of whom traveled via portals to there for it.
Then you have the various pantheons that were brought from other worlds, to add to this from just the main pantheon of the Realms, you have Tyr who is a Norse God. So yes, Earth would very much fall into the the realm of being on this Prime. This was easily handled in old lore with Spelljammer having spheres instead of the Astral Sea. You could actually have a closed sphere (such as Darksun and was referred to as).
To ignore this past is to lose sight of the D&D itself.
I don't think anyone is pushing anything aside as irrelevant.
There is some stuff that we have to accept and hold in common in order to say we're playing the same game, have compatibility with one another (so I'm not rolling up to a game and performing a Wisdom (Perception) check with a d100 and getting aggro because that table does it with a d4) and so forth. That commonality is canon.
The developers have explicitly said that they want to minimise canon so that DMs aren't bound by tone upon tome of lore. As a somewhat new DM, I'm grateful for that. I really don't want to have to spend anyear just reading previous editions and all its lore just to play the game. I could just start my party off in Phandalin and have them chase Cryovain.
However, like any good developer of games like this, they want to provide all sorts of things that I (and other DMs/players) can add in. I don't have to just to play the game, but I can. That stuff is not canon. It's not disrespectful to not include it. More importantly, it's not disrectful to recognise the difference in status, and on the boards when questions like these are asked, it's implicit that we're talking about canon material unless specified otherwise. David's link specifies what is and what is not canon, and I found it interesting at least.
Anyway, the canon/non-canon thing is a massive diversion from the point of the thread, asking whether D&D worlds are related to Earth.
Personally, I think the history, cosmology and the very nature of the D&D worlds are so drastically different to real world Earth that even if there were some intention behind it, there is no meaningful connection between them. I mean, you can travel between star systems on the power of thought, there is common magic, history has no relation between the two...even if it's a reimagining of our history or a post apocalyptic future a la Shannara, there's just so little tying the two, that it's meaningless to say that any of the worlds is Earth.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's worth mentioning that Earth (as in, our world) exists within D&D's multiverse. It's well worth reading. "Downunda" is speculated to be Earth's equivalent of the Underdark.
Do you think the material plane is our own world, but with a twist on it? Think about the the time period… perhaps in the dark ages?
No. Because The prime material plane is not a planet. Most of the game worlds exist in the prime material plane, it is the ‘physical’ plane where we all exist. It includes The forgotten realms, greyhawk, krynn, darksun, golarion, eberron, blackmoor, al-qadim and mystara. Those are all game worlds or planets that have been officially released as official game worlds - there are others, they are just examples off the top of my head. These all exist within the pmp. They are all distinct worlds in their own right with their flavour and identities. Then outside of that are the planes of hell, astral, ethereal, celestial, elemental etc. Earth would be located within the pmp and it would be considered a separate game world if they ever did it as an official setting.
The material plane isn't a specific world, it's a dimension that many worlds occupy, such as Toril, Oearth, Krynn, and Exandria. None of the published settings are, were, or will be our Earth, they're all their own worlds.
Some older, non-canon content did have connections between our world and the various worlds of D&D.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
From the Grand History of the Realms, slavers from Toril did come to Earth twice to take humans as slaves. This is why you see similar pantheons of Gods from ancient Earth in the Forgotten Realms Setting. Whether you call a book by WotC with Ed Greenwoods name on it a “non-canon source” is up to you.
It's non-canon according to Wizards of the Coast
https://dnd.wizards.com/news/dnd-canon
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
I mean, per WotC and that link specifically, _everything_ is not cannon, including everything published for 5e. Actually a fan of that move. Makes adventure sales easier when players don't have to worry about continuity (and yeah, there's a timeline but I can only think of one instance in 5e where events of one adventure are referred to in another one as having actually happened).
To the OP's point. No. Some products of earlier editions, and some people play in their own game worlds, and those can be some sort precursor or post Earth; but it's never been D&D's explicit intent that the world you're playing in is in some sort of temporal relationship with our Earth. Definitely not Krynn. Greenwood's Forgotten Realms could "reach" the Earth of old and vice versa (and that bridging explains the existence of "real" mythologies popping up in the FR, which isn't a common thing mind you) it's part of his story logic for why they're called the "forgotten" realms when they were a fiction project before they became a game world. IIRC, that wasn't really a point or a known fact in the Forgotten Realms when TSR initially introduced it.
There was also the Legends and Lore book going back to AD&D that also statted various real life mythologies and fictions (Cthlulhu was in the original book, I forget whether Elrick was but there are artifacts in the game that are clearly analogs to Moorcock's mythos, which does have a relationship to "the real world".).
I guess at the end of the day, there isn't some essential or "true" relationship between the various cosmologies, pantheons, geographic structures etc folks draw from for D&D worlds and "the real world." However, at times and to varying degrees, the game has been and can be used to be set in some world in relationship to the "real world" if you want to do that. Play Camelot, play in Scandanavia and Iceland and go to Asgard, head butt Cuchulain, call upon the aid of Anansi to help defend your community, maybe there are sacred waters that are misunderstood to convey "eternal youth" and fight the invaders trying to find it. Or pretend your world prefigures the world you live in. You can do all of that in D&D, but it's definitely not essential to D&D and I'd say it's not the most common, or even a common way most players build their settings. More often "Earth's" relationship to any given D&D world is like Earth's relationship to the Star Wars Galaxy.
Jander Sunstar is the thinking person's Drizzt, fight me.
I was actually referring to these two key points:
and
Specifically there is content WotC considers canon and non-canon and pre-fifth edition content falls under the non-canon umbrella until reprinted under fifth edition
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Look if you want to do that, its your call. Tiamat from the first 5E module is a Babylonian deity. Those people that were slaves from Earth brought their gods from Earth. Much later that pantheon was wiped out save a few which joined the Faerun pantheon, including Tiamat. 5E acknowledges her existance therefore her past in the Realms via canon. If you don't want the hassle of dealing with the deep lore, that's your call, but pushing it aside as irrelevent is insulting to all the work done by people for the game and companies that brought us this great hobby.
Gotta agree with GodwinXZ on this one.
Grew up reading those Dragon Magazine articles of Ed talking to Mordenkainen and Elminister in his study. Both of whom traveled via portals to there for it.
Then you have the various pantheons that were brought from other worlds, to add to this from just the main pantheon of the Realms, you have Tyr who is a Norse God. So yes, Earth would very much fall into the the realm of being on this Prime. This was easily handled in old lore with Spelljammer having spheres instead of the Astral Sea. You could actually have a closed sphere (such as Darksun and was referred to as).
To ignore this past is to lose sight of the D&D itself.
I don't think anyone is pushing anything aside as irrelevant.
There is some stuff that we have to accept and hold in common in order to say we're playing the same game, have compatibility with one another (so I'm not rolling up to a game and performing a Wisdom (Perception) check with a d100 and getting aggro because that table does it with a d4) and so forth. That commonality is canon.
The developers have explicitly said that they want to minimise canon so that DMs aren't bound by tone upon tome of lore. As a somewhat new DM, I'm grateful for that. I really don't want to have to spend anyear just reading previous editions and all its lore just to play the game. I could just start my party off in Phandalin and have them chase Cryovain.
However, like any good developer of games like this, they want to provide all sorts of things that I (and other DMs/players) can add in. I don't have to just to play the game, but I can. That stuff is not canon. It's not disrespectful to not include it. More importantly, it's not disrectful to recognise the difference in status, and on the boards when questions like these are asked, it's implicit that we're talking about canon material unless specified otherwise. David's link specifies what is and what is not canon, and I found it interesting at least.
Anyway, the canon/non-canon thing is a massive diversion from the point of the thread, asking whether D&D worlds are related to Earth.
Personally, I think the history, cosmology and the very nature of the D&D worlds are so drastically different to real world Earth that even if there were some intention behind it, there is no meaningful connection between them. I mean, you can travel between star systems on the power of thought, there is common magic, history has no relation between the two...even if it's a reimagining of our history or a post apocalyptic future a la Shannara, there's just so little tying the two, that it's meaningless to say that any of the worlds is Earth.
If you're not willing or able to to discuss in good faith, then don't be surprised if I don't respond, there are better things in life for me to do than humour you. This signature is that response.
It's worth mentioning that Earth (as in, our world) exists within D&D's multiverse. It's well worth reading. "Downunda" is speculated to be Earth's equivalent of the Underdark.
https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Earth
[REDACTED]
No, but I think Earth is one of the worlds in the Material Plane, separated from the other worlds by its own wildspace system and by the Astral Sea.
I really like D&D, especially Ravenloft, Exandria and the Upside Down from Stranger Things. My pronouns are she/they (genderfae).