Forked Thread: The Great Wheel

[Fallen Seraph]

That's something I'm also against with 4e, especially when you consider how easily accessible all those spells that made planes survivable for a party are now, with all such spells easily being rituals. All it requires is a stop in Sigil or some other planar metropolis to pick up a ritual scroll or learn one, it doesn't take that much for a party to survive a plane of burning death anymore.

This was always the case though, and to travel to some planes in the first place you needed to do this. So it is not different then before, and now since the planes are hospitable without these rituals/spells in 4e, you don't simply become immune to everything that plane has to hold.

 

[Khairn]

Contrariwise, I find the Great Wheel loaded with interesting places to go. Fantastic places. But 4e seems rather pedestrian to me by way of comparison due to the nixing of the inhospitable planes. Making all the planes "PC ready" is a tremendous fourth-wall breaker for me.

Agreed. The easy access and survivability of the 4E realms diminishes the wonder that planar travel has always had in the D&D games that I've been part of.

Another difference is that the cosmology of the Great Wheel had volumes of material written about it, while 4E's cosmology is very new. But given the minimalist approach WotC's taken to their PoL settings I can't imagine that changing any time soon. Actually, if I was going to use the 4E cosmology I would break out my oWoD Mage and Werewolf books and convert some of those concepts to the Feywild, Shadowfell and Astral Sea.

 

[billd91]

I like the metaphor of the Astral Sea, the rest of the 4e cosmology is just meh to me.
I was always fairly neutral to the Great Wheel metaphor.

 

[Lanefan]

I guess I've always used a variant on the Great Wheel without realizing it, but basing the Human pantheons more on real-world historical pantheons e.g. Norse, Celtic, Greek, etc. I've never bothered much with the Astral and Ethereal, but the way I see it, every deity - or at least every pantheon - has its own plane or collection of planes; also every element (including Magic, and the Elemental Plane of Magic is probably *the* most dangerous place in the universe!), along with all the Hells and Abyss etc., and a few other afterlife-type planes usually race-based.

As far as how they link up, most of the time characters just use planeshift to get from one to the next so hard links don't matter very much...but, in the past I've also had a nexus point where all planes and worlds meet, and the inter-planar endless stairs from the 2e module For Duty or Deity worked quite well when I used them in an adventure.

That said, if an adventure I've got in mind requires characters to physically walk from one plane to another, I'll make sure there's a way to do so that can be found if they look.

As for the idea of the Wheel itself, it's pretty simple: if you're using the 9-alignment system, and assume each alignment has a few deities each with their own home planes, then what you end up with is going to look like a wheel - or at least the spokes - no matter how you design it.

Lanefan

 

[Loonook]

I really don't like a lot of the cosmology, but as I said before the Feywild and Shadowfell could work... but I can also see some possible adaptations which could make the cosmology better (at least in my mind).

Ehh, really I just don't like the idea of the 4e and the Great Wheel was poorly but worked... personally I use a mixture of Dreamtime, Faerie, and other types of crossing dimensions in my Modern game which have to be accessed through various ways, and specific pocket dimensions brought through different ways. In D&D... well, my system is just too screwy to make sense in explanation so I'll stop here. There are infinite markings, spires, barrel shapes and ... ehh, I'll stop.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[resistor]

The 3e Manual of the Planes was the first D&D book I ever read, after the core books, and I was absolutely floored by how awesome and interesting the locations were.

I really don't get the complaint that the Great Wheel didn't have interesting locations/adventure possibilities.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

The Great Wheel worked finely for Planescape, which took the alignment-based arrangement and cosmic symmetry, and ran with it (more successfully in some places than in others - can anyone say anything interesting about Bytopia, for example?).

However, just as Planescape in my opinion suffered, if you used it merely as a "transitional setting" for plane-hopping primes, I think forcing the Great Wheel on general settings also hurt them. Not all things will go with each other, and no matter how nice fine, dark chocolate (PS) is, it's going to suck if you're putting it into your stew (your own setting).

I'm quite happy with the 4e cosmology, overall. Shadowfell and Feywild, in particular, are excellent additions - a faerie world and a dark underworld of ghosts, both close to our world but not quite part of it - are tremendously popular in myths.

As for making the planes more accessible to characters robbing them of their distinctiveness and splendor... nah. In my experience, the inhospitable planes like Plane of Fire were either places where you didn't go (because you would die), until you had the spells / magic items to deal with the local conditions... at which point the place being made of fire became scene-setting only.

Furthermore, I don't see why you can't perfectly well have very dangerous and inhospitable planes in the 4e cosmology, if you want them. The astral dominion of an evil god, where his will is the natural law, filled with his minions and creations? Dangerous as all Nine Hells.

So no, 4e default cosmology isn't Great Wheel or Planescape, and as a PS fan, I think that's a great thing.

 

[Arnwyn]

Despise the 4e cosmology, love the Great Wheel.

Which is odd to me, considering that one of the major points of the Planescape setting was to make the planes interesting places to go and accessable at almost any level (yet without taking away the inherent hostility and danger posed by many posed - no handholding like at this level tier you can go to this plane and at this next level tier you can go to these other planes, etc).

Successfully done, AFAIC.

 

[SkidAce]

I think the new cosmology and the old one are both fine and interesting. I'm not sure, but they may have slimmed down the 4th ed version a bit much, we shall see.

However, I am quite perturbed that after years of home brewing, I made a consolidated model of planar interaction, decided the Astral was redundant, and turned the Ethereal into a "sea/river of worlds concept, just to have 4th agree with the concept but use the Astral instead.

No Bob, it's the Ethereal Sea....ETHEREAL..../sigh.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Count me as another Great Wheel fan, and another "Oh god what did they DO?!" of 4e.

4e's planes follow the same bit that much of 4e does: "EVERYONE CAN DO IT!" The planes are no longer mysterious and wonderful; the city of brass is now Walmart.