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Forked Thread: The Great Wheel
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<blockquote data-quote="TwinBahamut" data-source="post: 4558338" data-attributes="member: 32536"><p>I <em>never</em> really liked the Great Wheel at all. There are countless things about it that either make no sense, are completely redundant, or are simply over-designed. It is a giant mess of terrible ideas. I honestly can't think of a single thing I liked about it as a cosmology that isn't done much better elsewhere.</p><p></p><p>However, I really like the standard cosmology of 4E. It is elegant, approachable, and evocative. The Feywild fills an important niche that the Great Wheel completely lacked, the Faerie Otherworld/Spirit World seen in folklore across the world. The Shadowfell is a interesting equivalent that makes a great Netherworld/Dark World and would make for some great adventures. The Elemental Chaos is vastly better than the old Inner Planes simply because it is actually dynamic and complicated (though its similarity to the Chaos in Milton's <em>Paradise Lost</em> and ancient myth also helps). And the Astral Sea is simply a much more manageable and easier to use version of the entire Outer Plane cosmology, and the idea of it being a wide sea above the stars is so much more evocative than than the old, empty Astral Plane. The entire cosmology can easily contain everything from the old Great Wheel, but it puts it in easier to comprehend packaging that allows more complicated interactions between the individual aspects than ever before.</p><p></p><p>Still, I don't understand the argument that the new planar cosmology is "safer" or that someone is holding the player's hands in it. If anything, it should be far more dangerous than before. I mean, if you don't play up the incredibly great hazards of wandering into the Feywild or Shadowfell then you simply are not being true to the stories that inspired them. </p><p></p><p>The Elemental Chaos has every single hazard that you might have encountered on any of the Great Wheel Inner Planes or Limbo, plus a large number of Demons thrown into the mix. However, instead of these dangers being nicely packaged into little homogenous compartments (where you can safely protect yourself from all of them with a single elemental-resistance spell), they are thrown together into a chaotic landscape of conflict, where you can be suddenly thrown from a land of blazing fire into the depths of a raging frozen sea or caught in a battle between Efreet and Ice Demons at any moment. It is a beautiful land for adventure, but hardly safe.</p><p></p><p>Meanwhile, the Astral Sea is far more dangerous than the Outer Planes ever were. It contains all the hazards they had, but it has much fewer of the protections they had in place. In the Great Wheel, you could at least be certain that you were not at risk of being attacked by Devils on a trip to Mount Celestia, but in the Astral Sea that can happen just as easily as you can be assaulted by Githyanki pirates while trying to flee from a Formian army. Actually, since Angels are no longer as nice as they were in 3E, even being protected by Angelic armies is no guarantee of safety, since you are much more likely to end up fighting them.</p><p></p><p>Overall, the raw unpredictability of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos makes them far more dangerous then the structured and predictable Great Wheel ever was.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="TwinBahamut, post: 4558338, member: 32536"] I [i]never[/i] really liked the Great Wheel at all. There are countless things about it that either make no sense, are completely redundant, or are simply over-designed. It is a giant mess of terrible ideas. I honestly can't think of a single thing I liked about it as a cosmology that isn't done much better elsewhere. However, I really like the standard cosmology of 4E. It is elegant, approachable, and evocative. The Feywild fills an important niche that the Great Wheel completely lacked, the Faerie Otherworld/Spirit World seen in folklore across the world. The Shadowfell is a interesting equivalent that makes a great Netherworld/Dark World and would make for some great adventures. The Elemental Chaos is vastly better than the old Inner Planes simply because it is actually dynamic and complicated (though its similarity to the Chaos in Milton's [i]Paradise Lost[/i] and ancient myth also helps). And the Astral Sea is simply a much more manageable and easier to use version of the entire Outer Plane cosmology, and the idea of it being a wide sea above the stars is so much more evocative than than the old, empty Astral Plane. The entire cosmology can easily contain everything from the old Great Wheel, but it puts it in easier to comprehend packaging that allows more complicated interactions between the individual aspects than ever before. Still, I don't understand the argument that the new planar cosmology is "safer" or that someone is holding the player's hands in it. If anything, it should be far more dangerous than before. I mean, if you don't play up the incredibly great hazards of wandering into the Feywild or Shadowfell then you simply are not being true to the stories that inspired them. The Elemental Chaos has every single hazard that you might have encountered on any of the Great Wheel Inner Planes or Limbo, plus a large number of Demons thrown into the mix. However, instead of these dangers being nicely packaged into little homogenous compartments (where you can safely protect yourself from all of them with a single elemental-resistance spell), they are thrown together into a chaotic landscape of conflict, where you can be suddenly thrown from a land of blazing fire into the depths of a raging frozen sea or caught in a battle between Efreet and Ice Demons at any moment. It is a beautiful land for adventure, but hardly safe. Meanwhile, the Astral Sea is far more dangerous than the Outer Planes ever were. It contains all the hazards they had, but it has much fewer of the protections they had in place. In the Great Wheel, you could at least be certain that you were not at risk of being attacked by Devils on a trip to Mount Celestia, but in the Astral Sea that can happen just as easily as you can be assaulted by Githyanki pirates while trying to flee from a Formian army. Actually, since Angels are no longer as nice as they were in 3E, even being protected by Angelic armies is no guarantee of safety, since you are much more likely to end up fighting them. Overall, the raw unpredictability of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos makes them far more dangerous then the structured and predictable Great Wheel ever was. [/QUOTE]
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