Dragon 370 - Design & Development: Cosmology

[avin]

I certainly don't want fifty pages detailing the endless layers of the planes of Instant Death.

Neither do I. Where I've asked for it?

It's more like: "fire elementals come from Elemental Plane of Fire, if you're not into pyro don't bother. On the other hand we have this cool place called Elemental Chaos where all elemental planes touch each other and it's party everyday".

See? Would be easy to keep all of them and add ELemental Chaos. If I thought that while typing what could professional RPG designers do?

 

[balard]

Man, I love 4th edition. I really do. Its a blast. But I HATE all the Rich Baker ideas about the planes in general. I try very hard to glance over than. They are awful. I agree with the above posters in everything. "All planes must have dungeons", "Planes must be finite", "This plane are boring", "Devils and Demons are the same"(by the way, tell me know how do you recognize a demon, a devil, an archon and an angel in this edition?), "One cosmology to rule then all". All is dumb. I think one cosmology is cool IF the setting in question doesn't have one. Eberron is a great setting with a great cosmology.

And for gods' sake, if you don't have shadowfell, what changes? Really? The shadowfell creatures not even go in and out like the old ethereals. "This shadar-kai dude can not exist without shadowfell, even if the dark elf here can".

I was sad with the round of layoffs from WotC, even sadder when I saw Rich Baker wans't in there. At least make the guy do only mechanical stuff, because his fluff is awful!

 

[Hussar]

Neither do I. Where I've asked for it?

It's more like: "fire elementals come from Elemental Plane of Fire, if you're not into pyro don't bother. On the other hand we have this cool place called Elemental Chaos where all elemental planes touch each other and it's party everyday".

See? Would be easy to keep all of them and add ELemental Chaos. If I thought that while typing what could professional RPG designers do?

But the question remains - why bother? Why bother having locations that you CANNOT use? What, exactly, does the Elemental Plane of Earth look like? Big solid rock from top to bottom. Whooo, so, I can do what exactly? Oh, that's right, nothing. So what if earth elementals come from there? They can come from anywhere and still be earth elementals.

I've never, ever understood this obsessive need for gamers to have useless flavour. If it cannot be used for anything other than "background", why bother?

 

[Imban]

I always liked the Elemental Plane of Fire. I mean, so there have routinely been spells and effects in D&D that send your foeman to Hell, which is ostensibly a bad thing, but well... Hell's well-established as a place you can go to and dungeon hack through, so spells like Hurl Through Hell that temporarily send enemies to Hell shouldn't really have great efficacy in harming someone if you think about it too hard.

On the other hand, the Elemental Plane of Fire is an entire universe of nothing except fire. Sending someone there does them immediate and obvious harm, because it's an entire universe of nothing except fire.

And really, this avoids requiring much text detailing the layers of the Plane of Instant Death, because it's a huge homogenous area of instant death. What gets the detail are the areas of the plane, like the City of Brass, which are worth going to, rather than worth sending someone on an all-expenses-paid trip to if you really don't like them.

 

[Drkfathr1]

But the question remains - why bother? Why bother having locations that you CANNOT use? What, exactly, does the Elemental Plane of Earth look like? Big solid rock from top to bottom. Whooo, so, I can do what exactly? Oh, that's right, nothing. So what if earth elementals come from there? They can come from anywhere and still be earth elementals.

I've never, ever understood this obsessive need for gamers to have useless flavour. If it cannot be used for anything other than "background", why bother?

It's called imagination. Just because it exists "in game" and is described as such a place, doesn't mean the players ever have to go there. Or that there aren't pocket areas they can visit. What's so horrible about the fact that it serves only as an origin for creatures that get summoned to the regular world? I mean, this is a fantasy game, why should that be such a stretch?

 

[Stoat]

My specific beef with the Elemental Plane of Fire is this: to adventure there, a PC must have some means to be immune to fire. What is the primary attack form of those creatures native to the Elemental Plane of Fire? Fire.

In other words, if you're adventuring there, most of the natives either can't harm you at all or find their attacks greatly weakened against you.

 

[avin]

I've never, ever understood this obsessive need for gamers to have useless flavour.

It seems that it's not useless for a lot of people here so "useless" isn't a very polite word to use.

 

[avin]

In other words, if you're adventuring there, most of the natives either can't harm you at all or find their attacks greatly weakened against you.

Looks like we are split into people who think all places are exploring ground and people who think some places work just fine as background.

 

[Imban]

My specific beef with the Elemental Plane of Fire is this: to adventure there, a PC must have some means to be immune to fire. What is the primary attack form of those creatures native to the Elemental Plane of Fire? Fire.

In other words, if you're adventuring there, most of the natives either can't harm you at all or find their attacks greatly weakened against you.

If you're adventuring there, you're in the City of Brass, which is populated by efreeti who cast spells and wield swords, and also cool enough that it's tolerable for non-fire-immune PCs.

If you go there because someone told you to go to Hell now, you are in an ocean of fire and it sucks to be you.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

It seems that it's not useless for a lot of people here so "useless" isn't a very polite word to use.

So, how do you use the planes of fire in your game?