Dragon 370 - Design & Development: Cosmology

[I'm A Banana]

To some limited extent, some do, because sometimes I create hooks to go places which don't get picked up. Otherwise, no, I do not create places that my players will not see. As I said, I'm into campaign-building, not universe-building.

Mentioning some place my characters will never go to helps me to build a more robust setting for the campaign.

If I have a character say another character is "tougher than a Nordian!" I don't need to have the players go to Nordia. They know that Nordia is full of tough people, and that's enough. That's all I really need.

If I have a character say to another character "I will burn you in the dimension of Pure Fire!" I don't need to know the price of tea there or how they build castles there. I just need to know that it's a threat.

It's more about having believable characters and dialogue than it is about pointless work.

And I've answered that: it's useless to me in a book that I am purchasing to use the material in my game.

If you want planes like that, then that's cool. However, we'll disagree on what published materials should present in that regard, and a product that satisfies you may not satisfy me.

I can respect people wanting different things than I do. However, when it comes to what will be in a published book, I will definitely want (and push for) material that is useful to me, even if it comes at the expense of what someone else wants.

My preferences are more like yours on this, but I guess I'm not as big of an extremist on it. I want adventuring locations, but I don't need to be able to slay goblins anywhere in the multiverse, so as long as the product isn't dominated by 10 page entries on stuff my players will never see, I can stomach there being places my players will never see, just like I'm okay with there being a Nordia they never go to.

 

[Harlekin]

Infinite planes are silly

"Infinite planes stagger the imagination"

It seems your imagination is kinda short. Infinite or not infinite, what difference does it make? If you walk from A to B does it matters if the plane is infinite or not? Infinite means less maps, enforcing creative ways to travelling... finite is like "let's map the place, explore, kill the boss and take the loot".

I would say exactly the opposite. If you think planes should be infinite (rather than just really big), you haven't considered what that means. Many elements of planescape canon for example don't work with infinite planes:

The blood war: A battle that kills 10 Million fiends is meaningless if there are infinite fiends.

Sigil: Sigil is finite, so it cannot have doors to every place in even one infinite plane. In fact doorways from Sigil can only reach 0% of all places in an infinite plane.

History: One of the most important events in planescape history is when a region shifts from one plane to another. However, if both planes are infinite, such an event is meaningless to everyone but the inhabitants of that region, as both planes have the same size and population before and after the event. No balance of power shifts.

In summary, a universe with infinitely large planes cannot be affected by a finite number of individuals in a finite time. The fraction war is then pointless. Not to mention anything the players do.

 

[avin]

Interestingly enough, everybody arguing for elemental planes being useful cites pockets or border regions as areas the PCs may visit. Aren't those places exactly like the new elemental chaos?

Well, I said that, just check my posts

I'm also somewhat confused, why "place for the PC to visit" ="dungeon". Is an attempt to call every place that may get a lot of screen time a dungeon, even if the PCs do no fighting or looting there, but instead interact with the locals and marvel at the surroundings while the players get to roleplay?

Maybe you missed another post of mine where I said Elemental Chaos was used by me (and in pocket size even in 1E) long before 4E, a place where all elemental planes colide.

The point is: was it real necessary to remove elemental planes for this new concept to be useful? Looks like not.

I DM 4E and I like it. I'm a DDI subscriber and so far what you described ("marvel at the surroundings while the players get to roleplay") is farm from what 4E is offering... it's more like: "Elemental Chaos? Nice, lava is hindering terrain, roll iniative"...

 

[Sir Brennen]

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?

Sooo.... making fantasy locations usable by the DM as a place PCs can actually adventure is somehow not imaginative? Inventing boring, homogeneous places the PCs can't go to shows imagination? How is having a plane which is just where creatures of a particular type come from and PCs can't visit more cool than someplace those same creatures still come from, but the PCs can travel to?

Nothing is lost, so many possibilities gained!

My own 3E campaign's cosmological history has elementals cast more as antagonists, wanting to rip the world apart and return it to it's primordial essences. If I wanted to have the high level PCs take the fight to an Archelemental demigod, my options were pretty limited. I mean, why would a powerful fire deity dwell in a location that's relatively safe for adventurers to attack? More logically, he'd reside at the "center" of the plane, the superheated core. As mentioned, PCs would have to make themselves immune to fire, and hence totally immune to most of the attacks which creatures of the plane use, which is boring. Also, you know what I'd always have on hand as a powerful resident of an elemental plane to deal with Prime Material interlopers? Dispel Magic. Save or Die. Poof.

The Elemental Chaos, however, lets me create fiery locations for the bad guys to reside without them being completely just fire. Making the Elemental Planes someplace PCs can actually explore and interact with isn't tantamount to making them just another a "dungeon". How is being freed to create really cool locations with fantastic features based on the churning chaos less imaginative then setting things either in a pocket of air or solid element?

Regarding the World Axis: I don't think people see how flexible it actually is. It's really just a stripped down Great Wheel: Prime Material, Astral Plane and the Inner Elemental Planes, with a couple of co-existing planes. Add the Outer Planes back in as Domains, and there you go.

Making the domains in the Astral Sea independent "widgets" was a great move. Now one can keep the core model and use whatever "Outer Planes" they desire. I'm sure this is the approach they'll be using for Eberron. So, yeah, all published settings will use the World Axis model, but they'll still be highly customizable and unique.

 

[avin]

In summary, a universe with infinitely large planes cannot be affected by a finite number of individuals in a finite time. The fraction war is then pointless. Not to mention anything the players do.

It depends how powerful these "beings" are. As a DM I can say: "it's butterfly effect time" and a single death is changing the way the universe moves, so your argument isn't entirely accurate.

How much players in a finite Toril can do to change universe? Finite or infinite holds nothing in a game of fantasy.

 

[Harlekin]

The point is: was it real necessary to remove elemental planes for this new concept to be useful? Looks like not.

I DM 4E and I like it. I'm a DDI subscriber and so far what you described ("marvel at the surroundings while the players get to roleplay") is farm from what 4E is offering... it's more like: "Elemental Chaos? Nice, lava is hindering terrain, roll iniative"...

Well, I'm happy if elements of the planes that don't get screen time do not use up book space either. If the elemental planes were still out there, we would expect them do be described in more than a few sentences. Which is a waste.

I agree though that focusing on places to adventure should not mean turning everything into a combat scene. Especially memorable NPCs are important. I hope that Wotc uses their DMG2 to provide a lot of help on generating interesting non-combat encounters.

 

[Harlekin]

It depends how powerful these "beings" are. As a DM I can say: "it's butterfly effect time" and a single death is changing the way the universe moves, so your argument isn't entirely accurate.

How much players in a finite Toril can do to change universe? Finite or infinite holds nothing in a game of fantasy.

Wouldn't even a change due to the butterfly effect require an infinte amount of time? Chaotic effects do generally not affect infinitely large systems.

 

[avin]

Wouldn't even a change due to the butterfly effect require an infinte amount of time? Chaotic effects do generally not affect infinitely large systems.

Not really.

The mentioned death was an accident. Unfortunately a shipment of wood for constructing a church for Elf-god-dude road killed some Orc-god-priest. Orc god decided to piss off elves and send a rain of fire over some tree top city 12 minutes later.

And then war was made...

You are talking about physics... D&D has fled physic school foor some swimming

 

[Harlekin]

Not really.

The mentioned death was an accident. Unfortunately a shipment of wood for constructing a church for Elf-god-dude road killed some Orc-god-priest. Orc god decided to piss off elves and send a rain of fire over some tree top city 12 minutes later.

And then war was made...

And to even tell all the infinite number of elves about the war will take infinite time. If you don't tell all of them only finite numbers on bith sides will be involve, so only finite numbers will die. So after the war you will have as many elves as before the war. Nothing changed.

 

[Harlekin]

You are talking about physics... D&D has fled physic school foor some swimming

I'm talking logic and internal consistency, not physics. We are set up to think about finite numbers, the infinite makes everything wonky. Hence it makes much more sense to say a plane is "really big", rather than infinite.