Dragon 370 - Design & Development: Cosmology

[Shemeska]

In fact, I find it funny that you're basically arguing for limits. The Inner Planes of previous editions did not present as many options for a DM or players to explore as the current setup, which is the point.

The hell they did. The inner planes of previous editions had more options than the hand-holding "Don't make it too dangerous! Then adventurers won't come to our extraplanar dungeon! Oh noes!" I see in the 4e planar design.

By stripping any serious level of hostility from some of the planes, you water down the wonder and challange of actually adventuring in those planes, even as you strip depth and background flavor from the cosmology.

By no means was the elemental plane of fire just a blank, endless, YOU DIE NOW! plane of flames. Just skimming The Inner Planes by Monte Cook from the later days of 2e that's blazingly clear, even when the book happens to be narrated by a crazy slaad named Xanxost. In the 1e/2e/3e Elemental Plane of Fire you could have adventurers step through a portal and trudge across a plain of compacted ash, intermingled with the crumbling bones of dead Azers, slain centuries ago by a theocratic empire of Salamanders. The PCs could struggle across the landscape, crossing lakes of cooling lava covered only by a thin crust, sweating from the heat as they search for the ruins of the Azer capital city where a longstanding campaign antagonist searches for a relic of Imix, once worshipped by those same Azers, hoping to use it to summon the Elemental Prince to the prime material.

The Elemental Plane of Fire wasn't just a monolithic stretch of fire. And saying that it was displays either an ignorance of previous editions' material on the plane, or a blatant misrepresentation of it.

The 4e cosmology by its nature is placing limits by what the design team feels is proper for your campaigns, and in the process it's happily twisting previous campaigns to fit that sterile, homogenous view. Nothing in the previous cosmology from 1e/2e/3e precluded anything from the 4e planes from happening therein.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

I find this article wonderfully refreshing, as I was starting to run low on things with 4e that I really, really, really disliked.

PS: DEAR KAMIKAZE STOP POSTING WHAT I WANT TO POST BUT FASTER AND AMAZINGLY MUCH MORE ARTICULATED.

 

[Aldarc]

The 4e cosmology by its nature is placing limits by what the design team feels is proper for your campaigns, and in the process it's happily twisting previous campaigns to fit that sterile, homogenous view. Nothing in the previous cosmology from 1e/2e/3e precluded anything from the 4e planes from happening therein.

I fail to see how the converse could be held true in regards to the Great Wheel. The move from the Great Wheel to the World Axis has merely traded one set of limitations for another.

 

[Drkfathr1]

I fail to see how the converse could be held true in regards to the Great Wheel. The move from the Great Wheel to the World Axis has merely traded one set of limitations for another.

But at least in previous editions the Great Wheel wasn't used for every setting. The new World Axis is.

 

[Drkfathr1]

Calls for realism in fantasy or fantasy in reality generally never is upheld consistently, but only when it is convenient for the argument particular.

I fail to follow your reasoning here. If you argue for 2, you are still arguing for impossing a limit, but now it has only advanced by a unit of 1, which remains to be seen as to how much utility of "option" is gained in the advancement of 1 to 2. Furthermore, it is also just as easy for the opposing side to make a similar argument in which the Elemental Chaos has numerous locations that would be inaccessible by PCs given the danger of the surrounding Chaos. And instead of confining elements to just a cosmetic cosmology in which elements are mostly restricted to simply their particular elemental plane, DMs using the Elemental Chaos could choose to keep the elementals in ever-changing elemental domains amongst their own kind or DMs could choose to have the elementals roam around the Elemental Chaos in battles within. To argue that the use of particular elemental planes somehow creates more options than the Elemental Chaos seems short-sighted based on the set-up of the Elemental Chaos.

Let me try this reasoning for you, and I'll keep it simple: How does "finite" give you more than "infinite"?

Would you have liked my point better if I had expressed it as 1+1+1+1+1 etc etc etc etc.

Gimme a break.

 

[Mouseferatu]

But at least in previous editions the Great Wheel wasn't used for every setting.

That's only true of 3E. In 1E and 2E, it was used for everything.

 

[Scribble]

The hell they did. The inner planes of previous editions had more options than the hand-holding "Don't make it too dangerous! Then adventurers won't come to our extraplanar dungeon! Oh noes!" I see in the 4e planar design.

If that's what you see then thats what you see...

Personaly I see setting material and info that inspires me (The Dm of my group) with new ideas, and adventure opportunities.

I also see setting ideas that are easier for me to blend together without jumping through hoops.

New ideas and inspiration sources are cool.

 

[Drkfathr1]

That's only true of 3E. In 1E and 2E, it was used for everything.

No, the Great Wheel was not used for Dragonlance in 1E, nor was it used for Dragonlance in 2E or Darksun in 2E.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I find this article wonderfully refreshing, as I was starting to run low on things with 4e that I really, really, really disliked.

PS: DEAR KAMIKAZE STOP POSTING WHAT I WANT TO POST BUT FASTER AND AMAZINGLY MUCH MORE ARTICULATED.

Hey, I'm not as down on the vast majority of these things.

But one cosmology to rule them all is kind of dumb in my eyes (despite their reasons).

Also, as the last few pages have demonstrated, infinite planes are only a problem if you're thinking too hard about fantasy.

"Infinite," for all intents and purposes, means "Contains whatever you want." As that doesn't change at all between any edition of D&D's planes, changing infinite to finite is just as pointless as making halflings four feet tall as opposed to two-and-a-half feet tall. It doesn't change anything, it just scratches a particular designer's itch to change the verbiage.

 

[Scribble]

"Infinite," for all intents and purposes, means "Contains whatever you want." As that doesn't change at all between any edition of D&D's planes, changing infinite to finite is just as pointless as making halflings four feet tall as opposed to two-and-a-half feet tall. It doesn't change anything, it just scratches a particular designer's itch to change the verbiage.

It also lets them al ACTUALLY (in game actually) be floatin around in the astral sea, and not just philosophically so.

Like if you were sailin around in the astral sea, you could see the "edge" of one of the planes. Can't really do that with an infinite plane.