Dragon 370 - Design & Development: Cosmology

[mhacdebhandia]

As I said in my earlier post that you're apparently content to ignore, Shemeska, by even giving your PCs compacted ash or cooled magma to walk on you're making the Elemental Plane of Fire "safe for adventure".

You still haven't explained how "every crazy and dangerous elemental place you can imagine all exists within an enormous maelstrom" is worse for the game than "there are four Elemental Planes, and where they touch there are four Para-Elemental Planes, and where the Elemental Planes touch the Positive and Negative Energy Planes there are eight Quasi-Elemental Planes".

I say the Elemental Chaos is better than the Inner Planes of earlier editions because it contains everything about them which was good and useful in any sense. There's plenty of room in the Elemental Chaos for a void of negative energy where nothing, not even vacuum, exists. There's plenty of room for lakes of barely-hardened magma surrounding the palace of a salamander king, or honeycombed tunnels through the realm of some crazy earth spirit, or whatever else you liked in Planescape.

The only thing that you can't have is the ultimately useless "elegance" of separating all these places out into individual planes.

 

[Harlekin]

You know what, it's a hostile environment. That means that adventurers need to prepare for that challenge. It's no different than having an angry dragon lairing on a mountain the PCs are quested to adventure on - the dragon will attack intruders so oh no should we remove the dragon because it makes that mountain less friendly to adventure in? Or should we remove the kobolds from the dungeon because they make the dungeon hostile with their devious traps? Of course not. Nor should we turn on the air conditioning in the landscape surrounding the City of Brass, or snuff the flames of Phlegethon, or force the ice devils of Cania to provide hot cocoa to chilly travelers. Some places on the planes are difficult, so are places like Undermountain and Castle Grayhawk, but that doesn't stop any of them from having been the location of many of D&D's most awesome and challenging adventures for the decades prior to 4e fixing everything and making all those places no longer suck as they seem to want folks to believe.

Apparently I'm in a mood for hyperbole tonight.

It's a challenge for PCs to overcome in all cases. Some places are more dangerous than others, and rather than water them down, it seems right for PCs to know when they can take that challenge, and then enjoy their success when they've earned it by overcoming that difficulty.

The problem is, a Fire plane dealing that much damage is a meaningless challenge as there are only two outcomes:
1) The party is underprepared and an instant TPK occurs. This is frustrating and boring as an outcome and will be avoided by both DMs and players at all costs.
2) The party is adequately protected. Then the nature of the plane is entirely neutered and the adventure might as well be happening on the prime material plane. Such protection does not even reduce the options of the party by much as being adequately protected requires only a single spell for the entire party (in 3rd).

As 1) rarely happens unless a DM is tired of his game, 2) is usually the scenario under which players enter the elemental plane of fire. Thus, by being super-lethal, the plane of fire becomes very vanilla in actual play.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

I like the fact that the 4e designers created a bunch of heterogeneous planes and are being slammed by fans of homogeneous planes as creating homogeneous planes.

4e was a risky move. It sorta "gave the finger" to armchair (and non-armchair) GMs whose used the rules to world-build or basically get all tingly inside about the planes, independent of actual in-game use. 4e was intentionally designed, top to bottom to eliminate this non-gaming activity as a design goal.

 

[avin]

Discussion remains, points are being made and I still think removing 4 planes and putting a soup in its place is reducing my number of choices.

More: no matter which color people try to paint it I bet Elemental Chaos will be just another big dungeon.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Discussion remains, points are being made and I still think removing 4 planes and putting a soup in its place is reducing my number of choices.

More: no matter which color people try to paint it I bet Elemental Chaos will be just another big dungeon.

Which makes it different from an Elemental Plane .. how?

 

[avin]

Which makes it different from an Elemental Plane .. how?

Elemental Planes are prohibitive places, just like the sun or the center of earth. Should we remove them just because players can't swimm on lava?

Are you trying to argue that all almost all 4E stuff we have isn't a "big dungeon"...?

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Elemental Planes are prohibitive places, just like the sun or the center of earth. Should we remove them just because players can't swimm on lava?

Lava, Sun, Center of Earth are part of our world. The sun doesn't need a definition - it's there, we know how it looks like, and we accept it as a given thing. Lava is actually something you can interact with. The Center of Earth might exist, but we do not need to define anything and just presume it exists in our world. We do not go there, so we do not describe it any further.

The Cosmology is made up. Why make up a cosmology containing lots of elements that you do not use? Why spend time defining something that you do not use? sure, we could just say. "Oh, there are pure elemental planes, but no one goes there and cares for it".

Are you trying to argue that all almost all 4E stuff we have isn't a "big dungeon"...?

Define "dungeon". Apparently your definition is that every place the characters will go is a dungeon. By that definition, yes, everything (at least every place) in 4E is a dungeon.
I say every place the characters want to go to has a potential for conflict. Not necessarily melee combat or trap detection type of conflict.
Maybe I am narrow-minded that way. I think there is always a goal the players or their characters should have that something is stopping them from. Maybe they want to find a treasure. A trap or monsters might block their way. Or just the fact that they need to travel half the countryside is the think that's blocking them and they have to overcome. Or the cities mayor deeming them unworthy of getting some treasure. Or the mayor saying they can get the desired treasure if they perform a different task.
Or they desire an information. The guy with access to it needs to be found, and then to be convinced of giving them. All that introduces a conflict. But it doesn't require a dungeon.

What are the conflicts of the Elemental Plane that _only_ work if the plane is composed of a single element? What conflict couldn't I also run on the Elemental Chaos? The City of Brass was located on the Elemental Plane of Fire, but one of its features was that it was not just flames and fire alll around, but that it was habitable and provided a structure, containing organizations and people with their own motivations and goals.
Now it's in the Elemental Chaos. And works just as well. Because you weren't using the Elemental Plane of Fire, you used the City of Brass.

Everything interesting about the Elemental Planes has been moved to the Elemental Chaos.

 

[avin]

Everything interesting about the Elemental Planes has been moved to the Elemental Chaos.

Interesting for you, for sure. The moon isn't interesting just because you can adventure there without a space ship?

The mere existence of elemental planes is far more interesting than elemental soup, for me.

"Elemental planes is a part of our universe. They don't need a definition - it's there, we know how it looks like, and we accept it", I'm not asking for more than that.

What you seem to want, correct me if I'm wrong, please, is every place written in books have "potential conflict". It looks like you don't like scenario as I do. Feel free to correct me.

I'm strongly against RPG books where every corner is a potential adventure place. I want good planes, elemental planes, boring places to add a feel to the game... I respect DMs which want everything killable and lootable but disagree, this is not for me.

Maybe you have another sources I don't have. Core books, RPGA Adventures, DDI Dragon articles, all point to combat combat combat. Removing prohibitive planes is giving more room to combat combat combat.

Every place is where action happens, everywhere there's a troll waiting... this is 4E (which rules I like and DM but which world and direction I change to what I need), this is points of light... this is the direction Wotc decided to go and I don't like it, so you're probably wasting your breath trying to convince me that "dumbing down planes" (my opinion only) is cool and adds to roleplaying...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

so you're probably wasting your breath trying to convince

Yes. I am.

 

[avin]

Yes. I am.

TLDR: I don't think Elemental Chaos is a bad idea, I just wished Wotc made it a veeeeery large place where the elemental planes connect.