D&D 5E (2014) L&L 1/7/2013 The Many Worlds of D&D

[Blackwarder]

Mike describe their approache to D&D cosmology.

http://wizards.com/dnd/Article.aspx?x=dnd/4ll/20130701

Warder

 

[GX.Sigma]

For all I bitched about it on Twitter, I'm pretty okay with this.

I like the return to the 1e idea of the Prime Material Plane (and thank jeebus we're calling it that again!) being in the middle of the elemental planes. Even though that's not how Planescape showed it, it perfectly fits in with the idea that everyone sees their plane as the center of the multiverse--of course Primes see the Prime plane as being in the middle!

I don't get why it's specifically the Feywild and Ravenloft as the positive and negative border planes. I think we're missing an opportunity to use some old-school terminology: it would be neat if the border between the Prime Material and the Positive Energy Plane was called the Positive Material Plane, for example.

As for the Spelljammer thing, I'd be fine if any future Spelljammer products had nothing to do with existing settings, except for a little sidebar with advice on how to incorporate space travel into your pre-existing FR (or whatever) campaign.

Edit: Though Mearls is a heathen for using the term "ring" in reference to the Inner Planes, since (as Monte Cook tells us in The Inner Planes) they're more of a sphere.

 

[Dausuul]

Planescape as default. Ick.

Oh, well. I've been homebrewing my own cosmologies for ages, guess I'll just carry on.

 

[Raith5]

I am not a fan of the planescape/ Great wheel cosmopology but this makes sense. But I really dislike terming the shadowfell/ negative plane "Ravenloft". It seems like WOTC marketing took over world design, rather than being in term used by people in that world.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I support every aspect of this. Also, I'm pretty sure Ravenloft will be called the Plane of Dread.

 

[Stormonu]

I can live with this, but I hope they keep the Astral as a sea. I'd be perfectly happy if Spelljammer was moved over to the Astral Sea and you could use it to visit other planets (Alternate Primes) or head out to the outer planes.

I do hope they keep the Shadowfell and Feywild in name as border realms to the Negative Material and Positive Material. In fact, I'd actually like if they dropped the latter two names and referred to them as The Dark and the The Bright instead. And they were realms worth adventuring in - the Dark being a twilight, corrupting realm of decay and despair (where the dead here don't come back to life) and the Bright being a realm of blinding, energized realm of life and joy (where the living eventually transform into glittering showers of energy).

And what about the Ethereal? What is to become of it?

 

[Hussar]

I can live with this. Like [MENTION=58197]Dausuul[/MENTION], I'm not really a fan of Planescape (the Hell you say ) but, this seems to be a pretty good compromise. Most of the Planescape stuff gets shunted into the outer planes where it doesn't really impact play outside of Planescape and I still get planes that I like - similar to 4e style elemental planes - that are ((to me and me only)) better for plopping down adventures on.

And, really, putting the Feywild between the Prime and the Positive, and Ravenloft (or whatever it will be called) between the Prime and the Negative, makes a fair bit of sense to me. And, it possibly opens up an interesting relationship between the borders of the Feywild and the Dread.

 

[Li Shenron]

Planes are always just suggestions or examples of what you can do in your own setting. These changes offer some mildly new good options, but as usual, everyone can just ignore what they don't like.

Personally I am not a huge fan of positive and negative energy planes for instance. The Feywild is interesting enough on its own IMO (even tho I never actually used it) without a connection to / explanation in terms of positive energy.

OTOH showcasing 2 options for the elemental planes (I don't know how the 3rd one, the elemental chaos, is really different from the deep elemental planes) is a good thing: you can use the "hard" elementals for something more dramatic and challenging to the DM, or the "soft" elementals where the rules are easier.

Generally speaking, I always make up something of my own about the nature of the planes, so I believe that it is a good thing for D&D to present the planes as a collection of options and ideas rather than set them in stone (that's fine in a Campaign Setting book however).

 

[Falling Icicle]

I don't like this. By trying to combine 4e and pre-4e cosmology, it feels like they're diluting everything.

The thing I like the least is how they're keeping the planes from the great wheel that are inimical to life, like the positive/negative energy planes, where you pretty much automatically die if you go there barring the protection of some pretty extreme magic. Those planes always felt so completely pointless to me. It's about as useful as traveling to the sun. Even if you had a spacesuit that let you survive, what's the point?

And do we really need 3x4 elemental planes? Why can't the "elemental chaos" just be a single plane with many different layers and variety of locations, like, you know, any other world?

And making Ravenloft the opposite of the Feywild just really bothers me for some reason. And I don't understand all of the Spelljammer hate. If people don't want to include that in their games, they won't. I've never once played in any DnD setting where Spelljammer got in the way.

 

[JasonZZ]

I am not a fan of the planescape/ Great wheel cosmopology but this makes sense. But I really dislike terming the shadowfell/ negative plane "Ravenloft". It seems like WOTC marketing took over world design, rather than being in term used by people in that world.

Personally, it would make more sense to me to have "Ravenloft" be pockets (or one large region) within a 4e-style Shadowfell.

Of course, I'm more concerned with whether or not this new/old cosmology is built into the mechanics or not--I hope not; that was one complaint I had with 3.x.