D&D 5E 5e Cosmology

[Jeff Carlsen]

I have the PHB now, so I can answer some of these questions.

No sure what happened to the other border planes like the fire one Mike Mearls had, but it maybe related to the rearrangement of the Planes.

The elemental planes are described using a sea as a metaphor. On the shore, where an elemental plane meets the Material Plane, it resembles the material plane with strong elemental elements. The further you get from the Material Plane, the more pure the elemental planes become until, at the far end, they spill into the Elemental Chaos. So, the border planes are still there. And in fact, each elemental plane may really be a series of planes with different degrees of purity.

It's not shown but they said somewhere that Sigil still exists so I'm hoping that they've kept the outlands also, always liked the idea of the outlands.

The Outlands and the Spire still exist, and are described among the outer planes. Sigil is still around the top of the spire.

 

[gyor]

I have the PHB now.

The metaphor you used to explain the Elemental planes was a good one, even though the Ocean Metaphor is actually for the Ethreal Plane and not the Inner Planes, its still a sound metaphor on other levels.

The Ethereal Plane has a Border Region resembles a misty foggy verison of ths Material Plane (including its echoes), and the Inner Planes and the deeper Ethereal which is an area of pure colourful mists and fog.

The Inner Planes are Kind of organized in a simular way, a Border region that resembles the Material Plane, and possibly the echo planes, and the a Deep Elemental Plane, with one more step beyond that to the Elemental Chaos.

The Outer Planes have simular division, based less on physical local the perception. There is what most Mortals think of as the Outer Plane the part Mortals can perceive, the Border Outer Plane and then thier is the Deeper Outer Plane which is beyond ordinary mortal senses, beyond mundane perception. This is a really neat way of explaing how Plane can appear finite and yet still be infinite, the perceievable part of the Plane is just the tip of an infinately big iceberg. It also helps explain how the dimenesons of the plane can change and its why its so morphigenic.

The Energy Plane does not appear to be divided into a more habitable region and a less habitable one, but very little is given on these Planes, just basically they're the source of Life and Radiant Energy in the Positive Case and Death, Necrotic Energy, and Undead in the Negative Case. The Shadowfell and Feywild are not only not Border Regions of these Planes, but far away from them.

If they do have Border Regions they aren't mentioned. I hope they do and get detailed in the Manual of the Planes.

Also I suspect Fiendish and Celestial Spirits that end up Familiars, Paladin Mounts, and other Spirit Forns, are actual drwn and forced into percievable form from the normally unpercievable parts of the Outer Planes. Just athought.

 

[Savage Wombat]

Do they describe the outer planes in any kind of detail?

I always thought the Elemental Chaos sounded too much like the 2nd edition version of Limbo for the two of them to comfortably coexist - so I'm curious if they've changed Limbo at all.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Is there any mention of how "outer space" is handled? Any mention of solar systems or crystal spheres or galaxies? Is the Astral Plane/Astral Sea the same as Wild Space?

 

[MonsterEnvy]

Do they describe the outer planes in any kind of detail?

I always thought the Elemental Chaos sounded too much like the 2nd edition version of Limbo for the two of them to comfortably coexist - so I'm curious if they've changed Limbo at all.

Elemental Chaos is just were elements mix, overlap and merge. Limbo is pure chaos the ground could be solid rock one moment then pure liquid rock the next before deciding that liquid on you is now liquid diamond and that west is now up and south is west. The only way to move around in limbo is to posses a strong enough will to bend the surrounding to your will.

 

[gyor]

They don't detail any outer planes except the Outlands, they just explain the basic nature of outer planes, list them with alignment and explain abit about Upper and Lower Planes.

Its all very bare bones, the basic nature of the planes, no real details, that will likely come with Campaign Settings and the Manual of the Planes (which hasn't been announced, but is a tradition)

 

[steeldragons]

Is there any mention of how "outer space" is handled? Any mention of solar systems or crystal spheres or galaxies? Is the Astral Plane/Astral Sea the same as Wild Space?

I can't really say how it is RAW (don't have the PHB yet), but my understanding of that has always been that "outer space/space travel/galaxies/etc..." is all taking place on the Prime Material plane. It is a part of the PC's "real world" (however well or mis- understood by the characters and npcs in the game world), the material plane, and thus not an inter-/extra-planar concern. Obviously games like SpellJammer and assorted individual campaign/tables can certainly treat it differently. But I've always assumed if you are going to the moon/a neighboring planet or even different solar system or galaxy, for example, the PCs are not engaging in planar/interdimensional travel.

Just my 2 coppers.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

The Energy Plane does not appear to be divided into a more habitable region and a less habitable one, but very little is given on these Planes, just basically they're the source of Life and Radiant Energy in the Positive Case and Death, Necrotic Energy, and Undead in the Negative Case. The Shadowfell and Feywild are not only not Border Regions of these Planes, but far away from them.

While they may not be viewed as border planes, their orientation on the map lends credence to the idea that they are somehow related to the positive and negative energy planes. And thematically, that makes sense.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

Is there any mention of how "outer space" is handled? Any mention of solar systems or crystal spheres or galaxies? Is the Astral Plane/Astral Sea the same as Wild Space?

They don't go into detail, but they do mention that fantasy worlds are part of the Material Plane, and they don't mention alternative material planes. So I'm thinking the default assumption is multiple planets in space.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

I can't really say how it is RAW (don't have the PHB yet), but my understanding of that has always been that "outer space/space travel/galaxies/etc..." is all taking place on the Prime Material plane. It is a part of the PC's "real world" (however well or mis- understood by the characters and npcs in the game world), the material plane, and thus not an inter-/extra-planar concern. Obviously games like SpellJammer and assorted individual campaign/tables can certainly treat it differently. But I've always assumed if you are going to the moon/a neighboring planet or even different solar system or galaxy, for example, the PCs are not engaging in planar/interdimensional travel.

Just my 2 coppers.

Thanks for the response steeldragons. This is how I remember it:

In the 1e MotP, the AD&D worlds were implied to be different planets in different solar systems somewhere in the black void of the Prime Material Plane. There was no spelljammer or crystal spheres. Just "outer space". There was a detailed chart about Alternate Prime Material Planes, but I forget if and how it was supposed to be related to the various D&D worlds.

This may be only fully relevant to Mentzer's home campaign, but Frank Mentzer even said (here) that his home version of Oerth is in the real world Tau Ceti solar system. In his BECMI boxed sets, he says that Mystara (known as "Urt" in the BECMI boxed set era) is supposed to be the Jurassic past of Earth--in other words, that "Urt"/Mystara is actually Earth.

In 2e: As you say, all the crystal spheres of the 2E worlds are located in the Material Plane, with a shared Great Wheel cosmology. Canonically, the BECMI version of Mystara exists in a completely different Reality (this is described in the DRAGON magazine article "Up, Away, and Beyond" ). However, the 2e version of Mystara is part of the Great Wheel cosmology and has spelljammers (one crashed there in the First Quest boxed set).

In 3e: No more crystal spheres. (Did 3e say what's at the edge of the solar system of those campaign settings?) Each D&D world is a Prime Plane to itself, with its own cosmology. Those cosmologies are connected only by the Plane of Shadow.

In 4e: I didn't follow 4e much, but it seems to me that the "Astral Sea" was a merger of the Astral Plane (of Planescape) and Wild Space (of Spelljammer), with each Outer Plane being a discrete planet which could be visited by an astral ship. I don't know where the planets and solar systems of Nerath, Toril, and Athas were supposed to be relative to each other.

Am I remembering correctly?

So I wonder which aspects of these four iterations of "outer space" will find their way into 5e.