D&D General What is your favorite D&D cosmology?

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The Great Wheel bored me for so many years, and I made up a blend of Spelljammer and Mystara’s cosmology for all those early years because it was more flexible in ways I needed.

I skipped 4e after a couple tries, but when I came back to D&D with 5e I heard what 4e did with its World Axis. World Axis was finally nearly everything assembled in one thing that I wanted all this time.

I still have a soft spot for Dark Sun and it’s unique para-elemental planes, and the Gray, Black, and Hollow. It just needs a bit more for portability beyond use with Athas.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

I voted Eberron, though the World Axis is a very close second.

In homebrew worlds I take a hatchet to the planes and pare it down to material (which usually has Aether Space which is basically Treasure Planet meets Flash Gordon meets Star Wars), Otherworld, The Spirit World/Ethereal, and sometimes the Elemental Chaos. Sometimes gods have their own domains, sometimes there is an Asgard type place with many domains.

If there is a Hell, it’s either just one place where all fiends live, or it’s infinite Hellscapes suited to each kind of fiend or to each sin. Or hell is just places in Otherworld.

 

[Undrave]

The Great Wheel bored me for so many years, and I made up a blend of Spelljammer and Mystara’s cosmology for all those early years because it was more flexible in ways I needed.

I skipped 4e after a couple tries, but when I came back to D&D with 5e I heard what 4e did with its World Axis. World Axis was finally nearly everything assembled in one thing that I wanted all this time.

I still have a soft spot for Dark Sun and it’s unique para-elemental planes, and the Gray, Black, and Hollow. It just needs a bit more for portability beyond use with Athas.

"The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea" is an awesome book about the Astral Plane and filled with edition neutral fluff if you really want to get more fun cosmology.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

"The Plane Above: Secrets of the Astral Sea" is an awesome book about the Astral Plane and filled with edition neutral fluff if you really want to get more fun cosmology.

Yup! I own it. Bought after reading all the descriptions when I first heard what World Axis was. I also grabbed The Plane Below. Do not regret either purchase.

 

[delericho]

I've never been a fan of the planes, tbh. My preferred approach was 3e's, where each setting had it's own - the World Tree for FR, Eberron's moons... and "Manual of the Planes" went to significant lengths to facilitate the DM rolling his own.

That said, I don't consider Spelljammer to be a cosmology. If you do, I guess that's my favourite.

 

[Undrave]

Yup! I own it. Bought after reading all the descriptions when I first heard what World Axis was. I also grabbed The Plane Below. Do not regret either purchase.

I loved learning bout all the gods and their complex relationships and the sort of things they did on a daily basis. Loved the way Bane and Gruumsh were constantly at war but its hinted at that Bane is just pretending to be stuck, and I absolute adored Erathis doing dark things to further her goal but keeping them hidden from Pelor. Or the origin story of Asmodeus and how its hinted that the god he killed was probably the creator of human.

I feel like the 4e pantheon was so much more dynamic and interesting. I really liked playing Divine characters in 4e. Particularly enjoyed my Paladin of Erathis! His order was put in charge of handling all sorts of bureaucratic tasks by the Kingdom, including escorting payment to the army during war time... But neither he, nor his order, had any loyalty to the crown itself, only to the concept of ORDER and Civilization so when the King apparently began to act erraticaly and apparently arrested all the (other) able-bodied Paladins, he had no qualm just talking of replacing the corrupt King by his daughter and get the Kingdom back to working in an orderly fashion.

I would still love to do something with that material at some point in the future, all those dead domains with tragic History...The various 'islands' floating around them. Or those guys who are on a manic hunt for the fragment of their shattered domains! Forgot the name but their strongest soldier grow a second face on the back of their head? Those guys had some great potential.

 

[Ixal]

I choose other because I do not really care about cosmology. When I need a different dimension I make them up or steal it from a other setting, but there is no geography involved with a distinction between inner planes, outer planes, etc.
They simply exist and you can travel between them with spells.
What planes exist? Basically the gods each get one, demons of course plus whatever I feel like is needed for the story.

 

[Aldarc]

4e World Axis is the easiest to teach that is still flavorful.

"God stuff here. Element stuff there. Fey stuff and Shadowstuff here.

To the great surprise of absolutely no one, I voted for the 4e World Axis for a similar reason.

The World Axis IMO feels like an organic, flavorfully rich, and mythic cosmology. It's also one that empowers GMs and players to explore it. It made the planes into (relatively) accessible sites of adventure. It gave us the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I didn't vote for FRs world tree, but I will say its had alot of cool stuff, it had a ton of potential, but they did nothing with it. I mean all those FR books in 3.5e and not one Forgotten Realms Manual of the Planes style book to flesh them out was a wasted opportunity.

Btw FRs World Tree isn't completely dead in 5e, the plane of Zigguraxus is mentioned in one of the last Brimstone Angels novels that Gilgeam and Enlil were completing to restore, which was intended as one of the World Tree Planes, but kind dead when the Untheric Pantheon fell apart after Gilgeam's death.
How the restoration of the planes of Zigguraxus and presumedly Heiropolis (the Mulhorandi Gods), not to mention the continued existance of the Towers of Night Plane from FR's version of the World Axis cosmology fits in with 5e Cosmology is an important question.

It suggests that the great wheel outer planes are not the only outer planes in 5e.

 

[QuentinGeorge]

Not really a big fan of most of them, like others though, I definitely preferred 3e's approach of "unique cosmologies", rather than the whole shoehorning of everything into the Great Wheel that was 2nd edition.

For me, I'm honestly not really enthused by the whole idea of gods living on a different plane, especially since it isn't actually a good reflection of what people actually believed.