D&D 5E Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!

Parmandur · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
You really cannot see any implications that could effect storytelling in Eberron from Eberron’s entire cosmology being a pocket dimension in the Deep Ethereal of he great wheel rather than genuinely it’s own universe?

Nothing that can't be easily ignored, since what happens at a given table is the only thing that matters. The general assumptions are just baseboards upon which to build a LEGO set. They don't dictate anything.

Maxperson · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
So, just to try to be as clear as possible, the issue isn’t the reality or lack thereof of the progenitors. It is with the idea that they (or a consciousness cosmic force, or happenstance, or whatever the Prophecy is, or whatever) picked a spot in the Deep Ethereal (not astral) plane, and took stuff from around the multiverse to make their own isolated playground.

3.5 has them create their cosmology as well, and it wasn't as if it existed and no other settings in D&D did. WotC didn't release a press release saying that with the release of Eberron, no other settings or cosmologies exist in the D&D multiverese any longer. It was always a part of the greater D&D community, but it was an isolated one that nobody could get to. And that remains with 5e.

was · Jul 21, 2021

like the idea of dragonborn w/ gem dragon ancestry

Bolares · Jul 21, 2021

was said:
like the idea of dragonborn w/ gem dragon ancestry

oh, that's right, this thread was about Fizban's

I agree, Gem Dragonborn are tight! I loved the flying horns

DEFCON 1 · Jul 21, 2021

Dire Bare said:
Some novels have smaller stories that don't overly impact the larger setting. At least not to the degree that it needs to be mentioned in the next iteration of the campaign guide. But some stories most certainly are that big. The Realms is known for it's RSEs (Realms-Shaking-Events), some of which are detailed in game products, others are detailed in novels, others in both. The Avatar trilogy springs to mind . . .

I want to say though that the Avatar trilogy was written to explain the changes to the Realms from changes made to the game, and not the other way around. Game impacted those novels, not that those novels impacted the game. Could be mistaken on that though, admittedly...

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
I’m not…unhappy? I don’t get it. I don’t assume that someone who dislikes a change or prefers a different model is upset about it.

Maybe a poor word choice, but for this discussing dislike = unhappy in my mind. So if you don't like the word unahppy, you can replace that sentence with the following:

"...You will just have to dislike the current direction I guess (until WotC changes course) - sorry!"

Dire Bare · Jul 21, 2021

Mirtek said:
Tortured maybe for Athas, but Krynn was pretty well connected. There was a lot of traffic between Krynn and Toril.

Athas definitely came packaged with an unnecessary explanation of how it's a part of, but isolated from, the multiverse. I remember reading it back in the day and thinking, "Why?" Just let Dark Sun be it's own thing without worrying about how it is connected to the multiverse. If tables want to play cross-planar games with Athas, let them. And of course, at some point, the githyanki invade the planet anyway (unless I'm remembering that wrong).

Krynn, at first, was simply it's own thing. Takhisis both was and wasn't Tiamat, Paladine was/wasn't Bahamut, the Abyss was . . . maybe the Abyss, or maybe what Krynn-folk call Baator/Hell, or maybe it's own evil plane. It was all good. At some point though, some fans (and designers) started to think defining exactly how Krynn was related to the greater D&D multiverse was important, and we're still arguing about it today. I get a little more annoyed by the Dragonlance world-building by omission trope. This world is different because no orcs, no drow! Like somehow that truly defines what makes Dragonlance different. But Dragonlance was the first setting consciously designed by the D&D team at TSR (previous settings came from adventure authors, including Gygax and Arneson), so I give some slack there.

I'm totally fine with a setting being a part of the D&D multiverse, but also being it's own thing and not really fitting in to the Great Wheel. I don't need the details on how that works, it's a problem that doesn't need solving.

doctorbadwolf · Jul 21, 2021

Urriak Uruk said:
He didn't say any of that... he said that it can be interpreted that way, or another way. Or you can use the DMG to just throw the Great Wheel away entirely and use your own home-made cosmology. There isn't really canon at all, the DMG allows you to make anything.

Which is irrelevant to a discussion of whether the direction of the canon (and yes, it exists, it just isn't binding in a game. Canon just refers to the lore published by the IP holder. What they publish is DnD, what I run at my table is my DnD. I don't need to feel beholden to the official DnD in order to care about what direction it is going with the lore.)

As I've said at least a half dozen times in this thread, I don't follow any published setting's canon, and my homebrew worlds don't use any published dnd cosmology at all. In Islands World, death doesn't even work remotely like it does in published DnD, gods aren't what they are in any published world, and there aren't any "planes of existence", there is just the one universe. Even the "spirit world" isn't a world, it's just that spirit beings are, by default, invisible and ethereal. They don't inhabit a different space than everything else.

In Space Fantasy, The Nine Hells are literal planets in a solar system that orbits the Abyss, which is a black hole. The Feywild is a region of space with pockets and tendrils reaching deep into other regions, and the Shadowfell is just the darker places within the Feywild.

In both, Devils and Demons aren't distinct from eachother in any way, those are just interchangable terms for the same thing, which all MM "fiends" are part of. Most people use the term Demon, while Devil and Fiend are more esoteric/academic terms.

None of that has any impact whatsoever on whether "is the direction the lore of dnd is going good, bad, or ambivelent" is a valid topic of discussion, or a valid thing to care about.

Parmandur said:
Nothing that can't be easily ignored, since what happens at a given table is the only thing that matters. The general assumptions are just baseboards upon which to build a LEGO set. They don't dictate anything.

I would posit that most people buy a given game not just for the mechanics, but also for the lore. The lore matters, regardless of it's lack of binding nature. What direction the lore is going is a thing worthy of discussion and criticism. Trying to invalidate the perspective of other people by telling them the thing they are trying to discuss doesn't matter is condescending, at best.

Maxperson said:
3.5 has them create their cosmology as well, and it wasn't as if it existed and no other settings in D&D did. WotC didn't release a press release saying that with the release of Eberron, no other settings or cosmologies exist in the D&D multiverese any longer. It was always a part of the greater D&D community, but it was an isolated one that nobody could get to. And that remains with 5e.

Can you explain what relevance the part I bolded has to the discussion? It doesn't connect to anything I've ever seen anyone say in any discussion, much less anything I've said in this discussion.

dave2008 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
You really cannot see any implications that could effect storytelling in Eberron from Eberron’s entire cosmology being a pocket dimension in the Deep Ethereal of he great wheel rather than genuinely it’s own universe?

Why do you assume a "pocket dimension" couldn't also be its own universe? That seems entirely plausible. Just like the great wheel could be a pocket dimension of another reality. There are not constraints applied to what is or isn't a dimension, a plane of existence, or a universe. At least not that I am aware of.

DEFCON 1 · Jul 21, 2021

doctorbadwolf said:
Ah yes, from “ego” to “bad roleplaying and/or inability to compartmentalize”. Can you make an argument on this topic without insulting the people you disagree with, or no?

I've made plenty. You just won't accept them. You believe everything should be a certain way, others have said why that way is unnecessary, and you don't want to agree. And I have made my own inferences from that for why you won't agree. C'est la vie.