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

[Voadam]

I never really got into the World Tree having come from an AD&D Forgotten Realms background where it was just the normal outer planes having specific domains in the existing planes. Even though I enjoyed the 3e FR Campaign Setting I never really read up on the Tree cosmology, how did it differ from the default great wheel? From the casual glance it looked like it had most of the same stuff.

 

[Seramus]

I love Planescape cosmology, I genuinely do. It will always be near and dear to my heart. That said, World Axis/Dawn War has so much traction it could burn the tires off a full roster at Daytona Speedway. It was cherry picked that way, and it worked.

Exandria deserves special mention as well, since it also drove a monster truck through the cosmology of several settings and yoinked the best bits.

 

[Argyle King]

I voted 4E, but it's most accurate to say that I use a cross between 3E's Great Wheel and 4E.

I prefer to put the 4E World Axis (prime material, shadowfell, and feywild) in the middle like an axle and have the Great Wheel rotate/move around it. Not all parts of it rotate/move the exact same though, so there may be special times of the year where certain planes are closer or farther away from each other.

 

[Xeviat]

Planescape #1, World Axis a close #2 for me. Planescape won out for me for being "traditional D&D" to me, and being uniquely D&D. World Axis is #2 for being a simplification that's still really cool (and technically most of those outer planes can be Astral worlds).

 

[SkidAce]

Since I am always tinkering with cosmology and planes/worlds etc, I came upon this thread again.

A question to those who are fans of the 4E World Axis. How do you feel/deal with no Ethereal Plane, border or otherwise?

 

[RangerWickett]

When I wrote up the planes section for Level Up, I took inspiration from 4e's version as to what planes are known, but used the metaphor of a book to describe travel.

A plane is like the text on the page, and the ethereal is like the page it's written on, while the book itself is the astral plane.

 

[MNblockhead]

I vote Great Wheel, but honestly in my campaigns it is a hodge-podge influenced by various editions, along with the very vague Lost Lands cosmology. I'm actually happy with the resulting vagueness and contradictions because how well can mortals accurately describe the entirety of reality. Also, my campaign doesn't involve a great deal of planar travel and even when they have been to the Feywild, the City of Brass, the City of Dis, etc. having a full picture of how one location sits in relation to other planes has never been particularly important. When they research it, they don't get the same answers from all sources.

 

[Aldarc]

A question to those who are fans of the 4E World Axis. How do you feel/deal with no Ethereal Plane, border or otherwise?

Should I miss it?

 

[SkidAce]

Should I miss it?

Well, it has been used for ghosts, phase spiders to move in and out of.
Oil of Etherealness, and Armor of Etherealness are affected.
Those in the Ethereal used it for scouting and bypassing obstacles.
It was a way to get to the Elemental Planes. It was implied you could get to Faerie or Shadow via Ethereal.
Various stuff, just curious.

 

[Voadam]

Since I am always tinkering with cosmology and planes/worlds etc, I came upon this thread again.

A question to those who are fans of the 4E World Axis. How do you feel/deal with no Ethereal Plane, border or otherwise?

Shadowfell mostly replaces the Ethereal as a plane.

Mechanical effects (invisible incorporeality but still seeing the material plane) for things like magic and monsters still work without an ethereal plane.

The Ethereal is not needed for planar travel.