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

[Storyteller Hero]

The current 5e version of the Great Wheel is my favorite so far, followed by the Planescape Wheel. The 5e Wheel feels like a true evolution of DnD cosmology that combines what people enjoyed about the 2e and 4e cosmologies.

It's worth noting that these cosmology structures are all conceptual structures theorized by in-game scholars rather than physical maps of the multiverse, so they all have simultaneous validity to some extent.

Given the quasi-conceptual nature of reality presented as the multiverse of DnD, which makes magic and miracles possible on grand scales, I find it comforting to have a well-defined structure to work with, even if conceptual itself.

I guess that makes me Lawful Ev-Good. Lawful Good. Glory to the mountains of Celestia.

 

[SkidAce]

The Shadow and Fey planes already do this. A person that has a strong mind can create a "domain" that expresses ones will.

Is this spelled out in a book somewhere, or is it inferred from the fact that we have seeli lords and domains etc?

 

[Davinshe]

Wow, I voted for 4e cosmology and I was surprised to see it do so well. I definitely think the cosmology tried to take what worked well in previous cosmologies and throw out what didn't work. The old great wheel cosmology had a ton of planes that had little utility. I can think of an adventure set in the 7 heavens, but Bytopia? I mean... I guess if I wanted to challenge myself.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Personally, I like it as a plane for the existence of the deep ethereal. Basically, the further you get from the material plane, the less the rules of basic reality apply, allowing for pocket planes with wildly different rules and general weirdness, like say the stray remnants of a spell that collided with a bird and spiraled off into the deep ethereal, iterating on the idea of "bird" and growing more distorted over time until it formed a pocket plane consisting of gliding feathers all spiraling into a single eye that captures everything it sees and only releases you once you've contributed something it accepts as tribute for it's nest.

As others have mentioned, I'd say that's the function of the Astral Sea (at least in the World Axis cosmology, which I favor because it feels much more "mytho-natural.") That is, since I share much of @Yaarel 's views on the 4e cosmology, I see the Astral Sea as being the plane of thought made manifest, as opposed to the Elemental Chaos, which is forces given form. Deities are in some sense living concepts--connected to transcendental, reality-defining elements (hence why, even though the Elemental Chaos is a place "of chaos," you can still have deities of chaos: because "chaos" is still a concept.) And the deepest, furthest reaches of the Astral Sea can get really weird, as strange thoughts achieve some level of realism or physicality.

At those outermost edges, you get the Astral Sea's equivalent of the Abyss, where you strain against the boundaries of reality. The places where reality becomes close to the Far Realm, often represented by the eldritch stars and their strange powers.

It's worth noting that these cosmology structures are all conceptual structures theorized by in-game scholars rather than physical maps of the multiverse, so they all have simultaneous validity to some extent.

Is it really? It always came across to me as a really thoroughly nailed-down, "it must be this way, and this is a comprehensive accounting of what there is."

That's part of why it always felt so non-mytho-natural to me. There's a place for everything and everything in its place. It feels like the Standard Model of particle physics, simultaneously ad-hoc and intended to be comprehensive, bringing the worst of both worlds: rigid enough to feel artificial and constraining, but messy enough to not actually trigger my "ah, symmetry" reflex. (The weird "halfway between XY and XZ" planes certainly don't help, at least for me.)

 

[see]

The old great wheel cosmology had a ton of planes that had little utility. I can think of an adventure set in the 7 heavens, but Bytopia?

Most D&D worlds are over 99.99% places where literally nothing happens (more than a few dozen miles above or below the surface). This does not seem to result in anyone arguing that D&D should universally switch from planets-in-space to "Flat Earth" world designs.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Most D&D worlds are over 99.99% places where literally nothing happens (more than a few dozen miles above or below the surface). This does not seem to result in anyone arguing that D&D should universally switch from planets-in-space to "Flat Earth" world designs.

Well...that was sort of the whole point of the World Axis. Every "plane" was somewhere that you actually COULD adventure, sometimes even at very early levels. The Astral Sea has its god-homes and outlying islands, the Elemental Chaos has islands of stability (such as the area around the City of Brass), and it's easy enough to have fairy-rings or natural gateways that connect to the Feywild or the Shadowfell. All these places are legit adventurable, and cover a lot of ground while remaining thematically cohesive.

If you want a Bytopia or whatever, it can be located in one of the above places (I imagine it would be a place in the Astral Sea, given its overall Lawful bent, but it could be an unusually lawful subset of the Feywild). But you don't need such rigidly-defined "there's a one-to-one correspondence between the 9 alignments and outer planes, plus 8 transitions between the outer ring of planes."

 

[Scars Unseen]

As others have mentioned, I'd say that's the function of the Astral Sea (at least in the World Axis cosmology, which I favor because it feels much more "mytho-natural.") That is, since I share much of @Yaarel 's views on the 4e cosmology, I see the Astral Sea as being the plane of thought made manifest, as opposed to the Elemental Chaos, which is forces given form.

I don't really see the astral being a great substitute for the deep ethereal, personally. Like you said, the astral plane is one of thought. At least in AD&D, you didn't travel to the astral plane physically, but rather projected yourself there, and traveled by thought. The deep ethereal is closer to your elemental chaos, except that instead of being tied to elements, it was more distortion by distance from reality (well, that and a lot of mist to make distance in general difficult to discern). It's still physical, just with the laws that usually define such a state being wonky. Magic acts weird, gravity is weird, and there's a certain amount of drift that means that when you go back to the material plane, you don't always end up where you intended.

The astral plane I see as being a place where your strength of mind and sense of self help you see your way through, and any weirdness is the result of beings of a more alien mindset holding sway. The deep ethereal is in a more natural state of flux, miniature realities forming and dissolving with little rhyme or reason, and it would be my go to excuse to introduce weirdness with no explicit origin, like my bird dimension I posted about earlier.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Most D&D worlds are over 99.99% places where literally nothing happens (more than a few dozen miles above or below the surface). This does not seem to result in anyone arguing that D&D should universally switch from planets-in-space to "Flat Earth" world designs.

They don't publish source books about the mesosphere and charge money for it though.

And a few miles below the surface is slavers, slaves and the cult of the Dumbest Goddess.

 

[see]

Well...that was sort of the whole point of the World Axis.

And what I'm highlighting is that 99.99+% of the Material Plane is places where people can't adventure, or even live. If the "whole point" of the World Axis is eliminating places where people don't adventure, then the next step is to demand that the Material Plane be changed to eliminate 1) the stratosphere on up and 2) the mantle on down. After all, nobody adventures in those parts of it.

It's perfectly fine to find the World Axis more aesthetically satisfying than the Great Wheel. But if people are going to try to argue from a pseudo-objective premise that places should not exist in a game multiverse if they have "little utility", I'm going to point out the places of "little utility" they don't actually seem to have any problem with.

 

[Vaalingrade]

And what I'm highlighting is that 99.99+% of the Material Plane is places where people can't adventure, or even live. If the "whole point" of the World Axis is eliminating places where people don't adventure, then the next step is to demand that the Material Plane be changed to eliminate 1) the stratosphere on up and 2) the mantle on down. After all, nobody adventures in those parts of it.

Please show me a MotP that devotes pages space to the stratosphere and the mantle.