glass
(he, him)
Mods, I am putting this in Older Editions because, while I am not completely discounting 5e lore I tend to prioritise 2e through 4e. But if you feel it would be better in the main Dungeon & Dragons forum with a General tag, feel free to move it.
D&D and adjacent games have had a fair few planar cosmologies over the years, and it would be fair to say that I am a big fan of most of them, and just recently I have been tooling around with connecting them all together - partly because of a wild idea I have for a high-level campaign that will probably never happen, but mostly just because it is fun. I have had some discussion on the matter elsewhere, but for various reasons it seemed like a good idea to see what the assembled genius of ENWorld had to say on the matter.
TLDR: All the D&D and adjacent cosmologies are part of the M:tG overall planar structure, but the Great Wheel, the Great Beyond, World Axis, Mystara’s cosmology, and Eberron’s cosmology, and various others are tied together more closely.
What is exercising me at the moment is the Forgotten Realms. But this post is long enough already, so that can be the subject of a later one.
_
glass.
D&D and adjacent games have had a fair few planar cosmologies over the years, and it would be fair to say that I am a big fan of most of them, and just recently I have been tooling around with connecting them all together - partly because of a wild idea I have for a high-level campaign that will probably never happen, but mostly just because it is fun. I have had some discussion on the matter elsewhere, but for various reasons it seemed like a good idea to see what the assembled genius of ENWorld had to say on the matter.
The story so far is that I intend to keep the various cosmologies largely intact and separate. Although not to the extent that the 1e, 2e, 3e, and 5e versions of the Great Wheel are separate cosmologies - there I reconcile the differences. Ditto for the various takes on Mystara’s cosmology. The “top-level” structure will be Magic: The Gathering’s blind eternities, meaning that only people with a planeswalker spark (ie almost nobody) can move between them freely. Each cosmology is a plane in M:tG terminology - there is precedent for M:tG planes to have sub-planes.
But the various D&D, and adjacent, cosmologies form something of a local group, which are slightly easier to move between (although still by no means easy, of course), and are connected together in various ways:
The obvious one is the Plane of Shadow: Per the 3e Manual of the Planes, it connects to alternate prime material planes, and thereby to alternate cosmologies. But not all cosmologies even have a Plane of Shadow (and some like the World Axis’s Shadowfell are borderline as to whether they count - I am leaning towards “they don’t”). Of course, I could just add the Plane of Shadow to those cosmologies that lack it, but I do not want to take away the distinctiveness of the different cosmologies - it rather defeats the point.
Another poster on RPGnet suggested a pair of extra planes to fill in the gap, The Churn and The Void, and the former was greatly useful in closing the links (I have some tentative thought about the latter, but nothing concrete yet). So far it breaks down as follows:
The Plane of Shadow links to the Great Wheel; the Great Beyond (Pathfinder/Starfinder); the Omniverse, Orrery, and the Winding Road (3e MotP alternates); and Eberron.
The Churn links, via either the Elemental Chaos or Dimensional Vortex to the Great Wheel (again), World Axis, and Mystara.
Both also link to my homebrew world’s cosmology, Pelhorin. And there are also more localised links.
But the various D&D, and adjacent, cosmologies form something of a local group, which are slightly easier to move between (although still by no means easy, of course), and are connected together in various ways:
The obvious one is the Plane of Shadow: Per the 3e Manual of the Planes, it connects to alternate prime material planes, and thereby to alternate cosmologies. But not all cosmologies even have a Plane of Shadow (and some like the World Axis’s Shadowfell are borderline as to whether they count - I am leaning towards “they don’t”). Of course, I could just add the Plane of Shadow to those cosmologies that lack it, but I do not want to take away the distinctiveness of the different cosmologies - it rather defeats the point.
Another poster on RPGnet suggested a pair of extra planes to fill in the gap, The Churn and The Void, and the former was greatly useful in closing the links (I have some tentative thought about the latter, but nothing concrete yet). So far it breaks down as follows:
The Plane of Shadow links to the Great Wheel; the Great Beyond (Pathfinder/Starfinder); the Omniverse, Orrery, and the Winding Road (3e MotP alternates); and Eberron.
The Churn links, via either the Elemental Chaos or Dimensional Vortex to the Great Wheel (again), World Axis, and Mystara.
Both also link to my homebrew world’s cosmology, Pelhorin. And there are also more localised links.
What is exercising me at the moment is the Forgotten Realms. But this post is long enough already, so that can be the subject of a later one.
_
glass.
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