WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Oofta]

On a related note, one of the issues I have with these planes is that they're frequently described as infinite or having things like infinite staircases. Does anyone really think about what that implies? If you have a truly infinite plane then all sorts of weirdness happens. Looking for Orcus? Well, if the Abyss is infinite then there are infinite possibilities which means that if there is 1 Orcus there would at some point be another. An infinite number of others for that matter. They aren't the same Orcus of course, but given infinite randomness you will have infinite duplicates no matter how unlikely even 1 duplicate is.

Anyway just the thought for the day. If there are infinite versions of reality as some people think is possible, there are infinite Oofta's out there typing this exact same sentence. Along with an infinite number thinking "this is a dumb tangent" and deleting the post before posting.

 

[Micah Sweet]

99% of every campaign setting is useless to anyone with a finite lifespan. It is very unlikely I will ever be in a game involving Tassledale, but that doesn't mean it needs to be removed. WotC may have removed areas for any number of reasons, but that doesn't mean the area lacks potential use. You also wildly underestimate new players if you think quasi-elemental planes are a line in the sand for their capacity.

Most of the planar stuff was in the game when I first started back in late 1e, and I had no problem following. Absolutely devoured the 1e Manual of the Planes.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There was a book on the Inner Planes toward the end of Planescape's run, including the para- and quasi-elemental planes. Most of the material was admittedly focused on the four main elemental planes, but there are a few locations detailed for each, along with an overview on various inhabitant of note.

Okay. So what is there? Just because there was a book that mentions them doesn't tell me anything. I think the 5e DMG mentions them too, that doesn't mean that they have any additional detail.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They don't connect in the classic 2e Great Wheel. Must be an Elemental Chaos thing.

Considering they were published in the Inner Planes book in 1998, I'd say that they precede 3rd edition, published in 2000. let alone 4th editions Elemental Chaos. So, if they aren't connected to 2e's Great Wheel, then they sure are strange

Edit: Ah, didn't see you responded. Well... you mentioned it was in the book, still no details

 

[Chaosmancer]

Nothing in the game is really necessary. They do explain things like undead and radiant damage, though. They serve a very good purpose in being in the game, even if only as a minor mention. If you remove them and don't replace them with something to serve the same purpose, and the feywild and shadowfell don't do that, then the game has lost something that was beneficial to it.

What do you mean they "explain the undead" or they "explain radiant damage"? You know that many, many, many things could possibly explain the Undead, right? In fact, there are even undead that don't connect to negative energy at all.

And the Shadowfell can be the origin of Undead, in fact, it is. You don't need an entire plane of existence to be full of the energy that undead use. And radiant damage is caused by being hit by divine energy, or light energy. There isn't a plane of Thunderous energy to explain thunder damage, or a plane of slashing energy to explain slashing damage, why do we need a plane of positive energy to explain radiant damage?

Can you? The elemental planes are where the building blocks for the various settings came from. That fire(or the potential for it) your PC generated came originally from the plane of fire. The earth your PC walks on came from the plane of earth.

Page 52 of the DMG, "The Inner Planes surround and enfold the Material Plane and its echoes, providing the raw elemental substance from which all worlds were made."

So, when I strike flint and steel I'm opening a portal to a new plane of existence? When lightning (an element of Air) strikes wood, does THAT open a portal between dimensions to the plane of fire? Why does wood (an earth element combined with a water element) being struck by lightning (an air element) create fire, but fire doesn't create any elements of stone or water?

The "raw substance" is far more likely to be things like the sun, or the molten core of the planet, not every single fire ever created.

There's magic and anti-magic. There's positive energy and anti(negative) energy.

Except there isn't anti-magic. Anti-magic is just the abscence of magic. Read the spell "A 10-foot-radius Invisible Sphere of antimagic surrounds you. This area is divorced from the Magical energy that suffuses the multiverse. " You don't fill a sphere with anti-magical energy, you remove magical energy from the sphere. Just like you can't fill a sphere with cold, you remove heat from the sphere.

 

[Chaosmancer]

They? Never.

You the DM? Whenever you like.

So... WoTC should continue publishing things they never intend to use, because someone might fill in those places they never plan on using.

And this is better than taking those things, and repurposing them to serve in places that WoTC IS using, and they are devoting effort into detailing...

 

[Chaosmancer]

I started with Planescape in middle school. It wasn't difficult to grasp then, I don't see why it would be hard now. Today's youngsters are more capable if anything given the amount of information they're exposed to.

It isn't difficult to grasp, it just is difficult to CARE.

Let's just compare for a second. The 4e model had seven major parts to their cosmology. The Prime, The Ethereal, The Astral Sea, The Elemental Chaos, The Abyss, The Feywild, The Shadowfell. There were 19 major Divine Realms in the Astral Sea, including the Nine Hells (as one) and 11 major Elemental holds. These were all defined as being the realm of a specific being. This realms belongs to this god, this hold belongs to this titan, and on down the line. This would mean there are at max, 37 locations, with the Infinite Abyss being a problem child.



2e/3e cosmology? Well, I could say that it has ONLY 25 major parts... but even that isn't fully accurate. You have the prime, the etheral, the astral, Then the Four elemental planes... except there are six elemental planes, because Positive and Negative, and then you have the four Para-elemental planes (Magma, Smoke, Ice, Ooze) and then eight Quasi-Elemental PLanes (Lightning, Radiance, Mineral, Steam, Vaccuum, Ash, Dust, Salt). Then you have the Outlands and sigil, and the 16 outer planes.... except those 16 planes are divided into 53! different sections.

So, where maxing the 4e model gives you 37 locations, maxing the 2e/3e version gives you 76. It is double. And it isn't like it is difficult to understand, because it is box filling. Six elemental planes, then the four borders between the main four planes, then the eight edges that touch the positive and negative. It is easy to understand the boxes. It is far more difficult to try and make Earth, Earth and Water, Earth and Fire, Earth and Positive, Earth and Negative actually interesting to adventure in. And then do the same for Air, and then do the same for Fire, and... Seriously, it is just excessive. Same with the outer planes, You have good, then good and a little law, the law and good, then law and a little good, then good and a little chaos then good and chaos, the chaos and a little good. And sure, I can draw the model and explain how each subdivision fills the checklist, but it doesn't make for good adventures.

It isn't the instinct to make a good location for storytelling, it is the instinct to categorize and break down in compulsive detail every possible mixture of things.

 

[Micah Sweet]

It isn't difficult to grasp, it just is difficult to CARE.

Let's just compare for a second. The 4e model had seven major parts to their cosmology. The Prime, The Ethereal, The Astral Sea, The Elemental Chaos, The Abyss, The Feywild, The Shadowfell. There were 19 major Divine Realms in the Astral Sea, including the Nine Hells (as one) and 11 major Elemental holds. These were all defined as being the realm of a specific being. This realms belongs to this god, this hold belongs to this titan, and on down the line. This would mean there are at max, 37 locations, with the Infinite Abyss being a problem child.



2e/3e cosmology? Well, I could say that it has ONLY 25 major parts... but even that isn't fully accurate. You have the prime, the etheral, the astral, Then the Four elemental planes... except there are six elemental planes, because Positive and Negative, and then you have the four Para-elemental planes (Magma, Smoke, Ice, Ooze) and then eight Quasi-Elemental PLanes (Lightning, Radiance, Mineral, Steam, Vaccuum, Ash, Dust, Salt). Then you have the Outlands and sigil, and the 16 outer planes.... except those 16 planes are divided into 53! different sections.

So, where maxing the 4e model gives you 37 locations, maxing the 2e/3e version gives you 76. It is double. And it isn't like it is difficult to understand, because it is box filling. Six elemental planes, then the four borders between the main four planes, then the eight edges that touch the positive and negative. It is easy to understand the boxes. It is far more difficult to try and make Earth, Earth and Water, Earth and Fire, Earth and Positive, Earth and Negative actually interesting to adventure in. And then do the same for Air, and then do the same for Fire, and... Seriously, it is just excessive. Same with the outer planes, You have good, then good and a little law, the law and good, then law and a little good, then good and a little chaos then good and chaos, the chaos and a little good. And sure, I can draw the model and explain how each subdivision fills the checklist, but it doesn't make for good adventures.

It isn't the instinct to make a good location for storytelling, it is the instinct to categorize and break down in compulsive detail every possible mixture of things.

I prefer to go with that instinct personally. Not everything in the world needs to be designed for the PCs. The World Axis always felt artificial to me, because everything in it was designed for adventuring, and what world really works that way?

Others feel differently, and that's fine.

 

[BrokenTwin]

I still prefer 4E's cosmos, and use it whenever the topic comes up in my games. The relentless subdividing of planes in earlier editions just feels like pointless categorization to me. You can still have whatever adventures you want in "the ice plane" in the Elemental Chaos, you're just exploring an area with a particularly large affinity to ice.

 

[billd91]

On the whole topic of cosmology, I don't see a problem with D&D having a default cosmology that DMs can use for their settings if they so choose. There should be lots of elements in the DMG that are plug-and-play friendly and an outer plane cosmology is one of them.
But it's also OK for a specific setting, even a published one like Dragonlance or Dark Sun, to deviate from that default with a setting-specific one.

As far as what form that cosmology takes, the Great Wheel metaphor has worked and still works. An astral sea works well also. And I disagree that they're too complex for players, even new ones. For one thing, you don't have to explain it all at once. Too much exposition at once and, yeah, their eyes will glaze over. But bit by bit or even a diagram goes a long way. When we were in middle school obsessively pouring over the AD&D 1e books, most of us had no problem at all with the Great Wheel cosmology. We understood the mapping of the various outer planes to the alignment grid. The only gray areas really had to do with the transitional planes between the regular points on the alignment graph - Gehenna, Tarterus, Pandemonium, Acheron, Arcadia, etc. What exactly set them apart from the 8 locations that mapped to specific alignment was anybody's guess at the time - pre Manual of the Planes. To our eyes, they were just alternative afterlife names drawn from different sources or cultures (Happy Hunting Grounds was a dead giveaway on that one) - a planar version of the thesaurus-driven approach to descriptions and tables (like the wandering prostitute table).