WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Incenjucar]

Well according to the Athar...

 

[Chaosmancer]

It's fine that you don't care for it. I find the quasi-elemental planes inspiring, which is why I have an an OGL thing I'm dabbling with that specifically incorporates them, based on an idea that I had multiple editions ago. I'm not going to claim that grid-filling is always the best design, but you can find some amazing things if you do fill out the grid. Back in 4E I built 4 unique and flavorful elemental classes based on filling the role grid.

If you cannot make good adventures using a larger multi-verse, use a smaller one. You can certainly advocate for a smaller one, too. But whatever you find difficult about it is hardly universal. It makes for good adventures for other people.

Except... not for the people making the game. I've seen a lot of third party products for the Feywild or the Shadowfell or the Abyss, but nothing for the Plane of Salt. So not for them either. And I've been in quite a few homebrew games, and it hasn't been true for any of them.

So, if it is good for other people, it is an incredibly small number of people. Likely a bunch of people who would grid-fill and re-create these things even if the official material never mentioned them. Kind of like someone making an OGL thing based on the Quasi-Elemental planes that practically do not exist in 5e.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I just thought that it was weird that they mentioned that it felt more realistic. I was wondering if they weren't that familiar with real-world cosmologies because of it. And I was pointing out that it actually isn't anymore realistic and I just thought it was strange that the cosmology with several dozen planes of existence somehow felt more realistic than a simpler one.

I know, right?

It isn't. I was trying to understand their point of view. I was confused why they would say that, because it wasn't accurate and didn't seem like it should feel accurate based on any cosmologies that I know of from the real world. Most are generally much simpler than the Great Wheel (the Yggdrasil and 9 worlds of Norse mythology, the Duat of Egyptian mythology, the Underworld, Tartarus, and Mount Olympus from Greek Mythology, Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory/Limbo from Catholicism, the Dreaming from Aboriginal Australians, the Celtic Otherworld, etc).

In the real world, most cosmologies are pretty simple. So the statement that the Great Wheel somehow feel more realistic was really mindboggling, because I honestly cannot think of any cosmologies from the real world similar to it. Nothing about it feels realistic. It feels even more "artificial" than the World Axis.

The Great Wheel is an attempt to explain the universe and everything in it. It is a "Grand Unified Theory", if you will. It allows for things that do not directly have to do with a small group of powerful PCs looking for adventure.

That's the difference to me. That's why it feels more "real" than the World Axis, because it was created to encompass all the things that are, not as a collection of fun places to visit.

 

[Micah Sweet]

And yet a perfect spectrum of mixes of concepts of morality, Moving from Lawful Good to Chaotic Evil and back to Lawful Good feels completely natural to you?

That level of balance and mirroring doesn't happen in nature. And 4e doesn't feel artificial, it feels exactly like a real mythology does.

It doesn't feel artificial to you.

 

[Incenjucar]

Except... not for the people making the game. I've seen a lot of third party products for the Feywild or the Shadowfell or the Abyss, but nothing for the Plane of Salt. So not for them either. And I've been in quite a few homebrew games, and it hasn't been true for any of them.

So, if it is good for other people, it is an incredibly small number of people. Likely a bunch of people who would grid-fill and re-create these things even if the official material never mentioned them. Kind of like someone making an OGL thing based on the Quasi-Elemental planes that practically do not exist in 5e.

You should maybe try the Search function. While it's certainly niche, it's not wholly unsupported in OGL works, and there's plenty of old work on the topic that still holds up.

 

[Lanefan]

Real world cosmologies vary in complexity. In many cases there is a pop culture idea of these cosmologies that barely touched their surface.

And that pop-culture version is what I personally prefer to lean into. I ain't here for a lesson in the history of ancient religions; I just want something entertaining, amusing, and yet recognizable enough that when I say "Athena" or "Thor" most people have half a clue what I mean.

Hercules-Xena did a great job with their send-up of the various pantheons, and IMO represent an excellent starting point for designing a game-setting's real-world-adjacent cosmology.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

The Great Wheel is an attempt to explain the universe and everything in it.

That's what all cosmologies are. It's basically the definition of a "cosmology".

It is a "Grand Unified Theory", if you will. It allows for things that do not directly have to do with a small group of powerful PCs looking for adventure.

That's the difference to me. That's why it feels more "real" than the World Axis, because it was created to encompass all the things that are, not as a collection of fun places to visit.

The World Axis also has things that don't directly have to do with the PCs adventuring there. Not every lake of fire in the Elemental Chaos or stretch of the Astral Sea is meant to be adventured. The planes, in broad strokes, are overall just designed to accommodate PCs adventuring there. Not every single part of it is designed like that.

 

[Incenjucar]

And that pop-culture version is what I personally prefer to lean into. I ain't here for a lesson in the history of ancient religions; I just want something entertaining, amusing, and yet recognizable enough that when I say "Athena" or "Thor" most people have half a clue what I mean.

Hercules-Xena did a great job with their send-up of the various pantheons, and IMO represent an excellent starting point for designing a game-setting's real-world-adjacent cosmology.

Fair! It's not for everyone. The Great Wheel assumes you want to have as many pantheons as the real world, but if you want the whole world under the Norse pantheon it's obviously the wrong choice.

 

[Lanefan]

And it turns out, lightning =/= thunder. In fact, it is entirely possible to have "lightning" without "thunder"

Trying to figure how this could work, unless by "lightning" you mean electricity conducted through something other than air...which means it isn't lightning any more, just electricity.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Real world cosmologies vary in complexity. In many cases there is a pop culture idea of these cosmologies that barely touched their surface. D&D does also graft a lot of these pop cultural versions together, as is also popular in comic books, so there is some inherent complexity there. However, most cosmologies are at least somewhat more complicated than the average person is aware of, especially given the people who can give us more details on many of them have been dead for thousands of years.

Sure, but they aren't mathematical. That's the thing that bugs me about the Great Wheel and it's 16 planes of varying degrees of morality, and the Elemental planes with their varying degrees of each other. It feels like someone took a measuring tape to reality, then pounded in a fence-line.

Maybe the full scope of Ancient chinese or Vietnamese myth feels like that, because of their focus on bureaucracy and ordering things. But that is a hierarchy, the end of which is an Emperor who oversees all of reality. The Great Wheel doesn't have that. It is perfectly organized.... with no organizer.