WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Micah Sweet]

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

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.

Have they ever described a part that isn't? Serious question.

 

[Incenjucar]

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.

The Great Wheel, at least in Planescape, is not a canonical fact, it is a canonical hypothesis by fallible characters in the setting.

 

[Chaosmancer]

It doesn't feel artificial to you.

Yes. If it felt artificial to me, then I would have said "this feels artificial". Instead I said "this doesn't feel artificial." That's how ideas work. If they weren't true, I'd be lying when I said them.

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.

But the 4e version also encompasses all things that are. There isn't something that exists that they didn't cover.

4e has places to visit, but it also covers everything and explains how the cosmos functions. It doesn't have missing pieces.

 

[Incenjucar]

The 4E cosmology is also fine. It's a different flavor. The lack of ethereal plane never sat right with me, but other than that, it's fine.

 

[Micah Sweet]

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.

I've always seen the Great Wheel's structure as representative of an organized mortal's attempt to make sense of the infinite cosmos. It may not actually look like that in reality. After all, planes are infinite, and it's not like you can look at it all from outside.

 

[Incenjucar]

This whole conversation could honestly be reworked only slightly and put in a Planescape book. We just need some space-filling crawling marble squiggles and four-tone line art with lots of mohawks and beard jewelry.

 

[Levistus's_Leviathan]

Have they ever described a part that isn't? Serious question.

Why would you describe an area of nothing? That would be like spending a section of a swashbuckling pirate adventure describing an unremarkable spot in the adventure that the PCs have no reason to journey to.

And, according to the Forgotten Realms wiki, there are "Primordial Realms" in the Elemental Chaos (the counterpart of Astral Dominions), which are where the Primordials dwell. The rest is a sea of constant chaos (like Limbo). So, yes, there very much are spaces in the Elemental Chaos and Astral Sea where nothing important happens.

 

[Lanefan]

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.

With my own homebrew cosmology, that's pretty much exactly what I did and I'll stand behind it all day long.

Everything is in perfect* balance, with alignment being one of several variables comprising that balance.

* - with very minor variance here and there; but fixing those problems is what adventurers are for, right?

 

[Maxperson]

Really? It can not exist without the negative energy plane?

Not as written, no.

Huh... that's strange. Cause it absolutely does exist without the negative energy plane in literally every campaign world I have ever played. A lot of the one's I've read too. In fact, it isn't even trivial to explain why they don't need to be connected, it is literally more work to force the Shadowfell to need the negative energy plane that it is to not have it. You are literally making more work for yourself forcing those to be included.

Unless they homebrewed it away, that's how it worked in those campaigns.

So, it would be impossible for fire to exist in the Outer planes, right?

The outer planes work differently. The inner planes provide everything that goes into constructing the prime plane.

Because the potential for Fire was used in the making of the material plane, and the outer planes aren't made of the stuff of the inner planes. Or, does that seem entirely wrong to you for some reason?

Personally, I would use the inner planes in the construction of the outer, but that's not how it is written. The outer planes work on belief(older lore) or thought and spirituality(new lore) and since the belief/thought/spirituality in question is that of the mortal races, it's no surprise that they were created by those mortals with all of the elements present.

 

[Veltharis ap Rylix]

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.

I mean... I'd have to look it up, but most likely the "Great Wheel" model of the cosmology was developed in-universe by the Fraternity of Order, so that seems like exactly the kind of methodology they'd have used to put it together...