WotC WotC needs an Elon Musk

[Chaosmancer]

Not as written, no.

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

Does it count as homebrewing it away if you never once mention it and it effectively never exists? Or do you have to explicitly say "hey this thing that was made decades ago that has never been true in my world and that I've never mentioned isn't true in my world"

Because, funny enough, when the Shadowfell was created in 4e... the negative energy plane wasn't put back into the cosmology. So the Shadowfell was created to work without the negative energy plane. Sure, the Forgotten Realms campaign book for 4e said it was part of the creation of it, but Nerath was the default world of 4e, and it never had a Negative Energy plane nor does Shar exist in that world to create the Shadowfell by taking energy from the Negative Energy Plane.

I mean, I guess you could claim that all settings are subservient to FR lore that came out later, and that all settings and lore from are also subservient to it, but that seems rather silly to claim that Nerath and Eberron must obey the lore of The Forgotten Realms, and not the other way around.

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

Oh, I see. They work differently. So fire can exist without cause in the Outer Planes, because they work differently. But the inner planes fire MUST have come from the Elemental Plane of Fire and no other possible cause should even be considered.

After all, the Great Wheel is only the best guess of fallible mortals, so it must be 100% irrevocably true in all circumstances.

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.

Ah, so, something took the "inner planes" which were perfectly divided into 16 different distinct chunks, and used that to make the material plane, feywild and shadowfell. Then those inner planes created the Outer planes with thoughts about the stuff that the something used to create them, because whil fire existed as a concept, it wasn't a concept in the material world that didn't exist yet, so it had to be taken and make that world so that the concept of fire could be brought to the outer planes.

I bet if you twist a bit more to the left you could get that crick out of your spine too.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Never played 4e. But, I don't really care for the ethereal plane and leave it out of my homebrew cosmologies.

Same. It causes some issue with the one spell and some monsters, but it is just so empty that I've never found any reason to keep it around.

 

[Voadam]

Thank you for reminding me about that. I was looking for cosmologies a while back and I did not think to check D&Dg.

d20 Rokugan had a full sourcebook, Fortunes and Winds, on their planar cosmology.

The 3e Scarred Lands had their own planar cosmology sourcebook as well, Edge of Infinity, the Scarred Planes, but as cool as I found the Scarred Lands their planes seemed just knock off Great Wheel to me and did not really capture my imagination enough to delve into them so I can't say whether they are actually decent or not.

I really like the cosmology of Exalted which can be found in the various editions of the game's core books as well as fleshed out in the 2e Compass of Celestial directions books. Political bureaucracy heaven, demonic abyss, dead primordial and ghost souls escaping reincarnation underworld, invading Chaos fey all in a fantasy buddhism/taoism gone wrong type cosmology. Also the mortal world has elemental poles and a celestial realm at its heart.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Ah, so you're looking for adventures? Heck if I know. I don't use other people's adventures.

Elemental Compendium monster book: Elemental Compendium I: Creatures of the Inner Planes - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

"This supplement contains a wide variety of elementals that are ideal for both DM's and players. "

This is just statblocks and monsters. Not exactly breaking ground. Heck, they give stats for Cryonax and others, telling me that this is just someone who wanted 5e stats for things that WoTC didn't make yet. Sure, they mention that they made a salt mephit. A salt mephit doesn't mean anything at all about the plane of salt, it is just a monster. Heck, I've never sent players to the plane of fire, but I sure have used fire elementals. One does not need the other.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/285583/Elemental-Compendium-I-Creatures-of-the-Inner-Planes

Greater Genasi, includes salt genasi: Greater Genasi - Dungeon Masters Guild | Dungeon Masters Guild

Cool, player races. Still not giving me any reason to visit the Plane of Salt. Not a single thing is going on in the Plane of Salt, even if you have Genasi of Salt running around the world on adventures.
https://www.dmsguild.com/product/351213/Greater-Genasi

You can find more stuff online and in the official D&D books. Salt monsters also factor into Dark Sun if you just need more nasties.

Adventures? Things actually happening in the PLane of Salt, let alone the intersection of the plane of salt and the plane of ice? Or just "salt monsters" which I don't need an elemental plane of salt or an elemental plane of salt and ice to create, use or explain?

Just the monsters? Then I stand by my previous statement and how your "just use the search function" was a rather useless counter-argument.

 

[Voadam]

Does it count as homebrewing it away if you never once mention it and it effectively never exists? Or do you have to explicitly say "hey this thing that was made decades ago that has never been true in my world and that I've never mentioned isn't true in my world"

Because, funny enough, when the Shadowfell was created in 4e... the negative energy plane wasn't put back into the cosmology. So the Shadowfell was created to work without the negative energy plane. Sure, the Forgotten Realms campaign book for 4e said it was part of the creation of it, but Nerath was the default world of 4e, and it never had a Negative Energy plane nor does Shar exist in that world to create the Shadowfell by taking energy from the Negative Energy Plane.

I mean, I guess you could claim that all settings are subservient to FR lore that came out later, and that all settings and lore from are also subservient to it, but that seems rather silly to claim that Nerath and Eberron must obey the lore of The Forgotten Realms, and not the other way around.

4e was its own World Axis/Dawn War cosmology separate from the Great Wheel.

Mystara had its own BECMI cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel.

Rokugan had its own cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel.

Eberron was its own cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel, until it was.

 

[Chaosmancer]

By that logic shouldn't they remove violence from the game as well?

I'm sure there must be plenty of potential players who have suffered regular assault or been a witness to assault or murder

No.

Violence can have a purpose. If I punch someone and break their nose, there can be a good reason for me doing so. Such as defending my life or the lives of others.

There is no valid reason to sexually assault someone. You cannot get a "good outcome" by sexual assault, you cannot claim to have saved lives via sexual assault. Comparing the two is completely inappropriate and shows a profound lack of understanding.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Both cloud-to-cloud and cloud-to-ground lightning requires clouds...which - unless your setting is very un-Earth-like in terms of its physics - are made up of water vapour (or ice crystals) suspended in the air.

Magically-generated lightning doesn't require clouds but otherwise works pretty much the same.

It needs something to conduct it. Can't happen in space.

True. The original question, however, was whether lightning could exist without causing thunder*, to which I still posit it cannot.

* - even a simple static spark, which is miniature lightning, still gives off a crackle sound.

"clouds" as in masses of gases and dust particles can exist in space.

Also, there is a massive electrical "current" in space, seemingly coming from a black hole. So, yes, it can happen in space. This is like saying that there cannot be fire in space, because fire needs oxygen to burn.

Heck, with two charged masses of metal, with electro-magnetic fields, in space, you could have discharge between them without any need for anything to conduct it. Magnetism doesn't require a conductor to my knowledge, because if it did, the earth's magnetic field wouldn't function the way it does.

 

[Chaosmancer]

But at least one person had said that it did not feel artificial to them. So by asserting that it did not feel artificial without qualifier, you were at best being rather rude to them.

For the record, nether the World Axis nor the Great Wheel feel artificial to me, but I can accept that either or both of them can feel that way to other people.

Right. But see, a conversation on ideas doesn't have to stop just because someone says "I like this idea". I like plenty of ideas, that doesn't mean they are good ideas, or without issues. Additionally, just stating "that is what YOU think" is a stupid rejoinder in a conversation. Obviously it is what I think, I wouldn't be discussing from a position that I didn't think was true or had merit.

And I didn't assert it without qualifier. I asserted it and compared it to other real-life mythologies. I said it does not feel artificial, it feels like these other things which arose organically. Now, if someone wants to discuss why it actually does feel artificial, that can continue the conversation.

However, going with "Well, that's just like.. your opinion man" doesn't make me any more likely to change my mind or alter my position, because I am fully aware it is my opinion. I don't state other people's opinions and try and support them with evidence and arguments. I am actually rather shocked at the sheer number of people who must be arguing for opinions they do not believe in, since they constantly insist on declaring my opinions are my opinions, as though that will come as a surprise to me.

 

[Chaosmancer]

4e was its own World Axis/Dawn War cosmology separate from the Great Wheel.

Mystara had its own BECMI cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel.

Rokugan had its own cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel.

Eberron was its own cosmology that was not part of the Great Wheel, until it was.

Exactly. So the undead do not require the Great Wheel's Negative Energy plane to exist. There are other ways to do it,

(Not sure if you have Maxperson blocked, and so missed the point of my discussion with him)

 

[Voadam]

The great wheel makes sense to me as natural for D&D for two big aspects.

1 Alignment is a fundamental cosmic force of D&D, so having this show up as a fundamental aspect of the outer planes can work for me.

2 Allowing for multiple pantheons from Deities & Demigods to coexist in the same world you have multiple planes to accommodate their individual conflicting cosmologies in the big overarching cosmology, so there are planes for both Olympus and Asgard and Tarterous and Hell. This accomodates things like a Xena type campaign with Hercules and Gilgamesh cross-overs, or a Marvel comics type sprawling cosmology where lots of different stuff from different sources and inspirations is incorporated over time where Thor and Hercules and Doctor Strange can team up to fight Nightmare or Set from Conan.