D&D General Which was your favourite Forgotten Realms Cosmology?

[Epic Meepo]

Pretending that astral dominions are in any way comparable to the 17 outer planes and 18 inner planes and 3 interstitial planes and 3 or 4 additional planes is just fundamentally disingenuous.

There are five planes (plus one un-place) in the World Axis. There are, particularly with 5e's kludgy insertion of 4e ideas like the Feywild, more than 40 in the Great Wheel. The Great Wheel puts ALL of those 40 planes on equal footing. The World Axis absolutely does not put Mount Celestia on the same footing as the entire World. Mount Celestia is at best one (small) region.

This would be like saying that a Forgotten Realms where Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Amn, Rashemen, and Calimshan are all infinitely-large Ravnica-style city-planes is in no sense more complex than the singular FR world. Of course it would be! Each of those places is an entire plane unto itself!

From an in-world perspective, finite astral dominions and infinite planes are very different, but I haven't seen you making any prior arguments about in-world perspectives. Apologies if I missed it. From what I can tell, you've been arguing that the World Axis is superior to the Great Wheel as a game object: it's a better setting for adventures and it's easier for players to remember.

I contend that neither of those claims about the World Axis are true. Running an adventure where players teleport a thousand miles across a finite astral dominion is no more or less difficult than running an adventure where players plane shift from one plane to another. The quality of adventure sites at the destination is the same, whether you have five planes or five million planes.

And it's somewhat disingenuous to argue that it's easier for players to remember all the details of the World Axis cosmology than it is to remember all the details of the Great Wheel cosmology. Replacing forty named planes with forty named astral dominions doesn't reduce the number of location names players have to remember. The name of an infinite plane is still just one name.

And if you're going to argue that players don't have to remember all the astral dominions to understand the World Axis cosmology, I'll counter that players don't have to remember all the inner and outer planes to understand the Great Wheel cosmology. Those planes are just self-contained locations divided into three buckets: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, and the Outer Planes.

The OG Great Wheel divides the multiverse into five parts: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, the Outer planes, and two transitive planes. The World Axis divides the multiverse into five parts: the Material Plane, the Elemental Chaos, the Astral Sea, and two material echoes. Both cosmologies sort all locations in the multiverse into five distinct, easy-to-remember regions.

Likewise, a version of the Realms where Neverwinter, Waterdeep, Amn, Rashemen, and Calimshan are infinite city-planes is just as easy to explain as one where they aren't. Players still have to remember the same number of location names. DMs still have access to all the same adventure sites. All that's changed is the mode of transportation you need to get to certain places.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

And if you're going to argue that players don't have to remember all the astral dominions to understand the World Axis cosmology, I'll counter that players don't have to remember all the inner and outer planes to understand the Great Wheel cosmology. Those planes are just self-contained locations divided into three buckets: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, and the Outer Planes.

And I'll argue that they absolutely, 100% do need to know and remember those things for it to be the Great Wheel. That's the whole point. The ridiculous, needless complexity is intentional and required.

Celestia is a thing you NEED to memorize in the Great Wheel. It is absolutely not something you need to memorize in the World Axis. Your "buckets" analogy fails completely because "inner plane" doesn't mean anything unless you, y'know, explain what that means, and that means explaining what the inner planes are, which means going over them.

I explained the entirety of the World Axis just above, without ever naming a single astral dominion or internal division of the Elemental Chaos or whatever else. You don't need to know any of the contents of any of the buckets to have a perfectly functional understanding of the World Axis. You have to have a great deal of explanation to know what the hell an "outer" plane is and why it's "outer" and why there are only and exactly 17 of them.

 

[Aldarc]

And it's somewhat disingenuous to argue that it's easier for players to remember all the details of the World Axis cosmology than it is to remember all the details of the Great Wheel cosmology. Replacing forty named planes with forty named astral dominions doesn't reduce the number of location names players have to remember. The name of an infinite plane is still just one name.

And if you're going to argue that players don't have to remember all the astral dominions to understand the World Axis cosmology, I'll counter that players don't have to remember all the inner and outer planes to understand the Great Wheel cosmology. Those planes are just self-contained locations divided into three buckets: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, and the Outer Planes.

I think that the difference is mostly "as needed." You can take realms out of the Astral Sea without making a difference. You can put realms into the Astral Sea without making a difference. Taking planes out or putting planes into the Great Wheel is decidedly more difficult.

The OG Great Wheel divides the multiverse into five parts: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, the Outer planes, and two transitive planes. The World Axis divides the multiverse into five parts: the Material Plane, the Elemental Chaos, the Astral Sea, and two material echoes. Both cosmologies sort all locations in the multiverse into five distinct, easy-to-remember regions.

It's pretty easy to use shallow reducionism to paint the Great Wheel to be just as simple as the World Axis. But why not go a step further? Why not just say that the Great Wheel is easier than the World Axis because it's a single wheel whereas the World Axis isn't?

 

[Mephista]

From an in-world perspective, finite astral dominions and infinite planes are very different,

And from an OOC perspective. As someone who's played both, they are vastly different from an in character and out of character perspective both.

The main astral domains are just... the gods' (plus) homes. You've got three gods chilling on three peaks of Mount Celestia. That's why you go to Mount Celestial - to see Moradin, Bahamut or Pelor. Its clear, consise. You climb and get to them. One mountain per god.

In the Great Wheel? Mount Celestia has an infinite size with seven layers, with practically every LG diety having a miniature (yet still infinite in size) domain nestled within these layers (or even crossing them!). You can have three gods on one layer of Mount Celestia, one between two layers, and a layer with none. Depending on which gods exist in your setting. Oh, and Moradin is actually on the plane over one, the one between LG Celestia and LN Mechanus - a bit weird for a LG god. Oh, and each plane has its own environmental trickery and mind-warping effects.

The former is just a set of three mountains. The latter is an infinite sized world with nestled domains of infinite sizes contained within. In the world axis, you can just fly your spelljammer up to the mountain and disembark where you need to go. In the Great Wheel, there's a bunch of portal hopping and dealing with metaphysical quirks, like needing to do good deeds to progress in your travel or you never get anywhere - airship travel flat out doesn't work.

The complexity of the latter cannot be compared to the former.

but I haven't seen you making any prior arguments about in-world perspectives.

I really don't get where you think anyone's talking about in character instead of out of character. As far as I can tell, its been entirely OOC.

Apologies if I missed it. From what I can tell, you've been arguing that the World Axis is superior to the Great Wheel as a game object: it's a better setting for adventures and it's easier for players to remember.

I contend that neither of those claims about the World Axis are true.

Sure, we all have our own opinions on what's good for our own personal tables. However, that doesn't change that the Great Wheel is absolutely far more complex by design and weight of time.

Running an adventure where players teleport a thousand miles across a finite astral dominion is no more or less difficult than running an adventure where players plane shift from one plane to another. The quality of adventure sites at the destination is the same, whether you have five planes or five million planes.

If your argument hinges on level 13+ characters casting 7th level magics? That's a bad argument. Most casters only get one of those slots a day, if ever. Two if you're a level 20 spellcaster. You can't just casually traverse the planes this way.

Meanwhile, the astral dominions are designed for ease of travel WITHOUT teleportation magics of any kind for characters of any level, whereas the Outer Planes deal with planar gateways that need keys, and the mental/environmental effects that need advanced protection from spells or magic items. Lets not forget that visiting ANY outer plane without mental protection literally can transform your personality.

And it's somewhat disingenuous to argue that it's easier for players to remember all the details of the World Axis cosmology than it is to remember all the details of the Great Wheel cosmology. Replacing forty named planes with forty named astral dominions doesn't reduce the number of location names players have to remember. The name of an infinite plane is still just one name.

See, this is where your argument comes off as disingenuous. There aren't forty astral dominions. Not even forty planes in all the World Axis put together - more like 15 or so. Meanwhile, there's are forty planes in the Great Wheel setting - 17 outer, 18 inner, 4 transitive, 1 material. Over double.

And if you're going to argue that players don't have to remember all the astral dominions to understand the World Axis cosmology, I'll counter that players don't have to remember all the inner and outer planes to understand the Great Wheel cosmology. Those planes are just self-contained locations divided into three buckets: the Material Plane, the Inner Planes, and the Outer Planes.

So... is your argument that the two cosmologies are equal complexity because you don't need to bother remembering any of the details of either? Because that is what it sounds like you are saying.

 

[TiQuinn]

Because DnD loves its overlap and repeats. The Nine Hells, Limbo, the Inner Plane are effectively three takes on the elemental planes idea.
The Feywild is just a combo of the NG and CG planes mixed together.
Hades, the plane of Shadow, Ravenloft were all different takes of the same concept until Shadowfell merged them, but then 5e brought Hades back.

Orcs and hobgoblins are just le vs ce versions of each other. same with bugbears and ogres.

So much overlap.

There’s not really any incentive in paring it down, I think.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I prefer the World Axis mostly because I prefer the idea of Fundamental Planes you can add other planes to better than the rigid structure of the Great Wheel, which is harder to modify and has more planes that seem either uninteresting or redundant.

Quick personal impressions of the Outer Planes of the Great Wheel:

• The Abyss - Possibly my favorite plane, although its vast number of varied layers is probably the biggest reason I find most of the other Lower Planes unnecessary (as many of them could just be layers of the Abyss).
• Acheron - The main distinguishing point here is that the warring petitioners seem to be the primary inhabitants rather than any fiends, which at least helps it have a bit more identity.
• Arcadia - I've tried to read up on this place several times, but I can't tell you the first thing about it.
• Elysium - Is this the place Pelor lives? Another one I have no idea about.
• Gehenna/Hades - I'm having a hard time remembering which is which, so I'm including them both here. I recall feeling that the Shadowfell had largely replaced these. However, even the World Axis had its own pair of gloomy planes (Tytherion and Pluton), so maybe there's a need here I'm not understanding.
• Ysgard - Feels kind of like a chaotic and good counterpart to Acheron. I'm fine with it, but don't love it.
• The Beastlands - This one's okay, but I kind of think the whole "becoming an animal" shtick could just be handled by having some form of reincarnation in the Material Plane.
• Limbo - I largely prefer the Elemental Chaos, but for me personally having the slaads be elementals doesn't sit well, so I usually portray Limbo as being a portion of purer chaos siphoned from the Elemental Chaos by Primus that became its own plane.
• Mechanus - I'm honestly surprised this plane hasn't been used as an adventuring location more often. Instead of layers it has massive gears with a good variety of different inhabitants (modrons on one set, formians on others, miscellaneous lawful creatures building settlements on still others). It was perhaps the only plane not featured in the World Axis that I thought should have been.
• Arvandor - There's a good bit of overlap with the Feywild now, but I recall the 4E take being different enough by focusing on its nature as the elven afterlife.
• Pandemonium - The World Axis carried this one forward, but for what reason I have no idea.
• Celestia - The idea of climbing up through the layers is cool, but ultimately I think I prefer the World Axis take where there are distinct leaks that are more easily accessible for shorter trips.
• Carceri - I'm kind of torn on this one. The name is cool and the World Axis take had its origins as being a prison for ancient divinely-created war monsters that were no longer needed, but I'm still not convinced it couldn't just be folded in with the Hells or the Abyss.
• Bytopia - The concept is neat, but I'm not certain what you do with it.
• The Outlands - It's not personally my cup of tea, but I've grown to appreciate the concept more once I learned it was basically supposed to serve as the equivalent of a wilderness for adventuring outside of Sigil other than the planes.

My feeling is that many of the planes of the Great Wheel are primarily intended as afterlives for beings of certain alignments and adventure locations second.

 

[cbwjm]

You don't really need to explain the great wheel when describing the planes, you just need to say that:

• Outer planes are home of the gods, celestial, and fiends.
• Inner planes are the home of the elements

Easy, you're done. Most of the time the differences between the world axis and the great wheel are immaterial, you still get where you need to go for whatever adventure you're on even if the way to get there is different.

 

[Epic Meepo]

And I'll argue that they absolutely, 100% do need to know and remember those things for it to be the Great Wheel. That's the whole point. The ridiculous, needless complexity is intentional and required.

Well, there’s no way to debate subjective terms such as “needless,” so I accept that you find needless complexity in the Great Wheel cosmology. In contrast, I see the Great Wheel as something that’s only as complex as I choose to make it in my home campaign, just like the Forogotten Realms setting is only as complex as I choose to make it.

I can run a Planescape campaign where PCs use planar pathways to travel on foot between a few planar locations without ever enumerating all of the inner and outer planes, the same way I can run a Forgotten Realms campaign where PCs use roads to travel on foot between a few cities on the Sword Coast without ever enumerating all the nations of Faerun.

Celestia is a thing you NEED to memorize in the Great Wheel. It is absolutely not something you need to memorize in the World Axis. Your "buckets" analogy fails completely because "inner plane" doesn't mean anything unless you, y'know, explain what that means, and that means explaining what the inner planes are, which means going over them.

I explained the entirety of the World Axis just above, without ever naming a single astral dominion or internal division of the Elemental Chaos or whatever else. You don't need to know any of the contents of any of the buckets to have a perfectly functional understanding of the World Axis. You have to have a great deal of explanation to know what the hell an "outer" plane is and why it's "outer" and why there are only and exactly 17 of them.

On these points, the AD&D Manual of the Planes disagrees with you. It provides a concise overview of the cosmology later known as the Great Wheel with only half a page of explanation.

According to that source, “there are five basic groupings of the planes: the Prime Material Planes, the Ethereal planes, the inner planes, the Astral Plane, and the outer planes.”

A single paragraph describing each of the five regions follows. Inner planes are defined as “regions of primary forces, the primary building blocks of the multiverses.” (Apparently, there’s more than one multiverse!) Six inner planes are listed as examples, but that list isn’t part of the definition itself.

A later paragraph defines what outer planes are by listing their many shared properties. Not a single outer plane is mentioned by name in that paragraph (or anywhere in the overview), not even as an example. The Seven Heavens (a.k.a. Celestia) aren’t mentioned anywhere therein.

The next page in the same book has an illustration entitled “Traditional Depiction of the Planes” which portrays the entire D&D multiverse. There are exactly five named locations in that illustatrion: The Prime Material Plane, the Ethereal Plane, the Inner Planes, the Astral Planes, and the Outer Planes.

Later chapters start listing and illustrating specific inner and outer planes, but the overview of the cosmological model itself doesn’t delve into any of those details. The AD&D MoP version of the Great Wheel can be (and literally is) explained without referencing any of those details.

 

[Epic Meepo]

I think that the difference is mostly "as needed." You can take realms out of the Astral Sea without making a difference. You can put realms into the Astral Sea without making a difference. Taking planes out or putting planes into the Great Wheel is decidedly more difficult.

I certainly agree the World Axis is easier to modify than the Great Wheel. If this thread was about cosmology in general, I might argue that the World Axis is easier to use in a game than the Great Wheel. In the context of Forgotten Realms cosmology, specifically, though, the dominions and planes appearing in each cosmology are fixed. The modularity of the World Axis concept is a moot point.

It's pretty easy to use shallow reducionism to paint the Great Wheel to be just as simple as the World Axis. But why not go a step further? Why not just say that the Great Wheel is easier than the World Axis because it's a single wheel whereas the World Axis isn't?

I’m not actually doing any reductionism, shallow or otherwise. I’m paraphrtasing the description of the cosmology now called the Great Wheel as presented in the introdcution to the AD&D Manual of the Planes. Later chapters in that book flesh out specific planes included within that cosmology, but the overview of the cosmology itself divides the multiverse into exactly five regions: Prime Material Planes, Ethereal Planes, inner planes, the Astral Plane, and outer planes. The accompanying diagram of the multiverse doesn’t name a single inner or outer plane.

 

[Epic Meepo]

And from an OOC perspective. As someone who's played both, they are vastly different from an in character and out of character perspective both.

The main astral domains are just... the gods' (plus) homes. You've got three gods chilling on three peaks of Mount Celestia. That's why you go to Mount Celestial - to see Moradin, Bahamut or Pelor. Its clear, consise. You climb and get to them. One mountain per god.

In the Great Wheel? Mount Celestia has an infinite size with seven layers, with practically every LG diety having a miniature (yet still infinite in size) domain nestled within these layers (or even crossing them!). You can have three gods on one layer of Mount Celestia, one between two layers, and a layer with none. Depending on which gods exist in your setting. Oh, and Moradin is actually on the plane over one, the one between LG Celestia and LN Mechanus - a bit weird for a LG god. Oh, and each plane has its own environmental trickery and mind-warping effects.

The former is just a set of three mountains. The latter is an infinite sized world with nestled domains of infinite sizes contained within. In the world axis, you can just fly your spelljammer up to the mountain and disembark where you need to go. In the Great Wheel, there's a bunch of portal hopping and dealing with metaphysical quirks, like needing to do good deeds to progress in your travel or you never get anywhere - airship travel flat out doesn't work.
The complexity of the latter cannot be compared to the former.

I’ve also played in both cosmologies, so I know the process of flying to the homes of deities is equally easy in both the OG Great Wheel cosmology and the World Axis cosmology.

The realms of deities in the Great Wheel are finite in size, with physical borders you can walk across. (There are no nested infinities of the sort you mention.) Also, each divine realm has its own physical and magical traits, which need not match those of any surrounding plane. (So, the hostile planar environments you mention are only a problem in divine domains if resident deities want them to be.)

In the OG Great Wheel you can fly (or walk) through a conduit on the Material Plane directly to a deity’s realm without traversing any of the infinite parts of the Great Wheel and without needing a portal key. Conduits are usually located at prominent temples, so they’re pretty easy to find. Probably easier to find than a spelljammer ship.

If your argument hinges on level 13+ characters casting 7th level magics? That's a bad argument. Most casters only get one of those slots a day, if ever. Two if you're a level 20 spellcaster. You can't just casually traverse the planes this way.

Meanwhile, the astral dominions are designed for ease of travel WITHOUT teleportation magics of any kind for characters of any level, whereas the Outer Planes deal with planar gateways that need keys, and the mental/environmental effects that need advanced protection from spells or magic items. Lets not forget that visiting ANY outer plane without mental protection literally can transform your personality.

Fair point about the high-level spells. But see above for ways to visit deities on the Great Wheel at any level without teleportation magic or portal keys.

See, this is where your argument comes off as disingenuous. There aren't forty astral dominions. Not even forty planes in all the World Axis put together - more like 15 or so. Meanwhile, there's are forty planes in the Great Wheel setting - 17 outer, 18 inner, 4 transitive, 1 material. Over double.

Fair point. My mistake. I always forget how many astral domains and elemental realms exist since they’re just sort of floating there, not organized into any sort of recognizable pattern. And I was never really clear how much the 4e Realms and non-Realms cosmologies bled into one another. I should have done some research on those numbers.

So... is your argument that the two cosmologies are equal complexity because you don't need to bother remembering any of the details of either? Because that is what it sounds like you are saying.

What I’m trying to say is the World Axis is simple by default, but the Great Wheel is modular, with a simple underlying concept and tons of complex details you can choose to ignore if you don't want complexity. It’s fairly easy to keep the Great Wheel simple by just hand-waving the infinite spaces as rarely-visited fringe locations. There are plenty of finite, walkable locations to visit, like the homes or deities and the conduits that link them.