D&D (2024) Check Out The New Map Of D&D's Planes!

Snapped from the Barbarian video.

 

[Minigiant]

My ideal cosmology wouldn't have any overarching structure (other than having the Feywild and Shadowfell as parallel worlds to the Material plane), but that doesn't preclude local structures. For example, you could have something like the Nine Worlds of Yggdrasil as a set of interconnected planes, without them having anything to do with The Celestial Engine over there or the Eternal Library over here.

I can also see the point in having something like the Elemental Chaos or individual elemental planes as its own thing, separate from the more conceptual planes. But at the same time, the Nine Worlds needs to have room for Muspelheim, so "a world of fire" should totally be something a plane could be. Just like there could be a world without shrimp.

I think a structure is great but it has to be useful. Problem is 75% of the Great Wheel isn't useful for most fans.

It's like the DM wasting time on worldbuilding that wont affect play.
Instead of a Great Wheel with 18 spokes, there could have just been 4. One for each Pure alignment (G, E, L, C) or one for each quadrant (LG, CG, LE,CE).
Because why do we use them for? To go fight big bads when you get plane hopping magic.

4 Echo Planes for low-mid levels.
4 Elemental Planes for mid-high levels
4 Outer Planes for high-epic levels.

Extra books give monsters and adventures for high level Feywild and Shadowfell play or low level City of Brass play etc.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

I think a structure is great but it has to be useful. Problem is 75% of the Great Wheel isn't useful for most fans.

It's like the DM wasting time on worldbuilding that wont affect play.
Instead of a Great Wheel with 18 spokes, there could have just been 4. One for each Pure alignment (G, E, L, C) or one for each quadrant (LG, CG, LE,CE).
Because why do we use them for? To go fight big bads when you get plane hopping magic.

4 Echo Planes for low-mid levels.
4 Elemental Planes for mid-high levels
4 Outer Planes for high-epic levels.

Extra books give monsters and adventures for high level Feywild and Shadowfell play or low level City of Brass play etc.

I'd love to get a breakdown on how the OG great wheel was designed. Like I get the basic alignment planes, Good Elysium, Evil Hades, Lawful Mechanus, Chaos Limbo and even doing planes for all alignments CG Arborea, LG Mount Celestia, LE Hell, CE Abyss, and even TN Oulands, but who did they choose the weird alignment imbalanced planes Chaotic Good Neutral Plane Ysgard, the NGC Beastlands, LGN Arcadia, NGL Bypotia, NEC Carcari, CEN Pandomonium, ENL Gehanna and LNE Archeron, its not even grid filling, that's already filled, what purpoae did that serve? Love those planes, just want the story behind out and why they were designed?

You got your cardinal alignment planes, your mixed type alignments planes, all to give an afterlifes each alignment its own after, but there is no 3 point aligments.

 

[Kaiyanwang]

I think a structure is great but it has to be useful. Problem is 75% of the Great Wheel isn't useful for most fans.

It's like the DM wasting time on worldbuilding that wont affect play.
Instead of a Great Wheel with 18 spokes, there could have just been 4. One for each Pure alignment (G, E, L, C) or one for each quadrant (LG, CG, LE,CE).
Because why do we use them for? To go fight big bads when you get plane hopping magic.

I think that both on the map of their continents, and concerning the planes, the players should be always aware that there is a larger world and multiverse out there. It helps immersion because it avoids a sense of constriction and railroading, it adds options, stimulates imagination, allows the GM to add things later, helps re-playability of the setting.
If you are not using everything immediately it doesn't mean you will not use it later, and being too utilitatian in my opinion ends up curtailing parts that help the setting to breathe.
Finally, not all planes are striking for everyone (disregarding that there are people that not even try, but not much can be done about that), but producing an ensemble of them will surely hit the right mark for most.
Think about the gnome as a race, some despise them, other require them.

 

[Azzy]

I think a structure is great but it has to be useful. Problem is 75% of the Great Wheel isn't useful for most fans.

That's my experience—no group that I've been in has ever done planar travel outside of modules (Curse of Strahd and Return to the Tomb of Horrors). Of course others' mileage may vary (and I do not begrudge them that), to each their own.

 

[Epic Meepo]

It's like the DM wasting time on worldbuilding that wont affect play.

I must really be wasting time. I'm world building stuff and I'm not even running a game.

 

[SkidAce]

... Just like there could be a world without shrimp....

Wut?

 

[Minigiant]

I think that both on the map of their continents, and concerning the planes, the players should be always aware that there is a larger world and multiverse out there. It helps immersion because it avoids a sense of constriction and railroading, it adds options, stimulates imagination, allows the GM to add things later, helps re-playability of the setting.
If you are not using everything immediately it doesn't mean you will not use it later, and being too utilitatian in my opinion ends up curtailing parts that help the setting to breathe.
Finally, not all planes are striking for everyone (disregarding that there are people that not even try, but not much can be done about that), but producing an ensemble of them will surely hit the right mark for most.
Think about the gnome as a race, some despise them, other require them.

I'm not saying the Great Wheel can't be useful.

But the amount of attention, mechanics, and highlighting it get compared to how much it is used lopsided.

Do people actually go to Archeron to fight militaries or practice mass combat rule?

Or is it just somewhere you stick war gods and to mention endless beefing?

 

[Minigiant]

I must really be wasting time. I'm world building stuff and I'm not even running a game.

You're not a DM though.

A world builder without a game or novel never wasting time.. They are filling dead time.

 

[J.Quondam]

Just like there could be a world without shrimp.

Wut?

You know, shrimp. They're like chuuls, but tiny and pink.

 

[Staffan]

Wut?