D&D 5E 4E Cosmology

[MechaTarrasque]

And I'm telling you that that's a false comparison, because that mythology IS the story being told.

Like...let me make this very specific.

You keep saying that in the world of D&D, this thing is JUST one story among many. You have said repeatedly that all of these stories-about-reality could be true or false. Such a situation can only arise when the different stories cannot be verifiably and repeatably distinguished from each other--in other words, the situation just like real life, where we can't really be sure which is true and which is false. In other words, you take the story as being just that--a story told that may or may not actually be true.

Then you start talking about how within ancient Greek or Norse or Vedic etc. mythology, these places are verifiable, existent places that are real and present. In other words, you take the story as-is, accepting that it is a real and correct depiction of reality within the story itself.

You can't have that both ways. You cannot simultaneously have that Valhalla is a verifiably real place that souls go to under testable, verifiable conditions, AND have it be the case that Valhalla is merely one unverifiable story among many that people tell to each other, which might be true, but nobody can ever truly know. In exactly the same way, you cannot simultaneously have it that the Great Wheel's locations are verifiably real places that souls go to under testable, verifiable conditions, AND have it be the case that the Great Wheel is merely one unverifiable story among many that people tell each other, which might be true, but nobody can ever truly know.

Either the Great Wheel is verifiable, and thus the characters live "in" the mythology as it were, or it is not verifiable, and the characters believe the mythology without testable, verifiable fact. There can be no either-or on this; either the verifiability is possible or it is not. If it is verifiable, then it is true, and because of its nature, hegemonic. If it is not verifiable, then it is no more true than any other, and it has to be impossible for folks to know that (for example) a concertedly Lawful Good soul 100% always goes to Celestia.

The Great Wheel is not simply a mythology. It is a cosmological hypothesis. It makes specific, clear, testable, verifiable claims about reality. Either those claims can be verified, and thus proven objectively true or objectively false, or they cannot be verified, and thus other competing, contradictory hypotheses can also be entertained. Likewise, the World Axis is not simply a mythology. It, too, is a cosmological hypothesis, and not only does it make specific, clear, testable, verifiable claims about reality, those claims contradict the claims of the Great Wheel.

The Great Wheel is only verifiable in the real world, because we have DMG's and other publications. Inside the D&D worlds, we just have someone teleporting someplace and someone else told them, "Welcome to X". In other words, a story. Exactly the level of "proof" you said doesn't count. MY standard of verification says you need to provide a citation of someone proved the existence of the Great Wheel inside a D&D story OTHER than learning it from someone else or reading it on a scroll or a religious text (which is basically learning it from someone else). If it is so verifiable, then surely somewhere someone said "I have walked around the whole thing, and it really is a wheel. Who'd of thunk it?"

 

[dave2008]

The Great Wheel is only verifiable in the real world, because we have DMG's and other publications. Inside the D&D worlds, we just have someone teleporting someplace and someone else told them, "Welcome to X". In other words, a story. Exactly the level of "proof" you said doesn't count. MY standard of verification says you need to provide a citation of someone proved the existence of the Great Wheel inside a D&D story OTHER than learning it from someone else or reading it on a scroll or a religious text (which is basically learning it from someone else). If it is so verifiable, then surely somewhere someone said "I have walked around the whole thing, and it really is a wheel. Who'd of thunk it?"

Well, the 2024 DMG specifically says it is not verifiable in that way, so...

 

[cbwjm]

Not sure I've already mentioned it, but consider the things in the real world that are verifiable that people (to be fair, small groups of people) don't believe. We all know the world is round, it's been verified, but still plenty of people think it's flat and that's with access to so much information that shows it. Imagine living in some small village in the Forgotten Realms and someone says they walked into the realm of the gods, I'm not sure I'd believe them. I might believe that mighty heroes of the past visited the realm of the gods, but Joe the Fighter, not so much.

 

[Chaltab]

Makes me wonder if you took a Camera to Celestia and started taking photos, then brought it back to the Material plane and had them developed, what would they show? Can heaven and hell be photographed?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I apologize I couldn't read all this wall of text. I am just going to agree to disagree. I can't really discuss these concepts with someone talking about absolutes in RL let alone a fantasy game.

If you want the Great Wheel to be just one story amongst many, none of which has more claim to the truth than any other, you have to explicitly contradict several setting elements, such as what happens to souls when they die, or what happens to pieces of planes when the people living on those pieces act contradictory to the alignment of the plane that piece is part of.

There are reports, IIRC from 2e, where petitioners in the Outlands literally keep a tally of their good, evil, lawful, and chaotic actions, in order to prevent going overboard and thus causing their homes to get ripped away into wherever else.

You can't have it both ways, where it's a real physical description of reality, and thus Valhalla/Hades/etc. are physically real places that can be verified, and merely a story people tell with no ability to prove that it's true nor false, and thus all these things are just one person's interpretation, which could conflict with a dozen other interpretations and that's fine and dandy.

"The Great Wheel is true, and thus these places exist and work like XYZ", or "The Great Wheel is just one idea among many, nobody can know if any is 'true' or 'false', we don't truly know how things work". Pick one.

 

[dave2008]

"The Great Wheel is true, and thus these places exist and work like XYZ", or "The Great Wheel is just one idea among many, nobody can know if any is 'true' or 'false', we don't truly know how things work". Pick one.

Like I said, I don't really see the need to deal in absolutes. I don't have to pick one; however, I feel like it is pretty clear 5e is picking option 2.

For my own campaign I have an idea, but it is not absolute. Even I, as the DM and creator, don't know the true nature of the cosmology. I am just using a model to understand how things might work together. It is no different for the peoples that inhabit the campaign setting. I have not decided yet whether or not the gods know the complete and true nature of the cosmology. It is really in a quantum state I guess?

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Not sure I've already mentioned it, but consider the things in the real world that are verifiable that people (to be fair, small groups of people) don't believe. We all know the world is round, it's been verified, but still plenty of people think it's flat and that's with access to so much information that shows it. Imagine living in some small village in the Forgotten Realms and someone says they walked into the realm of the gods, I'm not sure I'd believe them. I might believe that mighty heroes of the past visited the realm of the gods, but Joe the Fighter, not so much.

The Great Wheel is only verifiable in the real world, because we have DMG's and other publications. Inside the D&D worlds, we just have someone teleporting someplace and someone else told them, "Welcome to X". In other words, a story. Exactly the level of "proof" you said doesn't count. MY standard of verification says you need to provide a citation of someone proved the existence of the Great Wheel inside a D&D story OTHER than learning it from someone else or reading it on a scroll or a religious text (which is basically learning it from someone else). If it is so verifiable, then surely somewhere someone said "I have walked around the whole thing, and it really is a wheel. Who'd of thunk it?"

Why not? Resurrection magic is known to exist. People who have been resurrected are known to remember what they experienced while they were dead. In the Great Wheel, the instant you die, your soul-form appears in the plane associated with your alignment.

This isn't like some crazy-weird thing only the rarest of rare people could have experienced. Anyone who dies and then gets resurrected could report on what they'd seen. Heck, you could have paid volunteers; I imagine a particularly empirically-minded Cleric (perhaps one with the Knowledge domain?) could work with such a thing, assuming they had the funds and spells to test it. After all, it's just 500 GP of diamond per revival and a 5th level spell. A retired adventurer with sufficient Cleric levels could easily take some large sum of money (perhaps funded by wizardly cosmologists, their church, and/or other interested parties) and investigate. Each volunteer would be paid some large sum of money to be killed and allowed to stay dead for nine days, two per day so as to not overtax the Cleric's spellcasting. Perhaps trying to focus on volunteers that are of verifiable alignment, so you can be reasonably confident about which plane they end up in.

Just because an ordinary Joe Shmoe can't check on it, doesn't mean it isn't verifiable fact. An ordinary Joe Shmoe couldn't have verified that the speed of light is constant in all reference frames, but that doesn't somehow make it so that all possible theories are of equally-undecidable truth value.

Further, trans-planar divination magic is known to exist. You can just...look at the other planes, with the right spell. So it's not even like you NEED to trust the word of someone who claims to have been there.

And, as noted, things like "parts of planes cleave off and go to other planes" isn't just whistling dixie. It's literally happened. One of the layers of Arcadia full-on sloughed off and glued itself to Mechanus because its residents were too Lawful and not sufficiently Good.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Makes me wonder if you took a Camera to Celestia and started taking photos, then brought it back to the Material plane and had them developed, what would they show? Can heaven and hell be photographed?

...why wouldn't you be able to?

Like I said, I don't really see the need to deal in absolutes. I don't have to pick one; however, I feel like it is pretty clear 5e is picking option 2.

For my own campaign I have an idea, but it is not absolute. Even I, as the DM and creator, don't know the true nature of the cosmology. I am just using a model to understand how things might work together. It is no different for the peoples that inhabit the campaign setting. I have not decided yet whether or not the gods know the complete and true nature of the cosmology. It is really in a quantum state I guess?

I have never--ever--understood ANY presentation of the Great Wheel to be such. It is, of its very nature, expressed hegemonically. It just is true, and known historical events (like the thing I mentioned above, where Arcadia lost one of its layers to Mechanus for being too Lawful and insufficiently Good) are just...known facts.

That layer, by the way, was called Nemausus. It was the most beautiful of Arcadia's originally-three layers, but it's been part of Mechanus for so long (despite the Harmonium attempting to reclaim it for Arcadia) that it's difficult to tell it was ever anywhere else.

If that isn't an explicit demonstration of the Great Wheel being pure fact, I don't know what is.

Do you have a quotation handy from the 5.5e DMG on the cosmology, by the way? You probably won't be surprised to know that I don't own one and have negative interest in buying one, but it really, truly would be nice to see ANY Great Wheel-based book that actually deigns to allow even the slimmest chance of other cosmologies actually being valid.

 

[Chaltab]

...why wouldn't you be able to?

Because it's a metaphysical plane of existence. Is the light there really bouncing photons or is it a conception of divine radiance? Not saying you couldn't, just a thought I had.

Do you have a quotation handy from the 5.5e DMG on the cosmology, by the way? You probably won't be surprised to know that I don't own one and have negative interest in buying one, but it really, truly would be nice to see ANY Great Wheel-based book that actually deigns to allow even the slimmest chance of other cosmologies actually being valid.

From DMG p. 173

Since the primary way of traveling from plane to plane is through magical portals, the spatial relationship between different planes is largely theoretical. No being in the multiverse can look down and see the planes arranged like a diagram in a book. No mortal can verify whether Mount Celestia is sandwiched between Bytopia and Arcadia; rather, this theoretical positioning is based on the philosophical shading among the three planes and the relative importance they give to law and good.

For your campaign, you can use a different model of the planes. Here are several examples:

• Planes situated among the roots and branches of a great cosmic tree (literally or figuratively)
• Material Realms suspended between two other realities: the Astral Realms (the Astral Plane and the Outer Planes) above and the Elemental Realms (the Inner Planes) below
• A cosmology with fewer planes: a Material Plane; the Transitive Planes; a single undifferentiated Elemental Plane, where all four elements churn in chaos; an Overheaven, where good deities and Celestials dwell; and an Underworld, where evil deities and Fiends reside
• Planes arranged in a complex system of orbits, with planes exerting greater influence on the Material Plane the closer they draw to it

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Because it's a metaphysical plane of existence. Is the light there really bouncing photons or is it a conception of divine radiance? Not saying you couldn't, just a thought I had.

I guess I just don't understand why the light would strike your eyes in a way that lets you see, but wouldn't strike a camera in a way that lets the camera "see."

From DMG p. 173

The first part was already quoted and all it says is that the planes are in metaphysical relation, not literal spatial relation. That says nothing whatever about whether the metaphysical relationship is correct, incorrect, or a matter of faith either way.

The second is, frankly, worse--because it pretty clearly indicates, at least to my read, that this IS the cosmology, unless and until you the DM decide that it's something else. In other words, by even having it as written this way, it's claiming that the model is in fact correct.

Of course, had I my druthers, the Great Wheel would be just one cosmology that got just enough page space to give you a loose idea of each of the planes. And then you'd have three to five additional cosmologies that each got comparable detail.

Instead, from what I can tell, the DMG spends at most maybe two pages sprinkled throughout the text, mentioning that you can do things differently if you really really really want to, and then 50+ pages going over crazy excessive detail about the specifics of the (5e-remodeled) Great Wheel.

It's not hard to see which of these things is meant to be understood as the correct way to do things, and which is "well, if you want to, I guess." Particularly in the context of much of the rest of at least the original 5.0 DMG, which is so aggressively wishy-washy "you can do whatever you want! You can do X, or NOT do X, YOU decide!"

I had really been hoping for a very specific, point-blank, "The Great Wheel is just a theory. A GAME THEORY" Ahem. More seriously, something like: "The Great Wheel is one competing theory of existence, with benefits and flaws like any other. Whether that theory is, in fact, actually correct about the planes is not a settled question. Perhaps your campaign has some of these planes but not all of them--and the theorized existence of the other alleged planes is just scholars far too pleased with their perfectly-symmetrical cosmos. Perhaps there are additional planes that definitely exist, but which the Great Wheel has no place for; in 2014, we revised the Great Wheel to add planes that had been developed for the World Axis cosmology, for example. Perhaps there is only one 'upper' plane and one 'lower' plane, with all others being merely territories in those planes, where Law and Chaos serve as the two 'gates' between them. All of these are valid choices, though you may need to think carefully about the consequences of a given choice, as (for example) the Monster Manual is written expecting the cosmology of the Great Wheel."