D&D 5E 4E Cosmology

Okay. Your insistence that it is true does not make it true either.
I can appeal to authority. I was an astrophysicist, I’ve seen the evidence.
That isn't what was said
It pretty much is. You think religious folks believe they will still have to obey the laws of physics when they get to heaven? Entropy kind of rules out the eternal life thing.
 

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Because it wasn't built that way. You have not merely put the cart before the horse, you have put the woodcutter before the...whatever the midwife-equivalent is for a veterinarian.

In our world, we stumbled upon existing symmetries, and from those things, learned more about what the world is--and, importantly, what it isn't. Indeed, symmetries are one of the most fundamental aspects of existence, as proved by the criminally forgotten mathematical physicist Emmy Noether. (And yes, this is a proof, an objectively true mathematical fact, not just a durably-observed pattern!) In layman's terms, Noether's Theorem proves that, for all systems that can be described by a certain extremely basic mathematical structure, if that system exhibits a symmetry, then it necessarily has a conservation law. As an example, the fact that physics worked the same five minutes ago as it does now requires that energy is conserved; the fact that physics works the same when rotating to the left vs to the right requires that angular momentum is conserved; etc.

The Great Wheel was not developed by uncovering symmetries. It projected them, enforced them, regardless of the consequences that might be entailed. That is a vastly different situation. There is no possibility of learning what the world isn't--or, indeed, even learning what it is!--from the symmetries of the Great Wheel. The Great Wheel's symmetries were declared to be true, and now we have to live with whatever contradictions or baggage that entails.

IRL symmetries are us, the denizens, discovering what is just observably true about our world. When we engage in fiction-writing to create a cosmology, we are not denizens of that cosmology observing it. We are the gods themselves--or, I guess, in Great Wheel terms, the over-over-gods, above even Ao--willing that cosmology into (fictional) being. It is not empirical in the least; it is creationist, as is all fiction from the author's and reader's perspective.
I really don't get what you're arguing for. How is anything you said not true of any fictional creation? Tolkien didn't study the pre-existing lifecycle of Elves, Herbert didn't conduct empirical research on the ecology of Dune, and Roddenberry didn't discover warp drive. They all just made creative choices to support stories they wanted to tell.

Again, you don't like the Great Wheel, then you don't like it, NBD. But arguing against it because its underpinnings were created by people rather than discovered as in the real world? I mean, what other option would there be? There isn't a "real" D&D cosmology to discover.
 

My opposition is not the fact that it is verifiable. I dislike the "unnecessary symmetry" of the Great Wheel when combined with the verifiability thereof. If it were unnecessarily symmetric, but equally a matter of faith as any other cosmology, I could comfortably ignore it with no problem. If it were not unnecessarily symmetric, but verifiable, then I could just roll with it. It is the two together that cause an issue.
A couple of observations:
  • In a standard D&D game, i.e. given availability of PHB spells and classes, verifiability is probably inevitable. If you have access to things like Plane Shift, Contact Other Plane, etc., you can eventually map out the universe/multiverse.
  • Given that any symmetry that exists in a fictional creation is put there by the creators, all symmetry is "unnecessary"; it's the result of choice.
If I can propose a summation of your position, then, you don't like the Great Wheel because of the amount of symmetry present in it, or at least that's one reason. Maybe you like your fantasy cosmologies messy. And that's fine, I'm just trying to understand where you're coming from.

I do want to say that the presence of symmetries in the Great Wheel model isn't an objective point against it, though. After all, as mentioned above, real-world cosmology appears to be underpinned by symmetries, and certainly the models that people have built and are still building to explain it are based on symmetries. In addition, there are symmetries present in plenty of historical and mythological cosmological models, so it seems to be a pretty natural thing to include when creating one. Whether or not that appeals to you is a matter of taste.
 

I do want to say that the presence of symmetries in the Great Wheel model isn't an objective point against it, though. After all, as mentioned above, real-world cosmology appears to be underpinned by symmetries, and certainly the models that people have built and are still building to explain it are based on symmetries. In addition, there are symmetries present in plenty of historical and mythological cosmological models, so it seems to be a pretty natural thing to include when creating one. Whether or not that appeals to you is a matter of taste.
I think the main thing is that many critics of the Great Wheel perceive it as full of useless symmetries that exist to give everything a direct opposite and every alignment plane an in-between step, even if that creates what is effectively dead space as far as 'is this usable for an adventure'. Now this sort of worldbuilding may be up some people's allies--after all there are plenty of places too hostile for people IRL--but in terms of a game space I can see why some DMs prefer the designers not to waste space in the text and diagrams explainign something they don't need.

As an aside... the World Axis is also symmetrical--the Material-Fey-Shadow symmetry as well as the Astral Sea/Elemental Chaos symmetry, but it was deliberately designed to that everything had potential conflicts and adventure hooks, even the Seven Heavens. So as I indicated earlier, to me the problem isn't symmetry but that quite a few of the outer planes aren't evocative enough that they need to exist as their own realm, at least in my opinion.
 

So they literally just stole the Elemental Chaos's skin and wore it? Not super surprising, just sad that they then pretended that this was somehow a 5e original idea.
Come on, they didn't do anything of the sort. No one "pretended" anything. 5e D&D kept several elements of the planar cosmology from 4e just like they kept some other lore and mechanics from 4e, mixed in with stuff from other editions as they clearly said they were doing from the beginning of the D&D Next playtest. It's not like they're scavenging Half-Price for old books they can pulp, and preventing publication of PDFs, so they can memory-hole the 4e origins of the Elemental Chaos, Feywild, or Shadowfell and gaslight us all into forgetting they existed before 2014.
 

Come on, they didn't do anything of the sort. No one "pretended" anything. 5e D&D kept several elements of the planar cosmology from 4e just like they kept some other lore and mechanics from 4e, mixed in with stuff from other editions as they clearly said they were doing from the beginning of the D&D Next playtest. It's not like they're scavenging Half-Price for old books they can pulp, and preventing publication of PDFs, so they can memory-hole the 4e origins of the Elemental Chaos, Feywild, or Shadowfell and gaslight us all into forgetting they existed before 2014.
Yeah I was wondering about that comment but I didn't want to pick a fight. Hell, the new Lore Glossary brought back the Prince of Frost and I don't think he had been mentioned since 4E.
 

I think the main thing is that many critics of the Great Wheel perceive it as full of useless symmetries that exist to give everything a direct opposite and every alignment plane an in-between step, even if that creates what is effectively dead space as far as 'is this usable for an adventure'. Now this sort of worldbuilding may be up some people's allies--after all there are plenty of places too hostile for people IRL--but in terms of a game space I can see why some DMs prefer the designers not to waste space in the text and diagrams explainign something they don't need.
This is a really good point, and I'd argue was valid... until the publication of Planescape. The whole point of that product line was to make every part of the Great Wheel multiverse adventurable, and I'd argue that the difficulty of doing so with some areas required stretching creative muscles that ended up producing really interesting ideas that wouldn't have been devised otherwise.

Again, you don't have to like it. But folks making outdated arguments against the Great Wheel multiverse should at least acknowledge that Planescape existed.
 


Out of interest, I know some people have already mentioned it, but what cosmology (if any) are people using in their home games?

Mine is fairly simple and mirrors 4e in a lot of ways:

At the top is Godsheim, the home of the gods and the various celestials.
Below them is the material plane which sits above/within the elemental plane though both are separate from each other, you don't look up and see the elemental plane of fire, for instance.
The Shadowfel and Feywild sit next to the material plane, they aren't true echoes of the material plane but you can use them to bypass obstacles if there are handy connections between material plane and one of the others.
Below the elemental planes sits the lower planes, home of the fiends, all grouped together with warring fiendish kingdoms.

Various connections allow access to the different planes, I use a great river that flows between them that people can use to access the others if they know how.
 

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