D&D 5E 4E Cosmology

[Chaltab]

I went with a modified (i.e. overcomplicated) World Axis. I brought the Ethereal Plane back as the Ethereal Void, mostly so the Radiant Citadel could have a home. I envision it as the Ginnungagap-esque space between the Astral Sea and Elemental Chaos, where the primordials crafted the world.

It’s also where I have the Flow set up for pseudo-spelljammer inter-world adventures. I keep the actual spelljammer ships in the Astral Sea as per 4e, and have the Flow navigated by more sci-fi, Barrier Peaks type ships. Each world is part of the same initial creation, shattered by the Dawn War and protected by crystal spheres, which are the manifestation of the primal spirits ban on divine/elemental interference.

I also have an Outland under Sigil, though my version is less Concordant Opposition and more Warcraft. It’s an accretion disk of broken dominions filled with old horrors from the Dawn War, essentially an astral no man’s land.

View attachment 393860

Amazing diagram. Love it.

 

[Starfox]

...when the PCs get to the outer planes, I'll have to create a horror-show version of them. Insane angels, feral celestial creatures, etc. In theory the PCs can bring along divine energy and rebuild parts of them.

This seems to be a cool setting to let PCs become god in. But then I am an optimist.

 

[pemerton]

A lot of people tend to overlook the significant impact that 4e made not just by redefining the structure of the planes themselves, but grounding everything that makes D&D into its own defined universe. Monsters of every imaginable kind could be traced to an origin that not only made sense, but helped to further define the monster as it is most often presented in the game. Relationships between various aspects of the world, both physical and ideological, were made far more interesting and elaborate than where they sat on the symmetric table like some cosmic pizza. And conflicts incited beyond the mortal realms had greater influence in the themes played out in the real world through trials and tribulations we call "adventures".

I just want to put on the record that I have not overlooked this! I've posted about it, on-and-off, for the last 15+ years. It's one of the strongest aspects of 4e as a FRPG, and as a version of D&D.

I guess we have different references, then. The point of a planar arrangement, to me, is to set up places where the cool extraplanar monsters come from, and to create weird canvasses for mid to high-level adventures.

I mean, the real core change in 4e was changing the planes from places that existed because of philosophy and symmetry, to places that existed to be a place to adventure.

I generally agree with your first quote (though a planer arrangement can also be cool/compelling in its own right), but not quite with your second. The traditional ("Great Wheel") outer plans exist because they reflect certain game idea - especially alignment and elementals - and connect those to some literary/mythological traditions. I agree with Lev Lafeyette's description of its original presentation (in Appendix IV of Gygax's PHB) as a "rather evocative assignment of Earthly polytheistic pantheons within the AD&D alignment system".

I think it was the effort of making the outer planes not just a set of evocative ideas but actually and systematically amenable to game play - via the MotP and the Planescape - that created the unplayable stuff that 4e then reacted against.

That is your understanding, that is not fundamental requirement of the cosmology. You are taking it to literally, so yes it does matter if it is literally a wheel or not.

I think, perhaps, I have a more figurative and less literally idea of what the outer planes (and the wheel) than some. From my perspective the Great Wheel and World Axis are both describing the same cosmology, they are just tales told by different people.

I am just trying to point out that a lot of the arguments against the Wheel don't hold water, or only hold water if you think the various planes are physically arranged in some type of wheel. If you take the description of the Great Wheel cosmology as being literally (even when they tell you it is not) then sure it doesn't make much sense from certain perspectives. So if you want me to defend it I can, but that is not something I feel compelled to do.

In the early presentations (PHB Appendix IV and DDG) there is no suggestion that the wheel is mere metaphor or design. And then in the MotP, and I believe also Planescape, the wheel is explained in terms of portals - eg Acheron has portals to Nirvana/Mechanus and to the Nine Hells; the Nine Hells has portals to Acheron and to Gehenna; etc. And it is these portals that establish the literalness of the "wheel" arrangement.

Even if one doesn't include those portals, there is still the classification of planes by alignment, which then supports an arrangement of them analogous to the alignment graph (compare pp 119 and 121 of Gygax's PHB). That is not a merely arbitrary arrangement, and it reveals the wheel-like structure of the planes.

What 4e does is break the relationship between the outer planes and alignment: it permits multiple planes for similarly aligned beings (eg Tiamat and Zehir don't get stuck in the Nine Hells) and permits differently-aligned beings to live in the same place without that creating alignment oddities (eg Erathis, Ioun and Pelor all living together on Hestavar).

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.

The Great Wheel and the World Axis are simply diagrams, a map of extradimensional concepts and their connections to each other. What claims are they making?

Like, let's say you're using the Great Wheel for your setting. You can also decide in your setting that instead of going to the planes when they die, all souls go to Hades/Grey Waste (identically to Eberron's Dolurrh) to be cosmically recycled (or whatever else happens when souls disappear). Removing petitioners and changing the cycle of souls doesn't mean you aren't using the Great Wheel still.

You have just changed the Great Wheel almost irrevocably, just with that one singular alteration. The whole absolute alignment enforcement thing is, very specifically, one of the greatest (and IMO worst) calling cards of the Great Wheel.

The part about souls is a much minor consideration, to me. It's important because knowing how it works can be used for adventure seeds, which is why I usually define it. "Great Wheel but the flow of souls works differently" is just Cherry Great Wheel compared to Original Flavor Great Wheel.

I agree with @TwoSix that the souls stuff is pretty peripheral. But the relationship of outer planes to alignments, in the Great Wheel, is not peripheral. If you drop that, you no longer have the Great Wheel. And while you do have it, you get the symmetry of the alignment graph projected onto the cosmology. And you also get the problem of what to do when an aligned plane becomes inhabited by, or conquered by, beings of a different alignment. The Planescape approach to that, which @EzekielRaiden has criticised, is probably only one possibility. But I don't think it's a case of "anything goes" - I mean, it would be weird for the Seven Heavens/Celestia to remain a plane of absolute LG if it had been conquered by and was now overwhelmingly inhabited by devils and demons.

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."."

Beliefs are what they are. But when anyone's perception is allegedly equally valid no matter how that perception differs, we live in a world without facts. That's not an acceptable world building principle in my book.

To me, both these suggestions seems a bit narrow. Who knows how vision works in the Outer Planes - or for that matter even on the material plane! Even if photography worked on the material plane, there's no reason to think it would work in other, more magical, places.

And as far as the relationship between belief and reality, it seems possible (perhaps challenging, but possible) to imagine a fantasy setting, or some aspect of a fantasy setting, where what a person encounters or perceives reflects, in part if not in whole, their fears, hopes and expectations. This could be done comedically, a la the Alice books, but perhaps seriously as well.

EDIT: Link to Lev Lafeyette quote: Review of AD&D First Edition Players Handbook - RPGnet d20 RPG Game Index

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I just want to put on the record that I have not overlooked this! I've posted about it, on-and-off, for the last 15+ years. It's one of the strongest aspects of 4e as a FRPG, and as a version of D&D.

And I appreciate your recognition thereof!

I think it was the effort of making the outer planes not just a set of evocative ideas but actually and systematically amenable to game play - via the MotP and the Planescape - that created the unplayable stuff that 4e then reacted against.

I'd argue it was the fault of changing the guard 2-3 times. Gygax mostly wanted the planes as background, I think, in much the same way that divinity is in the background for Conan stories or Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser stories (the gods in Lankhmar, rather than the capital-G Gods of Lankhmar, from what I've read). So, although he pulled from half a dozen different traditions, the sometimes strange associations were fine, because they weren't really meant to be places so much as....influences, if you will.

In the early presentations (PHB Appendix IV and DDG) there is no suggestion that the wheel is mere metaphor or design. [snip...] it is these portals that establish the literalness of the "wheel" arrangement.

Even if one doesn't include those portals, there is still the classification of planes by alignment, which then supports an arrangement of them analogous to the alignment graph (compare pp 119 and 121 of Gygax's PHB). That is not a merely arbitrary arrangement, and it reveals the wheel-like structure of the planes.

Yeah. Even if later stuff insists it's metaphor...there was a LOT of effort put into making it literal, and giving it physical representation via portals, the whole "sloughing off a layer of Hottopica to be absorbed by Punkland" thing, etc. If they aren't in at least some kind of physical proximity, these things are a lot harder to square.

What 4e does is break the relationship between the outer planes and alignment: it permits multiple planes for similarly aligned beings (eg Tiamat and Zehir don't get stuck in the Nine Hells) and permits differently-aligned beings to live in the same place without that creating alignment oddities (eg Erathis, Ioun and Pelor all living together on Hestavar).

Or, for one of my favorites, Kord couch-surfing with Bahamut and Pelor. Tiamat was a particularly nice touch, because in a very real sense she and Zehir could be so much happier if they were just able to cooperate, because he would prefer the depths and she would prefer the surface. That's not where their power bases formed, though, and as a result, they're locked in eternal war based out of lands they hate trying to steal lands they want. Perfect encapsulation of why even two like-minded evils can be eternally at one another's throats, while different factions of good can in fact get along and make each other better.

I agree with @TwoSix that the souls stuff is pretty peripheral. But the relationship of outer planes to alignments, in the Great Wheel, is not peripheral. If you drop that, you no longer have the Great Wheel. And while you do have it, you get the symmetry of the alignment graph projected onto the cosmology. And you also get the problem of what to do when an aligned plane becomes inhabited by, or conquered by, beings of a different alignment. The Planescape approach to that, which @EzekielRaiden has criticised, is probably only one possibility. But I don't think it's a case of "anything goes" - I mean, it would be weird for the Seven Heavens/Celestia to remain a plane of absolute LG if it had been conquered by and was now overwhelmingly inhabited by devils and demons.

My problem with this is that the souls thing is at very least the second-most-important way in which the alignment relationship is established and reinforced. The universe inherently knows your alignment and assigns your soul to the correct one, reifying alignment and ensuring that each outer plane naturally retains its alignment association. By cutting that out, nothing actually reinforces the planes anymore.

AFAIK, there has never been a full-scale occupation of one Outer Plane by another. Given they're implied to at least be extremely large, and (at least to the limit of my knowledge) arguably infinite, such an occupation would severely strain the resources of whatever plane was trying to do it, which would result in that plane getting dogpiled, etc. So it's a bit speculative; would Celestia remain stubbornly LG despite sloughing off a huge chunk of its territory? Would reality simply cease to have a true LG plane? Would one or both of its adjacent planes slough off pieces to form a "new" Celestia (or a new plane filling Celestia's place)? I don't believe any Great Wheel publication has ever considered these things, even in hypothetical.

To me, both these suggestions seems a bit narrow. Who knows how vision works in the Outer Planes - or for that matter even on the material plane! Even if photography worked on the material plane, there's no reason to think it would work in other, more magical, places.

Does this not conflict mightily with the "things work as they do on Earth except when explicitly told otherwise" premise that is so deeply important to your playstyle?

And as far as the relationship between belief and reality, it seems possible (perhaps challenging, but possible) to imagine a fantasy setting, or some aspect of a fantasy setting, where what a person encounters or perceives reflects, in part if not in whole, their fears, hopes and expectations. This could be done comedically, a la the Alice books, but perhaps seriously as well.

A world that reflects back at you your fears/hopes/desires/etc. is one that still has an actual nature, that could reasonably be learned if one showed sufficient diligence. The explicit claim I was responding to was that person A can go to the Outer Planes and see the planes of the World Tree (including things like Dweomerheart), and person B can go to the Outer Planes and see things like the gods dwelling in Astral Domains, and person C can go to the Outer Planes and see Hades and Gehenna and Carceri etc., etc., and all three are correctly seeing what is actually there. The only way for this to happen--for people to have their beliefs and perceptions be 100% equally real, despite being explicitly contradictory to one another, is for there to be no facts about the world, just individual subjective impressions, all of which are true no matter how much they might contradict.

 

[Henadic Theologian]

Am I just weird? I'm 57 in March and this summer will mark my 50th year in D&D. I've hated the Great Wheel ever since I can remember. The shift in Cosmology and the addition of the Feywild and Shadowfell in 4e I thought was brilliant. I was disappointed when 5e went back to the Great Wheel model. I've kept 4th edition Cosmology In all my stuff and refuse to let it go. A couple of my players say I'm being a "Boomer" about it

What are people's thoughts on the current Cosmology In 5e? Do you make use of it or ignore it? Do you run successful adventures in it? Inquiring minds want to know!

5e Cosmology still contains within it the 4e Cosmology. They even found a way to return Divine Domains like Havestar via Spelljammer. They mixed it with the Great Wheel, the Great Orrey, and maybe a few other things.

 

[Yaarel]

A world that reflects back at you your fears/hopes/desires/etc. is one that still has an actual nature, that could reasonably be learned if one showed sufficient diligence. The explicit claim I was responding to was that person A can go to the Outer Planes and see the planes of the World Tree (including things like Dweomerheart), and person B can go to the Outer Planes and see things like the gods dwelling in Astral Domains, and person C can go to the Outer Planes and see Hades and Gehenna and Carceri etc., etc., and all three are correctly seeing what is actually there. The only way for this to happen--for people to have their beliefs and perceptions be 100% equally real, despite being explicitly contradictory to one another, is for there to be no facts about the world, just individual subjective impressions, all of which are true no matter how much they might contradict.

Each culture has its own "region" within the Astral Plane, and subjectively experiences its own archetypes and deep structures of reality there.

Generally, he Astral Plane (including the alignment planes within it) behave like dreamscapes, albeit the dreams of a culture rather than an individual. That said, there are "dominions" that can be a manifestation of an individual person/persona.

 

[Hexmage-EN]

I think I'd like the Great Wheel more if there was a reduced emphasis on alignment and more on how the Outer Planes relate to the Material Plane. For example, I like how in the new DMG Yggdrasil is said to perhaps be the ancestor of all trees and connects the Outer Planes with the Material Plane, and I like how the new Monster Manual apparently has giant intelligent animals be celestials from the Beastlands.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Each culture has its own "region" within the Astral Plane, and subjectively experiences its own archetypes and deep structures of reality there.

Which is exactly the problem I'm talking about. There are only three possibilities:

1. Only one specific group is actually correct about the structures of reality.
2. No specific group is actually correct about the structures of reality, but it's possible for someone to learn what is correct.
3. All groups are equally correct, no matter how contradictory their experiences may be.

#1 and #2 are universes that allow for facts to exist, and only differ on whether anyone yet knows what those facts are. #3 is a universe where facts cannot exist, because all perceptions are equally correct and thus equally meaningless. Every claim you could make, even two exactly contradictory claims, can be true, and thus you can prove literally anything.

Pedantic's example above, of things conditioned on/by a particular person's hopes/dreams/fears/etc., still permits facts so long as either (a) at least one person can see past the superficial appearance conditioned by those hopes/dreams/fears/etc. and down to whatever fundamental stuff is acting upon those things (meaning universe #1), or (b) currently nobody can, but it's at least possible someone could do that (meaning universe #2).

If two people can look at the exact same sources of information, and both correctly claim that what they observe is real, even though both of them see incompatible things, then facts do not exist anymore. The person who wrote such a cosmology has ensured that truth has no meaning inside that cosmology. There is no problem in having something that rearranges itself to suit any particular observer's beliefs, so long as there are still things that are inherently true about that thing prior to any such rearrangement--that's reality deceiving you into thinking it is X way when it's really not.

Further, there is no problem if, working off your answer, each "region" of the Astral Plane is isolated from others, and thus someone in one region would be speaking only about that region and not about the absolute, complete totality of the Astral Plane. E.g., the World Tree could be correct for one Astral Plane region, while the World Axis could be true of PoLand's region, and the Great Wheel true of Toril's astral region, and likewise Athas and Eberron would each have their own particularly isolated Astral Plane regions.

But you cannot have it be the case that the Great Wheel is true for those who perceive it, and also the World Axis is true for those who perceive it, and also the World Tree is true for those who perceive it, all at the same time, in the same "region" of the Astral Plane, all of them looking at exactly the same information, because these three models all make mutually-contradictory claims that can be observed.

Generally, he Astral Plane (including the alignment planes within it) behave like dreamscapes, albeit the dreams of a culture rather than an individual. That said, there are "dominions" that can be a manifestation of an individual person/persona.

Okay. Whether it's conditioned by the perceptions of an entire culture in aggregate or a single person makes no difference. There can only be three options: either exactly zero cultures correctly understand the structure and behavior of the planes; or exactly one does and all others are incorrect insofar as their perceptions conflict with the one correct perception; or multiple cultures (any number 2 or greater) all "correctly" understand the structure and behavior of the planes, and thus "facts" about the planes are nonexistent, only (cultural) perceptions thereof. A "fact" could be completely true for one culture and completely false for another, and both perspectives are correct. Due to the principle of explosion, this now means you can "prove" literally anything is true--and thus "truth" ceases to have any meaning.

 

[pemerton]

Does this not conflict mightily with the "things work as they do on Earth except when explicitly told otherwise" premise that is so deeply important to your playstyle?

I'm not sure why any such premise is deeply important to my playstyle. In a fairly recent series of posts that I made addressing this issue, I argued that FRPGs tend to depend on common sense (eg objects, if unsupported, fall to earth) but there's no reason to think that scientific truths obtain in fantasy worlds (eg that falling to earth is due to universal gravitation; that combustion is due to oxidation; etc).

When it comes to vision, I don't see any reason to think that photons (for instance) are part of the World of Greyhawk. Given that instantaneous travel (via teleportation, for instance) is possible, there's also no reason to think that other scientific principles pertaining to light are true in that fantasy world.

 

[Neonchameleon]

Which is exactly the problem I'm talking about. There are only three possibilities:

1. Only one specific group is actually correct about the structures of reality.
2. No specific group is actually correct about the structures of reality, but it's possible for someone to learn what is correct.
3. All groups are equally correct, no matter how contradictory their experiences may be.

You missed us metamodernists out both in the real world and your example!

4: Reality exists and it is completely possible to be utterly wrong about it. As for being right? Understanding is a map and not the territory and reflects a fraction of what is weighted to whatever the person or group considers valuable. A river map is inherently no more or less right than a road map. And distances measured in "time to get there" are in many ways a better model of reality than ones measured in miles or kilometers. What is correct is reality and our maps can be improved.

I'm not sure why any such premise is deeply important to my playstyle. In a fairly recent series of posts that I made addressing this issue, I argued that FRPGs tend to depend on common sense (eg objects, if unsupported, fall to earth) but there's no reason to think that scientific truths obtain in fantasy worlds (eg that falling to earth is due to universal gravitation; that combustion is due to oxidation; etc).

When it comes to vision, I don't see any reason to think that photons (for instance) are part of the World of Greyhawk. Given that instantaneous travel (via teleportation, for instance) is possible, there's also no reason to think that other scientific principles pertaining to light are true in that fantasy world.

A more concrete example I'd use would be that I'd assume Newtonian physics was true but relativistic and quantum physics probably aren't and even atomic probably isn't. And that an apple will fall from a tree as it does on earth, but teleportation can be instantaneous and atomic bombs are impossible.