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2024 Astral Plane
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<blockquote data-quote="Marandahir" data-source="post: 9039575" data-attributes="member: 6803643"><p>WotC have been very clear in 5e that the Planar Wheel is JUST A MODEL by mortal sages trying to make sense of the planes.</p><p></p><p>A Higher Plane of Existence is not physically part of the same space as our world. Trying to say that Celestia is physically INSIDE the Astral Sea as opposed to connected to it is like trying to force a tesseract-shaped peg through a torus shaped hole but only being able to see in 2 dimensions. </p><p></p><p>In YOUR game you can make the Astral Sea or Astral Plane a physical space surrounding both the mortal plane(t) and other plane(t)s but that's not the defined 5e cosmology assumed by the core books. </p><p></p><p>In MY game, for example, the Astral Sea is a physical space related to Wildspace and Star Wars Hyperspace and IRL Outer Space; a space so big that distances and timelines become impossibly large and our tiny lives and world becomes essentially a blip in the fabric of existence, while the Elemental Chaos is like the Quantum Realm from Marvel - a hidden "inner space" so tiny that time becomes meaningless and the building blocks of creation drift between states of matter and energy. Meanwhile, the Outlands in my game are literally beyond the raw edges of the universe, the space between all things and at the outer limits of our understanding -- and where the Ruby Gate and its Shardmind guardians hold back the incursions of the Far Realm. </p><p></p><p>I see these as fundamentally related ideas to the 5e cosmology, but clearly the way I'm interpreting them and retrofitting 4e concepts and MtG concepts and building in my own ideas makes it different.</p><p></p><p>Planescape uses the Great Wheel Cosmology as a default, but remember that it's ONLY A MODEL. WotC don't have a financial incentive to define it further than that, especially given that the Forgotten Realms are their home-base setting. FR has a history of understanding cosmology in multiple ways, of plane lists changing, and that history wasn't wiped when the Spellplague ended and Abeir and Toril passed out of alignment with each other again at the turning of 5e a decade ago. The Forgotten Realms are a living setting, even if the exact details of scale have changed from edition to edition (seriously, the 3e and 4e maps of the Realms are SO MUCH SMALLER than 5e's version). And that means that the nature of Cosmology needs some flexibility to allow past interpretations to remain as a viable option for the sages to discuss.</p><p></p><p>So they're probably not going to define the space between the planes further with Planescape; instead, they'd focus on the factions of Planescape and the campaign adventures of Planescape and the options of Planescape characters and what it means to play a game without a Material Plane as the central starting zone and place to protect from planar incursion. I'd expect close details on Sigil and character options, a starter adventure in Sigil, a larger campaign taking inspiration from PS:Torment, and a Manual of the Planes gazetteer that explores the creatures and factions and some key locations in each of the Outer Planes. I actually expect them to ignore the Inner Planes, the Parallel Planes, and the Transitive Planes when it comes to details, but to speak to them very briefly as also there. If you're playing Planescape, you care really about the 16 Outer Planes and the Outlands, less about the Astral Sea.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Marandahir, post: 9039575, member: 6803643"] WotC have been very clear in 5e that the Planar Wheel is JUST A MODEL by mortal sages trying to make sense of the planes. A Higher Plane of Existence is not physically part of the same space as our world. Trying to say that Celestia is physically INSIDE the Astral Sea as opposed to connected to it is like trying to force a tesseract-shaped peg through a torus shaped hole but only being able to see in 2 dimensions. In YOUR game you can make the Astral Sea or Astral Plane a physical space surrounding both the mortal plane(t) and other plane(t)s but that's not the defined 5e cosmology assumed by the core books. In MY game, for example, the Astral Sea is a physical space related to Wildspace and Star Wars Hyperspace and IRL Outer Space; a space so big that distances and timelines become impossibly large and our tiny lives and world becomes essentially a blip in the fabric of existence, while the Elemental Chaos is like the Quantum Realm from Marvel - a hidden "inner space" so tiny that time becomes meaningless and the building blocks of creation drift between states of matter and energy. Meanwhile, the Outlands in my game are literally beyond the raw edges of the universe, the space between all things and at the outer limits of our understanding -- and where the Ruby Gate and its Shardmind guardians hold back the incursions of the Far Realm. I see these as fundamentally related ideas to the 5e cosmology, but clearly the way I'm interpreting them and retrofitting 4e concepts and MtG concepts and building in my own ideas makes it different. Planescape uses the Great Wheel Cosmology as a default, but remember that it's ONLY A MODEL. WotC don't have a financial incentive to define it further than that, especially given that the Forgotten Realms are their home-base setting. FR has a history of understanding cosmology in multiple ways, of plane lists changing, and that history wasn't wiped when the Spellplague ended and Abeir and Toril passed out of alignment with each other again at the turning of 5e a decade ago. The Forgotten Realms are a living setting, even if the exact details of scale have changed from edition to edition (seriously, the 3e and 4e maps of the Realms are SO MUCH SMALLER than 5e's version). And that means that the nature of Cosmology needs some flexibility to allow past interpretations to remain as a viable option for the sages to discuss. So they're probably not going to define the space between the planes further with Planescape; instead, they'd focus on the factions of Planescape and the campaign adventures of Planescape and the options of Planescape characters and what it means to play a game without a Material Plane as the central starting zone and place to protect from planar incursion. I'd expect close details on Sigil and character options, a starter adventure in Sigil, a larger campaign taking inspiration from PS:Torment, and a Manual of the Planes gazetteer that explores the creatures and factions and some key locations in each of the Outer Planes. I actually expect them to ignore the Inner Planes, the Parallel Planes, and the Transitive Planes when it comes to details, but to speak to them very briefly as also there. If you're playing Planescape, you care really about the 16 Outer Planes and the Outlands, less about the Astral Sea. [/QUOTE]
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