4e Cosmology Changes

[Snoweel]

Just want to know your opinions on the 4e changes to the D&D cosmology.

I don't have any 4e books yet (still umming and ahhing) so all I know about the revised cosmology are from articles at wizards.com

So what do you think? Does it seem tidier? More internally consistent? More of the same?

Tell me I'll be able to use the 4e cosmology straight out of the tin.

 

[ProfessorCirno]

Absolute crap.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

I dislike 4e too much to be impartial. I'd just like to say I think the above image made me laugh and seemed pretty accurate.

The 4e cosmology has a lot in common with Exalted cosmology. Back when the first teasers were put out in the Worlds&Monsters book a lot of people were commenting how they ripped off Exalted but turned the rating down to PG.

Me I'm just not interested in it. It doesn't hold a candle to planescape or even the variant cosmologies of older editions.

 

[thundershot]

See... even though my gaming goes back to the old basic boxed set, I LIKE all of the new cosmology changes. There were changes between 1E and 2E (not many, but I think that's when Lloth became a god), and lots of changes between 2E and 3E (Vecna became a god and the planes got altered a bit). This one is more extreme, but I ended my campaign and started a new one from its' ashes. There'll be some easter eggs later, but for now, it's all new all different... so this fits in with my theme.

Though I did leave the pantheon of 20 gods, I did add and subtract some.



Chris

 

[Snoweel]

teh hilarious

I dislike 4e too much to be impartial. I'd just like to say I think the above image made me laugh and seemed pretty accurate.

The 4e cosmology has a lot in common with Exalted cosmology. Back when the first teasers were put out in the Worlds&Monsters book a lot of people were commenting how they ripped off Exalted but turned the rating down to PG.

This might be why I like it.

I was drawn to Exalted by its cosmology - it seems they ripped off my homebrew cosmology and remade it 100 times better.

(I'm off Exalted for other reasons, however.)

Me I'm just not interested in it. It doesn't hold a candle to planescape or even the variant cosmologies of older editions.

The problem with the enormous cosmologies of Planescape et al is that they provide so many alternatives that the Prime Material becomes irrelevent.

See... even though my gaming goes back to the old basic boxed set, I LIKE all of the new cosmology changes.

So do I mate. So far anyway.

It seems much tidier and Prime-Material-Plane-centric. Which I dig.

 

[Doug McCrae]

The new cosmology consists of:
The Astral Sea - Contains the homes of the gods including Hell.
The Elemental Chaos - All the old elemental planes (earth, air, fire, etc) all 'smooshed' together.
The Abyss - Home of demons, located at the 'bottom' of the Elemental Chaos.
The Feywild - Celtic Otherworld, close to the world adventurers live in.
The Shadowfell - Place of death, evil, scary. Like The Feywild, also close.
The Far Realm - Where Azathoth lives.

I prefer the Astral Sea to the old Great Wheel. Thor doesn't have to live on Mount Olympus now and it isn't tied to the nine alignment system, which I think is inferior to three alignments or none at all.

I like the Feywild a lot, it's got a very Celtic mythical/folkloric feel. You can even find Fomorians there. Shadowfell and Far Realm I'm meh about, though I think including the Far Realm is a good idea as people love Cthulhoid monstrosities.

The Elemental Chaos is a bit weird. The concept is tied to the elementals in the MM as they have also been 'smooshed' together. Probably not a good idea tbh, but at least they're trying to do something a bit different, which counts for a lot in my book.

My ideal set up would be to combine demons and devils into one race. If anything the division has now been emphasised. Devils are still lawful, demons are now much more chaotic. 4e demons are destructive forces of entropy a la BECMI. Although this isn't how I would've done it, it is a cool idea, definitely superior to the old demons.

 

[malraux]

It strikes me as quite a bit simpler than the Great Wheel cosmology. And I think that's both good and bad. If you and your players are willing to put the work into learning a good bit about the planes, then a PS campaign is a very rich setting. But if you really don't want to learn, or more especially if you don't want to make it a focus of your campaign, the Great Wheel is a lot of baggage to haul around.

The PoL cosmology is pretty simple. There's the world, plus a bright/nature echo and a dark/death echo. Then there's the Astral Sea, where the gods live, and the Elemental Chaos, where the primordials live. Both have evil components, the Nine Hells and the Abyss respectively. Its a bit easier to grok than the onion layered nature of the GW.

That said, I don't think the PoL cosmology will feel lacking. The relatively unbounded nature of the Astral Sea and the Elemental Chaos means that any sort of location can be included without much trouble.

edit: Crud, I forgot about the Far Realm.

 

[Spatula]

I'm not a fan of the change-for-change's sake alterations. But I never really used the Great Wheel anyway, so it's not a huge deal.

 

[EroGaki]

I don't like it. At all. I'm not a fan of the way they dumbed down everything in 4E, especially the planes. Perhaps if they had put more work into some actual fluff... but at this point, to me, it feels like they slapped together a cosmology a day before the books were supposed to hit the printer.

 

[Wormwood]

The new cosmology has two actual benefits:

1. It's easier to use the new cosmology in actual play---unless your old homebrew had vast epic battles in the positive energy plane or the plane of earth, of course.

2. It's tied to the 4e fluff. Monsters, classes and every upcoming sourcebook will reference them going forward. If you don't want to spend a lot of your time doing search/replace on your books, just go ahead and use the new stuff.

3. It's internally consistent. Now, some people like the old planes---but to me they were as evocative as a shopping mall map ("Dante's Inferno? Yeah, that's downstairs just past Mount Olympus and the place where dead Vikings go. Near the food court.")