4e Cosmology Changes

[bmcdaniel]

I like it primarily because the planes now have enough room for whatever new planes you want. Need a plane of mirrors? Check, you can add it. Need a sub-plane where the followers of one particular god go to die (instead of fading into non-existence)? Check, you can add it. Need a strange new plane that nobody has even heard about before? Check, you can add it.

The Great Wheel is so constraining. Everything was so logically laid out in place that if your idea didn't fit into the existing structure, well there wasn't room for it. (Plus, how goofy is it that the ultimate organizing principle of the entire multi-verse is alignment?)

The new cosmolgy is much better.

 

[frankthedm]

I have a lot of 4E hate, but comparatively little is directed at the new cosmology. The great wheel had gotten plenty of millage and has 3 editions under it's belt. The reboot seems flavorful enough to make the New MotP a worthwhile read.

(Plus, how goofy is it that the ultimate organizing principle of the entire multi-verse is alignment?)

Nothing goofy about moral absolutes shaping the metaphysical side of a fantasy's Multiverse.

 

[pawsplay]

I kinda like the new cosmology. The only thing that makes me said is some of the shuffling make Maruts and a few other critters sort of "homeless" in the sense of not having a recongizable place in the cosmic order like demons, devils, and angels.

 

[Tervin]

The old cosmology was very hard to write good storylines for, IMO. The new one fit almost perfectly with stories I was already writing before they revealed it.

The Feywild and the Shadowfell made it so much easier to fit my ideas to D&D, and the Astral Sea does every good thing that the Great Wheel did, but in ways that I feel much more comfortable with. Plancescape was one of the best settings ever made for D&D, and I honestly think that it fits a lot better in the new cosmology than in the one it was originally made for.

I also prefer the Elemental Chaos to the old elemental planes. Much like the great wheel, the elemental planes suffered from the problems that building from symmetry create. Things easily get boring, predictable and not really exciting to explore.

The Far Realm? Always nice to have an excuse for including the truly weird things that don't fit in otherwise. To me it is not as much a place in the cosmology as a source for plot devices when I want to twist things around.

 

[Jhaelen]

It's a bit of a mixed bag, but I mostly like the changes.

The best part of it is the Feywild and the Shadowfell. Both work like the regio in Ars Magica, now. And everything reminding me of Ars Magica is a BIG plus

The Astral Sea contains (almost) all of the old outer planes, so there's not much of a change here.

The elemental planes and the positive/negative planes are gone. They'Ve been replaced with the Elemental Chaos. The good thing is, the place is lot more accessible now. It's no longer impossibly hard to survive the place. So it makes a better place for adventuring.

I assume there might be zones of purity amid the chaos, so you could still have sites where a single element is dominant.

I don't quite like that demons are supposed to be corrupted elementals now but I can live with it.

The rest of the changes is actually caused by the simplification of the alignment system. I suppose there's still a Mechanus somewhere in the Astral Sea, but it's no longer the place of rigid lawfulness without any good/evil tendencies.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

I agree and if you really like the Great Wheel (which I never did) it's easy enough to stick it in the Astral Sea.

This. Honestly, I'm a Planescape fan, but I can't fathom the complaints about this issue. The Astral Dominions are, for all effects and purposes, the old Outer Planes (well, with the exception of Abyss, but that is easy to handwave if you like).

And yes, Shadowfell and Feywild are both excellent ideas. I'm honestly surprised that it's taken this long for an "underworld" and a "faerie world" to become parts of the D&D's cosmology.

Edit: Also, something that's becoming more and more clear to me as time passes... I like Planescape, but as a setting of its own, not as a connective meta-setting, or the default cosmology of the game. (The same thing with Spelljammer.)

 

[thundershot]

Also, with the new cosmology, they can combine Planescape & Spelljammer into one spectacular setting.... Ships going through the Astral Sea, going from plane to plane (and you know the Manual of the Planes is going to give us more goodies to fill the Astral Sea with) and even take a stop at the city of Sigil....

Okay, *I* would love that concept, at least.



Chris

 

[FungiMuncher]

The new cosmology is VERY similar to how I've had things in my homebrew. Such a set up makes it easier to have actual adventures in the other planes, so I like the changes.

 

[Heselbine]

Absolute crap.

I like it. I felt the great wheel to be well past its sell-by date. All sorts of planes invented simply to make a plane for each alignment. Simply too many for them to be meaningfully different.

The new cosmology is much simpler and much more focussed on providing adventure opportunities. Adventure opportunities which don't rely on you having an infinite supply of potions of fire resistance or water breathing.

Who needs all those good planes? What were they for? How many times did your characters go there, in all your DMing experience? I've DMed for thirty years now and never had any reason for the PCs to go to a good plane.

I can understand, though, that this is one of the things that people might see as iconic D&D. Well, the developers of 4e disagreed. That doesn't make it, to quote "absolute crap" it makes it a different design decision. What makes it a good or bad design decision is how well it plays.

 

[Mercule]

I love the 1e Manual of the Planes. I think it's a brilliant piece of work, and keep it on my shelf with my 3e/4e stuff. I never dug the Great Wheel thing; it was so artificial, in my mind. Still, this book was a treasure trove of ideas.

I hated Planescape's setup. It basically neutered the outer planes. I want the outer planes to be alien and dangerous, not someplace you just jump to.

Now, with 4e, I can slide in anything I like from the Manual of the Planes and roll with it. Simplicity itself!

Pretty much this.

The Great Wheel was crap. It fit a specific vision of the cosmos and I was fine with it for Greyhawk, but I haven't used it for my home brew for about 20 years. But, with the "unnecessary symmetry" of previous editions, it was occasionally hard to do too large of revisions without a tome of changes to the implied setting. I see the astral sea being much better.

Besides, the new set up really leaves nothing to complain about. If you like the Great Wheel and Sigil, they can still be there just as they were before. The rest of us just aren't stuck with them.