D&D 5E 4E Cosmology

[EzekielRaiden]

Hypothesis: I am Australian. Correct (when I advance the hypothesis). False (when you advance the hypothesis).

Hypothesis: The screen in front of pemerton is visible, in the forward arc of vision. Correct (when I advance the hypothesis). False (when you advance the hypothesis).

Etc.

You are assuming that the language used to describe planar states of affairs doesn't have relativistic or reflexive terms like "I" or "forward". But that is not self-evident. Especially once we're talking about a fantasy setting.

EDIT: In case it's not obvious, there are quite respectable views that elements of language that are not regarded as relativistic/reflexive by speakers, nevertheless in fact have a type of relativistic/reflexive element.

Okay.

Does any of this argument apply to things that aren't self-reflexive? Because all of your examples are already starting from an individual person's perceptions, and thus necessarily about an individual person's perceptions.

"You cannot travel via the Astral Plane between any Outer Planes, you must first return to the Prime Material and then travel outward again to the Outer Plane you wish to reach" is not reflexive in this way. "Every soul of a person who dies, unless trapped in some way, goes to the Outer Plane associated with their alignment" and "Some souls of people who die do not go to the afterlife appropriate to them, but are instead stuck in eternal limbo, genuinely unable to join the deity that matches who they were in life" are not reflexive in this way, and I don't see how both statements can be correct, and I certainly don't see how perception could affect the truth-value of any of these statements. (Planescape making it so metaphysics yield to sufficient density of belief is, naturally, a separate concern.)

 

[Paul Farquhar]

The problem, that causes "all beliefs are correct" to occur, is that people have said--repeatedly--that there is no objective reality, that perception and belief mean any "story" people tell about it is true, etc.

Why is that a problem?

 

[TwoSix]

"You cannot travel via the Astral Plane between any Outer Planes, you must first return to the Prime Material and then travel outward again to the Outer Plane you wish to reach" is not reflexive in this way. "Every soul of a person who dies, unless trapped in some way, goes to the Outer Plane associated with their alignment" and "Some souls of people who die do not go to the afterlife appropriate to them, but are instead stuck in eternal limbo, genuinely unable to join the deity that matches who they were in life" are not reflexive in this way, and I don't see how both statements can be correct, and I certainly don't see how perception could affect the truth-value of any of these statements. (Planescape making it so metaphysics yield to sufficient density of belief is, naturally, a separate concern.)

Just like with any statement made in life, a statement that asserts absolute surety about anything should be taken with a bunch of implied caveats.

Any descriptors attached to something as far-reaching as a cosmology should be assumed to be narrated from a limited perspective.

 

[dave2008]

Then I have no idea how to parse the things you have said in the thread.


For what it's worth, I apologize for antagonizing you. I cannot fully make good on that apology because I don't fully understand what I did wrong.

If I have made assumptions, I don't know what they are. I have no interest in "spitting" on anyone's ideas. I've simply said that I don't understand how the things I quoted, which do include explicitly saying that perception/belief defines reality, and that multiple contradictory models can somehow all be true, could possibly make any sense, other than by asserting that there are no facts, just beliefs/perceptions.

If your position is "well, none of these things are even right anyway", I don't understand how that squares with the degree of detail and specificity that the Great Wheel--whatever version is being discussed. It's quite clear to me that we're supposed to take this at face value, and at the very least treat it as mostly correct, particularly in the areas where it makes explicit claims about what is real and what is not, what can be done and what cannot, where one can go and where one cannot, etc.

I guess what I'm saying is, I don't understand how it is even possible to assert that the world is a huge mass of unknowns. The Great Wheel is not presented as a huge mass of unknowns. It is presented as "a place for everything, and everything in its place." That's precisely what I dislike about it so much. Needless symmetry is merely a symptom of that.

I never really paid much attention to the World Tree (even though theoretically that was the cosmology when I started playing D&D, in early 3e), but I very much prefer its structure to the Great Wheel. Even if I still like the World Axis better, the World Tree has its charms. At least the its nature comports better with merely being a documentation of "what we have seen thus far", leaving well open the possibility of additional hidden/lost/missing/etc. planes, rather than a complete and precise accounting like the way the Great Wheel is continually presented.

Another way of saying that: You lose the fundamental nature of the Great Wheel if there are any additional Outer Planes. Because then they can't, even in principle, be fit into the "pure Courteous Fashionable, blended Courteous Fashionable/Neutral Fashionable, pure Neutral Fashionable, blended Neutral Fashionable/Sarcastic Fashionable, pure Sarcastic Fashionable" etc. You can't have 1:1 correspondence between alignment and outer planes anymore, which causes the whole "planes slough off parts that deviate too much" to no longer function. You throw off the afterlife. Etc., etc.

It's not just needlessly symmetric (half the "lower" planes are nigh-indistinguishable). It's also...well, for lack of a better term, "closed" unless you decide to undermine the very foundations of the system.

I appreciate the response and I will try to be as clear and simple as I can be in my clarification of how I look at things.

1. I don't believe perception/belief defines reality broadly (it can locally - like in a particular domain/plane). That was/is someone else who said that (I assume - if I said so it was a mistake or misunderstanding).
2. I believe there is possibly a true nature of the cosmos (D&D Reality), but we are not fully capable of describing / understanding it. That is not just an in-game viewpoint, but a RL issue. We (as author's and DMs) do not have the ability to describe the true nature of the cosmos. So we are left with "models" both in game and IRL.
3. Following on item 2, the D&D books only present a model of the cosmos. It doesn't matter how explicit or detailed the books get they are flawed models. IMO, they (GW, WA, WT, etc.) are all equally valued and based on a limited understanding of the D&D Reality (sorry I haven't come up with a good name for he base Reality yet)
4. The GW, for me, is not shackled with symmetry, that is simply a flawed model. As already discussed, there are domains in the Astral Sea that are outside the wheel (that is a 5e thing btw), which for me is really what the GW is - superdomains (aka planes) floating in the Astral. This is basically the 4e model with a bunch of superdomains added. For example, you can travel, through the Astral Sea to the Nine Hells and then through the Astral Sea to the Seven Hevens and then again through the Astral Sea to Hestavar (sp). That is not the most efficient way (and therefore rarely described), but you can do it.
5. There are other superdomains floating in the astral sea. I wouldn't say there are an infinite number of domains and planes (superdomains) like in BECMI, but that is for all intents and purposes true.
6. There are multiple connected Realities: D&D Reality; Far Realm/Blind Eternities; Aether Reality; and more?
7. My version of the D&D Reality mixes lore and cosmological models from all editions of D&D.

If there is any point that doesn't make sense or you would like more information about, let me know.

Finally, I want to be clear that to me D&D is a personal / group game. It is not beholden to what is in any book or to what TSR or WotC or KP or anyone else determines. That, to me, is essential to D&D. If you can't reject what is in a book and make the game your own, then you are not playing D&D, IMO, you are simply playing a game. Every group is there own constellation of ideas and views - that is what makes D&D what it is to me.

 

[Aldarc]

Long post coming up.

I came into TTRPG’s in my early 20’s during 4E. As a system, 4E remains my absolute favourite. I own all the books and I wish I could play it again with my group. So I was the target audience and consumer of 4E products.

The only thing I don’t like about 4E is the cosmology. Though I get why it exists the way it does.

The cosmology to me is just about what I thought a basic generic fantasy cosmology would look like. In fact it’s exactly what I thought of when I thought about fantasy cosmology. The only thing that surprised me was that Hell was located in the heavens and the place I thought of as hell was a place of chaotic elements. Basically I found it boring.

So I tried to figure out how to make it interesting. The thing is I wasn’t that good at the time when it came to any kind of world building (I’m still kind of bad at it), and the Great Wheel only has a single page to it in the 4E Manual of the Planes (and looking back on it doesn’t really tell you how it works). Everything I came up with in an attempt to make it more interesting just made it more generic.

And to me that’s the strength of the World Axis cosmology. It is so basic, generic, and simple that anyone can easily understand it, and add to it.

In comparison the Great Wheel is so strange, weird, and complex, that the best way to introduce someone to it is to do so slowly. But to me the Great Wheel cosmology in all its strange, weird, and complex glory was something I had never seen before!

Seriously, to me the Great Wheel was like an epiphany of what a cosmology could look like, and when I finally learnt about it my imagination went wild with possibilities, which is something that the World Axis never did. Yggdrasil, The River Styx, Olympus, the Outlands, Sigil’s Factions, the Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres!

The Great Wheel is not a generic fantasy cosmology, it is unique to D&D. And every setting that I’ve come across that uses something similar was made after the Great Wheel was already made and designed to easily work with it.

That’s why I like the Great Wheel.

Thing is, I strongly dislike, if not loathe, the Great Wheel for the reasons that you love it and more. As someone who came into D&D via 3e D&D, the Great Wheel felt incredibly boring and artificial to me. I hated "Yggdrasil, The River Styx, Olympus, the Outlands, Sigil’s Factions, the Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres!" It didn't feel like a cosmology. It didn't feel alive. It didn't make me feel anything but a feeling to get ridding of this over-engineered trash as soon as I possibly could.

I felt inspired when Eberron created its Orrery Cosmology. That is when I felt liberated from the inorganic, mechanical, artificiality, and symmetry-obsessed Great Wheel. Then when 4e created the World Axis, it was even better for me because of its simplicity. Simplicity was bliss for me. It evoked a real sense of mythological wonder.

 

[TwoSix]

Another way of saying that: You lose the fundamental nature of the Great Wheel if there are any additional Outer Planes. Because then they can't, even in principle, be fit into the "pure Courteous Fashionable, blended Courteous Fashionable/Neutral Fashionable, pure Neutral Fashionable, blended Neutral Fashionable/Sarcastic Fashionable, pure Sarcastic Fashionable" etc. You can't have 1:1 correspondence between alignment and outer planes anymore, which causes the whole "planes slough off parts that deviate too much" to no longer function. You throw off the afterlife. Etc., etc.

Yea, I disagree pretty strongly with this.

The Great Wheel concept needs some sort of symmetry (ideally, some factor of 8 number of planes). It need 2 orthogonal axes of belief to orient itself (although I don't think they NEED to be L-C and G-E). The planes that do exist should be fairly familiar to what's already extant. I would argue you probably need Celestia, the Nine Hells, the Abyss, and maybe Limbo, but the rest of the planes are pretty negotiable.

But the planar layers growing and shrinking isn't fundamental. It gives a narrative hook, but it would be easy to come up with others for a Planescape game. Likewise the flow of souls. There's no NEED for the Great Wheel to be the one and only afterlife, it simply needs to be a place where the concept of the soul having value exists.

 

[Aldarc]

Yea, I disagree pretty strongly with this.

The Great Wheel concept needs some sort of symmetry (ideally, some factor of 8 number of planes). It need 2 orthogonal axes of belief to orient itself (although I don't think they NEED to be L-C and G-E). The planes that do exist should be fairly familiar to what's already extant. I would argue you probably need Celestia, the Nine Hells, the Abyss, and maybe Limbo, but the rest of the planes are pretty negotiable.

Honestly, I think that Magic the Gathering's asymmetrical Color Pie would make for a MUCH BETTER Great Wheel cosmology than D&D's own Great Wheel.

 

[TwoSix]

Thing is, I strongly dislike, if not loathe, the Great Wheel for the reasons that you love it and more. As someone who came into D&D via 3e D&D, the Great Wheel felt incredibly boring and artificial to me. I hated "Yggdrasil, The River Styx, Olympus, the Outlands, Sigil’s Factions, the Phlogiston and Crystal Spheres!" It didn't feel like a cosmology. It didn't feel alive. It didn't make me feel anything but a feeling to get ridding of this over-engineered trash as soon as I possibly could.

I felt inspired when Eberron created its Orrery Cosmology. That is when I felt liberated from the inorganic, mechanical, artificiality, and symmetry-obsessed Great Wheel. Then when 4e created the World Axis, it was even better for me because of its simplicity. Simplicity was bliss for me. It evoked a real sense of mythological wonder.

I'm pretty much in the middle. I love the Great Wheel, and Planescape, and I love the symmetry, even while recognizing it can be confining. But I also loved the "Planar domains sparkling like stars in the sky" aspect of the World Axis, and the god/primordial ancient conflict, and I've imported it in the Great Wheel. And I love the Eberron Orrery, which I still use for Eberron (and other homebrew worlds) and have narrative connections between them.

I'm not overly discerning, is what I'm saying. I usually manage to find joy in any new setting I've read, because there's always seeds of something I haven't used before.

 

[TwoSix]

Honestly, I think that Magic the Gathering's asymmetrical Color Pie would make for a MUCH BETTER Great Wheel cosmology than D&D's own Great Wheel.

I will say I absolutely have my own theories as to where the five colors roughly "map" onto the L-C/G-E axes.

 

[Aldarc]

I'm pretty much in the middle. I love the Great Wheel, and Planescape, and I love the symmetry,

You already lost me, and now you are forever dead to me. Our amicable time together on this board was nice while it lasted.