D&D 5E 4E Cosmology

[pukunui]

I’ve long been toying with the idea of ditching the multitude of planes for something much simpler, like a singular spirit world a la the Avatar cartoons and the Dragon Age series.

4e’s Astral Sea with its dominions is similar but then you’ve still got the other planes Iike the Feywild, the Shadowfell, and so on.

 

[Charlaquin]

Love World Axis cosmology. It’s so much more usable than Great Wheel.

 

[dave2008]

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!

I liked the 4e cosmology quite a bit (and really like its lore), but I grew up on the great wheel so I like how 5e combines the two generally. I have my own take (The cosmology of the Wheel and the Aether), but it has evolved, much like 5e, to be more like 4e over time.

@GusNBru , just wanted to check in make sure you understand that the 5e version of the wheel has incorporated a lot of the world axis cosmology such as:

• Elemental chaos
• Feywild
• Shadowfell
• Astral Sea - which has dominion similar to 4e (see below)

You can see from the image below that various planes are even represented very similar to "domains" floating in the astral sea as they were in 4e.

 

[dave2008]

Like...this is a universe where Chaos exists, and is trying to break everything down....

And the forces of Law push against it

and yet it plays perfectly nice with everyone else, stays in its lane, and participates exactly as it should in the pristine clockwork of the universe where there is a place for everything and everything has its place. It just...doesn't make sense, cosmologically.

Why do you come to that conclusion? I wouldn't have the conclusion in the world axis or the current version of the wheel. That seems like your own bias or misunderstanding than the fundamental nature of the cosmos. I mean, it can be interrupted that way, but I certainly wouldn't

The fact that the Great Wheel is also almost actively antagonistic to the concept of "playable, adventurable locations" is just as bad, of course. But the above has always bothered me so, so much.

I don't agree with that, but I haven't adventured a lot in the planes in any edition of D&D. For me, 4e was not different from 1e or 5e in that respect.

 

[dave2008]

Love World Axis cosmology. It’s so much more usable than Great Wheel.

I too like the World Axis, but I never understand this statement. The Great Wheel doesn't seem any more or less usable than the World Axis to me. I mean everything that exists in the World Axis exists in the Great Wheel. So how can the Great Wheel be less usable? Is it because the Wheel has areas that are not very playable too?

 

[dave2008]

A setting that is legitimately both the World Axis and the Great Wheel.

What you seem to have here is "The Great Wheel with some extra stuff attached." That doesn't look like you've found a way to make the rather dissonant principles of the two cosmologies work together.

Like, if I took the World Axis and said that all of the alignment planes are really there, but as Astral Dominions, I wouldn't say that that "incorporates both." It fundamentally is the World Axis, it just allows players to visit some of the Great Wheel locations outside the context of the Great Wheel proper.

You do realize the "Great Wheel" is not physically a thing, correct. Each plane is not physically connected to each other in wheel. They can be "domains" floating in the Astral sea.

 

[dave2008]

My preference is for cosmology to be as vague as possible, with millions of planes out there, each with their own weird stuff going on. Something like the 70s Hulk comics where he got banished to "the Crossroads" and kept wandering around having weird otherwordly encounters. Within this multitude, there's certainly room for local agglomerations of planes that provide some sort of structure, such as Yggdrasil connecting the planes of Norse mythology, but I want the overall multiverse to be weird and unpredictable.

The World Axis kinda gives you that if you squint a little. The Great Wheel... is an exercise in box-filling that doesn't even come close.

I actually think the Great Wheel can fit into your very BECMI approach to cosmology. The planes of the wheel are metaphysically connected, but not actually connected. Here is what the 2024 DMG says:

"Since the primary way of traveling from plane to plane is through magical portals, the spatial relationship between different planes is largely theoretical. No being in the multiverse can look down and see the planes arranged like a diagram in a book. No mortal can verify whether Mount Celestia is sandwiched between Bytopia and Arcadia; rather, this theoretical positioning is based on the philosophical shading among the three planes and the relative importance they give to law and good."

So you can easily have a few of many millions of planes and the planes of the wheel (or even the layers of those planes) are just some of them that have been found and connected (or not) via portals and such. Seems to fit in just fine to me.

 

[Aldarc]

At this point, this thread feels less like a 4e Cosmology thread and more like a "@dave2008 gets defensive about the Great Wheel" thread.

 

[dave2008]

At this point, this thread feels less like a 4e Cosmology thread and more like a "@dave2008 gets defensive about the Great Wheel" thread.

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.

To be clear, I don't think the Great Wheel is any better than the World Axis or World Tree or any other cosmology.* If I had to pick the Great Wheel or the World Axis, I would probably pick the World Axis. However, I would do that primarily because I prefer the lore behind it more, not because it is a superior cosmology. As I noted previously, my preference is a version of the marriage of the wheel and the axis that 5e as being move towards (with my own wrinkles thrown in of course).

Spoiler: * caveat

With one exception: spelljammer. The idea of crystal spheres and the pholgiston never made any sense to me. But I never dug to deep into that setting.

 

[Mind of tempest]

I'm World Axis Gang

I even add Jotunhiem (aka BIG Land) and Dragonspire (aka Brilliant Treasureland) as additional echo Planes.

Half the alignment planes are utterly useless gameplay and story wise,

those do not feel like they lend them selves to setting or anything