D&D 4E 4E Devils vs. Demons article

[Simia Saturnalia]

That would be a terrible argument, if it had been the one I made.

But I don't think it looks silly. There is something cool about the interaction of primal Chaos, ultimate Law, pure Evil and pure Good. The particular configuration of 17 planes, in and of itself, isn't either good or bad. But the vivid landscapes described by Jeff Grubb in the original MotP? Very cool.

There aren't any boring or silly parts.

Let's accept for the moment that yes, you find it vivid. Also accepting that others find cramming a handful of historical cultural afterworlds together in a big wheel together with some places named after historical cultural afterworlds but looking nothing like them and some other completely weird places to be very boring and silly. Which would make it precisely that argument as I - and presumably they - read it.

Though thank you for reinforcing the "good because it's old" theory.

 

[Nahat Anoj]

Tradition for the sake of tradition is as lame as change for the sake of change.

Thus is it written.

 

[Ripzerai]

DM: This planar adventure takes place in Pandemonium.
Player: Which one, the Great Wheel Pandemonium, or the Astral Sea Pandemonium?
DM: Considering that they're identical, who the heck cares?

And, insofar as I suspect they will be identical, I'm not worried about Pandemonium. But some planes will change - will there still be a Blood War (which was and remains an excellent generator of plot ideas) if the Abyss is firmly separated from the Hells? Will the Abyss still as fun if there aren't tempter demons lusting after mortal souls?

I'm not having histrionics here. I'm not panicking or whining. I'm speaking, mostly, in the abstract.

I'm saying, yes: there is value in preserving traditions. Yes, purely because they are traditions, they are valuable.

This doesn't mean that something is good because it's old. But something that's traditional is more valuable, in many ways, than something that is not. Tradition is a reason to preserve something - one of many. It's not a deal-breaker, but it's something that should always be considered.

What would a Greyhawk setting even look like?

That's a whole 'nuther can of worms. It's being discussed right now on the Canonfire! boards, if you're interested.

If it's identical to the old Greyhawk stuff, people will complain that it's just reprinted material that they could get out of the older books.

There's something to be said for organizing it better and putting it in an attractively illustrated hardcover. Greyhawk has never gotten a full-color, solidly bound thing of prettiness like FR and Eberron have. There's something to be said for simply putting it back into print so that new gamers will be more likely to be exposed to it.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Let's accept for the moment that yes, you find it vivid. Also accepting that others find cramming a handful of historical cultural afterworlds together in a big wheel together with some places named after historical cultural afterworlds but looking nothing like them and some other completely weird places to be very boring and silly. Which would make it precisely that argument as I - and presumably they - read it.

There's the thing with having an infinite number of worlds out there, with an infinite amount of cultures. The thing is that if some of them do share afterworlds, they aren't all going to resemble one cultures idea of what that afterworld is. Even followers of the same god can have vastly different views on what their god wants, and the rewards/punishments they get.

I don't mind the changes to the cosmology as much I dislike the change to Demons and Devils, since that's harder to work around.

 

[Ripzerai]

You lose something without having objective anchors defining the forces of the multiverse. If Fire is just a bubble in a sea of chaos held together by the will of powerful beings, then it isn't real in the sense that it is in a cosmology with a Plane of Fire holding it up as one of the building blocks of the cosmos. This is even more true with positive and negative energy, or Good and Evil, or even things like the Quasielemental Plane of Vacuum (Elemental nothingness! How cool is that? I've loved the idea since I saw The Neverending Story).

When the cosmology is ruled over by great poles that define it, everything is realer and more important. It takes on a vaster, more crucial scale if the Balance is a real force in its own right, defined by its own plane, as are the various forces it balances - Earth and Sky, Water and Fire, Good and Evil.

I like that Evil isn't just a collection of evil deities' realms, but a Force, a Thing, that deities and fiends are only aspects of. I love that this is true of Law, and positive energy, and Good. I love that the Beastlands are the home of the archetypes of all animals, not just a place where a bunch of powerful animal lords happen to dwell.

The only thing that's really objective in this cosmology is Chaos. Which is nice, but I want more.

In Rich Baker's vision, everything is much more subjective and muddy. There's no great cosmic pole of Evil - there's a thousand little pocket domains that may or may not be in the same place.

That's a huge, huge difference in feel. It's more different in the Elemental Chaos than it is in the Astral Sea, of course, but it's different everywhere. And I think it's important.

 

[Cam Banks]

It's misleading to act as if the 3e Dragonlance cosmology is the same as the 1e one. It isn't. It's a new and simplified thing.

I don't believe that's the case. One can easily lump all worlds into the Great Wheel schema, which was the point of it after all, but Dragonlance continuity upholds the notion of a universe or cosmos created in its entirety by the High God and those gods he brought forth into it from Beyond. The dwelling places of the gods and those souls that remain behind as their servants after death are not located in this Beyond, meaning that they are within a separate and self-contained universe all on its own.

DLA doesn't rule out visitors from other worlds "far removed" from Krynn, but it makes pains to keep this rare and indeed seal those visitors off from any path back home. Krynn's gods are the only gods that have any influence, and one imagines that if they were sharing real estate with the gods from other worlds this wouldn't be nearly as big a deal.

Essentially, one should consider it this way: if your intent is to run a Dragonlance campaign, then the information in Manual of the Planes (and, later, Planescape, Spelljammer, Ravenloft et al) is not part of the continuity that's dealt with. If your intent is to run a multiversal campaign, or a Planescape/SJ/Ravenloft campaign, then Krynn is just one world in a vast array of others, linked together in whatever connection you like (planes, the Mists, crystal spheres, etc.)

That's at least how it's always been considered. I'm as much a stickler for the intent behind design as what makes it onto the page, and this sort of metatheory drives a great deal of what we've done and continue to do.

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Cam Banks]

In Rich Baker's vision, everything is much more subjective and muddy. There's no great cosmic pole of Evil - there's a thousand little pocket domains that may or may not be in the same place.

How is this different from a hundred Gods of Death, Gods of Murder, Gods of Thievery, etc that the Great Wheel supposes? Do they all form a union? Is objective Good and Evil necessary? What if each world has its own pantheon to define what that Good and Evil means or entails? That seems to be what's being implied with Rich Baker's explanation - in each campaign world, the astral dominions will vary, and those that are specific to the campaign in question are the only ones that matter (or, indeed, exist).

Cheers,
Cam

 

[Ripzerai]

How is this different from a hundred Gods of Death, Gods of Murder, Gods of Thievery, etc that the Great Wheel supposes?

It's fundamentally different, because they have common Forces behind them. Evil, Chaos, Law, Balance, Shadow, Radiance.

Maybe it's because you're probably more accustomed to thinking of the gods as the center of the cosmology, that you aren't seeing the difference. The Gods aren't important to me. They didn't make the multiverse and they don't define it. They merely live in it.

The great Forces, though - their absence makes a huge difference to things, just as their presence does.

My issue, here, is people who claim that things can really be just the same with the new set-up. They can be very similar, but they'll be inevitably different in many ways.

Is objective Good and Evil necessary?

I never used the word "necessary," but there's no doubt that a cosmology with objective Good and Evil is fundamentally different from one that lacks this.

What if each world has its own pantheon to define what that Good and Evil means or entails?

Then Good and Evil mean nothing to the cosmos as a whole. Then, for example, someone might be LG on an Aztec world and become LE on Toril.

Then on a world with multiple pantheons, like Oerth and Toril, alignment is even more confusing. Someone who's LE in the Flanaess could become LG in Hepmonaland.

 

[Shemeska]

How is this different from a hundred Gods of Death, Gods of Murder, Gods of Thievery, etc that the Great Wheel supposes?

They didn't represent an objective, tangible Evil. They were (for lack of a better term) the mortal conception of various flavors of vice and evil writ large and given substance, while the fiends were manifestations of an older or more primal abstract evil.

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

That's a whole 'nuther can of worms. It's being discussed right now on the Canonfire! boards, if you're interested.

Thanks for the link!