D&D 5E 5e/Next Cosmology

[Ratskinner]

Personally, I only paid much attention to the Great Wheel when I was running Planescape. Good fun, there, but I don't really want it for my other campaigns.

I think that tools and advice on making a cosmology are far more important than any default cosmology that I'm likely to ignore. New DMs will need to know more about how to design a campaign where X or Y is common or uncommon than about where Bytopia fits on the alignment wheel. While I realize that tic-tac-toe alignments are going to be "default", I don't plan on using them much, myself, so the Great Wheel kinda falls apart, for me.

 

[Viking Bastard]

Few thoughts:

• The idea of a proper planar toolkit is neat. I like toolkits.
• I like the Great Wheel (huge PS fan). I also like 4e's cosmology. I use bits and pieces from both in my game.
• In general, I find 4e's cosmos better as an attachment to a normal fantasy campaign, but the Great Wheel as more interesting as it's own thing.
• It's much easier to explain the 4e cosmology bits to my players.
• I miss some of the metaphysical aspects of the Great Wheel.

 

[Steely_Dan]

One thing I absolutely hated about Planescape was the half-assed cockney rhyming slang ripped off to use in Sigil.

It's not cockney rhyming slang (it's just slang), cockney rhyming slang is phrases such as "apples and pears" (stairs), "me old China" (plate = mate), "Sherman" (tank = yank) etc.

 

[Steely_Dan]

An' in all this, the Ethereal - she just winked out of existence. No one knows where she's gone or what 'appened to 'er. Tha' ghosts that used to haunt it 'ave all moved on to the Shadowfell and the rest seem to 'ave been dropped into the Astral, all acting like there never was an Ethereal at all.

Ha, very cool, but the Ethereal is in the 4th Ed cosmology (and 5th).

 

[Mattachine]

It's not cockney rhyming slang (it's just slang), cockney rhyming slang is phrases such as "apples and pears" (stairs), "me old China" (plate = mate), "Sherman" (tank = yank) etc.

That makes it even worse, since then it isn't even clever, but only derivative.

 

[Steely_Dan]

That makes it even worse, since then it isn't even clever, but only derivative.

Worse in your subjective opinion.

Most things are derived.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Just give me room to use the BECMI cosmology and I'll be in heaven…




…cosmologically speaking…

 

[Steely_Dan]

Just give me room to use the BECMI cosmology and I'll be in heaven…




…cosmologically speaking…

Cool, did they separate Dimensions (Nightmare etc) from Planes?

 

[avin]

Welcome back Great Wheel!

Now bring back Planescape!

Anyway, I salute Wotc's idea of giving DMs tools for using whatever cosmology they like.

 

[Stormonu]

Ha, very cool, but the Ethereal is in the 4th Ed cosmology (and 5th).

This is my own cosmology mish-mash, and I find the Ethereal to be rather redundant .

Thanks fer taking the time to read it though .

 

[Yora]

Anyway, I salute Wotc's idea of giving DMs tools for using whatever cosmology they like.

Like in 3rd Edition?

I have to say MotP is the only d20 book I still have other than 3.5e core rulebooks.

 

[avin]

Like in 3rd Edition?

I have to say MotP is the only d20 book I still have other than 3.5e core rulebooks.

3rd edition used a version of The Great Wheel.

Looking that way, 4E does a better job in it's MotP, there are guidelines for using TGW.

 

[howandwhy99]

I don't really want more canon. Or the necessity of planes, if I don't want 'em.

I want examples I can drop in, if I like them, but also inspire me to create my own. Something that says: here's how we did a city, a dungeon, a cosmology.

If one of the players says "I want Elminister to be in the campaign" that doesn't mean we have to quit the current and play Forgotten Realms.

 

[pemerton]

I liked 4e's cosmology fine enough, but the idea of burning all that had come before and re-building it from the ground up was very evident there

Huh? There is a page devoted to the Great Ring in the 4e MotP, which also makes it fairly obvious how much of what game before continues into 4e (The Abyss, the Hells, Mt Celestia, Carceri, etc). Not to mention all the Planescape, faction-y stuff (and Sigil itself) popping up all over the 4e planar stuff.

Obviously some stuff was changed, but it was hardly a case of "burning all that came before".

D&D needs a baseline, for many years the great wheel was that baseline. For many D&D isn't D&D without it.

But it wasn't part of B/X. Nor was it part of Oriental Adventures (which assumed a Celesital Bureaucracy). Nor Krynn (at least in the Dragonlance Adventures incarnation).

Originally it was just an appendix in the PHB, although taken further in Deities and Demigods and then Manual of the Planes. It was only sometime during the 2nd ed era that it took on its current status, I think.

The cosmologies are about different things. The Great Wheel cosmology is a metaphysical cosmology about Your Place In The Universe. The 4e World Axis Cosmology is about interesting and challenging places to visit.

I think you're right about the Great Wheel, although moreso, I think, as developed by Planescape, than as it appearedin PHB Appendix IV.

On 4e, I would add - it's not just about interesting and challenging places to visit, but it's about visiting those places mattering to the fate of the world.

One thing I absolutely hated about Planescape was the half-assed cockney rhyming slang ripped off to use in Sigil.
It would similar to a British company making a fantastic world where Bronx slang was used.

Yes. I never really understood the rationale for this. (I'm Anglo/Irish-Australian, so some of that slang is part of my childhood vocabulary. What's it doing in Sigil?)

 

[stonegod]

As someone else said, cosmology is tied to setting: The Great Wheel (where alignment really matters) makes little sense in Eberron (where it doesn't or is subverted).

 

[Tovec]

Huh? There is a page devoted to the Great Ring in the 4e MotP, which also makes it fairly obvious how much of what game before continues into 4e (The Abyss, the Hells, Mt Celestia, Carceri, etc). Not to mention all the Planescape, faction-y stuff (and Sigil itself) popping up all over the 4e planar stuff.

What page is the stuff about the pre-4e cosmology? I don't doubt you but I'm not going to read the whole 4e MotP to find it. I do see a section on Sigil but I've played 3.X for many years and never even encountered word one of Sigil so that really doesn't matter to me.

However, compare the chapters of the book. 4e MotP:
1. Exploring the Planes
2. The Feywild
3. The Shadowfell
4. The Elemental Chaos
5. The Astral Sea
6. Monsters of the Planes
7. Planar Characters (which includes magic items)

Vs. 3e MotP:
1. Nature of the Planes
2. Connecting the Planes
3. Characters and Magic
4. The Material Plane
5. The Transitive Planes
6. The Inner Planes
7. The Outer Planes
8. Demiplanes (which includes non-standard planes)
9. Monsters

But it wasn't part of B/X. Nor was it part of Oriental Adventures (which assumed a Celesital Bureaucracy). Nor Krynn (at least in the Dragonlance Adventures incarnation).

I did say that it needs a baseline. If you happened to quote a bit more of that paragraph you would have included the part where I said that elves, drow and orcs are all the baseline creatures with baseline alignments. You can THEN vary from that to create something new and those baseline creatures can also be tossed as needed. The same applies to planes, so when you encounter a world that doesn't deal with those planes it is perfectly fine to toss them, but for most games they are going to be present in some form.

I even consider 4e to be one of those forms, as they are very similar in a lot of ways. My comments about DnD had the great wheel for a while still applies regardless of when the wheel was first introduces. To a lot of people DnD isn't DnD without a lot of little details. The more of those you toss or replace for little or no reason the more you start to stray from what people consider the core or baseline of DnD. That is fine to do from time to time, new races are cool. But rarely does everyone get on board about changing everything all at once. Recognizing this is a step in remedying it. It doesn't mean they have to think all the changes were bad but it does mean they have to realize they weren't all universally accepted either. It doesn't mean that they are trying to anger 4e fans but it does mean that several changes which 4e fans herald aren't widely accepted outside of the 4e fanbase - including this new cosmology.

Yes. I never really understood the rationale for this. (I'm Anglo/Irish-Australian, so some of that slang is part of my childhood vocabulary. What's it doing in Sigil?)

The only thing I can think of is some people want a pseudo-industrial citystate to play around in. It is kind of like the Legend of Korra setting, where it is clearly a mishmash of a lot of different cultures in the 1920-1930s most notably New York and Hong Kong (if I remember the press releases correctly). The new vocab might be part of that. A couple posts back someone mentioned it sounding like the Bronx, that is an element of it I think.
I could be equally off-base, having never actually encounter Sigil (or traditional planescape) in game.

 

[pemerton]

What page is the stuff about the pre-4e cosmology?

Page 15 sets out the Great Wheel using 4e terminology and tropes. The biggest mechanical changes are making Demons immortal rather than elemental, and adding the ethereal plane.

But Planescape elements (eg the recent history of the Nine Hells, various factions with their planar bases and agendas, etc) are spread throughout the book (and other 4e plane books also).

 

[Stormonu]

Yes. I never really understood the rationale for this. (I'm Anglo/Irish-Australian, so some of that slang is part of my childhood vocabulary. What's it doing in Sigil?)

I have no solid evidence, but my thought was Sigil's chant was based on Victorian England criminal slang. The development articles in Dragon back when the campaign setting was being released might have more info.

 

[pemerton]

I have no solid evidence, but my thought was Sigil's chant was based on Victorian England criminal slang.

Yes it is. My point was that, for some of us, that slang (or at least elements of it) are still part of our everyday vocabulary. (A lot of Victorian England criminals found themselves in Australia, after all!)

For example, when I was a kid, "berk" was a term I used pretty regularly to describe a dickhead. Now I just use the more expletive form without needing to worry about parental disapproval, but I still think as the word as an ordinary part of my vocabulary.)

That's why it's weird to see it used in this fantasy RPG context.

 

[Shemeska]

Here's the thing though. Like its use or not, the thing is, you remember it. It's one of the quirks that makes Sigil a memorable location, and it's still here with us more than a decade, nearing two decades after it came out.

I happen to adore Sigilian cant, though in-game I only use it for characters from Sigil itself rather than anyone else out on the planes except for a bit for those from the Gatetowns linked to the City of Doors.

As for Sigil itself, thankfully as I recall it, Michelle Carter really pushed hard for its inclusion in the 4e MotP, otherwise we might not have gotten it in 4e. Likewise, a number of writers went out of their way to bring as many bits of the Great Wheel cosmology in terms of NPCs and locations alike into the 4e cosmology. The concepts varied in how they translated from the Wheel to the very different at times 4e cosmology, but they were well liked originally and it wasn't surprising to see those things come back in one form or another over time even if they were initially absent.

Tentatively it looks like we'll be seeing much more of a return of those classic PS / Great Wheel elements, and hopefully in their original cosmological context. This is a very -very- good sign in my opinion.