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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tovec" data-source="post: 5981619" data-attributes="member: 95493">Actually, it would be closer to say "D&D is not D&D without Dragonborn" but my point still remained. I think it is silly to take a statement like "D&D is not D&D without the great wheel" and extrapolate it to mean that the great wheel is the only way to play D&D or to extrapolate it to mean that if you are playing D&D without the great wheel you are doing it wrong OR to extrapolate it to mean that the great wheel was best and 4e sucks. I think it is fair to say that some people disliked the 4e cosmology and that those same people perhaps preferred the great wheel. I'm not putting words in the authors mouth to say exactly what I just said because that is exactly how that article reads, it also seems to be the general sentiment coming out from WotC lately given 5e.Again, it isn't about that. It is about D&D having a base that some people liked, and that that base is very D&D. Without that base it is not D&D to some people. An individual game (campaign/setting/home game) can lack orcs and elves and drow, but that doesn't make it less D&D. If the whole GAME (system/D&D's actual rules) lacked elves, orcs and drow then we would be questioning what happened, and I think rightly so.We both seem to agree about what I said in my last post, 4e took the 3e cosmology, smashed it with a hammer and reassembled using the same pieces. I object to them not evolving it, they only changed it. You perhaps object to them not starting over from scratch. In some ways I would prefer them starting from scratch. It is when you take the same pieces and rebuild them in a configuration that is completely alien to me (and those who liked and understood the previous version) then you come into troubles. Either you have to evolve or you have to completely restart it, reworking it and calling it new only hurts people.I don't really get your point here. I wasn't (and I'm not) saying the great wheel should stay as it is. I've changed it plenty in my games while keeping the same basic structure. I've added and removed planes and changed how entire aspects work. That breaks down when suddenly everything is an entirely new shape without explanation of how it got there. Especially to long time players who expect things to work a certain way.If you are going to make something new then do it full board. *grumbles* new 52 *grumbles*I think that incorporation of cosmology into setting can work. I don't think it universally works, which is my issue. I think that I don't want my gods on mount olympus, hell I don't even want all my gods in the same heaven necessarily. It all depends on how the planes are used and more importantly how spells interact with them. That is an area which I definitely think the designers have fallen down on the job instead of thinking it through or inventing something new. Some spells to access the planes become too good, summon things too easily or readily. To me those are much more important areas to discuss then the metaphysical shape of the worlds beyond our own.We agree then.Would it make sense to talk about the planes in eberron without talking about eberron? That is what I mean. I think that it is a flaw to talk about planes without talking about the "normal" world they interact with. I said before that I think they need to think more about how spells interact with the planes they should spend much more time thinking about how the world works first, how it needs to interact with the planes. If mortal souls don't go to an afterlife without paying the way then that is a very different cosmology than if they are sent there within seconds of death. If the world is an ancient egyptian one then the planes are going to interact very differently than one with psudo-christian goodies and baddies. I would then expect jackal-headed gods riding chariots of fire to light the day, instead of ones sitting in a glorious hall of the dead. I don't need 18 kinds of demons and devils (fiends in general) if the evils are great snakes and crocodiles. That is what I mean by I think it is a flaw to discuss planes without the material world.9 times out of 10 I couldn't care less what the planes look like as long as spells work the way I expect them to. 9/10 I won't be dealing with the planes at all, except when creatures are summoned from there. So 9/10 times I couldn't care less if the planes are metaphysically a wheel, or a soup, or if the world is just one pond of many in an endless grove of trees (which I've actually used). That 1/10 times they had better get the details right, I need ethereal to act a certain way, for example.</blockquote>

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