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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Sword of Spirit" data-source="post: 8007693" data-attributes="member: 6677017">For me, there is a tension between an open Material Plane and the definiteness of other planes. If you have a wide open Material Plane full of endless realms and genres, does it make sense to have the same Outer Planes, or even the same Inner (Elemental, Energy) Planes? Maybe a pulpy Buck Rogers visiting Sigil makes sense, but there are a whole lot of other settings where it just doesn't make sense to have the same Outer Planes and Inner Planes (or even the Ethereal and Astral Plane) exist. The further you get from standard fantasy D&D the less those planes fit. I mean, it doesn't even make sense that completely different realities would all for some reason share the same Elemental Plane of Fire.While in general I'm not a fan of most 3e cosmology stuff, I think a wide open Material Plane requires taking a page out of it. In 3e, every setting was its own multiverse, so all of the planes could be completely different. They had the Plane of Shadow as a potential way of traveling between different multiverses.I'm not entirely certain from the articles what your preference is regarding how you do those planes or how you envisioned them being done in the early days. Manual of the Planes was at least pretty specific in making them concrete places with definite locations that you could presumably visit from any campaign setting, and I think you indicated that was the book where you started seeing the changes you don't like, so perhaps you just kept the other planes as more vaguely defined. But what level of definition of planes really works for an open and unlimited set of alternate realms in the Material World? I'd think you'd almost need to go 3e style for it to work.So I guess one thing I'm trying to get at is that I don't think you can just open up the Material Plane without treating the rest of the planes in a similar manner--ie, going back to the 3e model of every setting is its own unique multiverse.What it seems like they have been doing in 5e is taking the baseline of the 2e Multiverse, and doing the following:1) Cosmological models are models, and it's difficult to say which, if any is objectively true. The Great Wheel is a popular way of viewing things, but there are other ways also.2) Some crystal spheres have "planes" within them. (I'm not sure how the Eberron book actually phrases it.)3) They are trying to allow for any setting they publish to fit within the multiverse somewhere.Personally, I'm fan of the Spelljammer/Planescape Multiverse and the explicitly D&D IP. I just have no use for D&D outside of its own IP--there are so many other RPGs out there to play with that I'd rather D&D be about something and do that one thing (even when that thing is as wide as a Multiverse), rather than try to be an Ur-Game to cover all RPGing needs, which it isn't very good at. A lot of people want something completely different from their D&D though.</blockquote>

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