D&D (2024) Check Out The New Map Of D&D's Planes!

Snapped from the Barbarian video.

 

[Scribe]

Meh, more of the same AFAIC.

Asmodeus is always the head of Hell. Demons always come from the Abyss. Every setting has exactly the same planes to access (barring a few exceptions like Eberron - which still has 99% of the Great Wheel shoveled into it.)

I long ago gave up on planar stuff in D&D because it's frozen in 1992 and not allowed to make any changes.

Ah well. At least I can pretty much ignore all of that and only use the Far Realms.

I thought the 4e one was different in fundamental ways that fixes a lot of other peoples issues with the Great Wheel?

I mean yeah Asmodeus stays and all that (I guess?) but yeah.

 

[AnotherGuy]

Oooh, slipped world tree in there. Curious how you fit it into your cosmology

This quote from the FR wiki on the World Tree Cosmology page explains how I use it:

By the late years of the 15th century DR, some sages began to use again the World Tree cosmology model, despite the fact that other sages preferred to use the Great Wheel or the World Axis models.

In essence sages and scholars offer conjectures and opinions within the fiction. The characters are unsure as to who has the right of it regarding the cosmological debate, much like philosophical factions of Sigil and their take on the gods...etc

It becomes even more confusing when one merges the FR cosmological setting with the one in the Mystara setting. I've done some preliminary work on how it can be, but nothing has been set in stone, as yet - but we are getting to that stuff, soon as they deal with Tiamat.

 

[Hussar]

I thought the 4e one was different in fundamental ways that fixes a lot of other peoples issues with the Great Wheel?

I mean yeah Asmodeus stays and all that (I guess?) but yeah.

Was the main reason I started getting interested in 4e cosmology. Unfortunately that got completely flushed down the toilet, never to be talked of again.

 

[Staffan]

This quote from the FR wiki on the World Tree Cosmology page explains how I use it:

By the late years of the 15th century DR, some sages began to use again the World Tree cosmology model, despite the fact that other sages preferred to use the Great Wheel or the World Axis models.

In essence sages and scholars offer conjectures and opinions within the fiction. The characters are unsure as to who has the right of it regarding the cosmological debate, much like philosophical factions of Sigil and their take on the gods...etc

That's one of the reasons I prefer the World Axis cosmology as the primary one for D&D. It's fairly solid for the planes that are nearby (Feywild and Shadowfell, and slightly beyond that the Elemental Chaos), but very open-ended for the things beyond that. This makes it able to accommodate other cosmologies within itself. You want Yggdrasil? Sure, you can have a plane that consists of a cosmic-sized tree that has portals to Asgard, Jotunheim, Niffelheim, and so on. You want a celestial river connecting a variety of planar ports? Have at it. Do you want to organize a bunch of aligned planes in a circle? You do you. They're all just different limited perspectives on the vast possibilities of the multiverse.

 

[Epic Meepo]

That's one of the reasons I prefer the World Axis cosmology as the primary one for D&D. It's fairly solid for the planes that are nearby (Feywild and Shadowfell, and slightly beyond that the Elemental Chaos), but very open-ended for the things beyond that. This makes it able to accommodate other cosmologies within itself. You want Yggdrasil? Sure, you can have a plane that consists of a cosmic-sized tree that has portals to Asgard, Jotunheim, Niffelheim, and so on. You want a celestial river connecting a variety of planar ports? Have at it. Do you want to organize a bunch of aligned planes in a circle? You do you. They're all just different limited perspectives on the vast possibilities of the multiverse.

That's why I prefer the 3e Manual of the Planes to any source describing a single cosmological model. It presents the Great Wheel as one of five possible cosmologies (six if you count the sample cosmology in the "Building Your Own Cosmology" section), plus sidebars with guidance for simplifying the Great Wheel (by removing the Ethereal Plane, any number of Inner Planes, and/or any number of Outer Planes), plus descriptions of multiple planes not appearing in the Great Wheel cosmology. It even has a couple sidebars explaining how to use certain Great Wheel planes outside the Great Wheel cosmology ("Limbo, The Edge of Reality" and "Ysgard as a Material World"). I find that book much more useful than any one cosmological model presented in a vacuum. (Sorry, Planescape.)

 

[MNblockhead]

That's why I prefer the 3e Manual of the Planes to any source describing a single cosmological model. It presents the Great Wheel as one of five possible cosmologies (six if you count the sample cosmology in the "Building Your Own Cosmology" section), plus sidebars with guidance for simplifying the Great Wheel (by removing the Ethereal Plane, any number of Inner Planes, and/or any number of Outer Planes), plus descriptions of multiple planes not appearing in the Great Wheel cosmology. It even has a couple sidebars explaining how to use certain Great Wheel planes outside the Great Wheel cosmology ("Limbo, The Edge of Reality" and "Ysgard as a Material World"). I find that book much more useful than any one cosmological model presented in a vacuum. (Sorry, Planescape.)

Never played 3e, but that sounds like a great approach. I would much prefer a planes book to be about selecting from a number of sample cosmologies and guidance for creating your own, than a canonical treatment. I want a DM's tool box, not a setting.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

Never played 3e, but that sounds like a great approach. I would much prefer a planes book to be about selecting from a number of sample cosmologies and guidance for creating your own, than a canonical treatment. I want a DM's tool box, not a setting.

The 3E Manual of the Planes is a great book, with less crunch you might expect from a very crunchy system, and includes a bunch of optional planes like the Elemental Plane of Wood, the Plane of Mirrors, etc.

From a pure planar content standpoint, it's not as good as Beyond Countless Doorways or Planebreaker or any version of Planescape, but it's an excellent toolkit. Worth grabbing next time it's on sale on DMs Guild/DriveThruRPG.

 

[Azzy]

That's why I prefer the 3e Manual of the Planes to any source describing a single cosmological model. It presents the Great Wheel as one of five possible cosmologies (six if you count the sample cosmology in the "Building Your Own Cosmology" section), plus sidebars with guidance for simplifying the Great Wheel (by removing the Ethereal Plane, any number of Inner Planes, and/or any number of Outer Planes), plus descriptions of multiple planes not appearing in the Great Wheel cosmology. It even has a couple sidebars explaining how to use certain Great Wheel planes outside the Great Wheel cosmology ("Limbo, The Edge of Reality" and "Ysgard as a Material World"). I find that book much more useful than any one cosmological model presented in a vacuum. (Sorry, Planescape.)

Yeah, the 3e Manual of the Planes was a great book that had me inspired to make custom cosmologies for my homebrew settings. Personally, I hope the DMG will talk about creating custom cosmologies when it discusses creating your own setting. But I doubt that will happen because they are really trying to make the Great Wheel and the Multiverse happen.

 

[Yaarel]

That's one of the reasons I prefer the World Axis cosmology as the primary one for D&D. It's fairly solid for the planes that are nearby (Feywild and Shadowfell, and slightly beyond that the Elemental Chaos), but very open-ended for the things beyond that. This makes it able to accommodate other cosmologies within itself. You want Yggdrasil? Sure, you can have a plane that consists of a cosmic-sized tree that has portals to Asgard, Jotunheim, Niffelheim, and so on. You want a celestial river connecting a variety of planar ports? Have at it. Do you want to organize a bunch of aligned planes in a circle? You do you. They're all just different limited perspectives on the vast possibilities of the multiverse.

This 4e fluidity is still possible in 5e ... when ... the alignment planes and different parts of an alignment plane can appear as a floating island within the 5e Astral Sea. The island is bigger on the inside up close than it is from the outside from a distance. Each "dominion" is an Astral island. A dominion can be any concept, not just an ethical alignment. So there are many unaligned dominions. All related concepts have their islands linking and networking to each other to form massive and complex planes.

Because Astral distances are nonphysical and depend on how closely related various concepts are, the concept one is focusing on is what determines how far away an other concept. So the appearance of the Astral Sea is like the results of a search engine prompt. (The spelljammer helm helps sort thru to navigate the peculiar properties of the Astral realm of thought.)

Concepts like "world tree", "world axis", and so on, are different paradigms to navigate the networks of Astral dominions. Almost any conceptual model is possible. Each model makes some dominions more relevant and others less, and fails to access potentially infinite dominions.

The Astral Plane and its Sea is inherently fluid. Any cosmology can be there − it depends on what each mind is looking for. Meanwhile every culture or subculture and its collective organizing paradigms form a Astral dominion. Every point of view exists within the Astral Plane.

 

[Yaarel]

It is possible to reconcile the 4e World Axis cosmology with the 5e Astral Plane cosmology.

Notably, 4e lacks the Ethereal Plane. Nevertheless, both Feywild and the Shadowfell are inferrably aspects of the Ethereal Plane. Positive Fey and Negative Shadow relate moreso to life and death, respectively. But there can plausibly be a neutrally mixed aspect of the 4e Ether that relates to matter itself, and by which one accesses the Elemental Chaos. To some degree the 4e Elemental Chaos is the 4e Ethereal Plane, albeit there are gradations where the "shallow" Chaos would be moreorless the same as the Material Plane that it overlaps, but then as one planeshifts deeper into Elemental Chaos, the Material Plane increasingly distorts, heightening the properties of the states of matter, until disconnecting entirely from the Material Plane. At the extremity, the "Deep Ether" and the full-on Elemental Chaos become the same thing. Note, there is a region of the Deep Ether where mainly immaterial Ether prevails.

In 4e, the Chaotic Evil alignment plane, namely the demonic Abyss, locates within the Elemental Chaos, not within the Astral Sea. To reconcile this with 5e, the Abyss actually is within Astral Sea. However, when one is using the World Axis to navigate the Astral thoughtscape, one cannot access the Abyss directly. One must detour to a Chaotic Evil conceptual link to somewhere within the Elemental Chaos, perhaps a faction of Elementals who are nihilist, who oppose the use of matter by others − a kind of existential, anarchical, terrorism. From this location in the Elemental Chaos, their cultural symbols and customs link to locations in the Abyss. Probably 5e players wont bother going thru such a detour to get to the Abyss. But a special relationship between a faction of Elementals with Fiend Demons might be an interesting location in the Elemental Chaos. The 4e-ism of elementally oriented Fiends has a place within 5e.

By the way, 4e Demons are more about destroying physical matter, whereas 4e Devils are more about tempting and corrupting thoughts. 4e had a weird alignment system that I prefer to leave behind. 5e returns the ethical clash between groupist Lawful versus individualist Chaotic. In 5e, both Lawful Good and Chaotic Good exist, and the True Good, namely Neutral Good, juggles between them. Similar to the way the World Axis is unable to access the Abyss directly from the Astral Sea, it would also be unable to access the Chaotic Good plane of Arborea directly. To get to Arborea, one would need to detour thru an Eladrin faction in the Feywild to connect to the dominion of Arvandor, or perhaps detour thru a Greekesque culture in the Material Plane to get to the dominion of Olympus. As mentioned, 5e players will probably access these Astral locations directly from the Sea without detours. Nevertheless such symbolic culturally paradigmatic link between a faction and an Astral dominion are doable in 5e.