Cosmology Part II

[Baron Opal]

It would melt as fast as a icecube on a griddle. Which is to say, not only do you have to stop the demon on the iceberg before it melts or you slip off into the lava you're doing it zipping along at a 100 miles an hour.

Those suckers really slide on their cushion of water and vapor.

 

[Remathilis]

Of course, we're assuming something like real ice and real lava, not Stygian Ice surfing on a river of searing Blue Lava (the only lava hot enough to melt other lava).

If your going for fantasy, make it fantastical...

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Inner Planes was quite an interesting book, and presented plenty of places to go to and encounter in all of the 2e inner planes. Even a plane of nothingness such as the Plane of Vacuum had something there. There were strange border regions between the planes, and ever plane had it's unique challenges and hazards. And along the way they presented new spells and equipment to make surviving there possible. I don't know who saw the inner planes as boring places, they had things of importance mentioned in the books (like a citadel of colour, or places where thoughts froze), and a DM could always had more there.

I know you could probably use everything mentioned in Inner Planes in the new Elemental Tempest. But it's not that the old inner planes was ever bad for adventuring either.

 

[Alaric_Prympax]

D&D is a roleplaying game, some things in the game (like some planes of existence) are there to help roleplaying, not just to provide yet another backdrop for a combat grid.

Although I agree with you (and the rest of your post that I deleted) the current game designers don't. I guess we didn't have the right kind of fun with our own or previous elemental planes or cosmology because everywhere in the multiverse must be a fun place for the party to adventure. Nevermind actually researching new spells or creating/finding magic items that would help you survive the enviroment.

Though I must say that fighting on an iceberg in a lava flow during a hurricane while there is a mudslide happening (yeah I added those last two) does sound fun.

 

[SpiderMonkey]

Exactly.

I'd rather have a kick-ass awesome adventure than an argument about physics and chemistry.

Wormwood, if you're cool with it, I'm totally sigging this.

 

[sckeener]

I wonder where the githzerai and the Slaadi are going to go...elemental tempest sounds so much like limbo

 

[Dacileva]

Things like the planar cosmology help to flesh out the entire setting, providing flavor for role-playing, not just be another site for adventuring.

Why not have a location that can be both?

So far, other than the Ethereal and Positive/Negative planes, I cannot conceive of something that could be done in GW cosmology that can't also be done in what we've had described so far, and this cosmology has more flavor, more variety, far fuzzier boundaries (which I as a GM nearly always prefer), and a vast extensibility that the alignment-based Outer Planes and firmly geometric Inner Planes never had.

 

[Stone Dog]

I wonder where the githzerai and the Slaadi are going to go...elemental tempest sounds so much like limbo

Considering that one of the things you can find in the Tempest is a grim fortress monastery of githzerai adepts I'd say that githzerai at least are going to go over there. I'm betting on slaadi too.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

Nevermind actually researching new spells or creating/finding magic items that would help you survive the enviroment.

And do we know for sure that you don't need to do any of that in the 4th edition cosmology? I'm sure that, even if the Elemental Tempest is overall less instantly lethal (and uniformly boring) than the planes of Earth, Fire or Vacuum, there are plenty of places where traipsing around naked and unprotected is going to be really, really bad idea for even high-level characters. (The Abyss and some of Astral domains are likely also very dangerous places to go to.)

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Some people claim the old stuff was boring. I don't see it.

Some claim the new stuff has more flavour. I don't see it.

Some claim the old stuff was hard to use, while the new stuff won't be. I don't see it.

Flavour.

Taste.

That's what it comes down to. Some people can't (or wouldn't bother to) be creative with the old setup, and love the new stuff for being more "open". At the same time, they tell those who prefer the old setup that it should be "easy" to recreate to fit into the new setup.

a) Why the heck should I want my preference to "fit" into the new one that I don't like?

b) If it's so "easy" to recreate the old stuff, why don't you instead go and create the kind of Inner Planes you like with it and leave the whole thing in one piece instead of completely revamping it?

This whole discussion, from the start, is not about one concept being "better", or more anything, than the other...it's about "MY preference is in the core rules, nya nya nya!" The whole heap of "it's traditional, so it's good" and "it's fresh, so it's good" is a dance around the maypole of taste and personal preference.

I love the old setup (mostly the Inner Planes, though), I used it (and still would if I had a game right now), find it inspiring and awe-inspiring, and useful. Others hate it, found it boring and uninspiring, and chucked it out first chance they got for something else (or cursed TSR under their breath for years).

Flavour.

Taste.

Personal preference.

And nobody's going to be convinced otherwise either.