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D&D Cosmology: the old and the new. Where do you stand?

D&D Cosmology: the old and the new. Where do you stand?



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Very few of my campaigns have involved planar travel, in part BECAUSE I dislike the Great Wheel. I've had campaigns involve Faerie before, and sometimes to parallel universes, but didn't consider these 'planar adventuring.' I've occasionally GMed expeditions to the elemental planes, and, IIRC, maybe once or twice to the actual outer planes. Didn't like the latter any better in play than I did reading about them. :P

I suppose technically, I GMed an adventure in Dal Quor (Eberron's plane of dreams), but it was in a Spelljammer campaign, the players didn't know that was what happened, and if the campaign had continued in that direction they would have found it wasn't 'planar adventuring' so much as 'subconscious astral projection to a highly morphic space.'

I've done quite a bit more planar adventuring as a player, and never cared for it.

Oh, and things FROM the Far Realms are often involved, but PCs have never gone there.

In 4e terms, I'll likely do more 'planar adventuring' because Faerie (er, the Feywild :\) is considered an outer plane.
 

Wormwood said:
And thanks for making this a public poll.
Certainly, I figured it would be a good way to see how a DM's past related to their stance on the new.

Also, I wanted to see which discordian types voted for the two instructional lines of the poll.

Hobo said:
EVERY poll should be public. How else can we know who deserves to be thoroughly mocked for their opinions?
:lol:

[I've always heard about people spraying drink on their keyboard, but thought it was just hyperbole. This one actually made me put my hand over my mouth to prevent that very thing.]
 

RPG_Tweaker said:
[EDIT: I wondered how long it would take until someone selected the two instruction lines as part of the poll... only 7! :lol: ]
And the bonus of this poll is: we get to see who the incompetents are!
 

I've almost always used the Great Wheel, but I'm intrigued by the new cosmology... it it turns out to be well done, it will be another option for me to consider. I must also add that I plan to play 4e from scratch, without converting an existing campaign... still, should I change my mind, I would certainly retain the Great Wheel in a converted campaign.
 

I've used the Great Wheel whenever I've played a homebrewed setting and played planescape for a short campaign. Currently I DM Eberron and use the Eberron Cosmology.

I think the new Cosmology sounds quite of cool. A less symetric approach might be less constraining to designers (who obviously in the past often created monsters just to fill certain planes/planar roles to mirror other alignment-outsiders/elementals).

I think I can do better though and since I already aim to have a system tailored homebrew ready for the release of 4th, it will come with its own cosmology.
 


I prefer a more ill-defined, mysterious cosmology that can't simply be reduced to a bunch of alignments and elements. Yawn.

I want a cosmology that defies a simple explanation and gives me more freedom to develop my own view. I may want a plane full of fire elementals and angels, or a plane of giants' souls.

This new cosmology looks like it can do that.
 

In the past I've used the Great Wheel, but it never sat well with me. So in my new homebrew I've thrown the wheel out and am developing my own. As my homebrew is something that I'm building as needed much of it will remain a vague cloud. Right now I have two "solid" planes", Angraza - AKA the Plane of Shadow, home of the sole Evil Deity and his servants and Hamistagan - home of all the other Deities and their servants. I wanted to go with a more Greek/Norse approach (I'm sure there are others) where the gods weren't confined to a particular plane. My cosmology has all the non-evils interacting and living among each other (though they certainly have control of their own areas of Hamistagan) with even a few of the evil servants visiting on occasion. As a side note (I don't believe my players read this) Hamistagan is also the name of the single moon, it's no coincidence.
 

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