D&D General D&D's feel vs. what D&D should keep - final comparison

[Desdichado]

The funny thing is, thanks to 5E the Great Wheel basically stole some of the best ideas from the World Axis (Feywild, Shadowfell, and even a version of the Elemental Chaos). Doesn't leave the World Axis with as much distinctiveness (in terms of structure - lore is a different matter).

Feywild is both new and yet not; D&D has had faery-like planes kicking around for a long time (Elysium in particular comes to mind although a specific Feywild-like plane of faerie was an alternate in the 3rd edition Manual of the Planes. I doubt that's the first time it had appeared in D&D, although I admit I don't know off-hand of an earlier appearance), not to mention their provenance from actual folklore, that serve as prototypes for feywild. Shadowfell being radically different from (as opposed to a little bit of new development within) the plane of shadow is a hard sell too.

That said, I think what 4th edition did with them specifically were among the more popular developments of that cosmology and they were seen as salvageable in a different cosmology, whereas much of the rest of 4es cosmology hasn't been mentioned since.

 

[Sacrosanct]

A week or so ago I asked Frank Mentzer what was the one big thing, mechanically, that made D&D what it was when it came out. His answer? Using a d20. Everything prior was using d6s. So I suppose the biggest sacred cow and thing that makes D&D feel like D&D would be the d20

 

[TheSword]

I don't think that's entirely true.

I think the main issue is that whilst world axis cosmology is my favourite D&D cosmology, when I've seen it listed in polls I had NO CLUE WHATSOEVER what they were talking about and assumed it was some weird old thing.

I think if you put it as "World Axis - i.e. Feywild/Shadowfell/Elemental Chaos etc." then it would have been a hell of a lot more popular. I'm very sure I never voted for it despite loving it.

Also any time the Feywild and Shadowfell come up they're extremely popular and they're in 5E for a reason.

Interestingly most of the questions are simple keep or not. There is nothing in conflict with keeping polyhedral dice or saving throws for instance... well nothing listed in the survey.

However, the World Axis is in direct competition to the Great Wheel. So for that question people have to choose between one or the other. As far as I can see these are the only things in the game that have this. It’s quite possible it partly accounts for the lower score.

A better question would be... “Would you keep a default planar setting like the Great Wheel or World Axis.”

 

[Ruin Explorer]

A better question would be... “Would you keep a default planar setting like the Great Wheel or World Axis.”

Yeah that's a more interesting/valuable question.

D&D has an implied lore setup (from monsters, spells, etc.) that does pretty much require there to be some planes or conceptual spaces, but doesn't really require very many of them. Most of the outer and inner planes could vanish tomorrow and I suspect about 99% of campaigns would be largely unaffected (assuming gods were re-housed etc.), as could most of the elemental/para-elemental planes. The Feywild and Shadowfell contribute to this, and they do have relevance. I'm pretty sure you could get around with paring D&D down to the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the Astral Plane, an elemental space (perhaps the elemental chaos), and maybe "niceland" "mechaland" and "badland", if that.

If the answer to the question was overall no, D&D might want to look at paring back some of the frequent references to that smaller selection of planes even. It would certainly move it more towards the "generic fantasy" space a small amount.

 

[Desdichado]

Yeah that's a more interesting/valuable question.

D&D has an implied lore setup (from monsters, spells, etc.) that does pretty much require there to be some planes or conceptual spaces, but doesn't really require very many of them. Most of the outer and inner planes could vanish tomorrow and I suspect about 99% of campaigns would be largely unaffected (assuming gods were re-housed etc.), as could most of the elemental/para-elemental planes. The Feywild and Shadowfell contribute to this, and they do have relevance. I'm pretty sure you could get around with paring D&D down to the Feywild, the Shadowfell, the Astral Plane, an elemental space (perhaps the elemental chaos), and maybe "niceland" "mechaland" and "badland", if that.

If the answer to the question was overall no, D&D might want to look at paring back some of the frequent references to that smaller selection of planes even. It would certainly move it more towards the "generic fantasy" space a small amount.

While I agree with this, and it makes a kind of logical syllogistic sense, the reality is that when 4e consolidated to a niceland, badland and an otherwise easier to use structure, it seems to have gone over with the fans rather poorly. I personally quite liked it—better than just about anything else from 4e other than the points of light assumption, but I appear to have been in the minority.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

While I agree with this, and it makes a kind of logical syllogistic sense, the reality is that when 4e consolidated to a niceland, badland and an otherwise easier to use structure, it seems to have gone over with the fans rather poorly. I personally quite liked it—better than just about anything else from 4e other than the points of light assumption, but I appear to have been in the minority.

Did it though?

I mean, if we put a list of people's complaints about 4E, and a list of people's positives for 4E, I strongly suspect complaints about the planar structure would extremely low down the list of complaints, but contrastingly, positive comments about the planar structure (particularly the Feywild and Shadowfell) would have been extremely high up the positives list, if we ranked by frequency.

I mean, I was a veteran of the 4E wars, and I have the scars to prove it, and it seemed like whilst a few people were like "But my great wheels!", it wasn't many, really, and even many of those were like "Meh, doesn't really matter...".

 

[TheSword]

Did it though?

I mean, if we put a list of people's complaints about 4E, and a list of people's positives for 4E, I strongly suspect complaints about the planar structure would extremely low down the list of complaints, but contrastingly, positive comments about the planar structure (particularly the Feywild and Shadowfell) would have been extremely high up the positives list, if we ranked by frequency.

I mean, I was a veteran of the 4E wars, and I have the scars to prove it, and it seemed like whilst a few people were like "But my great wheels!", it wasn't many, really, and even many of those were like "Meh, doesn't really matter...".

I suspect these things are very much bound by generation. The Great Wheel would probably be more important to people who came to the game in AD&D, Planescape, Torment, 3e.

While world axis will appeal more to people from the 1e and 4e eras. I suspect there isn’t much more to the question than that. They are all just variations on the same theme though.

It might just be that the lower scores would be higher if respondents didn’t need to make a choice between them.

 

[Desdichado]

Did it though?

I mean, if we put a list of people's complaints about 4E, and a list of people's positives for 4E, I strongly suspect complaints about the planar structure would extremely low down the list of complaints, but contrastingly, positive comments about the planar structure (particularly the Feywild and Shadowfell) would have been extremely high up the positives list, if we ranked by frequency.

I mean, I was a veteran of the 4E wars, and I have the scars to prove it, and it seemed like whilst a few people were like "But my great wheels!", it wasn't many, really, and even many of those were like "Meh, doesn't really matter...".

Shrugs. Who knows? Whether it did or didn't may well be a matter of perception without the data to prove it one way or another. I saw a lot of complaining about it. I noticed it in particular, because I thought that the changes were among the few good things that 4e brought to the table. But maybe that bias is what made me notice it more.

Or maybe I just saw way too many Shemeska posts. I dunno.

 

[Marc_C]

A week or so ago I asked Frank Mentzer what was the one big thing, mechanically, that made D&D what it was when it came out. His answer? Using a d20. Everything prior was using d6s. So I suppose the biggest sacred cow and thing that makes D&D feel like D&D would be the d20

6e will use 2d10s instead of a d20 for a less swingy system!

 

[JEB]

However, the World Axis is in direct competition to the Great Wheel. So for that question people have to choose between one or the other.

Nothing kept folks from voting to keep both options, though. In fact, looking back at the anonymized individual responses on Google Forms (which I am happy to share), a number of folks on Reddit did vote to keep both: 16 in all, 7.11% of the total votes. (Which is also 84.21% of folks who voted for World Axis and 34.78% of folks who voted for Great Wheel; suggesting to me that World Axis fans on Reddit are the more open-minded of the two sides...)

However, folks did agree with your binary on rpg.net: nobody voted to keep both cosmologies, only one or the other. Guess rpg.net folks are more winner-take-all on the matter. (Though their sample was extra tiny, so who really knows?)

Unfortunately, I can't tell you what folks on ENWorld thought, since I can't extract individual responses from the forum poll. Though I can tell you I personally voted for both...

Note that 5E does technically have both options as well (which is why I included both in the list). It's just that the World Axis is only an option in the DMG.