Design and Development: Cosmology

[schroederlance]

I was thinking that the Shadowfell wasn't too far from Birthright's Shadow World. If halflings come from there, then it will be a lead pipe cinch.

It makes sense considering Rich Baker wrote this article. He came up with Birthright originally didn't he?

Edit: Oops. Didn't read far enough into the thread. I see this was already stated above.

 

[Masquerade]

* bard, druids : obviously tied to the feywild. I hope druid kills the bard, take a lot of his stuff.

You want the druid to have more stuff?!?

 

[The Little Raven]

How the freak will we know whether we're in the Shadowfell or the Feywild?!!

Your DM will tell you.

Or he won't, if you're not supposed to know.

Or maybe you can use your character's planar knowledge to determine whether you're in the land of the dead or the land of the fey.

If a forest of black thorns is enough to confuse you, then traits like rivers of fire and barren, desolate rock wastes and such must have really made all of the evil realms hard to distinguish from eachother.

 

[TwinBahamut]

I really like all of this, mostly because the Feywild and Shadowfell sound way too much like my own homebrew. Two planes which overlap with the physical world, a Spirit World and a Shadow World, filled with spirits and undead respectively. The Oriental Adventures Spirit World mixed with the shadow plane, the classic mystic land of the Fey, and a bit of Legend of Zelda Sacred/Dark Realm. I like it a lot, and love all the possibilities in it that can't be found in the Great Wheel setup.

Imagine wandering into some small hamlet, built on the ruins of some ancient city, and the wandering into the Shadowfell, and finding that ancient city still stands there, filled with whole generations of its now dead citizens, and ruled by a council of its undead kings...

Or you can retread the waters from old celtic myth, and accidentally wander into the realm of a otherworldly faerie king because you fail to follow a common superstition.

Also, I like the Elemental Tempest and Astral Sea. Far more flexible and interesting than Inner and Outer Planes. I am also glad they are minimzing the term "plane".

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I have to say, I don't understand the attachment people have to the Great Wheel.

It's okay, but I can't say it ever did anything for me.

I do think it's telling that neither of the supported settings at this time use the Great Wheel in their cosmology.

And if they're changing how important alignment is and how it works, the Great Wheel suddenly becomes even less useful, because, at heart, all it is is alignment.

Brad

 

[Lonely Tylenol]

The elemental planes are the accretion disk, and the Abyss is the supermassive black hole at the center.

It would suit things well if the elemental planes are slowly but inevitably getting drawn down into the Abyss. Tharizdun pulled the plug at the bottom of the universe.

 

[Wormwood]

It would suit things well if the elemental planes are slowly but inevitably getting drawn down into the Abyss. Tharizdun pulled the plug at the bottom of the universe.

Seven months before 4e, and I'm stealing the hell out of that idea.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

I don't know whether to laugh or cry foul....the shadowfell sounds exactly like my graveyard plane.

I think it sounds exactly like Silent Hill. Which is a good thing.

 

[Grog]

I'm mostly neutral about this change, but one thing I really like is that this will allow DMs to create their own planes and easily insert them into the existing cosmology. You couldn't do that with the Great Wheel (unless you were making an Abyssal layer). That's a definite improvement, IMO.

 

[Shortman McLeod]

"Unthinkably vast – thousands of miles" – huh? London to Jerusalem is ~3500 miles by road. That's not unthinkably vast.

Reminds me of Dr. Evil: "You will pay me one million dollars!!!!"