D&D General DnD cosmology - Which Edition do you prefer?

[Lyxen]

I think there's an open question as to how many groups are even interested in any conflict that isn't Good vs Evil though.

It's a good question, but actually I think that a lot of the more mature players are bored with good vs. evil.

I mean, I can't say if you're right or wrong re: how many directions you can get out of the Great Wheel, but I do think, based on the 30+ years I've spent playing and talking about RPGs that, when it comes to cosmic conflicts, people are really only interested in two of them:

1) Our team vs their team. Which doesn't require any alignments. You see this in a lot of RPGs, whether morally ambiguous or not. Team Camarilla vs Team Sabbat. Team Solar vs Team All The Other Ones (but particularly Dragonblooded). Team Wyld vs Team Weaver.

Of course it all depends on the theme of the TTRPG. Most of them are not concerned with epic, cosmic conflict.

2) Good vs Evil. Hopefully self-explanatory. This can genuinely be a bit more than a "team" conflict and provoke some more real thought.

Not my experience, actually. Our groups are a bit bored with the Good vs. Evil, which has been done time and time again.

Law vs Chaos, for example, is very interesting in Moorcock's writing and it is a reoccuring theme in literature through the ages, whether Nomos and Physis in classical Greece (technically more "Nurture vs Nature" but often used in a de facto Law vs Chaos way), or the Lintons and the Earnshaws in Wuthering Heights, and hell, you could argue it's part of stuff like The Secret History. But in games? Are many players into that? My experience is "Definitely not". People will do "Team Law vs Team Chaos", but that's just team stuff, they're not actually engaging with the concepts or particularly thoughtful about it. And more esoteric concepts than those? Either it goes to team stuff or people get bored pretty quickly in my experience (as a player and DM).

Again, no my experience, we have hearty discussion of Law vs. Chaos and what it means, or about the derivations of that, because most of our campaigns drift in the Planescape view at mid+ level and it's as fundamental as Good vs. Evil.

So maybe it's actually just irrelevant to most groups? I mean, I think there's a reason Planescape created all the Factions, more concrete "teams" for people to be part of and cheer for, rather than focusing on what might have been more obvious - the alignments of the PCs involved. The Great Wheel offer a lot of cosmic conflict, but it's not terribly engaging/valuable.

I think it's a bit different there. Planescape is also meant to be played including at low levels, and having patrons more "earthy" than cosmic principles helped. Moreover, most of the factions certainly have a strong alignment bias.

Re: Law I actually think one of the most interesting conflicts is "The Rule of Law vs. Natural Justice" (essentially LN vs NG), but it's one difficult to do well in an RPG, or to get a lot of player buy-in for.

Again, I suppose it depends on your groups, but we've always found that Law vs. Chaos resonated very strongly for us, and allowed some moral ambiguity (Good / Evil) about the means employed by the factions.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

Again, I suppose it depends on your groups, but we've always found that Law vs. Chaos resonated very strongly for us, and allowed some moral ambiguity (Good / Evil) about the means employed by the factions.

That's interesting, but I suspect it's rather unusual. Lot of Moorcock fans in the group? As for bored of "Good vs Evil", sure, but my experience is that most more mature/aged players tend to be bored of "cosmic conflicts" in general and more interested in just playing fun characters and/or more specific conflicts which don't have cosmic resonance. As you say, most RPGs aren't concerned with said conflicts, and even most "epic" conflicts tend to be of a more straightforward nature.

 

[glass]

Is the Cosmere complex? Definitely. Is it because of its Cosmology? No.

Even if it is a "simple" as you are painting it (the only Brandon Sanderson I have read is his volumes of Wheel of Time, sadly, so I don't know whose characterisation is more accurate), you still have the complexity of explaining how the hell a 0-dimension plane works (or even exists).

I'm sorry, but I don't find "the abyss, but very noisy and possible to live in" a good idea for a plane of existence. The Abyss already has literal hundreds of layers. There could literally just be a single level or two that is inhabitable for mortal creatures and very, very windy. Pandemonium doesn't deserve to be its own plane of existence any more than any of the layers of the Abyss, IMO.

You don't find it a good idea, but not everybody is you. Some people have different preferences. See my comment above about de gustibus.

Even the Great Wheel encodes one conflict as higher than the others: the upper planes are Good, the lower planes are Evil...but there's no term for the opposite axis, is there?

Yeas, of course they are - Planes of Law on the left, Planes of Chaos on the right, Planes of Conflict in the middle.

_
glass.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

Yeas, of course they are - Planes of Law on the left, Planes of Chaos on the right, Planes of Conflict in the middle.

I know that that is how they are usually displayed.

Where are they named this?

 

[glass]

I know that that is how they are usually displayed.

Where are they named this?

The 2e Planescape boxed sets, for a start.

_
glass.

 

[Lyxen]

I know that that is how they are usually displayed.

Where are they named this?

Why, in Planescape, of course.

 

[Lyxen]

That's interesting, but I suspect it's rather unusual.

Honestly, I've gamed on many places on the planet, but not in the US, so I would not know what is usual there, for example. But based on France and the UK (not to mention more exotic places, but in terms of population the players were actually more FR/UK than locals), I would consider it quite usual.

Lot of Moorcock fans in the group?

Yes, but also lots of old gamers, I think Moorcock is no longer that well-known amongst younger generations of players.

But we are also huge fans of Amber (played at least 3 multi-years campaign of Amber Diceless RPG), where the philosophical aspects of Amber and the Court of Chaos were explored in detail, and where Good and Evil are absolutely non-existent in terms of concept (although of course some acts clearly are so and can make an imprint, especially if evil).

As for bored of "Good vs Evil", sure, but my experience is that most more mature/aged players tend to be bored of "cosmic conflicts" in general and more interested in just playing fun characters and/or more specific conflicts which don't have cosmic resonance. As you say, most RPGs aren't concerned with said conflicts, and even most "epic" conflicts tend to be of a more straightforward nature.

Again, everything in this discussion is about preferences, and since BECMI/AD&D we have always played at fairly high level, almost all our campaigns finish at the max level for an edition if not beyond. If all of these were Good vs. Evil, it would be boring, so having other sources of conflict is really a bonus.

When we are playing other RPGs, of course, we don't have epic conflicts in most cases, although we have them in Runequest, where we usually went into Hero Wars / Hero Quest and where the conflict against Chaos (but also potentially its acceptance) is central to most of the threads. And even there, it's really interesting to see the difference between the very individualistic but chaos-hating Sartarites and the very civilised and organised but chaos-accepting Lunars. Again, a setting with Law/Chaos epic conflict (at a level in a sense far more fundamental than D&D) but where Good and Evil really are secondary considerations.

 

[Voadam]

The Great Wheel has a lot of incarnations from the early Dragon Magazine article to the 1e PH and Deities and Demigods to 1e Manual of the Planes to 2e Planescape and then 3e and 5e.

It has been a little vague and contradictory on the afterlives, some indications are that alignment determines it, some indications are that pantheon and/or god indicate what happens in the afterlife. Orcs and Goblins in the Great Wheel go to the same plane with their pantheon head gods for their eternal battles even though what planes they are shift and do not necessarily match the base alignment of the races in AD&D or 3e.

D&D has usually been vague and contradictory on the afterlife, sometimes coming up with in-depth petitioner to outsider to different outsider afterlives, sometimes things are based on alignment (evil souls become larvae) sometimes it is god based, sometimes it is vague. In 1e Deities and Demigods whether the afterlife is eternal or temporary resting spot waiting for reincarnation depends on whether you have a soul like a human or gnome or a spirit like an elf or orc.

 

[Guest 7034872]

D&D has usually been vague and contradictory on the afterlife, sometimes coming up with in-depth petitioner to outsider to different outsider afterlives, sometimes things are based on alignment (evil souls become larvae) sometimes it is god based, sometimes it is vague. In 1e Deities and Demigods whether the afterlife is eternal or temporary resting spot waiting for reincarnation depends on whether you have a soul like a human or gnome or a spirit like an elf or orc.

I think that's right. I also think it's inescapable, though, so I don't even bother to look for consistency in this stuff. They could have made it consistent right from the start by keeping the afterlife in the afterlife, but that would've precluded using the gods and planes in adventures, which I imagine was the whole point. My hunch is that inconsistency was the price for building out all this adventure-ready game-space.

It would've been a lot more logically coherent and consistent to keep the afterlife in the afterlife, but where's the fun and adventure in that? Orpheus isn't famous on account of a spelunking expedition, so they fudged the line between the afterlife and the mortal world.

 

[Twiggly the Gnome]

Bytopia and Arboria are incredibly different. Bytopia is quite and peaceful, a place were people can live relatively ordinary lives without anxiety. Arboria is emotional, ever-changing, and loud, like an eternal party that even nature is participating in.

The move away from the real world inspirations somewhat obscures what Bytopia is supposed to be. It's original name, the Twin Paradises, was a reference to Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained. It's the world before and after the reign of iniquity.