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General Tabletop Discussion
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DnD cosmology - Which Edition do you prefer?
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<blockquote data-quote="Urriak Uruk" data-source="post: 8616226" data-attributes="member: 7015558"><p>I guess I'll defend the Great Wheel... you likely know this, but each Outer Plane is defined, and I guess in turn defines, concepts in the universe. Mount Celestia is Lawful Good, the Nine Hells is Lawful Evil, and the Abyss is Chaotic Evil and so on. The roots of this come from Moorcock, and even earlier <em>Three Hearts and Three Lions</em>. There is conflict in the universe between the forces of Law, and forces of Chaos. Now, these weren't explicitly good and evil, so D&D took the premise of "Law vs. Chaos" and added the much more Biblical dimension of "Good vs. Evil." Now you have two dimensions of alignment, and from there every version of the afterlife is created, and by proxy four quadrants of conflict for the moral fate of the universe. Although on paper, Law and Good seem like optimal outcomes, they lead to stagnation and perpetuity... so the only "perfect" option is for all four quadrants to hang in a perpetual, balanced conflict.</p><p></p><p>In that respect, the Outer Planes represent concepts, and the Inner Planes represent reality.</p><p></p><p>The other important element of the Outer Planes/Great Wheel is that the wheel makes it look like they're in a big 2-dimension circle orbiting the Inner Planes. This is just a conceptual framework... yes they do flow into one another (although not as directly as you may think) the Wheel is just a way of visualizing the Outer Planes. It's not actually how the planes are "mapped." And 5E has explicitly kept that vague, as perhaps a tree or something else.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Urriak Uruk, post: 8616226, member: 7015558"] I guess I'll defend the Great Wheel... you likely know this, but each Outer Plane is defined, and I guess in turn defines, concepts in the universe. Mount Celestia is Lawful Good, the Nine Hells is Lawful Evil, and the Abyss is Chaotic Evil and so on. The roots of this come from Moorcock, and even earlier [I]Three Hearts and Three Lions[/I]. There is conflict in the universe between the forces of Law, and forces of Chaos. Now, these weren't explicitly good and evil, so D&D took the premise of "Law vs. Chaos" and added the much more Biblical dimension of "Good vs. Evil." Now you have two dimensions of alignment, and from there every version of the afterlife is created, and by proxy four quadrants of conflict for the moral fate of the universe. Although on paper, Law and Good seem like optimal outcomes, they lead to stagnation and perpetuity... so the only "perfect" option is for all four quadrants to hang in a perpetual, balanced conflict. In that respect, the Outer Planes represent concepts, and the Inner Planes represent reality. The other important element of the Outer Planes/Great Wheel is that the wheel makes it look like they're in a big 2-dimension circle orbiting the Inner Planes. This is just a conceptual framework... yes they do flow into one another (although not as directly as you may think) the Wheel is just a way of visualizing the Outer Planes. It's not actually how the planes are "mapped." And 5E has explicitly kept that vague, as perhaps a tree or something else. [/QUOTE]
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