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General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
DnD cosmology - Which Edition do you prefer?
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<blockquote data-quote="Levistus's_Leviathan" data-source="post: 8616818" data-attributes="member: 7023887"><p>My statement of "necessary" meant "if you can fulfill a concept with one plane, you really shouldn't create two that basically do the exact same thing as one another". Not that cosmologies are necessary to the hobby. But that only the "necessary" ideas should be included as full planes of existence. Other things can be folded into layers of these planes or made into mostly unimportant demiplanes. </p><p></p><p>There are concepts "necessary" to most D&D cosmologies. A place for demons/devils/fiends to come from, a place for celestials to come from, a place for fiends to come from, an afterlife system (possibly also fulfilling the role of the origin of undead), etc. They're "necessary" in the sense that it's expected that the cosmologies of D&D have a place for all of these thins. </p><p></p><p>But creating planes of existence to grid-fill a pre-determined alignment-based chart of the planes? That's not a good way to worldbuild. You can't force creativity. Restricting yourself to a wheel of 16 different planes all bound to an alignment (or combination of alignments) is going to cause you to stretch to fill all of those grids (possibly making redundancies) and force you to exclude ideas that should be included in D&D's cosmology, but can't because they don't fit into one of the alignments (the Far Realm, a realm of fairies, plane of judging the dead, etc). </p><p></p><p>So, you're right. "Necessary" is not the right word. But that doesn't refute my point. </p><p></p><p>No, there is a "should". Base D&D cosmology <strong>should </strong>include planes of existence for most of D&D's assumed creatures. A realm for celestials, a realm for fiends, a realm for fey, a realm for aberrations, a realm for undead, and so on. If they're not included, it would probably work better as a specific setting's cosmology that doesn't have all of those base assumptions (Theros, Dark Sun, etc). Base D&D's cosmology also should be relatively simple for newer players to understand. Otherwise, it might turn away new players, which is not a good thing. If planes are redundant, they should be combined, because having any more planes than are necessary to get across the base assumptions of the game and make cosmology over-convoluted (which is obviously not a good thing). </p><p></p><p>The World Axis does not have this problem. Eberron (mostly) doesn't have this problem. They're much easier to understand, get the same basic concepts done in fewer planes than the Great Wheel, and are more user-friendly because of it. And user-friendliness is definitely a good thing to strive for with the core cosmology of the game.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Levistus's_Leviathan, post: 8616818, member: 7023887"] My statement of "necessary" meant "if you can fulfill a concept with one plane, you really shouldn't create two that basically do the exact same thing as one another". Not that cosmologies are necessary to the hobby. But that only the "necessary" ideas should be included as full planes of existence. Other things can be folded into layers of these planes or made into mostly unimportant demiplanes. There are concepts "necessary" to most D&D cosmologies. A place for demons/devils/fiends to come from, a place for celestials to come from, a place for fiends to come from, an afterlife system (possibly also fulfilling the role of the origin of undead), etc. They're "necessary" in the sense that it's expected that the cosmologies of D&D have a place for all of these thins. But creating planes of existence to grid-fill a pre-determined alignment-based chart of the planes? That's not a good way to worldbuild. You can't force creativity. Restricting yourself to a wheel of 16 different planes all bound to an alignment (or combination of alignments) is going to cause you to stretch to fill all of those grids (possibly making redundancies) and force you to exclude ideas that should be included in D&D's cosmology, but can't because they don't fit into one of the alignments (the Far Realm, a realm of fairies, plane of judging the dead, etc). So, you're right. "Necessary" is not the right word. But that doesn't refute my point. No, there is a "should". Base D&D cosmology [B]should [/B]include planes of existence for most of D&D's assumed creatures. A realm for celestials, a realm for fiends, a realm for fey, a realm for aberrations, a realm for undead, and so on. If they're not included, it would probably work better as a specific setting's cosmology that doesn't have all of those base assumptions (Theros, Dark Sun, etc). Base D&D's cosmology also should be relatively simple for newer players to understand. Otherwise, it might turn away new players, which is not a good thing. If planes are redundant, they should be combined, because having any more planes than are necessary to get across the base assumptions of the game and make cosmology over-convoluted (which is obviously not a good thing). The World Axis does not have this problem. Eberron (mostly) doesn't have this problem. They're much easier to understand, get the same basic concepts done in fewer planes than the Great Wheel, and are more user-friendly because of it. And user-friendliness is definitely a good thing to strive for with the core cosmology of the game. [/QUOTE]
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