Dragon #351?
- Thread starter Razz
- Start date
Cam Banks said:It's pretty simple, really - in the Dragonlance cosmology, there isn't any Great Wheel, Krynn is the center of the universe, etc etc. A Krynnocentric campaign as described in the books from Sovereign Press/Margaret Weis Productions, we assume that there aren't any other campaign worlds out there, the gods don't share the planes with any other worlds' gods, and it's all more or less a neat package.
In a multiverse campaign where Krynn isn't the main focus and you want to leapfrog about material planes, then you can use the Dragonlance stuff however you like. Some Planescape people like to account for the lack of planar-savvy folk on Krynn as them being a "planar backwater" or whatever. Spelljammer gamers put a spelljammer port in Palanthas. Works for them.
The whole premise of the article is that the World Serpent Inn opens to various worlds. I made a compromise; it opened - once - for a few days, and this opening cycles around and around until the kender's "curse" so to speak gets solved, and then it's gone. That's the gist of it, but I think as soon as an idea gets published and sent out into the world for people to do things with, it's open season.
It was a lot of fun to write, and I look forward to seeing everybody else's stuff. I do have to say I'm happy no temples to Dragonlance gods show up, though.The Fiendish Codex already got their alignments wrong...
Cheers,
Cam
In my Planescape campaign, I ruled that Dragonlance is part of the cosmology, but that "current" Planescape is basically in line with the Age of Mortals, before the War of Souls, and that all the various portals to Krynn have become very unreliable and/or inaccessible. My "Dead Gods" campaign actually ended with the PCs getting the Rod of Orcus, and realizing he'd hunt them to the end of existence, so they took a portal to Krynn, which was held open temporarily with powerful magic, and then escorted the rod through to the other side, ending up stranded on the Rainward Isles. It's unlikely the portal could get opened again, and the PCs have plans on throwing the rod into the burning sea in the middle of Taladas in order to try and destroy it.
And in any case, because the portals are unreliable, and, in particular, the effects of the dead on magic mean that the PCs are losing their most powerful magic, it's entirely likely that the PCs would be stranded there until at least the War of Souls.
Banshee
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Just out of curiosity, can any Dragonlance aficionados lend any support to the magazine's implication about how "no amount of magic" can get you to or from the Dragonlance world/cosmology? I've never seen anything about that before now, and I'm wondering if that's in a 3.5E third-party DL book that I haven't picked up yet, or something.
Nightfall
Sage of the Scarred Lands
Al,
Not that I'm aware of and I have just about every book. Towers of High Sorcery didn't mention it nor did the 3.5 campaign setting. I honestly don't recall it in Holy Order of Stars either.
Sckneer,
I said it. It's James Clemens.
Joel, I have Gaz IV. I just haven't read it in a while and wondered if the writer had. Since it's Lowder, I guess I'm not surprised he has kept up with Ravenloft lore.
*has the mag finally!* Now I can die happy.
Not that I'm aware of and I have just about every book. Towers of High Sorcery didn't mention it nor did the 3.5 campaign setting. I honestly don't recall it in Holy Order of Stars either.
Sckneer,
I said it. It's James Clemens.
Joel, I have Gaz IV. I just haven't read it in a while and wondered if the writer had. Since it's Lowder, I guess I'm not surprised he has kept up with Ravenloft lore.
*has the mag finally!* Now I can die happy.
Alzrius said:
They're simply referring to the point that the world is considered to have its own cosmology, as does every other world now. But that's only from the perspective of the Clueless. The rest of the well-lanned cutters out there know that all it takes is knowledge, and the right portal key
Banshee
Pants
First Post
Blech.Banshee16 said:But that's only from the perspective of the Clueless. The rest of the well-lanned cutters out there know that all it takes is knowledge, and the right portal key
Banshee
Always hated that aspect of PS. The arrogant planars and the clueless primes. Whatever.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Banshee16 said:
I thought so too, but between using planar travel spells to move through the Shadow Plane (as laid out in, IIRC, Manual of the Planes), and the cosmology-crossing gate spell (as laid out in Lords of Madness), it shouldn't be as difficult as that article implies.
The Dragonlance and Ravenloft articles are two of the strongest ones in that issue, I think, especially used together (because the PCs can meet young, uncorrupted Lord Soth in precataclysmic Istar, redeeming a cursed kender, then later on meet the magical Blessed Knight version of him from Ravenloft asking them to help redeem an entire domain). The others would require more work to tie them together, and their hooks didn't seem as vivid (finding a missing sword beneath Irongate and chasing off khaasta or simpathetics in Ecstasy). I haven't read the Dark Sun or Kara-Tur articles very closely yet - my eyes glazed over a bit. The phoenix feathers and dao slavers in the Al-Qadim article are pretty awesome, though, I must admit.
And I did very much like the Irongate and Ecstasy articles. The portrait of Irongate was beautiful, and using Lazz to do the cartography for a Planescape article is nothing but appropriate. It's just that, as they were finally edited and published, the hooks didn't seem as strong as in the Ravenloft-Dragonlance (from now on I'm considering it to be one single adventure, regardless of designer intent) and Al-Qadim articles.
About the simpathetics - I notice they're listed as NE (in 2e they were CE), but their attack still turns people CE. Is that a typo? I actually like them better NE, since the 2e Fiend Folio Appendix had them as CE creatures from Maladomini, and the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II had them as spawn of the Abyss. Making them NE and from the Lower Planes in general seems a good compromise.
And I did very much like the Irongate and Ecstasy articles. The portrait of Irongate was beautiful, and using Lazz to do the cartography for a Planescape article is nothing but appropriate. It's just that, as they were finally edited and published, the hooks didn't seem as strong as in the Ravenloft-Dragonlance (from now on I'm considering it to be one single adventure, regardless of designer intent) and Al-Qadim articles.
About the simpathetics - I notice they're listed as NE (in 2e they were CE), but their attack still turns people CE. Is that a typo? I actually like them better NE, since the 2e Fiend Folio Appendix had them as CE creatures from Maladomini, and the Planescape Monstrous Compendium Appendix II had them as spawn of the Abyss. Making them NE and from the Lower Planes in general seems a good compromise.
Shemeska
Adventurer
Ripzerai said:
I posted some of the material cut during editing over on Planewalker.
Making them NE instead of CE was intentional on my part, gives more wiggle room in what plane you want to have them originating from, plus there was the CE/Maladomini thing to iron out. I thought it was an appropriate compromise as well, plus it makes them true opposites to the alignment of Ecstasy itself. But as I'd originally written it, I had their attacks turn people towards NE (it appears that it was changed to CE during the editing).
Cam Banks
Adventurer
Alzrius said:
As others have said, it's because the Dragonlance setting is now its own cosmology. "No amount of magic" may have been a little strong, and of course there's nothing to stop you from using 3.5's plane of Shadow back door pass, but the way the universe is set up even the Shadow plane is just one aspect of the Gray, a sort of trifold transitive plane within the "bubble" of planes that surrounds Krynn's material world.
The section on cosmology in Holy Orders of the Stars and even in the DLCS implies this, although truthfully there have been portals and wormholes before that lead outside the "bubble" and to the Beyond, which is where the Dragon Overlords came from. It's easiest to think of Krynn as being a world wrapped in three outer planes (the Abyss, the Dome of Creation, and the Hidden Vale), which are the source of positive and negative energy as well as the elemental planes, all of which extend inwards to the Mortal Realm. The Gray is the transitive stuff that occupies the rest of the inside of the "bubble" and, depending on how you access it, is the Astral, Ethereal, or Shadow plane.
The "bubble" is unimaginably huge, the outer planes are vast and contain hundreds of divinely-morphic realms of their own, and so on and so forth, so it's essentially a self-contained planar cosmology. But the "bubble" also 'floats' in the formless Ethereal Sea or "Beyond" where, it's assumed, there are other universes and worlds and planar constructs. But since the gods of Krynn reside as conceptual beings within one of the three outer planes in the "bubble" they don't extend their influences anywhere else (and they don't have stats in the Deities and Demigods sense, either.)
Yeah, I've thought about this way too much. But it's how Tracy conceptualized it originally, and although the 1e Manual of the Planes and the 2e cross-planar concepts shoehorned all of Krynn's gods and outer planar denizens into the Great Wheel, we wanted to get back to Tracy's vision with 3rd edition.
Cheers,
Cam
