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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 4582433" data-attributes="member: 2067">I'm with them for much of the article, but there's one minor problem and one big problem with the thought process here. #1:This is a "it's not really broke" angle. Like the size of halflings, no one had a problem with it. Infinite planes don't stagger the imagination, and the quantity of devils is a pointless question and has always been. You could walk millions of miles to your goal because you traveled at the speed of plot, exactly the way most D&D games travel. Limited Planes don't fix anything. No one mapped out all of Avernus, no one bothered to count the number of devils in Hell, and no one ever felt a need to. Infinity wasn't a problem, it was a solution: there's infinite possibilities here.With that said, even "finite" planes are too big to map and STILL no one is asking how many devils exist in the nine hells, so it's not like anything has really changed.Which is really the hallmark of a pointless change. No one cares.#2:IMO, this kind of thinking is thinking is almost entirely bass ackwards.FIRST of all, and most importantly, having a different cosmology helps define what is important in your world. I mean, this is basically the real reason that human cultures over the aeons have all come up with different cosmologies (Dante's vision of Hell/Purgatory/Paradise, Miltonian "world on a string"/"music of the spheres" heliocentrism, the Hindu wheel of existence, Nordic Ysgard, et cetra ad nauseum). To lack support for this customization in D&D is lazy, narrowminded, and ultimately at cross-purposes to actually telling the story you want to tell. SECOND of all, but related, is that one cosmology is not truly universal. Like I talked about in the thread on "what is Core," settings define themselves by including things that others don't and excluding things that others include. If you can't exclude the feywild or the astral sea or the far realm or the elemental chaos, or the shadowfell, if you can't include, I dunno, a plane of dreams or a plane of parallel consciousness, or a million extra Earths, or something like the thread "A Nameless City on a Many-Named Sea" cultivates, you're shoehorning in things that were never meant to fit, that don't fit, and that are frankly incongruous, and you're leaving out things that would help define and differentiate the setting.Now, I understand their reasons for making One True Cosmology. But there is too much sacrificed on the altar of convenience here. In a game that expects me to come up with on-the-fly narrative acrobatics for Shroedinger's Hit Points, they can't expect me to figure out what a shadowslayer sword or a shadow creature or the shadow crossing ritual is in a campaign that wants to make itself unique by excluding the shadowfell? REALLY? They have no problem chucking encounter-limited tripping at me and expecting me to totally be okay with that exception to the way the world normally works, but excluding or altering a subset of abilities is somehow too vastly complicated for my little lizard-brain? Are you serious? I can read a 900 page instruction manual for the game, but I can't quite understand when a shadow-thing might not work if I decide there's no shadowfell? Do you think I'm that dumb?So because I don't just want to tear it down, let's see an alternative. How about we see how I would have it done:Step 1: You know that things are going to have alternate cosmologies, alternate dimensions, different afterlives, and all sorts of interesting variations on worlds to explore. You know this. The real world does it, fantasy literature does it, every thing that you are <s>ripping off</s> culling for inspiration from does it, and it is something that a DM should not only be able to do, it is something they should be encouraged to do. Make your world your own, twist your cosmology to your own ends, and this is a good thing. Yes, I do want to hear about your world's alternate multiversal model.Step 2: Don't hardwire the assumed cosmology into the game rules. Really, it's that simple. Maybe PC's in certain settings won't fight shadow creatures. That should be okay. Maybe PC's in certain settings won't shadow walk. That should be okay. Maybe there will be no gods in some settings, and maybe no fey in others. That should be okay, too. Maybe your little ritual doesn't have universal application. Really, what's the big deal? Oh, wait, maybe this is the big deal:...so I can't have a world modeled after the Norse cosmology because you want to sell more copies of the Manual of the Planes?Shouldn't the Manual of the Planes have told me really how to make those new cosmologies, then? Shouldn't it have been more of a toolkit (a la the 3e MotP) and less of a "Now Everyone Needs Dragonborn" moment? Maybe said: "Hey, if you get rid of the Shadowfell, here are some things to consider..." instead of "OH GOD NO DON'T GET RID OF THE SHADOWFELL! WHY WOULD YOU DO THAT?!" Instead of getting a toolkit, I get a brick wall that I can beat my head against while I'm trying to figure out my setting's own cosmology.*deep breath*But there's a lot of thought that I like, too. For instance, this:It's a good list of what the planes are and should be, and I don't mind dropping the alignment angle at all on this one. This:I mostly agree with that list. I mean, I know demons and devils weren't really that similar and that good planes didn't have to be boring, but making good planes more exciting and demons and devils more different is basically a good idea, and I think 4e did a good job on that, as far as I can tell (I haven't seen anything about "good planes" yet, but I'm looking forward to 4e's take on Celestia). I also have no love of planes that are just there to travel through, so ditching the Ethereal Plane (and the host of wonky rules it brings with it), without stopping the ability to move through walls, was a good idea. So, yes, a lot of good stuff, but one very bad idea that needs to be abandoned tout suite.</blockquote>

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