Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Sir Brennen" data-source="post: 4586620" data-attributes="member: 553">What is so tightly bound to the rules that you can't easily pry the existing cosmology apart and substitute your own? Really?And what's wrong with having a baseline cosmology for new DM's who want to just run some adventures, not build a whole cosmos? What's wrong with having a default origin and story to tie things like Giants and Elementals together? This baseline helps published material be consistent and able to expand/explore the core assumptions. People complain about lack of fluff in 4E... how much less would there be still if there was no core metaphysical model and mythology to reference flavor-wise for spells, creatures and adventures?However, I don't see how - in any way - any of this is immune to reconfiguring or outright elimination in a homebrew campaign. You don't need a Fey plane for fey creatures to exist in your campaign.&nbsp; You don't need a plane of Shadow to have creatures of material darkness. You don't even have to have all the elemental planes mixed together if you don't want. What does it change mechanically? 4E actually tried to remove a lot of the mechanical links to things like magic and planes. Previous editions would would have many rules elements significantly altered if you, for instance, removed the Astral Plane.Really, the 4E cosmology is very modular, more-so than the Great Wheel, which was slavishly - and at times, nonsensically -&nbsp; tied to the Aligment game mechanic. Look at the World Axis: World, Astral Sea, Elem. Chaos, Domains (which the Abyss could be considered) and a couple of co-existent planes. You could arrange these in any way you want, remove elements, add elements... what changes?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Sir Brennen, post: 4586620, member: 553"] What is so tightly bound to the rules that you can't easily pry the existing cosmology apart and substitute your own? Really? And what's wrong with having a baseline cosmology for new DM's who want to just run some adventures, not build a whole cosmos? What's wrong with having a default origin and story to tie things like Giants and Elementals together? This baseline helps published material be consistent and able to expand/explore the core assumptions. People complain about lack of fluff in 4E... how much less would there be still if there was no core metaphysical model and mythology to reference flavor-wise for spells, creatures and adventures? However, I don't see how - in any way - any of this is immune to reconfiguring or outright elimination in a homebrew campaign. You don't need a Fey plane for fey creatures to exist in your campaign. You don't need a plane of Shadow to have creatures of material darkness. You don't even have to have all the elemental planes mixed together if you don't want. What does it change mechanically? 4E actually tried to remove a lot of the mechanical links to things like magic and planes. Previous editions would would have many rules elements significantly altered if you, for instance, removed the Astral Plane. Really, the 4E cosmology is very modular, more-so than the Great Wheel, which was slavishly - and at times, nonsensically - tied to the Aligment game mechanic. Look at the World Axis: World, Astral Sea, Elem. Chaos, Domains (which the Abyss could be considered) and a couple of co-existent planes. You could arrange these in any way you want, remove elements, add elements... what changes? [/QUOTE]

Verification