Elemental Planes Killed

[mhacdebhandia]

Oh - it was actually the entire Great Wheel cosmology that was described in the 1E PHB. I'm sure there have been variations on it through various editions, but it was considered the default layout of the outer planes for all campaigns, not just Greyhawk.

The fact remains that TSR never published a campaign setting other than Greyhawk which assumed the Great Wheel right from the start until Planescape. Dragonlance, the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun . . . any relationship these settings had to the Great Wheel was retconned in later.

It may have been in the Manual of the Planes, and filled with all manner of mythological deities, but that doesn't make it anything other than Greyhawk's cosmology. Yeah, Gary Gygax called it "the AD&D multiverse", but that's just him trying to force his homebrew campaign on the game.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

So, no, the Great Wheel is historically not a "Greyhawk" cosmology; it was the common, standard cosmology for all AD&D for 23 years.

Nonsense. It was never the standard cosmology for Dragonlance - that much is obvious from, you know, the books. It was never the standard cosmology of Dark Sun. Ed Greenwood didn't use it from the start, either, even if it was assumed by the time the setting started getting published.

 

[Grog]

I'm guessing this is "another brick in the . . ." mauseleum for 4e that Wotc is constructing. When all these fluff changes are added up, and then the rules changes that narrow the game through "roles" etc. are added in, I'm guessing 4e sales to the existing fanbase are going to look less well than 3x. Its like asking someone used to comfortable fit clothing to start wearing body suits - 4e constricts both players and DMs in how the game is played with the RAW (as far as it has been revealed at this point).

Actually, the new cosmology gives DMs more freedom. Under the new cosmology, they can design their own planes and put them in anywhere they want. That wasn't possible under the Great Wheel.

The Great Wheel was far more constricting than this new idea, whatever you may think of it.

 

[TwinBahamut]

All I can say is that, as a whole, I found the old Inner Planes to be incredibly boring. The new Elemental Tempest sounds a lot more interesting. For me, there are no other complications to even consider. "More interesting" is a big improvement over "incredibly boring", so I welcome the change.

As a whole though, I am beginning to realize that this marks a radical change from earlier cosmology. In the Great Wheel, all the elements exist in a pure state held seperate, part of a greater system of pure elements, energies, and alignments, a cosmos of perfect balance and order. By nature, the Great Wheel is a system of absolute order. And irregularities or complexities arise through the actions of creatures which exist within that universe. In the new cosmolgy, the Elemental Tempest represents a bastion of celestial chaos and unpredictability, where impurity and random combination are the natural state. Order is achieved through deliberate action, and elemental order is always artificial. Can't say much about the Astral Sea, though... It is an interesting total reversal of overall assumptions.

I suppose, going by the classic analogy that the DM serves as a god within the rules, the new cosmology allows greater freedom to create from the random scraps of chaos, rather than merely giving the freedom to find a place in the crystalline order of the Great Wheel.

 

[Glyfair]

I cannot either agree nor disagree with you until I have actually seen and read the 4e PHB, DMG and MM. I don't understand how these statements can be made with any accuracy until the rules come out.

He stated that he was "guessing." You don't need accuracy, or even an iota of fact, if you are "guessing." You pretty much have the freedom to paint any picture you want based on what is known at the time (and often that isn't kept very carefully).

 

[Shemeska]

Then there was the 1987 Manual of the Planes, which covered the AD&D multiverse in detail -- but only included Deities & Demigods' historical pantheons and monster gods, ignoring all Greyhawk, Forgotten Realms, and literary-pantheon gods. A generic AD&D supplement, with no campaign-specific material.

Though if you look closely, you'll find a DL reference in Tiamat's writeup. Though 2e would later make Tiamat and DL's oddly similar Takhisis distinct from one another, but both on the same lower plane, DL itself never presented itself with its own cosmology prior to it being referenced to as part of the broader Great Wheel.

 

[Shemeska]

Nonsense. It was never the standard cosmology for Dragonlance - that much is obvious from, you know, the books.

I can find a 1e DL reference within the Great Wheel, but I can't find any DL material that presents any sort of distinct DL cosmology. The creators of DL might not have liked that DL was included in the Great Wheel, but it was there and I'm at a loss to find an actual alternative within DL itself prior to 3e when Weiss regained creative control.

DL Adventures tosses out some vague names, but it doesn't present a cosmology.

It was never the standard cosmology of Dark Sun.

Non-Dark Sun sourcebooks certainly do include Athas as part of the Great Wheel. I can quote you page numbers if you'd like.

Within Dark Sun material, it's questionable and certainly up for debate. It really depends on if you approach it from the meta-setting perspective, or solely from the Athasian perspective. But even in that latter event, it's up for debate.

Ed Greenwood didn't use it from the start, either, even if it was assumed by the time the setting started getting published.

Which really doesn't mean much of anything for folks outside of Greenwood's home campaign.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

In my opinion: Planescape was far better as a setting in its own right than as a misbegotten attempt to force every published AD&D setting into a Great Wheel into which they simply didn't fit.

That's why all of the best supplements for it don't have anything to do with Toril, Oerth, Krynn, Athas, et cetera, and instead rely on setting material specific to Planescape.

It's a clear violation of the original design of the various official AD&D settings to staple them to the Great Wheel. Ed Greenwood may have been content to go along with it, but obviously it bothered Margaret Weis - and it outright weakens Dark Sun as a setting to retcon its established cosmology and slap it into Spelljammer and Planescape. It's not "up for debate" that Dark Sun didn't use the Great Wheel, it's fact.

Shemeska, I know you've got a lot personally invested in the whole Forgotten Realms + Planescape thing you do, but I think the majority of gamers reckon the whole idea of a crossover between the official settings is garbage.

The best parts of Planescape are specific to Planescape, and I believe the setting is weakened when it's associated with the baggage of other published settings.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

As a whole though, I am beginning to realize that this marks a radical change from earlier cosmology. In the Great Wheel, all the elements exist in a pure state held seperate, part of a greater system of pure elements, energies, and alignments, a cosmos of perfect balance and order. By nature, the Great Wheel is a system of absolute order. And irregularities or complexities arise through the actions of creatures which exist within that universe. In the new cosmolgy, the Elemental Tempest represents a bastion of celestial chaos and unpredictability, where impurity and random combination are the natural state. Order is achieved through deliberate action, and elemental order is always artificial. Can't say much about the Astral Sea, though... It is an interesting total reversal of overall assumptions.

Nah...well, maybe, but actually it's just the extension of the "points of light" setting assumption onto the planar level. Even the Astral Sea will probably be a vast and wild environment, with the astral abodes being the points of light inside it. At least that's how it sounds to me. And it fits with their announcement to make "high-level play similar to low-level play".

 

[wingsandsword]

I'm guessing about four people care about this sacred cow. The rest of the D&D playing population think this is a great idea, and are arguing over and over again with the four people, mostly represented by you.

You see, when 2e came out, they didn't rewrite the entire D&D cosmology just because some designer thought it sounded better like that. Same with 3e, 3e made a minor change or two to the Great Wheel cosmology, but not much. Now with 4e they want to chuck decades of D&D heritage for some Johnny-come-lately idea that's supposed to be better?

It's not just "four people" who care about it, or else we'd probably have a much shorter thread, many longtime D&D players, especially those who play or played cosmology-intensive games are going to care about this. Personally, the D&D Multiverse was one of the great things about D&D as far as I was concerned, the idea that all the myriad official settings were tied together via Spelljammer and Planescape.

In any case, the paradigm that "the planes (a word which I passionately hate, as a matter of fact, as an obvious and bizarre D&Dism) is only appopriate for high level adventurers---what makes that paradigm so special? Personally, I think it's kinda lousy. There's a lot of interesting ideas in the planes, but I can't use 'em because I depise high level play as unfun and tedious.

See, if I were a designer, this kind of systemic problem would be one of my top priorities to find and fix.

Actually, "the planes" is not a D&Dism, it's an actual medievalism. One of the most interesting courses I got to take getting my History degree was Medieval Cosmology. Turns out that much of the "Great Wheel" (especially the inner planes and the transitive planes) came from medieval and renaissance thought about the metaphysical structure of the universe.

Now, I know there is this idea out there that medievalism is bad in D&D, and it is supposed to be 21st century western culture and ways of thinking with a thin veneer of renaissance clothing and weapons for flavor, but the general layout and structure of the Great Wheel cosmology is very much in-period for D&D.