Elemental Planes Killed

[Geron Raveneye]

Why 17 planes? Why aren't there 9 alignment-based planes? Who can really tell the difference between CNG and NCG, or for that matter differentiating either from CG and NG or CN? It really seemed to me that the initial planes were attempts to utilize western mythology. So we'd have 9 planes in the Hells. Why? Because Dante said there were 9 rings in "The Inferno". There had to be an Asgard; there had to be an Arboria. Why? Because those existed in Earth's mythologies. Then it was "canon" and couldn't be changed because of the herds of cattle roaming the Outer Planes.

Why don't you ask him yourself? I mean, he's still alive and does answer the questions posted in his thread. Then you'd not have to guess and assume, but would know directly from the creator.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

Excuse me for butting in but...



You see when 2e came out they went from playing in Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms to ... playing in Greyhawk and the Forgotten realms. Not suprising nothing really changed.



Same with 3e, from playing Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms to plaing Greyhawk and the Forgotten Realms.



And now with 4e it's not Greyhawk or the Forgotten Realms so it's not Greyhawk's or the Forgotten Realms' cosmology. It's a different setting with a different cosmology. Just as Eberron's a different setting with a different cosmology, so is the "Points of Light" setting.

What wingsandsword is trying to point out is that the current cosmology was and is (with slight modifications for each edition) the default cosmology for AD&D. If you don't believe me, read the threads that deal with the topic, there's enough material in there to show it is. What he dislikes is that they are chucking the default cosmology, which has 30 years of roots and traditions with AD&D, for something that is supposed at once simpler AND more adventure-friendly, essentially cutting off every older AD&D player at the knees in terms of shared continuity of their game and backwards compatibility.

 

[Dinkeldog]

Why don't you ask him yourself? I mean, he's still alive and does answer the questions posted in his thread. Then you'd not have to guess and assume, but would know directly from the creator.

The day I have to ask someone else why there would be 9 planes in the Hells or 666 layers to the Abyss is the day that my high school English teachers ride out like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse to strike me down where I stand.

 

[Brennin Magalus]

I think it's actually a 1970sism.

"Hey, man, take this and raise your consciousness to a higher plane of awareness."

Gygax = Hippie!

LOL!

This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius
Age of Aquarius
Aquarius! Aquarius!

Harmony and understanding
Sympathy and trust abounding
No more falsehoods or derisions
Golden living dreams of visions
Mystic crystal revelation
And the mind's true liberation
Aquarius! Aquarius!

Incidentally, does Gary Gygax really deserve to have the not-so-great wheel pinned on him? Wasn't it someone else's bad idea?

 

[Brennin Magalus]

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?

Yep.

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.

Yeah, as I recall Bernard of Clairvaux had regular visions of the Happy Hunting Grounds and Bonaventure argued that there were only 8 outer planes, since he was an alignment purist and as such he rejected the concept of border alignments and the possibility of true neutrality. Thomas Aquinas and Roger Bacon, however, disagreed.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

The day I have to ask someone else why there would be 9 planes in the Hells or 666 layers to the Abyss is the day that my high school English teachers ride out like the Horsemen of the Apocalypse to strike me down where I stand.

And here I thought you were wondering about why there were 17 planes, with all the border alignment weirdness, instead of only 9. I don't think Dante's Hell or the Number of the Beast were ever in question.

 

[Baby Samurai]

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.

Now Dark Sun was interesting, because in the Dragon Kings hardcover they suggested that it was in its own Alternate Material plane with it's own Elemental planes etc, but the Spacefarers Handbook suggested that Dark Sun (athas) was part of the Spelljammer/Great Wheel cosmology in a closed crystal sphere. And in the 3.5 Dark Sun articles in Dragon they separated in into its own cosmology (The black,The Grey etc ) like 3.5 FR, Krynn and Eberron.

There is also an Athasian domain in Ravenloft.

 

[wingsandsword]

You know, all the snarkiness and sarcasm about my defense of the cosmology having some roots in history really isn't necessary.

Note that I never said the outer planes were a medievalism, just much of the Great Wheel Cosmology, and by "Great Wheel Cosmology" I do mean the entire traditional D&D cosmology from inner to outer and everything in between.

The elemental planes most certainly were, concepts of planar layers were, and there were concepts similar to the transitive planes. As for outer planes, yes only Heaven and Hell (and maybe purgatory) would show up in medieval or renaissance cosmologies. Even radiating from inner to outermost planes is similar to medieval cosmologies (although they typically had Earth in the innermost part). If you omitted all the outer planes except Heaven and Hell (or marked all the upper planes as heaven and all the lower planes as hell, ), a depiction of the Great Wheel Cosmology to a medieval scholar would appear novel, but not totally incomprehensible. Showing the same scholar what appears to be this New Cosmology would be showing him something totally beyond his reckoning.

The most important part of that was the elemental planes, what is definitively getting the axe in this version of D&D, is a medieval concept, the old D&D cosmology was closer to "historically" accurate than this mish-mash they are producing now, which sounds more like a list of raiding zones for an MMORPG expansion than an actual planar cosmology.

What wingsandsword is trying to point out is that the current cosmology was and is (with slight modifications for each edition) the default cosmology for AD&D. If you don't believe me, read the threads that deal with the topic, there's enough material in there to show it is. What he dislikes is that they are chucking the default cosmology, which has 30 years of roots and traditions with AD&D, for something that is supposed at once simpler AND more adventure-friendly, essentially cutting off every older AD&D player at the knees in terms of shared continuity of their game and backwards compatibility.

Exactly, the cosmology of D&D has been a constant for almost three decades (since the 1e DMG in '79 is the earliest version I can dig up), and every official setting was presumed to be a part of it unless explictly said otherwise. In the 2e era, Dark Sun internally said it wasn't a part, but other settings presumed it was, and Mystara never even pretended to be a part (but Mystara was definitely a special case). In the 3e era, they retconned Forgotten Realms into a new cosmology, but at least that cosmology was much the same, just jumbling up the order of planes and making some deific domains into separate planes.

Now though, the classic cosmology won't even be the default in the PHB, someone who has been playing D&D since the '70's and enjoys planar adventures will find 4e far more of a jump in differences in edition than the big 2e to 3e jump. 3e might have changed a lot of the mechanics, and some bits of "fluff", but it did try pretty hard to maintain historic continuity with the rest of D&D. Now it feels like they are trying to intentionally break that continuity.

 

[Desdichado]

The Great Wheel has absolutely not been a constant, at least in the core books. 1e had it. I don't know about 2e. 3e referred to it obliquely, but it was only the 3.5 DMG that had it included. However, B/X and the RC didn't assume a great wheel. OD&D didn't have the Great Wheel.

 

[Geron Raveneye]

OD&D didn't even bother with extraplanar stuff. D&D in the B/X, BECMI and RC variant was meant to be a different game, and had a different cosmology for the Outer Planes thanks to Mentzer. Not also that it also had only 3 alignments, no gods, and different concepts for Demons. From AD&D 1E on, the "Great Wheel" cosmology was a constant insofar as the order of planes and the number was the same. The "Great Wheel" itself was an example of how you could imagine them being connected. If your point is that there wasn't a picture of the Great Wheel in the DMGs of 1E, 2E and 3E...well, I've got a magnification glass here to borrow you to look for more differences.