Elemental Planes Killed

[Celebrim]

Screw continuity, sometimes things just need to make sense. Nothing should be done like it was 40 years ago. Designers got smart and made better changes. Thank goodness.

I'm with Geron here. I think you have no measurement of what is sensible or better. I certainly don't think, 'Nothing should be done like it was 40 years ago.' holds up to any sort of scrutiny. That might have been a fashionable thing to believe 40 years go, but we are beginning to learn better.

The designer's changes are a set of tradeoffs. They will get something, but they will lose something. There are alot of ways that the great wheel is smarter than the 4e cosmology, one of which is that the great wheel cosmology presents a universe that is enherently balanced and doesn't tell you what to believe or how to play. If there was a great vortex of chaos in Limbo, then there was a corresponding and equally weighty infinitely organized crystaline Nirvana on the other side. The great wheel cosmology creates a geography of ideas and thoughts and beliefs that encourage the great strength of fantasy - that the abstract can be examined by making it tangible. It's geography that says, 'This game can be about more than ego-stroking self-empowerment fantasies, but that it can look at good and evil in a serious way because its made good and evil tangible artifacts of the world and is asking the question so what would good and evil look like?'

Now, that isn't to say that there aren't other interesting cosmologies you could have, or even that some cosmologies couldn't be better thought out than others. But as for showing that the 4e cosmology is smarter and better thought out than the one from 1e to 3e - no I don't think you can show that. It might not be to your taste, but what is to your taste isn't necessarily smarter, better, or deeper by defination of being something you like.

 

[Lurks-no-More]

You know, I think it's perfectly simple to combine the "all fire, all the time" style Elemental planes with the Elemental Tempest.

At the "edges" (however defined), you have vast expanses of the pure elements; thousands or millions of miles of nothing but solid earth, or bottomless ocean. Then, as you move towards the center of the Tempest, the elements start to mix a bit; you get rock in your fire, and water in your air, until you have a region where, at any one place, you have a clear majority of one element, with noticeable amounts of other elements mixed in.

 

[Aloïsius]

I'This game can be about more than ego-stroking self-empowerment fantasies, but that it can look at good and evil in a serious way because its made good and evil tangible artifacts of the world and is asking the question so what would good and evil look like?'

And there, I disagree. There is nothing serious in making good or evil tangible artifacts. Because good and evil are not about "looking" they are about "acting". Only in movies we can tell the bad from the good by the color of their hat.

I don't have a problem with that : in fantasy, the (very) evil guy are supposed to be ugly, and the (very) good one to be of angelic beauty. But don't call this serious.

 

[Celebrim]

I don't have a problem with that : in fantasy, the (very) evil guy are supposed to be ugly, and the (very) good one to be of angelic beauty. But don't call this serious.

All that is gold does not glitter,
Not all those that wander are lost;
The old that is strong does not wither.
Deep roots are not reached by the frost.
From the ashes a fire shall be woken,
A light from the shadows shall spring
Renewed shall be the blade that was broken.
The crownless again shall be king.

"But there, I believe my looks are against me."
"They are - at first sight at any rate...But handsome is as handsome does, as we say in the Shire..."
"I believed tha that you were a friend before the letter came... or at least I wished to. You have frightened me several times tonight, but never in the way that servants of the Enemy would, or so I imagine. I think one of his spies would -- well, seem fairer and feel fouler, if you understand."
"I see... I look foul and feel fair. Is that it?"

Yes, I think it is serious. And I don't think you take your fantasy seriously enough to be telling me what its tropes are if you think serious fantasy tells you that evil looks foul and good is always recognizably fair. That isn't even the way children's fairy tales work.

 

[Cthulhudrew]

At the "edges" (however defined), you have vast expanses of the pure elements; thousands or millions of miles of nothing but solid earth, or bottomless ocean. Then, as you move towards the center of the Tempest, the elements start to mix a bit; you get rock in your fire, and water in your air, until you have a region where, at any one place, you have a clear majority of one element, with noticeable amounts of other elements mixed in.

I think this is probably the best way to handle it, if you want to mix existing cosmologies with the new, but at the same time I can't help but think- well, isn't that what the Prime Plane was supposed to represent? The admixture of elements, with the elemental planes themselves being the edges where the elements existed in exclusion from the others?

In any event, I don't really see how the new design is in any way better or "makes more sense" than the old. It just seems to me to be simpler. Instead of having four planes no one visits (or spending time actually developing them into something that people might visit and adventure in), they just lumped them all into one place that no one will visit.