Forked Thread: The Great Wheel

[Cadfan]

I have never used an official cosmology, and probably never will.

I'd rather develop a small region well, than develop many regions poorly. The largest number of planes you'll ever see in a game I run will be two- the one you start in, and maybe one other.

 

[timbannock]

I always treated it like this: if there's a neat spot I want to use, I work in a portal (usually to Sigil or a gatetown on the Outlands), and then I get the players there. I didn't care about anything else. Even alignment wasn't 100% what the cosmology said.

I never much cared about alignment anyway.

i don't really think about cosmology too deeply, like the whole "Ethereal is connected to OUter but not to Astral therefore this spell and that spell don't work here and there but do work over here..." That's all nonsense. I figure that the planes all kinda touch on each other, and the only thing that MIGHT influence that is if you're in a powerful Deity's home realm, at which point that deity defines what is allowable.

4e, 3e, 2e...it's all the same to me: adventuring sites. The more transparent the rules-effects, the happier I am.

 

[Imp]

In 1e the Great Wheel was an example cosmology. I take 4e's cosmology to be an example. I didn't always use the Great Wheel when running 1e through 3e; I wouldn't feel constrained by the 4e cosmology if I wanted to run 4e.

I completely agree with that – there shouldn't be anything really keeping you from porting cosmologies across editions. (Is there even any real reason you can't just bring over the Lawful-Chaotic-Good-Evil axis right over to 4e if you wanted? I've always thought alignments were one of the more disposable/ changeable aspects of any D&D version.)

That said I have always hated the Great Wheel. Eberron's cosmology is my favorite published one, and 4e's is pretty nice too.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

It felt inexplicable at times . . . both constraining and too expansive at he same time. I've always thrown away the Great Wheel. I always would substitute the BECMI cosmology, which remarkably is what 4e cribbed off of. As a thought experiment, with a little polishing, I even dropped the BECMI into my Dark Sun. The way elements respond to each other in BECMI is different from the standard expectation, and in a world very focused on elemental magic this change was an interesting alteration that I decided to keep it after I worked out the details!

 

[Merlin the Tuna]

The great wheel, at least initially, really appealed to me. But the more I thought about it -- and alignment in particular, since it depends so much on it -- the more repulsive and downright silly it became.

Am I thrilled about the 4e cosmology? Oh, yes and no. I'm a huge fan of the Feywild and Shadowfell, and the Elemental Chaos definitely resonates more strongly with me than the Elemental Planes of Palette Swaps, which were generally dull enough to leave me feeling more or less like this.

As for the Astral Sea... eh. I don't like big pantheons, and that kind of dumps this particular catch-all off my list of things to use. I'd call it an improvement over the wheel, but not enough to make me care for it.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The problem with the Great Wheel is that it is a metaphysical thing that is made to be read and thought about, but the too many of the places it describes really aren't interesting places to go. 4E's cosmology is designed around making the planes destinations that are interesting to actually go to. What use are the planes if it isn't interesting to go there?

The problem with planes being places you don't want to go isn't a Great Wheel problem. The Great Wheel is a model of how the planes link up, derived mostly from alignments and a division between elemental energies and belief (gods and philosophies).

The problem with planes being places you don't want to go was also relatively wonderfully addressed in most of 2e with the Planescape setting, and a lot of 3e with the fantastic 3e Manual of the Planes (in addition to the more narrow focus each of the Fiendish Compendiums gave).

However, a problem that 2e did have, that 3e had to varying degrees, was sometimes the hostility of the planes was such that they required a high-level party and high-level magic to get through unscathed. A DM basically had to give the party the magical ability to go on these quests in some cases.

4e's "survivable" planes mostly address this by having the planes be largely survivable by mortals right at the start, and directly assuming that high level characters will make use of them without world-changing magical powers.

And I'll agree with you, that is a pretty awesome thing to gain.

But that's not a problem with the Great Wheel.

That's a problem with how some specific planes were implemented and described. And it was solved, long ago, in the days of 2e, solved again in 3e, and solved from the beginning in 4e.

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I know for my group the problem with the inhospitable planes in the Great Wheel was that once you did gain the spells, magical items or whatever to travel there. You have essentially neutered whatever that plane was about, made it dangerous, etc. by eliminating in one swift blow its only world-to-PC engaging element.

 

[I'm A Banana]

I know for my group the problem with the inhospitable planes in the Great Wheel was that once you did gain the spells, magical items or whatever to travel there. You have essentially neutered whatever that plane was about, made it dangerous, etc. by eliminating in one swift blow its only world-to-PC engaging element.

Yes, that could be a problem with a few planes.

Yes, 4e fixed this from the start (2e did it with the PS setting and 3e did it with the Manual of the Planes, to varying degrees in varying planes)

No, I wouldn't say that was a problem with the Great Wheel. It was a problem more with the myths they went with in describing the planes.

 

[Psion]

The problem with the Great Wheel is that it is a metaphysical thing that is made to be read and thought about, but the too many of the places it describes really aren't interesting places to go. 4E's cosmology is designed around making the planes destinations that are interesting to actually go to. What use are the planes if it isn't interesting to go there?

Contrariwise, I find the Great Wheel loaded with interesting places to go. Fantastic places. But 4e seems rather pedestrian to me by way of comparison due to the nixing of the inhospitable planes. Making all the planes "PC ready" is a tremendous fourth-wall breaker for me.

 

[Kobold Avenger]

Contrariwise, I find the Great Wheel loaded with interesting places to go. Fantastic places. But 4e seems rather pedestrian to me by way of comparison due to the nixing of the inhospitable planes. Making all the planes "PC ready" is a tremendous fourth-wall breaker for me.

That's something I'm also against with 4e, especially when you consider how easily accessible all those spells that made planes survivable for a party are now, with all such spells easily being rituals. All it requires is a stop in Sigil or some other planar metropolis to pick up a ritual scroll or learn one, it doesn't take that much for a party to survive a plane of burning death anymore.