FR - Home Planes?

[The Little Raven]

The new cosmology is asinine and incomplete; never really stating that Dweomerhear is a sub-lane, sub-dimension, dimensional fief, etc.

Actually, it's your ability to read and comprehend that is incomplete.

Dweomerheart is listed under "Outer Planes." So... that would make it an outer plane, wouldn't it?

The Sage lists Dweomerheart as "No alignment traits. Mixed magic traits."

And I see nothing asinine and incomplete about the cosmology... the only complaint seems to be that it doesn't follow the standard D&D Great Wheel cosmology... which is good, because this is Forgotten Realms, not Greyhawk.

 

[Ferret]

How does the wheel work? What way does FR do it now.

 

[Arnwyn]

Giving a setting its own unique cosmology, as opposed to making it a carbon copy of the standard cosmology is an ill-conceived idea? Wow, you must not like diversity.

Your conclusion-jumping is simply amazing... I had no idea I gave so much away about myself in my post above. Hating diversity, indeed.

Nice try, bud. Giving a setting its own unique cosmology is a good idea. Giving a brand new (non-defined) cosmology to a pre-existing setting that already had a fully defined one is problematic.

 

[the_mighty_agrippa]

Your conclusion-jumping is simply amazing... I had no idea I gave so much away about myself in my post above. Hating diversity, indeed.

Nice try, bud. Giving a setting its own unique cosmology is a good idea. Giving a brand new (non-defined) cosmology to a pre-existing setting that already had a fully defined one is problematic.

What he said.

Not everyone should have to consult the Sage for every piece of published information, either. If the developers weren't going to include that information in the core material, why list it at all?

You should not have to check multiple sources to answer a question in the core book for a given world, especially, as Arnwyn states, when there was a different cosmology in place already.

 

[Staffan]

How does the wheel work? What way does FR do it now.

The Great Wheel is the standard D&D cosmology: From the Material plane branches the Ethereal plane and the Astral plane. The Ethereal plane is mainly useful for going ethereal[1], but through the Astral plane, you can reach the Inner and Outer planes. The Inner planes are the elemental planes and the energy planes (positive/negative), plus various combinations of these (para-elements between the elements, and quasi-elements where elements meet energy), and the Outer planes are alignment-based. The Outer Planes are arranged in a big circle with the Outlands/Concordant Opposition as a "hub", and this circle is the reason it's called the Great Wheel. There are 17 outer planes, one for each of the nine alignments and eight planes for the border sections between the alignments other than True Neutral (e.g. Mount Celestia is Lawful Good, Bytopia is Lawful/Neutral Good, Elysium is Neutral Good, Beastlands is Neutral/Chaotic Good, Arborea is Chaotic Good, and so on).

The default FR cosmology does away with this, and just has various outer planes that don't have any particular connection to alignments or one another. That is, instead of Lolth living in the Abyss in a realm called The Demonweb Pits, she now lives in a plane called the Demonweb Pits.

There are some rather strong reasons for not using the Great Wheel cosmology for many worlds. For example, the alignment-based structure means that there will be dissonance when applying it to real-world pantheons: Tyr is Lawful Good, so he should be on Mount Celestia. However, the other Norse gods live in Ysgard and according to mythology, so should Tyr. The problem with doing that for Forgotten Realms is that FR has been using the old cosmology since 1987, and now for some odd reason it doesn't anymore.

[1]This is a change from 2e, where the Inner planes were accessible through the Ethereal plane, not the Astral plane.

 

[seankreynolds]

{The Great Wheel is the standard D&D cosmology:}

Actually, the Great Wheel is the _sample_ D&D cosmology, just as Greyhawk is the _sample_ D&D campaign setting. In 3E it is no longer a standard; the 3E Manual of the Planes shows you how to build a cosmology, and gives an example: the Great Wheel.

It's perfectly appropriate for FR to has its own cosmology -- it's its own world, with its own gods, and doesn't have the same Moorcock-influenced dual-alignment conflict that Greyhawk does.

Arguing that the FRCS cosmology is inappropriate simply because 1E and 2E FR used the Great Wheel is as absurd as saying that no established character in 1E or 2E FR could change to an appropriate new class (or even a multiclassed character) in 3E. 3E gives us a new set of rules, and the design philosophy of FR is that FR is a real place and we're just using the rules like a "magic television" to interpret that place. Now we have rules that allow us to more precisely define how to build characters; therefore we can assign different classes and levels to FR characters than we did in the past. Likewise, we are no longer bound by Lorraine Willams' mandate that all TSR worlds use the same cosmology; therefore we can create a cosmology that's appropriate to FR without the forced-down-your-throat problems involved in using a 25-year-old cosmology designed for an entirely different campaign world with an entirely different campaign set of campaign paradigms.

 

[Arnwyn]

3E gives us a new set of rules, and the design philosophy of FR is that FR is a real place and we're just using the rules like a "magic television" to interpret that place.

Yeah, I've heard that before. I'll buy it for a small change like some NPC's class... I definitely don't buy it for something as large as an entire cosmology.

In any case, it's in there for good and there's nothing we can do about that. However, I quickly ignored it - as it certainly *is* inappropriate for my long-term FR campaign (be we value consistency and continuity. Others may not).