I love the Feydark.

[JPL]

Well, ultimately it's all a matter of preferences and opinion. I prefer a more focused cosmology - describe me the big, important parts of the universe, those with their own stories and that invite to create new stories.

Well put.

I'll go a step further and say that the older I get, the more I appreciate being given something small but functional that can immediately be plugged into my game. I mean, why did we have to wait for 4th Edition for a DMG that gives you a nice little town for a base of operations, complete with some NPCs and story hooks? And a little 1st level adventure that grounds you in that location.

I love a well-developed fantasy world for its own sake, but when you actually sit down to DM a game, sometimes a couple of concise adventure hooks, some NPCs to go with them, and a couple of appropriate encounter maps are far more useful that a detailed timeline and gazetteer.

I love that in the DMG2, they give you Sigil from several different vantage points. Here's how it fits in as the center of the multiverse; here's how it works as the HQ for a paragon campaign; here are some people you might meet; and here are a couple of maps of typical streets and alleys.

 

[Derren]

"Religion is a trick you play on the deities to make them give you things." Awesome.

Not so awesome: Feydark? Seriously? And Shadowdark? I thought we were getting away from 'pointless symmetry'.

Apparently not. And yeah, we've known about them for a while, but they're not any less stupid to me now than they were then. The old alignments and cosmology apparently sucked because of 'pointless symmetry'(They didn't), but now we've got... Pointless symmetry. With really bad names. Whoops.

And isn't the Feywild generally supposed to be 'the real world but turned up to 11!'? Why is the Feydark smaller and less grimdarkbad then? Sounds more like they turned it down to 2 when it was at 6. I'd expect a bigger, more badass hellpit bursting with all kinds of strange stuff that makes the normal depths of the underdark seem like a picnic, not 'well it's smaller and kind of in the middle for difficulty'.

Penny Arcade! - In Search Of A Robust Cosmology

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yeah, you'll notice there's not Astraldark or Element-o-dark.

Yet.

 

[Chainsaw]

Check out that preview from Underdark on today's DDI.

Glowing fungi, crazy gnomes, mushrooms who walk like men, one-eyed purple giants. Love it. So much cooler than drow / mind flayers / etc.

I would run an all-Feydark campaign in a heartbeat. Especially with an all-gnome party . . . the eladrin are nice enough guys, but if you're going into a big hole o' crazy, you need gnomes.

I really like the alien look and feel of it, but the name seems.. silly or forced or something. Feydark? Seller.

 

[Yabanjin]

If you like the Feydark, you'll love Changeling: The Lost. Even if you don't run World of Darkness games, the books for Changeling are a fantastic source of inspiration on dark, weird fae stuff. I always like to present a mixture of danger, beauty, and wonder: the fae are heart-breakingly beautiful creatures composed of pure glamour, but they also steal babies from their cribs. Traveler beware.

 

[Nai_Calus]

Yet.

I swear to god if I ever see anyone anywhere have something with Lolth's minions moving into the deep caverns below the islands of Arvandor I will scream for a year straight.

And yes, reflections of the world, but then you can argue that the Feywild and Shadowfell being *reflections* is the much-bemoaned pointless symmetry. They don't actually need to be reflections to exist. You can have just a plane of gloom and death and a plane of faerie without having them be reflections.

Hell, the para and quasielemental planes everyone likes to whine about so much were just 'reflections' of a sort. Some of them were a bit of a stretch, admittedly, and a different structure or different planes might have been better, but they all made at least some sort of sense and blended into each other anyway. This is where this touches this and what happens in the middle as a consequence. Yeah, it's infinite. Still touches. Got a problem with that, berk? That's the planes for you. Just 'cause it don't make any sense don't mean it ain't true.

As I've noted before, the multiverse in the old cosmology does not exist for the purpose of being an endless series of reasonably friendly adventure locales. Especially not the elemental planes. They'd go on just fine if every living and/or sentient being in the multiverse disappeared tomorrow. Outer planes? Eventually yeah that's going to cause a bit of trouble, no fresh belief or souls merging with anything. But the inner planes? Doesn't matter a bit.

(I should note that the mere idea of a multiverse where everything is designed to be a Friendly Immediately Useful Adventure Location offends me by coming across as massively insulting and that I don't care for the world axis cosmology and love the old great wheel, and think that the old elemental planes were a neat idea. Do you ever need the Quasielemental Plane of Salt unless you're opening a fast food restaurant in Sigil and need a good source of salt for your fries or have a pressing need to get rid of a massive amount of liquid? No, not really. Does that make it a terrible idea that shouldn't exist? No, not at all.)

At the very least though, the Feydark and Shadowdark need better names that don't make me slam my head on the desk.

And yeah, sooner or later someone's going to come up with and use that first idea in my post. Arvandordark? Get cutesy and call it Darkvandor? Glugh. *shudder*

I don't have a problem with symmetry, it just amuses me in a 'wait what' manner to see... Symmetry when they were complaining about it. <_>;

Whatever. At least Psychognomes are awesome.

 

[Tallifer]

Nai Calus makes good points about a cosmology and I agree that there is no good reason to dismiss esoteric places in a compleat cosmology, but I (and not a few others) merely want to buy a book with adventure locations and ideas. The Underdark and the Feydark fulfil that.

As for names, I like the newer compound names made of older English roots (Astral Sea, Shadowfell, Underdark) because they are evocative of many older English place names (Oxford, Northumberland -- the land north of the Humber river, Whitehaven, Newcastle, Blackpool) and also because they are easier to pronounce and remember than more fantastic names.

I never liked the pseudo-scientific terminology of 1st edition Dungeons and Dragons (Prime Material Plane, Quasi-elemental Plane), but that is because I also never liked the pulp science-fantasy blend that influenced Gygax. No orcs in space for me.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Personally, I think we need to find a new naming convention to beat into the ground.

Or we put them all into one!

Decent into the Underfelldarkfane

 

[Kinneus]

I agree with Nai Calus on all points. Quasielemental planes were cool, if utterly superfluos. Shadowdark is a ludicrous name, but oh well (I'm actually okay with Feydark, though, but YMMV). And, finally, psychognomes sound awesome. And the whole bit about religion being a trick you play on the gods? Oh man, that's genius. Makes me want to roll up a gnome cleric right now.

 

[ferratus]

I don't see anything interesting that can be done with the feydark that can't be done with the underdark. That's why we have the drow in the prime material after all.

The only thing cool about the feydark are psycho svirfneblin, cyclopses and formorian giants. The formorians are enemies of the surface-dwelling eladrin courts, so why would you want to separate them by an underdark? It is better for conflict in the feywild to have the formorians in cavern systems, lairing under barrow mounds, or in big black fortresses with extensive dungeons.

There is nothing in the preview article that suggests a extensive underground world is necessary, or particularly wanted. The formorian and gnome realms can just be caverns near a vulnerable eladrin "point of light" civilization. The dead forest and living grotto just look boring in conception, which would take one heck of an execution to make me give a damn. In the end the feywild is going to be a sideshow excursion in all but a few campaigns, and descending into the feydark is going to be a sideshow of a sideshow. Frankly, I can't be bothered to put in the effort to set the mood of descending into the feydark (with the wandering and wandering encounters needed to set the mood) when I'm already building up the mood of being in the feywild itself.

The Shadowdark suffers from the same problem. What can you put in the shadowdark that you wouldn't put in the underdark, or the gloomy land of the dead above? Why not put alhoon in the underdark where they've always been? Why not have buried tombs and undead lords under a shadowfell mountain rather than in a shadowfell underdark?

This is why my "shadowdark" is the nine hells. The shadowfell is basically purgatory or limbo (a place where the dead persist before perhaps going on to their final destiny) crossed with Sheol or Hades. So why not have a big gate that says "abandon all hope ye who enter here" in the land of the dead?