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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dausuul" data-source="post: 6664245" data-attributes="member: 58197">D&D has had a couple of different cosmologies (mainly the Great Wheel and the World Axis), but each has its own overarching design, which is tied into the origins and history of the setting. The World Axis is very cohesive and unified, built around the conflict of primordials versus gods. The Great Wheel was constructed after the fact*, rationalizing a bunch of stuff created in early adventures, but it still does a pretty good job of fitting everything together. There are the Inner Planes of physical forces, and the Outer Planes of ideology and alignment, with the Astral connecting them. Good versus evil is the obvious conflict in the Great Wheel, but digging deeper reveals a more primal battle between law and chaos, most visible in the Blood War.The Far Realm has no connection to any of this. It's just bolted onto the side, like a new villain introduced out of nowhere in a sequel because the writers wanted to up the stakes. I feel much the same way about Dark Sun, which is one of my favorite settings as a stand-alone, but doesn't mesh well at all with the Great Wheel. But nobody is trying to explicitly link psionics to Athas.[SIZE=-2]*At least, I think it was. I don't actually know how much of the Great Wheel is rationalizing previous material and how much was invented new in the 1E Manual of the Planes. I also don't really care.[/SIZE]</blockquote>