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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hexmage-EN" data-source="post: 8348780" data-attributes="member: 79428">A literal wheel isn't so much the problem as it is there are a finite and unchanging number of true planes that make up the Great Wheel or whatever other cosmological model the 5E DMG paid lip service to. There's still an assumption that the planes described as part of the Great Wheel and their gods must not only be present, but cannot be added to. Settings that don't normally include those planes or gods but are now in default 5E canon considered part of that same cosmology have to invent reasons why the planes traditionally considered part of the setting (Eberron) are separate from the true planes.It would be one thing if all the planes of Eberron were given equal status as the Outer Planes described in the 5E DMG and Eberron was very closely linked to its particular set of planes. However, the planes described in the 5E DMG have been presented as the only true planes, that by default cannot be added or subtracted from. Every setting has to have the planes commonly described as part of the Great Wheel as existing in their cosmology.For another example, despite largely being based on 4E lore that had it's own separate cosmology, the 5E Explorer's Guide to Wildemount has to conform to the planes described in the 5E DMG. This means that the deities Erathis, Ioun, and Zehir have been demoted from the 4E lore where they had their own planes (Hestavar for the prior two, Tytherion for the latter) to having small realms in the Astral Sea that are explicitly not true planes. The Pathfinder import, Raei, similarly has a realm that is stated to be "alongside" and not actually part of Elysium. This is an example of the homogenized cosmology pushed by 5E forcing elements of other settings that don't fit neatly into the planes described in the 5E DMG to be demoted to lesser Realms.I imagine it's also a hindrance to the possibilities that the new settings in development could have. All these settings will have to have the planes of the 5E DMG, which is an inherit limitation if a designer would rather use an alternate afterlife and cosmology in the vein of Eberron or Ghostwalk. It also reduces the chance of these new settings being patterned after non-Western cultures, as a D&D setting patterned after India (for example) would still have to have the Great Wheel as the truth of the cosmos, as opposed to something more akin to a Hindu view of the afterlife and cosmology. 3E and 4E's take on cosmology, in contrast, granted more freedom to create distinct sets of planes more in line with a given meeting's identity. 5E would only allow it if they went the 5E Eberron route of saying that said hypothetical India-inspired setting's views of the afterlife and cosmology were just a segregated bubble contained within the cosmology as described in the 5E DMG (or perhaps tiny sections of the various "true" Outer Planes).Finally, I can just imagine the reaction if an adherent of a real world religion died and found that another religion's version of the afterlife was the real one, but a tiny pocket of the true afterlife had been carved out to accommodate the people who had a different idea of cosmology. This is essentially what adherence to a single set of true Outer Planes does, whether it's called the Great Wheel or not. 2E Planescape demonstrated this by stating that certain Japanese and Chinese gods had pocket realms in Celestia that neighbored the realms of Bahamut and Moradin.</blockquote>

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