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Is Paladine Bahamut? Is Takhisis Tiamat? Fizban's Treasury Might Reveal The Answer!
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<blockquote data-quote="doctorbadwolf" data-source="post: 8349095" data-attributes="member: 6704184"><p>Except that if one were to have a character moment where they commune with the ghost of Syberis, or the nascent spirit of Eberron, or the seething Will of Kyber, and are given a vision of the reality of the cosmos, what that character learns is quite different. Unless we also reduce the progenitor wyrms themselves to clueless "berks".</p><p></p><p>I was saying exactly that "what shape the cosmological model takes" is not the point.</p><p></p><p>Well, no, not quite. Officially, Eberron is within the Great Wheel because it is explicitly part of the same cosmology, regardless of how that cosmology is described. </p><p></p><p>A locked box is within whatever building it is stored in. Describing it's contents as separate from the rest of the building doesn't change that. Describing the building differently doesn't change that. In the universe wherein Tiamat is trapped on Avernus and an aspect of her is a the primary deity of evil with a different name in a specific crystal sphere, there is a crystal sphere that can be reached, but not breached, via the same means that one could go from the crystal sphere of Toril to that of Oerth. The only difference is that you can't get into Eberron's sphere unless your DM decides there is a crack in it, or you're a Planeswalker or whatever trick Vi is using to go back and forth. </p><p></p><p>That is fundementally different than all three settings being separate universes.</p><p></p><p></p><p>Exactly.</p><p></p><p>No, it isn't.</p><p></p><p>Except that not everyone in a setting is stuck on the planet, and many are powerful enough to actually examine the cosmology around them. </p><p></p><p>And no amount of pretending that metagaming is some sort of sin is going to stop player knowledge from impacting how a character is played, how a world is viewed, etc. Knowledge creates filter through which every decision is made. It isn't the only set of filters, but knowledge based or informational filters are a very significant set of filters. </p><p></p><p>And combining worlds like this makes it harder to get poeple to understand that the planes of Eberron are not renamed versions of Great Wheel planes, but rather oftentimes <em>very</em> different planes that have their own fleshed out nature and features.</p><p></p><p>Okay? What has this to do with what anyone but you is talking about?</p><p></p><p>No one is thinking of them as shapes.</p><p></p><p>Exactly. And every benefit of a unified cosmology also existed in 4e. You just had to move between universes to travel from FR to Eberron, which allowed them to be completely different. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's still part of the Great Wheel. Magic still comes from Mystra, Elves are either descended from Correllon via the Feywild or the Progenitor Dragons copied Correlon when making them (goodbye any mystery as to why this alternature universe you've traveled to also has elves and dwarves that speak the same languages they speak in your home universe), etc.</p><p></p><p>Basically. The Great Wheel is two things. One, is a diagram. I don't care about the diagram at all. The problem would be the exact same if the diagram was a world tree or a world axis or a flow chart or if there was no diagram and it was just an alphabetical list of planes with their descriptions. </p><p></p><p>The other thing the Great Wheel is, is those planes and their descriptions. It's The Nine Hells, Astral Plane, Planes of various prime elements, Sigil, and all the things contained within those planes and locations. In 4e, the City of Brass is in the Plane of Fire if you're playing Greyhawk. You just have to use old material because no new stuff was published. In Nerath, an AU version of the City of Brass is in a hot area of the Elemental Chaos that combines fire and air, possibly other elements, to create a pocket of stability rules over by genies. In FR, IIRC it is similarly placed but has some different history, and stronger ties directly to the world in the form of the politics of Calimshan. In Eberron, I don't recall if there even is a City of Brass in 4e, but if there is it was placed somewhere that fit Eberron's cosmology. </p><p></p><p>Fernia is not a renamed plane of fire, it is much more complex than that.</p><p></p><p>Yep. And that has implications for the cosmology, even if a campaign that never digs into the cosmology isn't affected by it.</p><p></p><p>And it also says, IIRC, that if there is a crack in the crystal sphere (did Eberron have one of these before? it certainly didn't in 4e), those gods could and would affect things in Eberron.</p><p></p><p>trying to frame it as about ego is pretty gross. It's just a cheap way to try to delegitimize the arguments others are making.</p><p></p><p>It's not just meta stuff. Maybe your games don't interact much with the cosmology and the nature of the universe, but mine sure do.</p><p></p><p>Absolutely. Regardless of the issue being argued endlessly here, it's just boring. The universe is more interesting if Eberron's cosmology is wholly independant, and Dragonlance has it's weird intersecting spheres, and FR it's multiple paralel Astral Planes, and Nerath it's World Axis, and each is independent of the others, because it provides a much clearer message to players and DMs that thier DnD world can be whatever they want. </p><p></p><p>I've already run into people who have trouble understanding that I don't have to include any of the DMG planes in my dnd setting, or that there is no rule against my Space Fantasy setting making the "planes" into regions in a galaxy not too unlike our own except that there is Aether that can be breathed in space, and can be harnassed to make fuel for crystal-powered devices and ships, but between stars the Aether thins out to the point where you have areas that function exactly like mundane space. My buddy has a world where the place demons come from, and wherever angels come from, and the ethereal, are the only planes outside the physical world. Everything else is just places in the world, like Eberron's manifest zones. So, it's not like my group has any issue making up different cosmologies. But having a unified cosmology per canon changes the nature of player expectations, and limits what official material can establish about the worlds of dnd.</p><p></p><p>No, it's the nature of those planes, how they interact with eachother, and what they contain.</p><p></p><p>It's a bubble full of demiplanes. That is inherently less than it being it's own universe independent of any other universe. It's even worse if we imagine that Fernia is part of the Plane of Fire.</p><p></p><p>Feel free to show us where they have said that the Nine Hells don't necessarily have the layers described in official lore, or that Avernus isn't necessarily a broken battlefield, or that fire elementals don't necessarily come from the plane of fire. That is what the Great Wheel actually is, not the damn diagram being used to visualize it. You could use a flow chart, and it doesn't change anything.</p><p></p><p>Which is also bad, for exactly the same reasons.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="doctorbadwolf, post: 8349095, member: 6704184"] Except that if one were to have a character moment where they commune with the ghost of Syberis, or the nascent spirit of Eberron, or the seething Will of Kyber, and are given a vision of the reality of the cosmos, what that character learns is quite different. Unless we also reduce the progenitor wyrms themselves to clueless "berks". I was saying exactly that "what shape the cosmological model takes" is not the point. Well, no, not quite. Officially, Eberron is within the Great Wheel because it is explicitly part of the same cosmology, regardless of how that cosmology is described. A locked box is within whatever building it is stored in. Describing it's contents as separate from the rest of the building doesn't change that. Describing the building differently doesn't change that. In the universe wherein Tiamat is trapped on Avernus and an aspect of her is a the primary deity of evil with a different name in a specific crystal sphere, there is a crystal sphere that can be reached, but not breached, via the same means that one could go from the crystal sphere of Toril to that of Oerth. The only difference is that you can't get into Eberron's sphere unless your DM decides there is a crack in it, or you're a Planeswalker or whatever trick Vi is using to go back and forth. That is fundementally different than all three settings being separate universes. Exactly. No, it isn't. Except that not everyone in a setting is stuck on the planet, and many are powerful enough to actually examine the cosmology around them. And no amount of pretending that metagaming is some sort of sin is going to stop player knowledge from impacting how a character is played, how a world is viewed, etc. Knowledge creates filter through which every decision is made. It isn't the only set of filters, but knowledge based or informational filters are a very significant set of filters. And combining worlds like this makes it harder to get poeple to understand that the planes of Eberron are not renamed versions of Great Wheel planes, but rather oftentimes [I]very[/I] different planes that have their own fleshed out nature and features. Okay? What has this to do with what anyone but you is talking about? No one is thinking of them as shapes. Exactly. And every benefit of a unified cosmology also existed in 4e. You just had to move between universes to travel from FR to Eberron, which allowed them to be completely different. It's still part of the Great Wheel. Magic still comes from Mystra, Elves are either descended from Correllon via the Feywild or the Progenitor Dragons copied Correlon when making them (goodbye any mystery as to why this alternature universe you've traveled to also has elves and dwarves that speak the same languages they speak in your home universe), etc. Basically. The Great Wheel is two things. One, is a diagram. I don't care about the diagram at all. The problem would be the exact same if the diagram was a world tree or a world axis or a flow chart or if there was no diagram and it was just an alphabetical list of planes with their descriptions. The other thing the Great Wheel is, is those planes and their descriptions. It's The Nine Hells, Astral Plane, Planes of various prime elements, Sigil, and all the things contained within those planes and locations. In 4e, the City of Brass is in the Plane of Fire if you're playing Greyhawk. You just have to use old material because no new stuff was published. In Nerath, an AU version of the City of Brass is in a hot area of the Elemental Chaos that combines fire and air, possibly other elements, to create a pocket of stability rules over by genies. In FR, IIRC it is similarly placed but has some different history, and stronger ties directly to the world in the form of the politics of Calimshan. In Eberron, I don't recall if there even is a City of Brass in 4e, but if there is it was placed somewhere that fit Eberron's cosmology. Fernia is not a renamed plane of fire, it is much more complex than that. Yep. And that has implications for the cosmology, even if a campaign that never digs into the cosmology isn't affected by it. And it also says, IIRC, that if there is a crack in the crystal sphere (did Eberron have one of these before? it certainly didn't in 4e), those gods could and would affect things in Eberron. trying to frame it as about ego is pretty gross. It's just a cheap way to try to delegitimize the arguments others are making. It's not just meta stuff. Maybe your games don't interact much with the cosmology and the nature of the universe, but mine sure do. Absolutely. Regardless of the issue being argued endlessly here, it's just boring. The universe is more interesting if Eberron's cosmology is wholly independant, and Dragonlance has it's weird intersecting spheres, and FR it's multiple paralel Astral Planes, and Nerath it's World Axis, and each is independent of the others, because it provides a much clearer message to players and DMs that thier DnD world can be whatever they want. I've already run into people who have trouble understanding that I don't have to include any of the DMG planes in my dnd setting, or that there is no rule against my Space Fantasy setting making the "planes" into regions in a galaxy not too unlike our own except that there is Aether that can be breathed in space, and can be harnassed to make fuel for crystal-powered devices and ships, but between stars the Aether thins out to the point where you have areas that function exactly like mundane space. My buddy has a world where the place demons come from, and wherever angels come from, and the ethereal, are the only planes outside the physical world. Everything else is just places in the world, like Eberron's manifest zones. So, it's not like my group has any issue making up different cosmologies. But having a unified cosmology per canon changes the nature of player expectations, and limits what official material can establish about the worlds of dnd. No, it's the nature of those planes, how they interact with eachother, and what they contain. It's a bubble full of demiplanes. That is inherently less than it being it's own universe independent of any other universe. It's even worse if we imagine that Fernia is part of the Plane of Fire. Feel free to show us where they have said that the Nine Hells don't necessarily have the layers described in official lore, or that Avernus isn't necessarily a broken battlefield, or that fire elementals don't necessarily come from the plane of fire. That is what the Great Wheel actually is, not the damn diagram being used to visualize it. You could use a flow chart, and it doesn't change anything. Which is also bad, for exactly the same reasons. [/QUOTE]
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