Klaus
First Post
You can easily think of this as one "Elemental Plane", that gets less defined and regimented the farthest you travel from the Material Plane, until it dissolves into a roiling elemental chaos.
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D&D 5E L&L 1/7/2013 The Many Worlds of D&D
- Thread starter Blackwarder
- Start date
You can easily think of this as one "Elemental Plane", that gets less defined and regimented the farthest you travel from the Material Plane, until it dissolves into a roiling elemental chaos.
I wonder if the outer planes will have border planes too.
I hope the major elemental planes have qausi and para planes which have thier own border planes.
I think that a border plane of radiance would be cool right between the feywild and border fire (needs a name).
On the side closest to the feywild it starts off as a forest with alot of glowing plants, animals, crystals, and as one gets closer to the plane of fire its gets hotter and the wild life becomes less fairy tale and becomes more primal, the forest becoming a sweltering jungling of dazzling lights.
After awhile you see pools of fire here and there in the glowing jungle and you know your close to the plane if fire. Eventually you stare coming across burnt trees and you then enter the border plane of fire.
The border plane of void would be awesome too.
I hope the major elemental planes have qausi and para planes which have thier own border planes.
I think that a border plane of radiance would be cool right between the feywild and border fire (needs a name).
On the side closest to the feywild it starts off as a forest with alot of glowing plants, animals, crystals, and as one gets closer to the plane of fire its gets hotter and the wild life becomes less fairy tale and becomes more primal, the forest becoming a sweltering jungling of dazzling lights.
After awhile you see pools of fire here and there in the glowing jungle and you know your close to the plane if fire. Eventually you stare coming across burnt trees and you then enter the border plane of fire.
The border plane of void would be awesome too.
Morrus, your version doesn't really leave a spot for the outlands though, does it?
What I am curious is what will they do with Eberron. Will they change its cosmology yet again to fit the Great Wheel? Why can't we just agree to let different worlds be in different cosmologies?
What I am curious is what will they do with Eberron. Will they change its cosmology yet again to fit the Great Wheel? Why can't we just agree to let different worlds be in different cosmologies?
It's not my version! It's just an attempt to draw what Mearls described. He didn't mention the Outlands.
innerdude
Legend
I'm sure I'm in the minority here . . . but "cosmology" has always been one of least interesting, least compelling aspects of the entire "D&D Experience" for me. I truly couldn't care less.
To be honest, I'd much rather the design team be expending energy on pretty much anything else.
To be honest, I'd much rather the design team be expending energy on pretty much anything else.
JeffB
Legend
:sarcasm: yay! More Planescape.
I really do not understand why WOTC (and post Gary TSR) feel the need to have a very detailed default cosmology as core and published settings must conform. AFAIC, Each campaign setting should have its own,.and be detailed in the respective setting book. The "core DMG" book should only provide a handful of pages of general overviews of things like the great wheel, or earth mythology (norse, greek,.pharoanic,.etc) and spend more time giving advice for DMs on how to roll their own, or even how it may or may not be neccessary for the DM to create much in the way of details about the Cosmology.
I really do not understand why WOTC (and post Gary TSR) feel the need to have a very detailed default cosmology as core and published settings must conform. AFAIC, Each campaign setting should have its own,.and be detailed in the respective setting book. The "core DMG" book should only provide a handful of pages of general overviews of things like the great wheel, or earth mythology (norse, greek,.pharoanic,.etc) and spend more time giving advice for DMs on how to roll their own, or even how it may or may not be neccessary for the DM to create much in the way of details about the Cosmology.
I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
It's certainly usable. Not a bad effort.
But I'm a little bewildered that they didn't go with a more inclusive, modular idea: here's a BUNCH of planes for your game, weave them in and out as yous see fit, include or exclude or roll together planes that work for you or whatever.
Defining a cosmology is a key component of designing a world, and it's something that D&D could be more helpful to DMs with than "here's a cosmology that ALL OF OUR WORLDS ARE GOING TO FOLLOW, THIS IS REALITY!"
I'm also not convinced that this layout is really that useful for any purpose. What does a "border fire plane" do that a ring of volcanoes on the Prime can't do? Why can't the Prime have Basalt towers and Azers hanging out there?
There's also going to be a lot of doubling-up. 4e's Elemental Chaos was essentially Limbo, so it had Githzerai and Slaadi. It was also next to the Abyss, so we had elemental demons running around. So now we have Githzerai and Slaadi on the Elemental Chaos, and on Limbo on the outer planes, essentially doing the same thing in both places? And we have the Court of Stars in Arborea and the Court of Seasons on the Feywild? Shadowfell and Ravenloft and Border Negative Energy and also the Grey Waste?
Also: Astral plane/sea? Ethereal?
I could live with this set-up, but it seems like...not a great solution. Especially with the idea to have all of their settings share it. Why? Why does every setting need the same cosmology? We live on a planet composed of millions of different views of the universe, why does D&D need to enforce One True Planar Structure? "Basic D&D" doesn't even need any planar structure (there's evil critters from evil places, and they're here...that's generally enough), and when you're at the level of world-building where you'd need it, you're much better served by a menagerie of countless worlds that you can assemble than One Way.
It works, but it tries really hard to make everything fit into a Grand Vision of the Planes for Everyone, when really it'd be more useful I think to give DM's ways to assemble their own cosmology, with 4e, the Great Wheel, Eberron's Orrey, and other cosmologies as examples and possibilities. We don't need one cosmology to rule them all, we need the power to forge our own.
3e had diverse cosmologies (including the Pharonic, Norse, and Greek!...though not in the core book), and Gary I think invented the idea that the Great Wheel should unite all worlds, and I love Planescape, but yeah, I am with your sentiment, here.
I'm not sure what they gain out of it. Most D&D games don't need much of anything in the way of cosmology, and it's a fair bet that whatever cosmology they come up with, it ain't gonna work for everyone, so I don't understand the insistence on this point.
But I'm a little bewildered that they didn't go with a more inclusive, modular idea: here's a BUNCH of planes for your game, weave them in and out as yous see fit, include or exclude or roll together planes that work for you or whatever.
Defining a cosmology is a key component of designing a world, and it's something that D&D could be more helpful to DMs with than "here's a cosmology that ALL OF OUR WORLDS ARE GOING TO FOLLOW, THIS IS REALITY!"
I'm also not convinced that this layout is really that useful for any purpose. What does a "border fire plane" do that a ring of volcanoes on the Prime can't do? Why can't the Prime have Basalt towers and Azers hanging out there?
There's also going to be a lot of doubling-up. 4e's Elemental Chaos was essentially Limbo, so it had Githzerai and Slaadi. It was also next to the Abyss, so we had elemental demons running around. So now we have Githzerai and Slaadi on the Elemental Chaos, and on Limbo on the outer planes, essentially doing the same thing in both places? And we have the Court of Stars in Arborea and the Court of Seasons on the Feywild? Shadowfell and Ravenloft and Border Negative Energy and also the Grey Waste?
Also: Astral plane/sea? Ethereal?
I could live with this set-up, but it seems like...not a great solution. Especially with the idea to have all of their settings share it. Why? Why does every setting need the same cosmology? We live on a planet composed of millions of different views of the universe, why does D&D need to enforce One True Planar Structure? "Basic D&D" doesn't even need any planar structure (there's evil critters from evil places, and they're here...that's generally enough), and when you're at the level of world-building where you'd need it, you're much better served by a menagerie of countless worlds that you can assemble than One Way.
It works, but it tries really hard to make everything fit into a Grand Vision of the Planes for Everyone, when really it'd be more useful I think to give DM's ways to assemble their own cosmology, with 4e, the Great Wheel, Eberron's Orrey, and other cosmologies as examples and possibilities. We don't need one cosmology to rule them all, we need the power to forge our own.
Jeff B said:
3e had diverse cosmologies (including the Pharonic, Norse, and Greek!...though not in the core book), and Gary I think invented the idea that the Great Wheel should unite all worlds, and I love Planescape, but yeah, I am with your sentiment, here.
I'm not sure what they gain out of it. Most D&D games don't need much of anything in the way of cosmology, and it's a fair bet that whatever cosmology they come up with, it ain't gonna work for everyone, so I don't understand the insistence on this point.
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I agree. I don't think a Norse cosmology needs to be joined to or part of a Forgotten Realms one or a Judeo-Christian one, or any other. Cosmology is as much a defining part of a setting as towns and NPCs are.
Savage Wombat
Hero
I would rather Ravenloft be a region in the Shadowfell than vice-versa. Ravenloft is its own unique world, much like Greyhawk or FR. And it's a big prison. Not one where anyone other than occasional PCs should be jaunting in and out. This does not strike me as the description of a border-plane like the Ethereal.
Somebody's trying to put their IP stamp on as much as possible, I think.
Somebody's trying to put their IP stamp on as much as possible, I think.
