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Message: <blockquote data-quote="pemerton" data-source="post: 6152608" data-attributes="member: 42582">I tend to agree with these comments - in a "unification" edition it makes sense to present well-known planes in a self-contained fashion (The Hells, the Celestial Heavens, The Abyss, etc) and then assume that different settings/cosmologies/GMs will put them together for themselves.4e had the barest gesture to this in its Great Wheel sidebar of the MotP, which explained how to recombine the 4e cosmological elements into a Planescape-y configuration. More of that sort of thing would be good.I have quite a bit of sympathy for Hussar's point here, but a default setting doesn't require a default cosmology, given that the whole conceit of D&D is that you start at 1st level bound to the mortal world and only move into other realms once you have a few levels under your belt.The idea that the game includes Hell(s), The Abyss, a Plane of Chaos, etc is enought default to kick things off, I think. Ie the game is helped by individual planer components, but doesn't need a default cosmological arrangement of them.The issue of how much cosmological backstory there should be is trickier (and you can do this without metaphysical geography). 4e has a lot, and incorporates it fairly heavily into PC building, but is the only edition of D&D to do this, I think. For me that is core to the play of 4e (it takes it in a Glrorathan direction). Obviously many others didn't/don't like it. It seems to me fairly clear that D&Dnext won't have this.This I competely agree with. Metaversing just dilues the -verses. (And you can see that even in this thread, where we see non-Dark Sun products being held up as canonical from within the Dark Sun perspective itself. If someone wants to write a Ravenloft module with a Dark Sun element in it, fine, but that shouldn't create any default assumption that adventurers in Athas are only a mist (sandstorm?) away from a world of Gothic horror.)Also, on border planes: I don't get them. If planes A and C need a border plane, B, then why isn't there a border plane between A and B, and B and C, and so on ad infinitum? Conversely, if planes can border one another without giving rise to an infitine regress of border planes, why do we need such comparatively lame planes as Dust, Salt, Ash, Mud, Smoke, Radiance, Minerals, and Steam? (Dust, Mud and Minerals all look to me like just parts of elemental Earth; Smoke and Ash like parts of Fire; Salt and Steam like parts of Water; and Radiance like part of the Positivei Material Plane.)Lighting, Ice, Magma and Vacuum are more interesting, but Magma can still be part of Fire, and Vacuum part of the Astral or simply deep space. Lightning and Ice should be their own planes, given the preponderance of lightning and cold effects in D&D magic from the very beginning.</blockquote>

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