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Message: <blockquote data-quote="FourthBear" data-source="post: 4633039" data-attributes="member: 55846">Obviously, nothing ever *needs* to be altered.  The cosmology of 4e differs from the default of 1e-3e for pretty specific and reasonably transparent design goals.  1)  Create a more open cosmology that allows for the easy addition of new planes and regions.  This is the reason the Great Wheel was broken up: to eliminate a structure that led to a question for every new plane: where does this one go in the predefined alignment Wheel?2)  Eliminate the cosmological axes of alignment.  No more explicit LG, CN or NE(chaotic tendencies) planes.  This allows more easily for heterogenous planes.  Many planes inspired by mythology (in fact, pretty much all of them) fit extremely poorly into the alignment grid.  The various realms of the Norse, Greek and Egyptian gods, for example.  Now Olympus can be a simple, single realm with a philosophically diverse population of gods, monsters and spirits without having to wonder why it's on a plane with the CG tag.3)  Addition of the Feywild and Shadowfell, as planes which roughly parallel the World, as featured in fantasy stories too numerous to mention.4)  To eliminate highly homogeneous elemental realms in preference to a mixed Elemental Chaos, allowing for both huge regions of "pure" elements as well as the mixed regions where most of the action of previous editions took place in practice.Frankly, I believe that if the current cosmology had been presented back in 1e, the various past authors of D&D (both official and third party), would have created even more marvelous realms for campaigns and adventures.</blockquote>

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