Please Place Your Tinfoil Hat Snugly Onto Your Head

[RPG_Tweaker]

There ideas would be fine if they didnt mess with Game canon without a good reason.

Which canon? The canon for Greyhawk and Planescape's Great Wheel? A two-part campaign setting which has been officially decoupled from core D&D? That canon?

There many reasons for the removal: The newer one is less cumbersome and reduces baggage from a system that must be the gateway to a DM's OWN creation, additionally a vague, openended cosmos is less restrictive, once again nurturing a DM's OWN creation.

They should have just come up with a bunch of new stuff instead of changing what we already had for the sake of change alone.

They did create a bunch of new stuff, based on familiar elements from mythology, literature, the old Greyhawk setting, and several other settings.

It is not for sake of change alone... just read their reasoning included in most of their new releases and listen to the pod-casts.

A new core setting is fine but leave the established alone without some story reason!

They haven't changed the "established" one, they've unattached it to stand as a Campaign setting by itself, just like The Fogotten Realms, Eberron, Dragonlance, etc.

Wow, three times in one post... you may want to change that needle.

 

[Charwoman Gene]

There ideas would be fine if they didnt mess with Game canon without a good reason.
They should have just come up with a bunch of new stuff instead of changing what we already had for the sake of change alone.
A new core setting is fine but leave the established alone without some story reason!

Hell is repetition.

 

[Pale]

Which canon? The canon for Greyhawk and Planescape's Great Wheel? A two-part campaign setting which has been officially decoupled from core D&D? That canon?

Just as a point of correction: The "Great Wheel" has been the default AD&D cosmology since the release of the 1E Dungeon Masters Guide. It's not just canon for Greyhawk and Planescape.

Go back, read the DMG, stop saying false things.

 

[Moon-Lancer]

Hell is repetition.

Darnit, my bucket wont fill up with water...

 

[Nifft]

Hell is repetition.

People keep telling me that.

Hand-basket-case, -- N

 

[Nyaricus]

Just as a point of correction: The "Great Wheel" has been the default AD&D cosmology since the release of the 1E Dungeon Masters Guide. It's not just canon for Greyhawk and Planescape.

Go back, read the DMG, stop saying false things.

I would likely agree with you, except that in 3e (which most of us here are likely more familiar with) the Great Wheel was part of the "Greyhawk package" in the core rulebooks, which included deities, spell names and other "-isms" from the Greyhawk CS. Therefore, most of us 3rd editioners would associate the Great Wheel cosmology with Greyhawk herself, and not as a default of D&D as a whole.

food for thought,
--N

 

[FungiMuncher]

Has anyone noticed strange and curious similarities between the new 4e designs and things they've been doing in their own homebrews? ...

Yeah, I'll add my voice to this eerie chorus.

My homebrew has an alternate cosmology, including a faerie realm, the shadow plane, and a single elemental realm, as well as fallen celestials.

 

[Simia Saturnalia]

Had been working on a cosmology featuring:
Endless worlds in the Space Between, both deific and mortal.
An Abyss that breaches the borders of creation.
The Elemental Heart, the swirling maelstrom from which all matter was formed.
A 'darker' and 'brighter' reflection of the world, though mine were cast by the light of the Sacred Flame, a kind of cosmological 'sun' from which all life flows, making (my Feywild) a kind of 'bright shadow' of the world.

In fairness, however, my Abyss punched through the nothingness of the Astral into non-creation and Hell perched on its rim, a tiered city carved in equal parts from basalt and souls hammered into metal, culminating in the spire from which the grim and exiled tyrant Asmodeus stared down at his rebellious former subjects in the Abyss while plotting unspeakable revenge. So I kinda shifted up the 'Asmodeus/rebellion' thing a little, and the Abyss was something trying to get out, but still.

 

[Daztur]

My fluff is pretty different from what they have but it fits better with the new than the old and some of the new is cool enough that I'm going to shove it into my homebrew. A whooooooooooooole lot of the crunch is either stuff I houseruled myself or changes things that really pissed me off about 3ed. The number of people saying that WotC is doing the sort of things they homebrewed really bodes well for 4ed.

 

[RPG_Tweaker]

Just as a point of correction: The "Great Wheel" has been the default AD&D cosmology since the release of the 1E Dungeon Masters Guide. It's not just canon for Greyhawk and Planescape.

Go back, read the DMG, stop saying false things.

:\

Just a point of correction to your "correction":

The Great Wheel appeared in Appenidx IV of the PHB (1978), All encounter charts and text references regarding the planes in the DMG (1979) direct the reader back to the PHB.

BTW: This is tangental to the issue, but it should be noted that there is no mention anywhere in the 1E DMG or PHB indicating a connection to the not-yet-published World of Greyhawk (1980), which even in that supplement, was only assumed. All explicit affiliations of the GW to Greyhawk were established elswhere.

Regardless of its origin or specific connections, there are a few vital points at work here:

While the GW was the assumed cosmology of the D&D game pretty much from the onset, it was not compulsory. It was merely one appendix of various optional material, along with psionics, the bard, and suggested treasure division. It is fluff to be used or discarded at will.

Wizards of the Coast has decided that due to numerous mechanical and accesibility reasons, a new, less restrictive cosmology was needed for the assumed backdrop of 4E. One that isn't straight-jacketed by alignment (which is de-emphasized in the new game), and will allow for a wider range of personal tweaking, easier insertion of third party material, or complete abandonment.

Arashi Ravenblade's claim that Wotc is changing canon established over the years is not really correct. No actual canon related to the Great Wheel cosmology has been altered, it has merely been decoupled from the core game, left to stand as it's own campaign universe.

They key is its relationship to other universes:

There exist an infinite number of parallel universes and planes of existence in the fantastic "multiverse" of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.

All WotC has done is make the default setting be a different universe, parallel to the GW/Planescape universe, the Forgotten Realms universe, the Eberron universe, the d20 Modern universe, the Mutants & Masterminds universe, the Gamma World universe, d20 Judge Dredd universe, etc.

This means that a DM who prefers the GW universe can continue on as normal, albeit with some conversion necessary. They could even have players travel to the 4E assumed universe maybe by way of a portal somewhere in Sigil, and have to deal with its alien cosmology... or eschew it entirely, just as they probably have been doing with the Ptolus universe and its alien cosmology.