D&D 5E Renewing the D&D Next cosmology through Anthroposophy

[Dungeonosophy]

In my understanding of Occult Science, there are only three pantheons. I wonder if the 5E core cosmology might be more meaningful if it tapped into this trichotomy. I'm not suggesting that the pantheons of the existing D&D Worlds (Oerth, Faerun, etc.) be changed. The three forces are:

• A Chaotic pantheon led by Lucifer, the "hot evil". (Think Sauron, especially in the early days when he was still the beautiful Gift Giver.)
• A Lawful pantheon led by Ahirman (Mephistopheles), the "cold evil". (Think of the hyper-intellectual, mechanistic mind of Saruman the White.)
• A Good pantheon led by the Sun God, the "balance".

Above the LE and CE pantheons, there is also a Neutral Evil power called the Sun Demon. (Think Morgoth.)

More characterizations and pictures of Lucifer and Ahriman are available here. The core D&D Next cosmology would re-imagine elements of the xD&D "theological corpus", for example:

For D&D Lucifer: the Dark Prince, Graz'zt
For D&D Ahriman: the Cold Lord, Mephistopheles
For D&D Sun God: Pelor
For D&D Sun Demon: the Black Sun, Tharizdun

In this cosmology, Mephistopheles would replace Asmodeus as the Overlord of Hell, and Graz'zt would have vastly expanded cosmological role.

Another option would be to recharacterize the duality of Tiamat and Bahamut as a trine: Chronepsis, Bahamut, and Tiamat.

What you think?

 

[Mercurius]

Interesting approach. You could argue that the traditional D&D cosmology already has an Ahriman/Lucifer dynamic with Devils and Demons, or cold/ordered and hot/chaotic.

Of course if you get into the deeper meanings of Steiner's worldview, it doesn't really work for a traditional D&D game. Ahriman is the force that mechanizes, brings down the spiritual, reduces the human being to a purely material level; Lucifer is the force that lifts humans up and makes him feel greater than he actually is, separates him from embodiment. In other words, Ahriman says "You are nothing" while Lucifer says "You are God." I'm not sure if that sort of deeper psycho-spiritual dynamic can be part of a D&D game...I've never tried it.

Steiner also believes in Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite's nine Angelic hierarchies which could work for the forces of good and also have decent D&D correlates (planetars, solars, etc). I wouldn't go beyond the first three levels, though, as the higher beings are more abstract.

Just a side note. The colors are really hard to look at, especially the red and blue together - it almost created a 3D, multi-layered effect. Not sure what that's about.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

What you think?

Colors not helping.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

My eyes, they bleed.

 

[Keefe the Thief]

I think that you're currently standing in a line, and in front of you are:

- people who want the 1e cosmology
- people who like the Great Wheel
- people who want crystal spheres back
- people who like Planescape
- Planescape fanatics /w Mercykiller tattoos
- people who talk like they're from the Far Realm in real life

Perhaps we can try your idea in 6e or so, but right now, it's retro. What retro, of course, is going to be the question. I foresee catfights.

 

[Mercurius]

[MENTION=49552]Keefe the Thief[/MENTION], my guess is that 5E will include multiple cosmologies, at least both the traditional Great Wheel and the 4E cosmology (the nice thing about 4E, btw, is that it integrates both Planescape and Spelljammer; I don't think WotC exploited that well enough - it would have been nice to see paragon-to-epic adventures in the Astral Sea, for instance).

So again, it isn't either/or. We're probably going to see at least those two cosmologies plus guidelines for variants.

 

[delericho]

The cosmology postulated by the OP is certainly interesting, but...

I don't want 5e to have a default pantheon. The game should bake-in the absolute minimum required setting assumptions into the core. (Spells like "Contact Other Plane" imply the existence of other planes, for example, but doesn't need to specify much about those planes... and shouldn't.)

If and when they get around to doing the "Planes" module, they should try for a toolkit approach, with the Great Wheel, the 4e Astral Sea, and perhaps some other cosmologies given strictly as examples. Detailing them any more than that is fine... but that should be done as settings.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

The colors are really hard to look at, especially the red and blue together - it almost created a 3D, multi-layered effect. Not sure what that's about.

Colors not helping.

My eyes, they bleed.

Yep, that's what Lucifer and Ahriman are like. Contrasting. Hard to look at.

Lucifer's color is red, and Ahriman's color is blue. The Sun God's color is gold (greenish yellow).

 

[avin]

- Planescape fanatics /w Mercykiller tattoos

Sup?

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Yep, that's what Lucifer and Ahriman are like. Contrasting. Hard to look at.

So, you wanted to make it difficult to get your point across?

Noted.

 

[Alzrius]

Ever since 3E, when D&D adopted a much heavier "whatever you need your campaign to be" attitude, it's downplayed specific cosmologies in favor of letting you build your own. I think 5E will keep that attitude.

Personally, I'd like a return to the unified cosmology of the 2E era (and also 1E, though it didn't flesh it out too much). In fact, I'd like this to flip-flop the current approach - say that the D&D "multiverse" is the Great Wheel, but that there are other cosmologies out there (home games), with minor expansion on this latter point.

D&D can't be all things to all people, and it shouldn't try; it's that philosophy that's fractured the fan-base so badly. Give it a specific setting, albeit one so expansive and large as a multiverse with dozens of planes, and let those who want to set their games in a different cosmology do what they do best: world-build on their own.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

So, you wanted to make it difficult to get your point across?

Noted.

I meant no harm or ill-will. The colors are there to highlight the three sets of forces (hot, cold, and balanced), regardless of their various names.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

The cosmology postulated by the OP is certainly interesting, but...

I don't want 5e to have a default pantheon. The game should bake-in the absolute minimum required setting assumptions into the core. (Spells like "Contact Other Plane" imply the existence of other planes, for example, but doesn't need to specify much about those planes... and shouldn't.)

If and when they get around to doing the "Planes" module, they should try for a toolkit approach, with the Great Wheel, the 4e Astral Sea, and perhaps some other cosmologies given strictly as examples. Detailing them any more than that is fine... but that should be done as settings.

Perhaps you're right, that an "occult scientific cosmology" might work better as a specific setting. Yet I do think that this trichotomy might be a useful concept for the 5e design team. The concept of an "evil trinity" (Lucifer/Ahriman/Sorath) is an archetype that is appearing in some fantasy worlds: Sauron/Saruman/Morgoth, Boba Fett/Darth Vader/Palpatine, and Captain Jack Sparrow (Lucifer redeemed)/Lord Beckett/The Kraken.

Like Mercurius suggested, D&D already displays this in the poles of Law/Chaos, and Devil/Demon. I offer a tool to help tease this out, clarify, and align the D&D cosmology with a deep archetype.

 

[jonesy]

Funny. I keep looking at the pretty little color triplets, and all that pops in my head is Dragonlance, which is already arranged in a similar fashion. And the primary tenet of the Dragonlance setting is balance. With Tiamat and Bahamut in alternate forms.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Funny. I keep looking at the pretty little color triplets, and all that pops in my head is Dragonlance, which is already arranged in a similar fashion. And the primary tenet of the Dragonlance setting is balance. With Tiamat and Bahamut in alternate forms.

Excellent point. The big difference is that in Dragonlance, neutrality is the balance, whereas in Spiritual Science, good is the balance, with lawful evil and chaotic evil as the poles, like this:

CE-CN-CG-NG-LG-LN-LE

 

[jonesy]

Excellent point. The big difference is that in Dragonlance, neutrality is the balance

I'd actually argue that in Dragonlance Paladine (Good) holds the balance, and the Evil faction is split into those who want to mainly destroy (lead by Takhisis) and those who want to mainly conquer (lead by Sargonnas). The actual Neutral faction lead by Gilean is more like the Indeps in Planescape, staying on the sideline and focusing on their own projects.

 

[Dungeonosophy]

Occult science indicates that when there is a polarity, then, regardless of what you call the two, they are both bad. For example, what Milton calls "God", is really Lucifer, and what he calls "the Devil" is Ahriman.

From a 1919 lecture:

"If we think of those beings which man regards as this own divine beings, we must say: we can feel and sense them in the right way only if we conceive of them as effecting the equilibrium between the Luciferic and the Ahrimanic principles. We can never feel in the right way what we should feel as the Divine if we do not enter upon this threefold order. Consider from this point of view Milton's Paradise Lost, or Klopstock's Messiah which came into existence under the influence of Paradise Lost. Here you have nothing of a real comprehension of a threefold world structure, you have instead a battle between the supposedly good and the supposedly evil, the battle between heaven and hell. You have the mistaken idea of the duad brought into man's spiritual evolution; you have what is rooted in popular consciousness as the illusory contrast between heaven and hell, introduced into two cosmic poems of modern times."

"It is of no avail that Milton and Klopstock call the heavenly entities divine beings. They would only be so for man if they were conceived of on the basis of the threefold structure of world existence. Then it would be possible to say that a battle takes place between the good and the evil principles. But as the matter stands, a duad is assumed, the one member of which has the attributes of the good and receives a name derived from the divine, while the other member represents the diabolical, the anti-divine element. What does this really signify? Nothing less than the removal of the divine from consciousness and the usurping of the divine name by the Luciferic principle; so that in reality we have a battle between Lucifer and Ahriman; only, Ahriman is endowed with Luciferic attributes, and the realm of Lucifer is endowed with divine attributes."

"You see the far-reaching consequences revealed by such a consideration. While human beings believe they are dealing with the divine and the diabolical elements when contemplating the contrasts described in Milton's Paradise Lost or Klopstock's Messiah, they are, in reality, dealing with the Luciferic and Ahrimanic elements. There is no consciousness present of the truly divine element; instead, the Luciferic element is endowed with divine names."


As jonesy suggests, the Dragonlance setting does try to touch on this.

 

[jonesy]

As jonesy suggests, the Dragonlance setting does try to touch on this.

Hmm. I don't know if I agree or not with that since I'm unable to parse any meaning out of that lecture thingy.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The colors are there to highlight the three sets of forces (hot, cold, and balanced), regardless of their various names.

Worthy idea were they not rendered on a black background in the default forum theme. The blue-on-black is completely unreadable to me, I have to highlight it to make it legible. Ruining the effect you're hoping for. Just sayin' is all.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

Hmm. I don't know if I agree or not with that since I'm unable to parse any meaning out of that lecture thingy.

That's Rudolf Steiner at his purest.