D&D General The D&D Multiverse: Too Weird to Live, Too Rare to Die

[Micah Sweet]

Sure, that is fine for some. However, that is just not in the DIY spirit of the foundation of the game IMO. That aspect of the game I grew up with is an essential part of a TTRPG to me. I don't begrudge people who want rules for everything, but I prefer a different approach.

It is plenty in the DIY spirit if you DIY new rules to model something.

 

[Micah Sweet]

That, and Grandpa's speech about how he used to be with it are the two things in the Simpsons most relevant to my existence.

 

[Micah Sweet]

if you model it on our universe, sure, but then you have the same problems ‘we’ have with no one ever visiting a different plane(t) because it is too hard and deadly. You will have to make some concessions to make it worthwhile

I don't think you do, at least not in the way you mean. Planescape managed just fine IMO by including points of interest in every plane without changing how the plane itself worked, thus requiring magical protection if the party wants to go "off-road".

And we only have the one universe, so I tend to use it as a baseline and jumping-off point.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

You keep acting like my objection is the age of 3E canon and not Ezekiel's use of it to argue the GW can't be more than what the 3E MOTP says it is.

I'm not the one who quoted it as a source to say that other planes canonically were part of it!

My whole claim has always been that the Great Wheel is progressively hegemonic. Any time it takes an open stance, it will become closed later. Your Plane of Wood is a great example of exactly that. Early material implies it is real and even official. Later material explicitly excludes it. This has happened repeatedly.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I take exception to this. I loved all those books, especially MotP. It had a logical, verisimilitudinous take on the planes as they were described in earlier material, and didn't push the supremacy of narrative tropes and a PC-centric view of the universe it was describing. That's why it's my favorite 1e book.

Instead, it pushes a much different kind of supremacy: rigid rules, hard-coded planes, a perfectly symmetrical and consistent universe that everyone can learn fairly easily. No deviation, no variation. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Thing is? The "supremacy of narrative tropes" you speak of is both more realistic as a medieval worldview, and capable of holding your "logical, verisimilitudinous take" inside it, because a mechanistic/clockwork universe is a literary trope too, the music of the spheres and such. But a nailed-down mechanistic universal model cannot go back the other way.

Calling it "where fun goes to die", as you and @EzekielRaiden have, is harsh bordering on insulting, and not at all funny.

I did not say it was where fun went to die. I would never say such a thing. I did say it was where interesting cosmology went to die. Because the Great Wheel is extremely antagonistic to cosmological creativity. The Feywild and Shadowfell are the only innovations it's gotten in something like 40 years. It effectively cannot grow or change or even get all that meaningfully reinterpreted.

 

[Scribe]

It effectively cannot grow or change or even get all that meaningfully reinterpreted.

I dont know that it should. I see Fey/Shadow as Positive/Negative infused Material, but the transition planes as one goes around the wheel? I just cut those anyway.

Interactive layers between planes, is about the only room left, and the 'wheel' is more a visualization aid than anything else, a way to present an ultimately abstract and divine (speaking of outer planes mostly here) concept.

The 5.5 DMG even says something to this effect I believe, I looked over the cosmology section the other day.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Instead, it pushes a much different kind of supremacy: rigid rules, hard-coded planes, a perfectly symmetrical and consistent universe that everyone can learn fairly easily. No deviation, no variation. A place for everything and everything in its place.

Thing is? The "supremacy of narrative tropes" you speak of is both more realistic as a medieval worldview, and capable of holding your "logical, verisimilitudinous take" inside it, because a mechanistic/clockwork universe is a literary trope too, the music of the spheres and such. But a nailed-down mechanistic universal model cannot go back the other way.


I did not say it was where fun went to die. I would never say such a thing. I did say it was where interesting cosmology went to die. Because the Great Wheel is extremely antagonistic to cosmological creativity. The Feywild and Shadowfell are the only innovations it's gotten in something like 40 years. It effectively cannot grow or change or even get all that meaningfully reinterpreted.

I've always found the Great Wheel very interesting, especially as various editions (Planescape especially) expanded and detailed it, so I can't say I agree with that claim either.

 

[dave2008]

I've always found the Great Wheel very interesting, especially as various editions (Planescape especially) expanded and detailed it, so I can't say I agree with that claim either.

I definitely find the idea of the Great Wheel (and fantasy cosmology in general) very interesting. However, I have often found the lore that was attached to over the years less interesting. Some of it is the specific lore, but a big part of it is, I think, just the fact that something mysterious became clarified. What could be potentially anything, got defined as something, which is really hard to live to my imagination of anything!

 

[Voadam]

It is weird that the 3e MotP says that things like the Far Realms have no place in the Oerth centered Great Wheel when simultaneously things like the 3e Tome & Blood have alienists in the default Greyhawk world summoning things specifically from the Far Realms.

The Far Realms had been a part of D&D since late 2e with The Gates of Firestorm Peak and the illithiad modules. A place specifically beyond space and time and the outer planes, it was not the elemental chaos of Limbo or such outer planes but a specific other thing. While it started in 2e I really associate it with 3e where it was there from almost the beginning in core supplements.

 

[EzekielRaiden]

I dont know that it should. I see Fey/Shadow as Positive/Negative infused Material, but the transition planes as one goes around the wheel? I just cut those anyway.

Something that is almost totally resistant to alternate takes does not seem like a great fit for the baseline cosmology for an open game.

Interactive layers between planes, is about the only room left, and the 'wheel' is more a visualization aid than anything else, a way to present an ultimately abstract and divine (speaking of outer planes mostly here) concept.

The 5.5 DMG even says something to this effect I believe, I looked over the cosmology section the other day.

Well, that would certainly be an improvement, albeit a thin one.

It is weird that the 3e MotP says that things like the Far Realms have no place in the Oerth centered Great Wheel when simultaneously things like the 3e Tome & Blood have alienists in the default Greyhawk world summoning things specifically from the Far Realms.

The Far Realms had been a part of D&D since late 2e with The Gates of Firestorm Peak and the illithiad modules. A place specifically beyond space and time and the outer planes, it was not the elemental chaos of Limbo or such outer planes but a specific other thing. While it started in 2e I really associate it with 3e where it was there from almost the beginning in core supplements.

Color me shocked and appalled to find out that 3rd Edition was mechanically and thematically inconsistent. I don't think I'll recover from this...this...betrayal.