The Great Wheel Cosmology as an "assumed part of a D&D world"

[Scribble]

I think a lot of people's misgivings about the changes to the cosmology is because they make some major planar conflicts and plotlines unlikely at best, or invalidated at worst.

For me, the new planar layout makes the Blood War highly illogical (why would the devils bother fighting the demons when there are other astral dominions that would be vastly easier to invade?). And, since the BW is a major element of my campaign, I have no plan of ever updating.

I suspect other people who object to it hold similar views, replacing the Blood War with their own favorite conflict/theme from the Great Wheel.

They talked about the blood war in the demons and devils article... Basically they thought it was a wonky sort of reason for Demons and Devils to dislike eachother since their only real motivating factor in the game was Alignment.

So it sounds like the Blood war is out... At least in the core "setting."

 

[resistor]

They talked about the blood war in the demons and devils article... Basically they thought it was a wonky sort of reason for Demons and Devils to dislike eachother since their only real motivating factor in the game was Alignment.

So it sounds like the Blood war is out... At least in the core "setting."

I know. My post is mostly in response to everyone saying "You can do all the same stuff in the new cosmology that you could in the old one." That's just not true. As you said, the Blood War is out, and there's no consistent way to reinsert it. That rubs me the wrong way.

 

[Mouseferatu]

I know. My post is mostly in response to everyone saying "You can do all the same stuff in the new cosmology that you could in the old one." That's just not true. As you said, the Blood War is out, and there's no consistent way to reinsert it. That rubs me the wrong way.

Oh, I can think of several ways to reinsert it, if you want to. (After all, most devils are confined to Hell, but obviously not all of them can be.)

Maybe Asmodeus started it, trying to harness the elemental power of the demons for his own purposes (perhaps as a means of escaping Hell).

Maybe the demonic hatred of the devils is some primal instinct laid down by reality itself, sort of a last "middle finger" toward those who dare rise up against their own deific creator.

Maybe Tharizdun was a major enemy of the god that Asmodeus and the devils used to serve, and that instinctive hatred remains in the minds of those he created, and even those the devils killed that god, they still carry his taint/essence.

Maybe the war is because the demons seek to destroy the souls that the devils seek to corrupt and make use of to escape Hell.

And those are just off the top of my head. Lots of ways you can continue the Blood War, if you really want it.

 

[schroederlance]

The Great Wheel isn't a sacred cow. Planar travel has become somewhat key to D&D, but the specific layout of those planes isn't a big deal. To be totally honest, I think every setting should have its own cosmology and set of planes. The Great Wheel is Greyhawk's. Eberron has its own, as do the Realms (though they were once said to share one with Greyhawk).

First, the Great Wheel is considered by some, including the OP, as being just as key to D&D's unique 30 year history as the crunchy elements of the PHB classes and races. It may not be a Sacred Cow to you, but to those of us who have used it extensively, it is one. The Great Wheel is Greyhawk's, true, but it is also every other setting's before Eberron.

Forgotten Realms ret-conned their cosmology after 3.0 was already out, so the 'once said' comment you make is not acurate. You make it sound like the Realms never stated it either way and that they were just shoe-horned into the Great Wheel. It was explicit in any book dealing with FR gods. For example: Faiths & Avatars (2E FR God Book) shows the plane/domain name for each FR god, including dead ones. Turning to a random god entry: 'Amaunator (DEAD): Domain Name: Mechanus/Keep of the Eternal Sun.' Just because they chose to ignore or change the printed history of the setting in 3.0 does not mean that they only hinted at a Realms/Great Wheel connection. It is right there in black and white.

Dark Sun was explicitly set in a different multiverse, attempts to retcon it into working with Planescape or Spelljammer not withstanding.

Dark Sun was never retconned into the Great Wheel. It was there all along, with the understanding that it was virtually impossible to access the sphere of Athas becuase of the Grey.

Dragonlance wasn't as explicit, but wasn't particularly warm to the concept.

Dragonlance used the Great Wheel, though the average scholar from Krynn didn't have the 'facts' about the cosmology correct. The Gods all had domains within the Great Wheel, just like the Realms gods did. The setting wasn't 'warm to the concept' of the Great Wheel because it just didn't focus on the planar aspect of D&D. Thats not what the setting was about.

Lack of cosmologies for settings like Birthright is far from the same thing as implicit use of the Great Wheel. It's just that -- a lack of definition.

I'll simply state that the above statement is misinformed. From 'The Book of Priestcraft' for the Birthright setting I'll again choose a random god. Page 17:

Haelyn
Lord of Noble War, Lawmaker, Patron of Anuire
Greater Power of Mount Celestia, LG....

...Domain Name: Honor's Glory/Mount Celestia...

Birthright did not suffer from a lacking cosmology or a 'lack of definition'. The inhabitants of the setting were simply too busy dealing with mortal affairs to worry much about the planes. The planes were there whether they cared about them or not.

Really, the Great Wheel was very characteristic of earlier editions. It was exclusionary and defined by exception. New rules had to be created for every new idea. I really hope this is an indication that the 4E developers are attacking that "manage by exception" concept and that it carries over to other aspects of design.

This statement I will agree with. I too hope that the exceptions are just that 'exceptions' and not the rule.

 

[Plane Sailing]

Then with the new 4e cosmology we see a whole new planar layout thrown in, and out goes the "Great Wheel" which has been the generally assumed way planes work in D&D for almost thirty years.

All I can say is "excellent".

I've never used the great wheel (when I saw it introduced in the 1e PHB I thought it seemed silly, with its strict basis on alignment, and never used it - having had several more interesting cosmologies for years by that time anyway).

The best of the 3.0e supplements to my mind was the Manual of the Planes, with the excellent and thought provoking alternative cosmologies such as "Orerry" and "Winding Road" amongst others.

Granted, there are some people such as yourself who know and love the great wheel. But here's the thing: For all you guys, it doesn't really matter what implied cosmology there is in 4e, because you'll look at it and think "nah, I like what I've already got better" - just like I did in the late 70's. You'll have no difficulty in just arranging the planes in the great wheel with all the other later amendments they made according to your taste.

The only people for whom the new arrangement is significant are

a) people who are brand new to D&D, and for whom this will be their 'first' cosmology. Why not give them something brand new and with greater adventuring potential throughout all the levels (since that seems to be WotC's overall intention... making the planes better adventuring locations).

b) people who are ready for a change and looking for inspiration for the future - rather than giving them 'same old same old', why not take the opportunity to present something new?

After all, I think the Orerry cosmology of Eberron was brilliantly presented and was just oozing with plot hooks and adventuring ideas in a way that the great wheel never did. Should they have just left Eberron with the great wheel? I think it would have been poorer for it.

Cheers

 

[resistor]

Mouseferatu:

While those are all possibilities, to me they fail to give a good reason of why the devils should hate demons rather than any of the other inhabitants of astral dominions, which, in the new cosmology, ought to be a much more achievable conquest.

The two solutions seem to be a) the hatred is imposed by some greater power (the universe itself, the devils' former deity, etc.), or b) by saying that they hate each other because they're opposites. (Wait... isn't point (b) what they were trying to get rid of!?)

Both approaches feel like cop-outs to me, particularly (a). And (b) doesn't make sense to me. Why would the abyss, which is a focal point of a huge plane, be directly opposite by a relatively small island that's just one of hundreds (thousands?) in the Astral Sea. That kind of asymmetry really bothers me.

In the Great Wheel, the Blood War makes sense. Both the demons and the devils are evil, so they naturally want to conquer things. Invading "up" the Wheel will attract the attention of the Eladrin or the Celestials, who, being good, are for more likely to band together to defeat the Lower Planar invasion. So, the only obvious choice is the try to conquer each other, thereby expanding their own power across the Lower Planes and putting them in a position from which to attack the Upper Planes.

 

[Plane Sailing]

The point is though, that to anyone who is interested in using the Blood War as a key part of the campaign (and is thus already invested in the great wheel to some extent), there is no difficulty in just continuing to use the great wheel. They just ignore the 4e assumed cosmology for their own preferred cosmology.

If the Blood War is important to someone, they don't have to work out how to shoe-horn it into a new cosmology - they just their existing cosmology which has it already tied in.

What is the difficulty in doing this I wonder?

 

[wingsandsword]

Part of what really gets me about this new cosmology is that besides eliminating a constant background flavor element of D&D, the structure of the "Great Wheel", at least in my experience, was a major roleplaying thing in terms of alignment.

The Great Wheel was a very orderly, very lawful look at reality. The very flavor of the Great Wheel was one of a a cosmic balance with raw physical reality (the elemental and energy planes) at the center and raw metaphysical reality (outer planes based on alignment) at the outside, each with their precise balanced order, with the material plane at the center of them being perfectly balanced between belief and reality.

With this new multiverse, there is no great cosmic order, Lawful PC's don't have the in-game solace of knowing that the multiverse itself is an orderly place, with every element having it's place, with every belief having it's exact place that you could pretty much geometrically plot out.

Just like they are making D&D darker and grittier by making warlocks and tieflings core races (demon-bound spellcasters and descendants of incarnations of pure evil are common enough to be "core"!), they are putting it all into an inherently disorderly and anarchic multiverse where the gods live in random planes floating in a vast astral "sea" instead of a cosmically ordered wheel while the elements don't come from a precise balance and purity, but instead some plane in the Ethereal where icebergs float on seas of magma and demons come from an abyss that's a gaping maw in reality trying to suck all of creation into the void. It's almost a Lovecraftian remake of D&D, another posted noted that the new Cosmology was essentially the Old World of Darkness cosmology with changed names and some altered descriptions.

There are huge flavor implications for a world, at least as I see it, for the structure of the planes if and when they ever come into play or PC's find out about them.

No matter how much they say you can just cram in all the old Great Wheel planes into the "Astral Sea" or have a chunk of Elemental Chaos that's all one element for an adventure there, it's inherently a disorderly multiverse, it's a mishmash without order.

 

[Desdichado]

Oh, bah. Lovecraftian? No. Major hyperbole there.

 

[resistor]

What is the difficulty in doing this I wonder?

Depends how deeply they integrate the changes into the core rules. If the parts of the magic system related to planar travel and movement are too strongly adapted to the new cosmology, it could make my life difficult.

I haven't written off buying 4e, but I do intend to look carefully before I make up my mind.