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<blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 3806162" data-attributes="member: 14159">Part of what really gets me about this new cosmology is that besides eliminating a constant background flavor element of D&amp;D, the structure of the &quot;Great Wheel&quot;, 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.&nbsp; 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.&nbsp; Just like they are making D&amp;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 &quot;core&quot;!), they are putting it all into an inherently disorderly and anarchic multiverse where the gods live in random planes floating in a vast astral &quot;sea&quot; 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.&nbsp; It's almost a Lovecraftian remake of D&amp;D, another posted noted that the new Cosmology was essentially the Old World of Darkness cosmology with changed names and some altered descriptions.&nbsp; 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 &quot;Astral Sea&quot; 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.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="wingsandsword, post: 3806162, member: 14159"] 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. [/QUOTE]

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