D&D 5E The Multiverse is back....

[Neonchameleon]

This is why I tend to regard Planescape as an ultimately nihilistic setting.

Planescape isn't to blame for the Great Wheel. The core of Planescape, Sigil, has an Overgod (or whatever the Lady of Pain is) sheltering it from The Great Wheel.

I'm gonna call shenanigans on this unless you can give me at least the Planescape book that talks about all that (don't even have to give me a page).

I've been running Planescape for years and years, and that is simply not accurate. There's no great magic that detects some good was done here, so more evil has to happen here. In fact, the Planes can shift so much due to belief that you can affect the world on a real, physical, level. Layers can shift between planes, gatetowns can fall into planes, these things are shifts in philosophy and reality on grand scales that change the nature of the Multiverse itself. And PCs can effect these and even greater changes if they have the knowledge, the power, and the belief to do so. That is what Planescape is about, even when the Great Wheel is involved.

But, yeah, if you can tell me where I can find a passage that says good causes evil, I'm all ears.

@Neonchameleon ... as a fan of Planescape I'm going to have to agree with the others here as far as your take on the setting.

The core problem with Planescape is that it has not one but two cosmologies at the same time. The one Gygax landed D&D with, the Great Wheel, and its own cosmology that has more in common with Mage: the Ascension than it does with the Plane of Chaotic-Chaotic-Good* and box-filling of The Great Wheel. Unshackling it from The Great Wheel and leaving it with its own cosmology (which is the one most people use in play although it claims both) only improves it.

Not that I've anything against Asgard in specific.

 

[pemerton]

But doesn't this go both ways? Don't you also communicate something about these ghosts and wraiths by making them come from the Shadowfell as opposed to the Feywild? These places are already defined (that's kind of the point of a cosmology)... it's like saying the people in America define America... well yeah they do to a point... but having been a part of America in turn defines and differentiates them also.

I don't really follow your comparison to America. America is a real place, with real social and cultural dynamics, exercising a real influence on the life experiences and hence personalities etc of those who live and/or grow up within it.

The Shadowfell and Feywild are not real places. They're fictional creations, whose authors are trying to convey to an audience what they are like, and what their purpose is as literary creations. The way an author does that is by locating certain sorts of familiar creatures within them. In the fiction, the character of a unicorn, or a ghost, may well be shaped by its origin. But in discussing theme, cosmology, and how they relate to monster design we are not talking from the perspective of a character within the fiction. We're talking from the perspective of authors and audience of literary creations.

When the author tells you that the Shadowfell is where ghosts and wraiths come from, the audience - who are already familiar with ghosts, wraiths, and notions of a shadowy spirit-world - is able to understand what the author intends the Shadowfell to be. It is a place of death, of lingering tragedy, of emotional anguish, etc.

Similarly, when the author tells you that the Feywild is populated by unicorns and pixies, the audience is able to understand that it is a place of magical forests and exaggerated natural beauty.

If I say this Unicorn is from the Shadowfell it is going to be different from a Unicorn spawned on the Feywild in nature, mechanics and personality. All of these things will be informed by where it originates from. However the Shadowfell is not going to change because I put unicorns in it... they will just be Shadowfell unicorns.

I don't really follow. If you tell me that Gygaxian Monster Manual unicorns come from the Shadowfell, then all you do is confuse me. Why would CG creatures of sylvan beautiy and blessings for the pure of heart come from a place called the Shadowfell? Are you trying to be funny, or (perhaps) bitterly ironic?

Assuming a non-ironic, non-comedy game, then if you are trying to present the Shadowfell in the sort of way the 4e designers did you wouldn't put unicorns in the Shadowfell. You might put corrupted unicorns there (Rolemaster used t have such creatures, and I'm sure other systems/campaign worlds have had them too), but the fact that they are corrupted unicorns tells us something about the Shadowfell. And those corrupted unicorns wouldn't, mechanically, be the same monster. For instance, a touch from their horn wouldn't cure poison - more likely they have a horn-based attack that deals necrotic and/or poison damage.

 

[pemerton]

Planescape isn't to blame for the Great Wheel. The core of Planescape, Sigil, has an Overgod (or whatever the Lady of Pain is) sheltering it from The Great Wheel.

The core problem with Planescape is that it has not one but two cosmologies at the same time.

I do not own any Planescape boxed sets, so my knowledge of Planescape is via the modules that I have (eg Dead Gods, Infinite Staircase), the Planewalker's Handbook, and the way that Planescape material has been taken up and used in later (3E and 4e) planar supplements.

From that perspective, I regard the treatment of the Great Wheel in Planescape as quite different from its treatment in Gygax's Appendix 4 to the Players Handbook. I don't find the Appendix 4 cosmology cyncial or nihilistic, because there is nothing in that cosmology that entails balance or moral equivalence. For instance, upon reading Appendix 4 there is nothing to suggest that you might not try and destroy the Abyss or the Hells, or at least cut off there influence over the Prime Material Plane.

The idea of "balance", and that the dreams and aspirations of the evil are as "real" and metaphysically potent as those of the good, is something I associate with the Planescape materials that I mentioned above.

 

[aramis erak]

I enjoy Planescape as its own unique setting. I would happily play in a Planescape campaign.

As the background for other settings, I find it--and the Great Wheel, if you want to separate them--rather lacking.

Other people have already gone into a lot of reasons I agree with, but in essence it feels artificial to me. Too balanced, too precise. It feels like a game creation, not like something out of myth/occult belief. The 4e World Axis has its own flaws, but I felt it captured the idea of "other planes of existence" in a more organic fashion.

That said, it's important to understand where I'm coming from. I consider the whole "there must be universal balance in all things" philosophy to be such utter nonsensical prattle, I'm sometimes amazed at how many people take it seriously. The idea that good can't exist without evil, or that there can be such a thing as "too much good," is to embrace an absolute misunderstanding of what "good" means. (The Kingpriest on Krynn is not an example of "too much good," no matter how the books might claim he is. He's an example of a flawed human who did something bad that he thought was good. And frankly, the gods' response is also downright evil; they could have easily made the same point without killing millions of people for the sin of one man, or one Church.)

So, yeah; not so much a fan of the perfect symmetry. (Though again, I can't stress enough, taken as its own setting with its own setting-specific quirks, I like Planescape quit a bit.)

Without evil, good has no meaning.
Without order, chaos has no meaning.
Without war, peace (in the martial sense) has no meaning and...
without inner turmoil, peace has no meaning in the emotional sense.

I agree that symmetry need not be perfect, but note that the opposites are part of the understanding of any intangible.

Personally, I've always liked the Great Wheel, since I first encountered it in AD&D 1E... And noted that it was not quite perfectly symmetrical. The "evil" planes had many more layers than the good.

 

[Mouseferatu]

Without evil, good has no meaning.
Without order, chaos has no meaning.
Without war, peace (in the martial sense) has no meaning and...
without inner turmoil, peace has no meaning in the emotional sense.

That is, indeed, a philosophy that a lot of people subscribe to. But I personally find it both false and literally harmful, and I reject any notion that any cosmology--fictional or real-world religious--is better for it. I can accept it as the basis for a specific fictional setting, such as Planescape; I don't like it, but I can accept that in this world's particular (fictional) reality, it's the truth. I cannot accept it as the basis for a cosmology common to multiple settings, because I find it that abhorrent. Or, more accurately, I will not.

But I also don't particularly think that a thread on a gaming site is the best place for a philosophical discussion that, almost by definition, will have to touch on real-world religion and morals. So, with apologies, I'm not going to expand on this any further.

 

[The Shadow]

Without evil, good has no meaning.
Without order, chaos has no meaning.
Without war, peace (in the martial sense) has no meaning and...
without inner turmoil, peace has no meaning in the emotional sense.

Once again, Mouseferatu and I are on the same page here. These are statements I cannot, do not, and will not accept.

And I feel strongly enough about it to keep it out of my gaming. It affects me like an intellectual stench.

Briefly, in my own view (but it's a very traditional and long-argued one), evil is a privation of the good. It is not a 'thing', it has no equality with good. Evil is, by its very nature, a parasite: It needs good things to prey upon. But the good has no need of evil, any more than a healthy person needs a tapeworm.

The same is true of peace and its absence, whether that be war or turmoil.

Order and chaos are very interesting in this regard. The reason is that there is more than one kind of order, but only one kind of chaos. This makes the analysis more difficult, and I will not attempt it here; it could perhaps be argued that order does in some sense 'need' chaos so as to be properly defined. (I don't think so myself, but it's at least more superficially plausible.)

Now, it could be argued that we humans need to experience evil in order to properly appreciate good, but that leads immediately to questions about why, which in turn land us squarely in matters that cannot be discussed here.

 

[Neonchameleon]

But doesn't this go both ways? Don't you also communicate something about these ghosts and wraiths by making them come from the Shadowfell as opposed to the Feywild? These places are already defined (that's kind of the point of a cosmology)...

Of course it goes both ways. The example "Unicorn" was not, I believe, an accidental one. Unicorns are creatures that have an existance that reaches far beyond D&D (for that matter Unicorns appear in Harry Potter) - and as such they are going to always, always have more resonance than a D&D exclusive monster. There are are about a dozen other mythological monsters on that list (of which the Succubus is one) which have more emotional weight than D&D mythology. If it had been a Hamatsu and someone had moved its alignment, or they'd declared a Yugoloth was a demon, not a devil, that would have helped define the D&D specific word far more than it would have defined the cosmology. (And had it been something that really really doesn't match the mythology, like the Erinyes/the Furies of Greek Myth then it just causes confusion).

Again this seems to be more rooted in how you look at things than in an objective way of defining things. If I say this Unicorn is from the Shadowfell it is going to be different from a Unicorn spawned on the Feywild in nature, mechanics and personality. All of these things will be informed by where it originates from. However the Shadowfell is not going to change because I put unicorns in it... they will just be Shadowfell unicorns.

If, on the other hand, the source of unicorns in general is the Shadowfell and not the Feywild, that does really odd things to the planar structure. About as odd things as "Unicorns all come from Mechanus". The tonal mismatch is profound in both cases.

Without evil, good has no meaning.
Without order, chaos has no meaning.
Without war, peace (in the martial sense) has no meaning and...
without inner turmoil, peace has no meaning in the emotional sense.

None of that is even close to true unless you confuse "has no meaning" with "Is unremarkable". Such dualism is, as a philosophy, not just false but actively harmful (and doubly so when it becomes Balance Is King).

And [MENTION=16760]The Shadow[/MENTION], is mathematical chaos chaos or in fact a very deep kind of order?

But anyway [MENTION=1288]Mouseferatu[/MENTION] is right. We're drifting into the realms of real world religion and politics here.

 

[Stalker0]

Evil is, by its very nature, a parasite: It needs good things to prey upon. But the good has no need of evil, any more than a healthy person needs a tapeworm.

I wanted to highlight this. The concept of symmetry in philosophy is primarily an eastern derived one, that has steadily influenced western literature over the last several decades. The concept of Yin and Yang.

Before that, the philosophy above was more dominant. Good was the standard, than evil got introduced and screwed things up/



You can actually see this impact in the New Trilogy of Star Wars. When Anakin is supposed to bring "Balance to the Force", many younger people were confused by this. Since the light side was currently the dominant force...then balance meant he would make the dark side stronger....so why were the Jedi surprised when he went to the dark side?

The answer is, Lucas was using the more western style of balance (which was more predominant in the 70s when the movie was first made). The Light side by itself was balance....the dark side threw it off balance.

 

[Nivenus]

I think we may be getting unnecessarily sidetracked.

As others have said, Planescape and the Great Wheel do not necessarily promote a moral equivalence between good and evil. It's one thing to say that cosmic good and cosmic evil are equal in power - that's more or less indicated by their equal standing in the Great Wheel. It's another thing to say that every good action results in an evil reaction (or vice versa). The former is (essentially) true in Planescape; the fiends and celestials of the multiverse exist in a stalemate (as do the devils and demons for that matter). The latter, however, is not.

There is nothing in anything I've read which suggests that trying to enact good is a pointless exercise in the multiverse. There's nothing which says the death of a demon lord necessarily requires the death of a powerful celestial. There's nothing which says that good and evil are necessarily in balance at all times, forever, in perpetuum. Indeed, as others have pointed out, the very nature of Planescape's multiverse (which is shaped by belief) means that such things can (and probably will, given enough time) shift.

What's more, I don't really see how the World Axis of 4e is any different. The gods have defeated, destroyed, or imprisoned most of the primordials but a great number of them still exist or on the verge of escaping. The demons of the Abyss aren't really any weaker than the angels of the Astral Sea. And what's more, the gods themselves are divided into good, evil, lawful good, and chaotic evil camps, so there's not exactly a united front against elemental evil in that world. Not to mention the increased relevance of the Far Realm, which is full of horrors that make demons and devils look positively friendly.

Personally, I'm inclined to think mortals' understanding of the planes in any edition of D&D is probably a bit simplistic and flawed. I can see people in a setting viewing both the World Axis and the Great Wheel as valid interpretations, regardless of which is "core" (indeed, the 4e Manual of Planes allows for this possibility by explaining how to use the content of the book for the Great Wheel).

 

[Remathilis]

I think we may be getting unnecessarily sidetracked.

As others have said, Planescape and the Great Wheel do not necessarily promote a moral equivalence between good and evil. It's one thing to say that cosmic good and cosmic evil are equal in power - that's more or less indicated by their equal standing in the Great Wheel. It's another thing to say that every good action results in an evil reaction (or vice versa). The former is (essentially) true in Planescape; the fiends and celestials of the multiverse exist in a stalemate (as do the devils and demons for that matter). The latter, however, is not.

There is nothing in anything I've read which suggests that trying to enact good is a pointless exercise in the multiverse. There's nothing which says the death of a demon lord necessarily requires the death of a powerful celestial. There's nothing which says that good and evil are necessarily in balance at all times, forever, in perpetuum. Indeed, as others have pointed out, the very nature of Planescape's multiverse (which is shaped by belief) means that such things can (and probably will, given enough time) shift.

What's more, I don't really see how the World Axis of 4e is any different. The gods have defeated, destroyed, or imprisoned most of the primordials but a great number of them still exist or on the verge of escaping. The demons of the Abyss aren't really any weaker than the angels of the Astral Sea. And what's more, the gods themselves are divided into good, evil, lawful good, and chaotic evil camps, so there's not exactly a united front against elemental evil in that world. Not to mention the increased relevance of the Far Realm, which is full of horrors that make demons and devils look positively friendly.

Personally, I'm inclined to think mortals' understanding of the planes in any edition of D&D is probably a bit simplistic and flawed. I can see people in a setting viewing both the World Axis and the Great Wheel as valid interpretations, regardless of which is "core" (indeed, the 4e Manual of Planes allows for this possibility by explaining how to use the content of the book for the Great Wheel).

I think the key here is that both settings exist as static for a simple reason: replay-ability.

If Evil was to be crushed by Good, barring a reset button, then their is limits as to what you can do next. No Abyss full of demons, no underdark with drow and mindflayers. This is true of the GW or WA systems; if one side truly wins, then the nature of the world shifts so radically that there is no where to go but back. A multiverse locked in static might not be dynamic, but it assures there will always be a new challenge. A new prince will aspire to be a Demon Lord after the last one is slain. A new Balor will be birthed when the last one falls.

To Quote a Wise Man...

[video=youtube;fm26rpFUdU0]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm26rpFUdU0[/video]