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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Hussar" data-source="post: 6401833" data-attributes="member: 22779">The bolded part is exactly what I want.Why is it confusing?  That's precisely how D&D presents the Prime Material Plane.  The 3e DMG had extensive guidelines for building a campaign world, from demographics to political/alignment implications, to geography and everything in between.  The 4e DMG presented largely the same material as well.  My memory is too faded to claim the same for 2e or 1e, but, I'm pretty sure that they did so.  They presented baselines at most and then encouraged DM's to build whatever they wanted using those baselines as a starting point.So, if my Prime Material game world is a dessert world over run with giant sand worms, fantastic - here's the baselines for a quasi-medieval Tolkienesque world, and deviating from those baselines will have X, Y and Z impacts.  The Prime Material monster are not presented with hard and fast canon by and large.  Other than living underground, where do Kobolds live?  Who is the ruler of the Beholders?  What is the political structure of the Minotaur court?  Do Minotaurs even have courts?  What is a Grell's goal in life?  What is a medusa's?  On and on and on.In The Planes, all those questions are answered.  It's right there in black and white, Asmodeus rules Hell.  Hell is a bureaucracy dedicated to harvesting souls.  Ice Demons live on the 7th layer of Hell and their ruler is Mr. Mixilplict.  (ok, I made that last bit up. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />)  On and on and on.And, as you said, changes done to that canon are met with instant and loud condemnation.  Eladrin as elves aren't a problem because eladrin are mechanically flawed or don't make sense or can't be fit into a D&D world.  You almost never hear any criticisms like that.  The worst criticism you get for Tieflings is that their horns are too big.  No, the big, loud, and never ending criticisms are that Eladrin aren't what was established in The Planes Setting.  Tieflings are not what was established in The Planes setting.  So on and so forth.  I've almost never heard any criticisms of the 4e cosmology that are directly related to the actual cosmology.  The criticisms are almost universally based on the fact that 4e isn't using the same default The Planes setting as earlier editions.To be honest, I'm not thrilled about 4e's cosmology either.  Again they were trying to build IP and create something to sell.  They don't treat the planes as a toolbox for DM's to go out and build.  They treat the planes as The Planes - a distinct setting that they can keep selling setting books for.  it doesn't matter if it's the Great Wheel or 4e's cosmology.  It's the same thing.  The only reason I rarely bitch about 4e's cosmology is that I almost never see anyone complaining that 5e isn't using 4e's cosmology or that 5e's changes are somehow "disrespectful" to canon.  If people were jumping on that horse, then I'd complain about that just as much.</blockquote>

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